The mentally ill 19-year-old accused of decapitating his mother’s boyfriend wanted to chop up his body, in part by using a blender, police sources said.
But Damien Hurstel’s plan was short-circuited when his sister got home and found the mutilated body of Anthony Casalaspro, 45, in the bathtub.
When police showed up at the scene — the family’s Cary Ave. home in West Brighton — Hurstel stepped outside to surrender, sources said.
Hurstel confessed to detectives that he killed Casalaspro by pounding him over the head with a meat tenderizer then cutting his head off, sources said.
The suspect, sources said, was apparently miffed because the victim earlier had intervened in an argument he was having with his mother.
Hurstel was expected to be arraigned Wednesday on murder and weapons charges.
“This is horrendous,” the victim’s ex-wife, Valerie Casalaspro,told the Daily News in an exclusive interview Tuesday. “I’m shattered.”
She said her ex, a recently retired sanitation worker, always tried to do the right thing by the suspect.
“He was literally just at the kid’s graduation from high school,” she said. “So this is a complete shock and disgusting. I mean that is just grisly, to cut somebody’s head off. I am disgusted, and I want justice to be served.”
Trouble had seemingly been brewing in the home for years.
Anthony Casalaspro’s girlfriend had called cops five times on him in recent years, sources said, accusing him of breaking things in the home on one occasion and slapping Hurstel on another.
At the same time, he was having trouble dealing with the suspect, the ex-wife said.
“He told me [Hurstel] was always very angry, no matter what Anthony asked him to do, like, ‘Clean up, do the dishes.’ He always fought with him about it. He always would say, ‘You’re not my father, you can’t tell me what to do,” Valerie Casalaspro said. “Very not appreciative of the fact that Anthony was literally taking care of him and the sister and the mother. I know they didn’t get along.”
But her ex “didn’t think [Hurstel] was going to be violent because he was a teenager,” she said.
Hurstel, however, had been having psychological problems, his mother told police, according to sources, and had been on various medications.
Originally Published: October 8, 2025 at 11:48 AM EDT
