I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin
'My daughter’s murder could’ve been prevented’: Aggie Di Mauro Pt.1
30 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What tragic event is discussed in this episode?
The public has had a long-held fascination with detectives. Detectives see a side of life the average person is never exposed to. I spent 34 years as a cop. For 25 of those years, I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world. Can murders be prevented?
It's a complex question, but one that Aggie DeMauro is not afraid to ask. Aggie is the mother of Celeste, a vibrant 23-year-old whose life was brutally taken from her. She was stabbed to death in her own home by a former co-worker she hardly knew who was consumed by obsession. Today, Aggie joins me on I Catch Killers to make a point that is both heartbreaking and undeniable.
that Celeste's murder could have been prevented. Nothing said in this conversation will bring Celeste back. But Aggie's voice matters, and if the right people are listening, perhaps lessons can be learnt. Accountability can be demanded, and real change can follow. Because stalking is not harmless, it's dangerous, and far too often it is deadly.
It's time to wake up before something like this happens again. Aggie DeMauro, welcome to I Catch Killers.
Thank you, Gary, and thank you for having me on.
I know that you'd rather not be having a conversation with me in the circumstances that we're having the conversation. So I apologize up front, reliving things that are obviously very painful to you. But in the lengthy conversations that we've had in the lead up to this podcast, there's some very important messages that you want to get across. And I agree with you wholeheartedly on your concerns.
Concerns and mixed with anger about what happened to Celeste and the fact that it appears that no lessons have been learnt from then.
None whatsoever.
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Chapter 2: How did stalking play a role in the lead-up to Celeste's murder?
So they gave her a new team to lead. And the beast we're going to refer to was on that team. She was only his team leader for about two months before he left the company, the organisation. And the way that came about was that he was put on notice by management one day. He decided to leave then and there, apologised for his behaviour.
And Celeste, being his team leader, was required to walk him to the exit door. She did so. She was telling me, you know, when she got home that night that she'd experienced the most embarrassing moment of her life. because she felt quite bad for him, so she extended her hand to shake his hand and wish him all the best in his future endeavours.
And what she didn't expect was for him to kiss her on the cheek. So she went apparently bright red. She said, Mum, I must have been tomato red. I was so embarrassed. In that moment, I thought she was just being a little bit of a drama queen. I said, don't worry about it. Didn't even know who she was talking about. I thought it was just a young kid, possibly her age with some crush on her.
At 23, as much as Celeste with the thought she was an adult, you are still a child at that age, aren't you?
Yeah, she didn't even look 23. You know, she still got asked for ID in some venues. So
I saw the pictures of her and I can understand why that would happen. Her choice of career or study, criminology and psychology is an interesting path to go down to too. Did she have dreams and aspirations, what she wanted to do?
She wanted to help people. She used to do volunteer help for some of these not-for-profit organizations where people can call in if they need some sort of help talking to someone. And she did that for a while, volunteering with that. But, you know, she was a kind of... kid at school, even in high school, if she saw someone on their own, she'd approach them and see if they're okay.
She just didn't really like seeing people left out. So she just had this need to assist people. And yeah, she thought that she was a little bit undecided with whether to go down legal studies, lawyer sort of work or psychology, but she really wanted wanted to understand how people thought, why they thought a particular way, how she could help them think differently.
So yeah, she was very interested in that.
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Chapter 3: What failures did Aggie Di Mauro highlight in the justice system?
Absolutely wanting a murderer's rehabilitation, which I don't believe any of us want. In Celeste's case, in a nutshell, and this was all came out at the plea hearing, and obviously the judge read it out in her sentencing remarks, but in Celeste's case, You have an offender who decides to stalk a young woman who didn't even know him for well over a year.
We have an intervention order in place that he decides to breach with a three and a half page letter where he is pleading with Celeste to drop that intervention order. And there are many messages in that intervention order that absolutely basically say drop it or else. We don't drop it, and not because I didn't consider it.
I did want to do things differently, and I'm sure we'll go there as well. But we didn't drop it purely on police insistence to keep it in place. He then buys a hammer and a knife the very next day after he was arrested and released. goes quiet for three months, leading us to believe that he'd actually learned his lesson and this was over. So we've completely dropped our guard at this point.
Three months of silence from him. Goes as far as finding our address on Google Maps, according to him. Downloads the floor plan to the house to pinpoint Celeste's room. And in the middle of the night, jumps a side gate, smashes through her bedroom window and stabs her viciously 23 times. We rallied for an appeal the first time. Didn't get anywhere with that.
We rallied again, insisting on an appeal. Still didn't get anywhere with that. Once these decisions are made, they're made. I have not met, and I've met hundreds of people, I'm not exaggerating here, from the cemetery and just around the community. Not one community member has ever said to me that they didn't believe he wouldn't get life. They were convinced he'd get life.
The fact that the courts, the judges, everything they tell us through the Sentencing Act, that everything they do, they do in the interest of the community with community expectations in mind, it's a load of rubbish. And this is what I call gaslighting. They want to convince us that we want what they offer and we don't.
I understand where you're coming from. And in the numerous discussions we've had, the issue of life sentencing for murder across the board that you raised, and I said I'm not an advocate for it. And I explained my way that each case needs to be, in my view, judged on the circumstances of the case on its own merits. But what I also did say to you, and I want to put this out,
And with the research I've done on the lead up to the murder, I have absolutely no doubt, not that my opinion counts for anything. You've got more of a right of opinion at being the mother of a murdered young lady. But I believe this person should get life imprisonment. I campaign and I am an advocate for rehabilitation if possible.
But this to me is, and bearing in mind there was a homicide detective for a long time, this is the worst type of crime. This was premeditated. There was red flags, steps, the whole way that he could have walked away from it and he continued on. And I know there was a lot of discussion about mental health and was he impaired at the time of committing the offence.
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Chapter 4: How did Celeste's workplace respond to her stalking situation?
What could the police have done differently? There's so many things that could have been done differently. But we want the coroner to make those findings.
Have you been given a date for the inquest yet? No. Let's talk about the stalking aspect of the offence. I've always had a concern about stalking. I think that it's a very worrying red flag type of offence. If someone's stalking someone, there's real concerns. In my experience in the police, I don't think all police fully accept that or fully understand it.
I don't think the courts understand it as well and the politicians don't understand it. One of the campaigns that you've been pushing through is about getting more understanding of the offence and nature of stalking and make sure that police respond to it in an appropriate way. Can you tell me about your thoughts and efforts in that regards?
Well, again, when this happened... The Attorney General at the time asked the Victorian Law Reform Commission to do an inquiry into stalking, the laws around it, as well as the laws or legislation around the Personal Safety Intervention Order. That inquiry was done. It took 18 months. It came up with 45 recommendations. There were two reports, an interim report and then a final report.
The interim report was recommendations specific for Victoria Police, in which it made, I think it was nine recommendations, which form part of the 45. So, you know, going back to politicians don't understand it, police don't understand it, but an inquiry was done And it's allowed them to know where legislation is lacking, what police could be doing differently.
Part of those recommendations makes reference to what they refer to as SASH. which the former Attorney General in Victoria decided through a 60 Minutes interview that was done just after that beast was sentenced, to say that Victoria Police had responded appropriately to Celeste's murder by trialling the sash pilot, which at that point she still couldn't say where it was at. They've trialled it.
We know nothing else. The SASH pilot is basically, let's call it a screening tool. It's a questionnaire, among other things that they will delve into, but it's a questionnaire that allows police to categorise the level of risk that an offender poses, a stalker poses. And depending on that level of risk, they'll categorise him low, medium or high risk.
When I was taken through the pilot and what it meant, that's as far as they got at the time. This was at the end of, this was December of 2022. They still had to do stage two and stage three and some sort of evaluation, which I was supposed to be kept informed with, never happened. I have been following up on that every six months, still know nothing.
But when I had this meeting with the assistant commissioner that was spearheading that pilot, my question at the end of the meeting was very, very simple. When you've categorised that the offender poses a high risk, what do you do then? Now, at that point, there was no answer because they hadn't gotten that far. Honestly, this is not rocket science to anybody.
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Chapter 5: What critical warning signs were missed before the murder?
I was not as sweet as Celeste. Celeste always used please to stop contacting her. Mine was very direct, capital letters, telling him to stay the hell away from my daughter and that we were going to the police. You know, this is a person that comes back with a question mark. And, you know, another message to Celeste, like, Celeste, honestly, your mother is
We went to the police, tried to show this particular message. This is a disgusting message. He just looked at Celeste and said, look, there's nothing we can do about it. She could have said, mum, they're not going to do it. And I'm insisting, get in the car. We're going to the police. So I didn't even know what to say to her. Try telling a 23-year-old to get off social media.
Could I just break that down a little bit more? So you're telling me you've gone into the police station, a mother and a daughter. So you've got to form an opinion when someone walks into a police station. Here's a mother and a daughter here both reporting. It's not someone that's come in making up allegations. You've got the actual communications there. You're trying to show police.
You're concerned enough to go to the police station. This is a person that's not a relationship. It's not love gone sour, which is dangerous enough as it is. This is someone that's shown repeatedly he's obsessed with your daughter and you've gone into the police station.
Exactly. Exactly. And can I just add to that, that before we actually went to the police station, I called the police station, explained what was happening over the phone. And that officer that I was speaking to, which obviously was someone else, said, if you're concerned about anything, you should come in and report it. Which is why I said, Celeste, we're going. And we went in.
Yeah, there was nothing they could do about it. In fact, he said, a crime hasn't been committed. To which you can imagine my instant reply was, so we have to wait? for the crime to be committed. And we walked out quite, I felt completely helpless. So just prior to appearing in court, the prosecution got us to go in and sit down with them because they had to take us through that opening statement.
And when they were reading that out, I remember interrupting and saying, because they've gone straight to the July report at the police station. I said, no, no, you've forgotten February. And they've looked at me and said, Aggie, we haven't forgotten. It was never recorded. So we can't have it in the opening summary. I was livid. And I remember saying, but what do you mean?
And on that, what concerns me, I don't think there's an excuse if someone comes in and reports that. That is a warning sign to me. Someone's obsessed with someone enough that they're sending these messages, repeatedly changing the address so they can stay in contact. And The warning signs are there.
Even if a criminal offence couldn't be established, you would take the details down in case it's escalated, in case it's reported again. Maybe he's doing it to other women. There's so many things that could be done.
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Chapter 6: What actions were taken by law enforcement after the stalking reports?
the harassment stopped for a while. On the 4th of August, Celeste attended the magistrate's court for an interim order to be made final.
Celeste and I, yep.
Yep. And Seiko refused to consent to the final orders and a hearing was set down for the 9th of March, 2021. So we're going from August to He's not consenting to the orders and the orders I would imagine would be not to communicate, harass or the standard type of features in the order. He wouldn't consent to it. So a hearing was set down so he could contest what's in there.
We should add that the day he contested, however, the Magistrates Court still put in place an interim order with the same conditions that a final order would have had.
Okay. And that carries through until the hearing?
Until March.
Okay. On the 10th of August, 2020, Seiko was arrested and interviewed at the police station for repeated messages. He was released pending further investigations. The 11th of August, purchased the murder weapon. Now, you've indicated, I've just pulled that out from the summary. I'm not making...
Whether he knew it was a murder weapon, but that's the date he purchased the weapon that he used to murder Celeste.
What you referred to as the date just prior to that, when you said on the 10th of August he was arrested, that was for breaching the intervention order.
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Chapter 7: What is the current status of the coronial inquest for Celeste's case?
At the end of the day, the person that was at risk was only Celeste, right? It's not the person you're dealing with. My daughter was at risk.
These are the things that we've got to appreciate. And I think it comes back to not fully appreciating the nature of stalking. and understanding how dangerous offense that is. I've had on a high profile investigation I was working on, and I was so surprised we came across a person of interest that was stalking someone.
Horrendous case of stalking, just an infatuation, an obsession, that type of thing. And I was surprised by the amount of police that didn't think that was a serious red flag in the investigation. I was gobsmacked by it. And I've had the benefit because I do get a bee in my bonnet about stalking that people don't appreciate how serious it is.
And it's probably because I see the tail end of it as a homicide detective. But I had the benefits of speaking to Laura Richards on the podcast. And she's a world-renowned criminal behavioural analyst, international expert on stalking, homicide and risk assessment. She trained with the FBI and she also worked for New Scotland Yard.
She developed the domestic abuse stalking on a base violence, which is called DASH, which is similar to what you're saying with SASH, which is a risk identification assessment management model, which is currently being implemented in the UK. And she also was the founder of the world's first national stalking advocacy service. So she knows what she's talking about when she's talking stalking.
And when I spoke to her, she made a number of interesting points about stalking. Firstly, she said that stalking is often used in a comedic sense. Like, oh, I'm not stalking you and we all laugh and it's sort of the innocent stalker. Oh, it's just someone obsessed. And she said... That gives the wrong connotation of what stalking is. Stalking is a very serious predatory behaviour.
She also made the point that in her first five years working with New Scotland Yard on stranger rape, murder and abduction cases, she would call the majority of the offenders we caught were predatory stalkers. So let's break that down. She was working on the stranger rape, murder and abduction cases, and the majority of the offenders caught in that five-year period were predatory stalkers.
She talked about how stalking is often missed by police as predatory behaviour, but predators are the most dangerous type of offenders. So this is the world's expert on it. And she talks about murder in slow motion. She talks about red flags of the mist and the need to make police fully understand how serious stalking is.
Yes. Police don't take, I don't believe, take stalking seriously in the case of family violence, where you do have ex-partners that are stalking their wives, girlfriends, what have you. In Celeste's case, because You know, that was the first question that was asked. Are you involved with him or something like that? Because it was none of that, just someone that used to work there.
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