Celeste Manno: Top prosecutor refuses to appeal sentence for killer who relentlessly stalked and murdered 23-year-old as her mother responds: ‘I’m disgusted’

Victoria’s top prosecutor has refused to bow to pressure to appeal for a life sentence for the killer who stalked and murdered 23-year-old Celeste Manno.

Ms Manno’s devastated family has campaigned for a life sentence for Luay Nader Sako, who earlier this month was given 30 years behind bars for breaking into  Celeste’s home in the middle of the night and murdering her while she slept.

But on Friday the Victorian Office of Public Prosecutions refused to appeal the decision, leaving Ms Manno’s mother to respond: ‘I’m disgusted’.

‘The state failed her then (for) not keeping her protected then. And now the courts decided to fail her all over again,’ Aggie Di Mauro told Nine news.

‘According to them, she did not deserve to get her justice through a life sentence for him.’

The decision comes after Ms Di Mauro and other family and supporters took to the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne last Sunday to rally in support for justice for Celeste.

Ms Manno was stabbed 23 times by Sako, an obsessed co-worker, who used a hammer to smash his way into her Mernda home in northeastern Melbourne in the early hours of November 16, 2020. 

Sako had briefly worked with Ms Manno at a Serco call centre where she was team leader and had been kind to him when he was sacked for performance issues after only a few months.

He began harassing, stalking and professing his love for her, and despite Ms Manno turning him down romantically and taking out an intervention order, Sako sent 140 messages from various Instagram accounts over a 12-month period. 

Four months before he killed her, Sako breached the intervention order and sent Ms Manno a three-and-a-half page letter which terrified her.

Sako was arrested but freed, buying a knife and hammer, and then appeared to have lost interest in Ms Manno, going to ground over the next few months.

However, in reality he had found the floor plans to Ms Manno’s mother’s home and began driving up and down her street looking for the right house.

On November 15, with just hours to live, Ms Manno felt comfortable enough to go public with her new boyfriend Chris Ridsdale, posting a smiling image of them together on Instagram.  

An enraged Sako would later say he felt Mr Ridsdale’s smile was a taunt and that he was ‘laughing maniacally at him’.

What happened next would tear the lives of Ms Manno’s family apart and now leaves them distraught that Sako – just 35 when he murdered Celeste – runs the real possibility of one day walking free from jail. 

A grieving Aggie Di Mauro has said that her daughter had done everything she could to stop Luay Nader Sako from harassing her, but it wasn’t enough.

Justice Jane Dixon sentenced Sako to a maximum 36 years behind bars for the ‘appalling crime’, but he will be eligible for parole in 2054, when he will be aged 69.

Last weekend an emotional Ms Di Mauro told the rally in central Melbourne that her daughter had ‘entire life ahead of her’ before her murder. 

‘My beautiful sweetie, 23 years old, god she had plans,’ Ms Di Mauro said. ‘She was so excited because we were just coming out of lockdown.

‘My sweetie, this was her downfall, too kind. The amount of times she said don’t contact her, she always said please.’

Ms Di Mauro slammed Victoria’s laws as ‘pathetic’.

‘We don’t sentence murderers to life in this state and in most of the states in this country because of the brutality of the crime or the premeditation,’ she said.

‘The only time a murderer gets life in this state is if and only if their prospects of rehabilitation are so poor then if they are released, they might do it again. 

‘The victim doesn’t exist, all of it has been shocking and it’s just wrong. There is nothing that is about the victim.’

Ms Di Mauro claimed the criminal justice system had failed her daughter a second time by showing her killer mercy in sentencing.

Justice Dixon had declined to sentence Sako to a life sentence on February 29 after finding he had significant mental disorders which had impaired his judgement.

Ms Di Mauro said Sako deserved to spend life in prison for brutally cutting her daughter’s life so short.

After calling police in July 2020 out of fear for her safety when he dropped from sight in August, Ms Manno had thought Sako had ‘learned his lesson’ and ‘got scared’ to not contact her daughter again.

‘Everything stops. He disappears. We literally thought it was over,’ Ms Di Mauro said.

But then came the night when she told her daughter she loved her and Ms Manno had gone to bed. 

Sako had tracked her to her mother’s house, climbed through her bedroom window, and stabbed the young women  to death.

Ms Di Mauro teared up as told the crowd last Sunday how she had run to her daughter’s rooom, ‘and she was gone’.

‘Never, ever did it occur to me… ..that this beast would be capable of something like this,’ she said.

Ms Di Mauro said the attention Celeste received from him was neither desired nor reciprocated.

She said Sako had made her daughter’s life miserable, but police didn’t initially take the young woman’s complaints seriously.

 The grieving mother called for reform of stalking laws and the way in which police respond to alleged victims.

‘I promised Celeste that I would get her justice one way or another,’ Ms Di Mauro said.

The Victoria’s Law Reform Commission launched an inquiry in the wake of Celeste’s murder, with 45 recommendations from the report since being adopted.

But Ms Di Mauro said she’s been left disappointed with the delays in the introduction of such reform since her daughter’s death nearly four years ago.

‘I was made commitments, promises and, silly me, I believed it all,’ she said.

‘And we know that, right now, if Celeste’s situation was occurring – in the same way – it would happen again.’