True Crime with Rachel Shannon
How a Psychotic Obsession Lead to a BRUTAL Murder: The Terrifying Stalking Case of Celeste Manno
16 Nov 2025
Chapter 1: What societal pressures do women face when rejecting men?
As women, we are told that if a man approaches you and you aren't interested, all you have to do is reject him. Don't string him along, don't be too nice, don't lead him on, because that will just make you look like a bitch, excuse my language. But as women, we know that it isn't always as simple as it seems. Why? Because some men won't take no for an answer.
Some men try to be persuasive or assertive. They think it's a game and you want to be chased. Sometimes it's a little bit annoying, but it's harmless. Other times though, men will become obsessive or even violent if you reject them. Far too often when a man is rejected, his ego is bruised and he blames the woman who said no. and he retaliates.
And that is why some women can be afraid to reject men. This case is the perfect example of why so many women feel threatened when they reject someone they're not interested in. Today, we will be discussing the case of Celeste Manno. Celeste Manno was born on November 22nd, 1996 to parents Aggie DeMauro and Tony Manno, and she had an older brother named Jaden and a younger brother, Alessandro.
At the time, Celeste was living with her mother and younger brother in the city of Mernda in Australia. Celeste was described as being the essence of love and kindness. She hated the idea of anyone being left out and always went out of her way to be inclusive and spread positivity to others. She was beautiful on the inside and out.
She had the power to touch the lives of everyone who interacted with her, making it her mission to be kind and compassionate. Celeste was known to find joy in the simple pleasures in life. She loved music, dancing, and food, going out with friends, and living her life to its fullest. Throughout her life, her love for her family and friends was unwavering.
After primary school, Celeste went on to university, where she studied criminology and psychology, hoping to become a psychologist one day. She said that she wanted to learn as much about human nature as she could, so she could be better at helping those who needed it most. For the time being, 23-year-old Celeste worked as a team leader at the Circle Call Center in Melbourne, Australia.
There, she met her boyfriend at the time, Chris Risdale. The two had only been together a short amount of time before her death, but according to Chris, the time that they did spend together was amazing. He described that it was just effortless to love Celeste.
They made each other laugh and would stay up late talking on the phone for hours not wanting to hang up so they'd always fall asleep on the phone together. Chris said that Celeste was just such a positive influence on everyone around her and he knows that if he got to spend more time with her, they would have grown together and she would have made him a better person.
Another man that Celeste worked with at the call center was 36-year-old Louay Nader Sakho, who was originally from Iraq and migrated to Australia with his parents and four siblings in 1992. He started working at the call center in 2018 as a customer service operator. However, he was known to be very recluse and introverted, and honestly, he wasn't great at his job.
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Chapter 2: Who was Celeste Manno and what was her background?
I'm a bit surprised to read this as it is all new to me. As much as I appreciate this, I only feel a professional way towards you and I wish you all the best towards your new job and journey. Loewe, I appreciate your response and honesty. If it was ever possible, I'd give my life and the world to you just to be with you. I hope that one day I'll meet another Celeste for who I can do just that and
and for which can be my son that shines. After this interaction, he continues to send her messages. In another message, Celeste is more clear and upfront with what she wants. She asks him to stop contacting her, and these messages read as quote, LeWay, I'm so infatuated with you that now it's becoming unhealthy. I know my words don't help me. Maybe some NLP would help.
I'm sorry for coming on strong, Celeste. I'm just another rival for your affection. Celeste, I just saw these messages request by pure chance as I don't check the message requests often and I was quite shocked after reading them all. I would really appreciate if you could stop contacting me as this is making me very uncomfortable. Please respect my wishes and stop contacting me, Loei.
Loei, my impression of you has changed. You're no different to the majority of women. I'll remember you and this lesson for all of life and I will devote every ounce of energy I have to climbing up and proving to the world that I'm somebody. This is my promise to you and final contact with you. But as you can imagine, that was not his last contact with her.
After asking him to stop contacting her, she did block him, but that did not stop him. He started making other fake accounts and would send her message after message. He would send her a barrage of messages and then would just stop contacting her for days or weeks at a time. But no matter what she said or did, the messages continued.
At one point, Celeste got her mother involved because she was so disturbed by these messages and his utter lack of respect he showed her. These messages read, Since then, you have made another account and started this again. Celeste is deleting and blocking you again. Don't make another account to contact her anymore. We will be in contact with the police again.
To this, Loewe responded, There's absolutely no reason to feel intimidated by me, Celeste. Would you please say something? You're having to rethink your responses, Celeste. Please speak your mind. After months and months of messaging her, by December of 2019, the messages turned from professing his love and affection to getting more sexual in nature.
He started describing in extremely graphic and vulgar detail sexual things that he wanted to do with and to her. Her family said that some of the messages he wrote are so graphic that they didn't feel comfortable sharing them. But one of the messages reads, Obviously, Aggie was very concerned at these messages and how the situation was progressing.
She knew that they were dealing with a very scary, unstable man who clearly had no regard for what Celeste or anyone else wanted. Celeste was worried that he could be following her. He knew where she worked, so it wouldn't be a stretch to say that he could follow her home and find out where she lived.
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Chapter 3: What led to the obsessive behavior of Louay Nader Sakho?
He blamed her for reading the messages even when she knew they would disturb her. It was her fault for reading them, not his for sending them. So they brought this letter to the police and asked if they should withdraw the intervention order. But police insisted that they keep it in place.
they felt that having an order like this would be a better safeguard to prevent Loewe from harassing Celeste further. It made it so that there was a step, like if Loewe was even in her presence, they could report him for it, whereas if they didn't have this protection order, he could be around her and they couldn't really say much.
After finding out about the letter Loewe sent to Celeste, police did take him into the station for another interview. There, he said that the COVID-19 pandemic was causing him to become isolated and lonely, saying that his mental health was declining. So, he admitted to sending those messages to her, but he said that he's not a threat.
He said that Celeste lied in her protection order application and that he presents no harm to her. But by the following month, he was charged with violating a protection order, as well as with using a carriage service to harass, and he was scheduled to attend a court hearing in February of 2021. And it seems that after this letter, maybe things were finally over.
Weeks passed without any contact from Loewe. It seemed like he was disappearing from their lives. finally accepting reality that his obsession is not Celeste's problem. In the meantime, Celeste was enjoying the start of her new relationship with Chris.
On November 15th, 2020, she finally decided to officially announce her new relationship by posting a picture of the two of them at a pub together, which was taken that previous day. However, neither she nor Chris or anyone else in her family could have predicted the devastating consequences of posting that innocent photo.
By around 3.55am on the morning of November 16th, 2020, Aggie was awoken to the sound of glass shattering within her home. Immediately, Aggie is concerned for her daughter's safety, so she rushed to Celeste's bedroom to check on her, and it was at that time where she found 23-year-old Celeste lying in her bed, unresponsive, covered in blood, with a bloody knife lying on the bed near her foot.
Immediately, Aggie called 911 and attempted CPR to save her daughter's life, but unfortunately, it wasn't enough. It turned out that Celeste had been stabbed a total of 23 times to her chest, abdomen, back, legs, and head. She was also found to have defensive wounds on her arms. According to later autopsy, it was a stab wound to her heart that ultimately killed her.
Right away, Aggie knew exactly who was responsible for this horrific, tragic murder. But it took absolutely no time for police to find that person and bring them in. Upon reviewing CCTV footage as well as using cell phone evidence to track Loewe's movements, investigators found that all the way back in August, Loewe purchased a kitchen knife that he would later use for the attack.
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Chapter 4: How did Celeste respond to the unwanted advances from her stalker?
Clearly, LeWay is a very disturbed man who thinks very highly of himself and very lowly of everyone around him. He thinks that Celeste is the problem. Not him for incessantly messaging her, but it's her fault for reading the messages and reacting accordingly. After being taken into police custody, like I said, as he awaited his trial, he was examined by multiple forensic psychiatrists.
His goal at first was to get the doctors to diagnose him with a severe mental impairment that would deem him unfit to stand trial. He started telling one of them, Dr. Rajan Darji, about how he was experiencing visual hallucinations. Specifically, he saw a figure that he called Isha, who he described as ugly with big ears, a big nose, and pointy teeth.
He said that the figure told him to be a criminal and was even in the car with him while he was driving to Celeste's and it told him to end things. But based on other things that Lu Wei told Dr. Darji in that interview, he did not buy that he was experiencing a psychosis or anything of the sort.
According to what he would later testify at his plea hearing, he believes that Lu Wei was making up this hallucination to garner sympathy and make himself less culpable for his actions. He said though that he believed this hallucination represented the way trying to understand and describe the ugly side of himself that he didn't understand.
He went on to say, "...I think it's really his way of kind of explaining what's going on in different parts of himself, a part of him that absolutely hated the victim, but he won't be able to incorporate that with a part of him that was in love with the victim." He tried to portray that as if it's a psychotic experience and I didn't think it was. He goes on to say, he was exaggerating.
He was trying to persuade me that he had a mental impairment defense because he wanted to get sympathy and didn't want to be seen as being a monster. He said that LeWay was using words that were very similar to the exact diagnostic criteria they would use to diagnose psychotic disorder. meaning that LeWay had extensive knowledge of psychosis and he tried to use that to get himself diagnosed.
He said that he has never assessed someone with that level of knowledge and understanding of the criteria or who had used direct wording of a defense of mental impairment. After his intensive examination of Loewe, Dr. Rajan wrote a 125-page long report, which is the longest he had ever written.
In the report, he diagnosed Loewe with an extreme personality disorder, depressive disorder, and body dysmorphia. He said that Loewe felt increasingly persecuted by police and Celeste, after that intervention order was taken out against him and when he was charged with breaching the order. Then Celeste posting that photo of herself and another man is really what broke the camel's back.
His obsession and rage amplified and he couldn't handle the fact that Celeste was out there happily living her life with someone else all the while she was persecuting him for his innocent messages. Dr. Rajan said that in terms of the murder, he was enraged with Celeste while also desperate for the situation to disappear.
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