In this blog, we are going to discuss two separate cases where Australian women have committed murder and have decapitated their victims.
The first case is regarding a reality TV star/contestant named Tamika Chesser who appeared on the Australian version of Beauty and the Geek in 2010. She has recently been accused of murdering and decapitating her partner, Julian Story in June 2025.
As some background, Tamika has a resume online and this is some information from that:
Australian Model /Actress Tamika Chesser delivers a positive attitude to any surroundings & is very engaging, ambitious, honest, reliable with a polite down-to-earth nature.
Enjoys maintaining her health/fitness and a balanced lifestyle.
Tamika continues to aim for higher success and new challenges.
Available to travel to auditions plus jobs if required.
Her social media is filled with racy and glamorous photos.
She has also posted a series of images that appear to reflect Jewish and Hindu mythology.
In a post from June 2024, she wrote at length about her “spiritual journey”.
“Our Creator our Father and our Mother Nature our Earth are crying out to us all,” she writes.
“What do you think your ancestors would say in regards to the life you’re currently living? Would they be proud?
“What do you see behind the makeup, behind the false lashes behind the hair cut or perfectly groomed beard … behind the Botox … Is the flesh you reside in of relevance? Does it make you the person you are?”
Tamika’s online resume indicates that she was based in Queensland, but at some point she relocated to South Australia. In June 2025, Tamika – who was 34 – and Julian – who was 39 – were living in a unit together in Port Lincoln, South Australia.
Police have since said that Tamika only arrived in Port Lincoln shortly before the murder.
In the months prior to the murder, Tamika had been struggling with her mental health.
Her sister told the media “It just started getting worse.”
“She started being in and out of mental health. She didn’t mention anything and she just told everyone that she loves them.”
“It’s my sister, but that’s not who she is or the Tamika we know,” the sister, speaking softly with a blurred-out face, said.
“That’s not the Tamika anyone knows.”
Tamika had been checked out of a mental health facility in Port Lincoln just weeks before the alleged murder, despite her family’s pleas.
On the afternoon of Thursday June 19, 2025, police were called to the unit where Tamika and Julian were living after reports of a fire.
According to the documents, a witness told police that “he observed smoke coming from unit 3 [and] he saw the accused and asked what she was doing, the accused said ‘nothing’ and then took her dogs for a walk and locked the front door,” it said.
“The witness concerned that smoke or fire would spread … filled a bucket with water and entered unit 3 through the rear door.
“In the bathroom of the unit, he located a bundle of clothing rags and debris which was smouldering.
“The witness doused this and repeated this with a second bucket of water.
Police have said that Tamika walked around the town for hours after the murder. She can be seen walking with a bag, dogs, and dressed in heavy clothing.
The document said police arrived at the scene after being called by firefighters, where they allegedly located Julian’s remains – minus his head – in the bathroom.
“Once the scene was secure and safe, police entered the premises and in the bathroom sighted the deceased remains which were severely burnt and disfigured,” the documents said.
Tamika had returned to the unit by this time and she was arrested.
“The accused was seated in a garden chair in the rear yard adjacent to unit 3 in a catatonic and unresponsive state at this time.”
There was initially a suppression order regarding Tamika’s identity. It was soon lifted and we found out more about the situation.
Tamika was taken to the psychiatric facility James Nash House. She was charged with murder. She appeared in court via video, and had a shaved head.
Her sister said they had been unable to speak with Tamika after her arrest.
“We can’t have contact with her. She’s still unresponsive at the moment,” she said.
“It is very sad and I’m very sorry to Julian’s family.”
Police made this statement on June 27, 2025.
“We know that after his alleged murder, Julian’s body was dismembered and while I won’t provide any further details about that at this time, I can tragically say that we have not recovered the head of Julian Story,” Detective Superintendent Darren Fielke said.
“I can only imagine … the grief this news is causing Julian’s family.
“It is crucial that we locate Julian’s head so that his family has the opportunity to lay him to rest.”
Police also asked for information on Tamika’s movements during the time around the murder.
“Today I am asking the local community, or people that might know Julian or Tamika to please contact us,” Detective Superintendent Fielke said.
“I’m appealing to local residents to review CCTV or dashcam footage which they may have that may assist the investigation.
“Specifically, we are seeking to identify the movements of Tamika, particularly between midnight Tuesday, 17 June until the afternoon Thursday 19 June.”
“We know that they were in a relationship together … it’s something that’s being explored, that domestic relationship,” he said.
Detective Superintendent Fielke said there was no obvious motive at this stage and Tamika was compliant when she was arrested.
Julian’s family issued a statement at the time:
“We are navigating an unimaginable loss, and your care has brought comfort amid the chaos,” the statement read.
“We are also deeply grateful to our family and friends and this extraordinary community whose kindness and support have helped carry us through. Your prayers, presence, and quiet strength mean more than words can say.”
Tamika has also been charged with assaulting an emergency worker. She was scheduled to front court on July 31 for the assault case, and the murder charge is expected to be called in a higher court in December.
This is info about the July 31 appearance:
The 34-year-old woman appeared at Port Lincoln Magistrates Court on Thursday via AVL from James Nash House, a psychiatric facility.
She sported a shaved head and wore a blue sweater and greeted Magistrate Patrick Hill with a “hello”.
Ms Chesser is an Indigenous woman and Justin Slater, a solicitor with the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement, represented her in court.
He told Mr Hill he had ordered “reports” into the charges.
“We are doing our own reports in relation to these matters,” he said.
He asked Mr Hill to adjourn matters until a charge determination had been made for Ms Chesser’s more serious allegations and Mr Hill agreed to the request, setting December 18 at Port Lincoln for the next hearing.
When asked if she understood her hearing would be adjourned, Ms Chesser replied: “Yep”.
On the same day that Tamika appeared in court, Julian’s head was recovered.
SA Police Major Crime boss Darren Fielke announced the find at a press conference:
‘Earlier today police received information from a member of the public in Port Lincoln that they have located in a scrub area what appeared to be a human skull,’ he said.
‘There are some walking tracks through there, my understanding is the person who contacted us today was walking their dog in the area. The dog ran off into the scrub, it didn’t come back when called.
‘They had to walk into the scrub area to find it [the head]. [The remains] were not buried. They were quite out in the open.’
‘Preliminary investigations and phone calls to forensic science centre indicate the remains are most likely human and I believe they are the remains of Julian Story.
‘Julian’s family have been contacted today and provided an update in relation to what has been located and what the ongoing process is from here. Hopefully we can give them some comfort that we have found all the remains of Julian,’ he said.
The man who found Julian’s head has spoken to the media.
Tyson McCallum was walking in the area when his dog Benji the Beaglier found what police believe is a human head.
“I just went in a bit closer and kind of made the connection pretty quickly as to what I thought it was,” he told 9News.
“(It was) pretty surreal to be honest,” he added.
“I was kind of like ‘No way, it’s not what I think it is, surely not’. But it was too coincidental.”
The second case we are going to discuss is one that happened in Sydney, Australia in July 2019. Jessica Camilleri (25) was living in the suburb of St Clair with her mother Rita. Jessica was born on October 12, 1993.
It was just the two of them in the home – Rita had separated from her husband and her older daughter had moved out of home. Rita was Jessica’s sole carer.
Jessica had diagnoses including autism spectrum disorder, an intellectual disability and intermittent explosive disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (“OCD”), depression, and schizophrenia.
Jessica was placed in a learning support unit when she attended school and was in a special learning class. She found it hard to make friends and she often did not get along with other children. She was bullied and responded with outbursts of violence. When she was in Grade 9, she was suspended for biting the arm of a boy and attacking his girlfriend. She was expelled from school in Grade 10 after she assaulted a fellow student.
After she was expelled, she participated in a vocational program called ‘ Novo Transition to Work’. She was involved in violent altercations there and the police became involved. She had to leave the program.
For a period, Jessica lived with her grandmother after she fought with her parents. That arrangement ended after she assaulted her aunt. She went back to live with Rita.
In June 2018, Jessica’s behaviour became increasingly aggressive. A psychiatrist, Dr Chaudhary, diagnosed her with an “intellectual disability, poor anger control, impulsive behaviour, OCD and high anxiety levels”. Hypnotherapy four times weekly commenced at about this time. Reviewing the medical notes Professor Greenberg observed that it was apparent that the offender:
“… had high anxiety levels and lack of insight causing frustration to build up and her ability to tolerate stress decrease causing her to lash out without thinking about the consequences”.
Jessica was admitted to hospital in November 2018. She was prescribed valium and an anti depressant. She stopped taking the anti depressant in December 2018.
In the months prior to July 2019, Jessica had stopped taking her medication. She had told family that she wanted to seek more natural alternatives to treat her conditions.
Jessica loved watching horror movies. Her two favourite films were Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jeepers Creepers. She watched these on DVD repeatedly. Her sister sometimes took the DVDs as she thought they were not suitable viewing, and this would enrage Jessica. Rita gave her the DVDs back as a way to keep the peace.
According to the Case Law court documents for this case, one of Jessica’s repeated behaviours involved her dialling random phone numbers and speaking with whoever answered the phone.
On July 19, 2019, Rita took Jessica to the St Marys Police Station to speak to police. This was because Jessica had made over 30 calls to a random man that day. She started calling the man very early in the morning and woke him up. She then ended some of the calls by saying she hoped the man got cancer and died.
Rita wanted a police officer to speak to Jessica and caution her about her behaviour. Senior Constable Ayley Ross spoke to Jessica and explained that the behaviour could not continue.
The following day was Saturday, July 20 2019. There were a number of incidents that happened that day that led to heightened tensions in the Camilleri home.
A young relative of the women went to their home that day. This child was four years old. Jessica became resentful and jealous. Rita gave the child some attention and this angered Jessica.
A neighbor of the women, Ms Heard, asked Rita for help getting to a doctor’s surgery that day. Ms Heard had been having chest pain.
The child is referred to as ‘ Child A’ in court documents. This is info about the incident.
She blamed Child A for causing delay as Mrs Camilleri organised herself to assist her neighbour. The offender was observed by Ms Heard to be quite hysterical, and she referred to Child A repeatedly as a “little bastard”. The neighbour told the offender to calm down. In the car during the drive to the doctor’s surgery, the offender berated her mother for having Child A to stay, telling her “You have that little bastard too often”.
It seems like Jessica and Rita both took their neighbor to the doctor. The child also went with them. While they were in the doctor’s surgery, a man in the street looked at Jessica. This angered her and she blamed her mother for the man’s attention. When Ms Heard got out of her appointment, she said Jessica was yelling and throwing her arms around. The child was crying and Rita was trying to calm Jessica down. Jessica was said to be swearing and screaming at Rita, and accused her of ‘always embarrassing’ her.
Later that day when they were back at their home, Jessica became unwell and Rita called a home doctor service. Rita told the doctor that Jessica had stomach or gastrointestinal issues.
The doctor arrived at the home at 9.25pm and could hear Jessica talking on the phone, ordering fast food. Rita came to the door and asked Jessica to get off the phone so that the doctor could examine her. Jessica ignored Rita and could be heard trying to persuade the fast food worker on the phone to say ‘ I love you ‘ to her.
The doctor waited for another ten minutes. Jessica did not show any signs of being unwell and refused to get off the phone, so the doctor left.
At about 10pm, Rita spoke with her older daughter Kristi Torrisi on the phone. She told Kristi that she was so concerned about Jessica’s behaviour, that she was going to call an ambulance and request that Jessica be taken to hospital.
Jessica did not want to go to hospital and feared any sort of institutionalisation. She told one friend previously that she would rather kill someone than go to a psychiatric hospital.
Rita tried to phone an ambulance and Jessica tried to physically stop her from making the call. There was a struggle over the mobile phone and Jessica was able to take it from her mother.
Rita followed Jessica into the bedroom and tried to take the phone off her in order to call emergency services.
A struggle ensued. Jessica was much larger in stature than Rita. Police believe that Rita was knocked to the floor and then Jessica dragged her by her hair into the kitchen.
Once in the kitchen, Jessica used seven different knives to attack Rita. She stabbed her mother over 100 times. The attack was so brutal that four of the knives broke. Some of the wounds passed through her right eye socket and into her brain.
This info about the frenzied attack is from Case Law:.
Restraining her mother, very likely with the weight of her body, she directed an indeterminate but very high number of knife blows at her mother’s head and neck, ultimately decapitating Mrs Camilleri at the C2 vertebra, at the top of the neck.
The neck wound was described as “ragged [and] somewhat pulped […] with innumerable overlapping stab wounds in the upper neck [being] at least 100 stab wounds and incised wounds present over the entire surface of the head”. This included injuries to the whole of the surface of the face and head. There was a stab wound into the right eye that entered the lining of the brain, and the tip of Mrs Camilleri’s nose had been cut off, probably with an upwards stabbing blow that ultimately pierced the bony plate upon which the brain sits. The tongue had been cut off with multiple overlapping stab wounds, the wounds having a generally upwards trajectory. Dr Pokorny thought that the removal of the tongue was, either intentionally or otherwise, associated with the complex decapitating wounds to the neck rather than separate to them. There were some superficial wounds to the abdomen.
Rita tried to defend herself during the attack. She had 33 stab wounds to the right hand and at least 62 injuries to her left hand. There were some bruises and wounds to the left arm and some abrasions to the right arm that were suggestive of the use of a serrated knife.
There was an air embolus within a blood vessel in her neck which meant that Rita had been upright and breathing at one point during the attack. She likely died soon after she was stabbed in a vein in her neck.
Both of Rita’s eyeballs were removed from the eye sockets during the attack.
Child A was home during the attack. He woke up and saw what was happening and tried to help Rita. He jumped onto Jessica to try to stop the attack and he also used the cardboard lid of a toy box to try to strike out at Jessica.
Jessica pushed the child off and injured him with a knife in the process. He sustained a deep wound running down his cheek, parallel with an ear, and lacerations to his head and hands. The cheek wound required surgery, and the head wound had to be sutured. The child had been so distressed by what he had seen that he vomited.
After Jessica decapitated Rita, she picked up her mother’s head and went out onto the street.
Multiple times, she dropped the head on the footpath and picked it up, walking further down the street. She would eventually drop the head and go to a neighbor’s home. She asked for emergency services to be called. Jessica herself called 000 and asked for both police and an ambulance.
Jessica was wearing a nightgown, was barefoot and completely covered in her mother’s blood when she went to the neighbour’s home.
When police arrived, Jessica gave them an account of what happened. She first said that Rita was the aggressor and that she had tried to defend herself.
“Mum […] grabbed me by the hair dragged me from my room all the way to the kitchen, she got a knife out of the cupboard and tried to stab me with it coz I think she’s had enough. She was pulling me by the hair she’s ripped out all my hair, there’s hair everywhere, […] and she stabbed me and she broke my finger.”
Police officers wore body cameras and this is some of the transcript from that night.
“Can I ask, is my mum dead?” she asks.
“Don’t think I’m insane, but you can’t bring her back to life?”
Jessica says she knew “doctors can do miracles”.
“That’s a bit of a stretch,” an officer replied.
“Is anything going to happen to me … do I get the death penalty?” Jessica asked.
“We don’t do the death penalty in Australia,” an officer said.
“OK, so I’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Jessica requested that her family be called because “they’re the only ones who can explain it properly”.
“I’ve got a mental illness,” she said.
She also spoke about going to the neighbour and asking for help in calling 000.
“I had my mum’s head in my hand, I know this sounds insane, I was taking it to show my neighbour,” she said.
Jessica would later give her version of events leading up to the murder. She said that she and Rita had a ‘petty argument’ about Jessca going to a mental health facility.
“She said: ‘I want you out of my life.’ She said: ‘I deserve to have a free and happy life,'” Jessica said.
She said that her mother actually dragged her into the kitchen and there was a struggle. Jessica alleged that Rita grabbed the knife first.
“She wanted to kill me,” Jessica said.
“I don’t know what her intentions were … she was so frustrated and confused.”
Jessica then detailed the attack and how she was “ramming” the knife.
“I was so angry — in a fit of rage, like I’ve never been before,” Jessica said.
She also said she was “not fit” to go to jail.
“I’ve got a really bad illness,” she told the officer.
“The only place I’m probably fit for is a group home.”
“I understand my family are probably not going to want me after this,” she said.
In December 2020, Jessica’s case was taken to court. She had originally been charged with murder and pleaded not guilty to that. The defense’s argument was that impairment of her mind caused her to lose control of her actions. They also argued that the severity of her mental health issues warranted the charge being reduced to manslaughter.
It took the jury just over two days to find Jessica guilty of manslaughter.
Jessica was sentenced in February 2021. Her sentence was 21 years in prison for “a crime of extraordinary viciousness and brutality”. She was given a non-parole period of 16 years and two months.
Relatives in the public gallery began to cry and said “thank you” after learning the sentence.
Justice Wilson accepted the crime — which involved seven separate knives, four of which broke — was “entirely spontaneous” and predicated by Jessica’s fear of being returned to a mental institution.
It involved “destructive and mutilating brutality” upon Rita.
“She must have been in extreme pain, and both shocked and terrified by what was being done to her by her own beloved child,” Justice Wilson said.
“Mrs Camilleri’s life was cut short in the most horrible manner imaginable.”
The judge said by further mutilating her mother’s body after she had died, Jessica was “indulging in a sort of macabre curiosity” sparked by her obsessive viewing of horror movies.
Justice Wilson said Jessica’s crime meant she had lost not only her mother, but “her carer, protector, and only real friend”.
Jessica’s sister Kristi pledged in court that she would never forgive her.
In a victim impact statement, Kristi condemned her sibling’s selfishness, saying Jessica was offered, but refused, all possible help from both relatives and professionals.
She said did not care what happened to her sister once she was released.
Despite this sentence, in 2023, the case was taken to the Supreme Court.
Justice Peter Hamill dismissed claims that Jessica’s sentence was “manifestly excessive” and that the sentencing judge had been incorrect in their assessment of the “gravity” of the crime.
Justice Hamill nonetheless ruled that she should be resentenced, with support from justices Christine Adamson and Richard Cavanagh.
“Objectively, the facts were gruesome and brutal and involved a frenzied attack on an innocent victim in her own home,” Justice Hammil said.
“On the other hand, the offence was spontaneous and the result of Camilleri losing control of herself because of her complex psychiatric illness.
“Her behaviour of walking into the street with her mother’s head and dropping it, as well as asking emergency services personnel whether they could reattach it, demonstrated the extent to which the applicant’s conduct was divorced from the real world.”
Based on the evidence of multiple psychiatrists and a psychologist, Justice Hammil found Jessica had only a “simple understanding” of moral wrongfulness due to her intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder.
He ordered that she be resentenced to a prison term of 16 years, with a non-parole period of 12 years.
Jessica will be eligible for parole from July 20, 2031.
SOURCE LIST
https://www.police.sa.gov.au/sa-police-news-assets/front-page-news/update-on-port-lincoln-murder2
https://www.starnow.com/u/tamikachesser
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14957249/update-julian-story-tamika-chesser.html
https://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au/decision/1781f816e53c1a136805ac14