{"id":5804,"date":"2025-10-17T01:10:21","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T01:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/5804\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T01:10:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T01:10:21","slug":"staten-island-man-cops-say-decapitated-by-girlfriends-son-was-one-of-the-greats-ex-wife-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/5804\/","title":{"rendered":"Staten Island man cops say decapitated by girlfriend\u2019s son was \u2018one of the greats,\u2019 ex-wife says"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ex-wife of Staten Island decapitation victim<\/a> Anthony Casalaspro says the doomed city sanitation mechanic had \u201cbig plans\u201d to spend his retirement in Florida \u2014 but his girlfriend\u2019s son, who cops say brutally ended his life, didn\u2019t want the troubled family to leave New York.<\/p>\n

Casalaspro\u2019s girlfriend\u2019s son, Damien Hurstel, 19, is accused of stabbing him to death in their Cary Ave. home near N. Burgher Ave. in West Brighton Monday afternoon, chopping off his head and leaving the knife sticking out of his neck in the blood-soaked bathtub.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is horrendous,\u201d the victim\u2019s ex-wife Valerie Casalaspro told the Daily News in an exclusive interview. \u201cI\u2019m shattered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anthony Casalaspro, 45, tried to do right by his accused killer, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was literally just at the kid\u2019s graduation from high school,\u201d she said. \u201cSo this is a complete shock and disgusting. I mean that is just grisly, to cut somebody\u2019s head off. I am disgusted, and I want justice to be served.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hurstel was arrested at the scene for murder.<\/p>\n

Trouble had seemingly been brewing in the home for years. Anthony Casalaspro\u2019s girlfriend had called cops five times on him in recent years, police source said, accusing him of breaking things in the home on one occasion and slapping Hurstel on another.<\/p>\n

But Anthony Casalaspro\u2019s ex-wife said the victim told her Hurstel was hard to handle.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe told me [Hurstel] was always very angry, no matter what Anthony asked him to do, like, \u2018Clean up, do the dishes.\u2019 He always fought with him about it. He always would say, \u2018You\u2019re not my father, you can\u2019t tell me what to do,\u201d Valerie Casalaspro said. \u201cVery not appreciative of the fact that Anthony was literally taking care of him and the sister and the mother. I know they didn\u2019t get along.\u201d<\/p>\n

But her ex \u201cdidn\u2019t think [Hurstel] was going to be violent because he was a teenager,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Anthony Casalaspro, who recently retired from the city Sanitation Department because he was going blind, amicably split with his ex-wife in 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI literally talked to him two weeks ago. He was doing good. He was talking about getting a house in Florida,\u201d she said. \u201cHe had very big plans.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Hurstel didn\u2019t want to upend his life and leave his Staten Island pals behind, Valerie Casalaspro said her ex told her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if that\u2019s what caused friction with them,\u201d she said. \u201cBut something definitely caused friction in this house to be this bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police had responded to five domestic incident reports made against Casalaspro to the Cary Ave. home in West Brighton over the years, cop sources said, mostly involving incidents stemming from his drinking.<\/p>\n

His ex-wife countered, though, that he was never violent in their 12 years together.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had drinking problems back in the day, but he also did get help for that and has been clean now for about 2\u00bd years,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She stressed how they remained friends even after separating.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a great, great person. We had our ups and downs, but that kid did everything for me, everything for my son, took him in like his own,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I have nothing bad to say about him. \u2026 Very good-spirited, always the life of the party, always made sure that people laughed, always in a good mood.\u201d<\/p>\n

His outlook changed after his brother went missing in 2014, then washed up dead<\/a> on a shore off Bayonne, N.J. But that didn\u2019t stop him from continuing to help others.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven when I struggling, he called me and was like, \u2018Do you need anything? Let me help you.\u2019 You know, lent me money when I needed help,\u201d Valerie Casalaspro said. \u201cHonestly, he was one of the great ones.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ex-wife of Staten Island decapitation victim Anthony Casalaspro says the doomed city sanitation mechanic had \u201cbig plans\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5409,5411,5412,9,24,63,134,136,135,5410,3318],"class_list":["post-5804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-anthony-casalaspro","tag-damien-hurstel","tag-ex-wife","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-valerie-casalaspro","tag-west-brighton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}