It was minutes after midnight on Oct. 23, 2021, when Flora Casale rushed to her landline phone inside her Washington Township home and dialed 911, desperately trying to describe to the woman on the other end the horrific, gruesome scene she had just witnessed. She then found herself fleeing out the front door, cordless phone in hand, and into the darkness as she screamed for help from her neighbors, but nobody came.
An officer arrived not long after, but Casale was able to string together only five words, which she kept repeating to the officer: "Get him off of her."
Casale, now 78, shed tears as she described for a jury of 14 in a Bergen County courtroom last week the moments she discovered the lifeless body of her 51-year-old daughter, Mary Huber, on the floor of her condominium, and watched as the man accused of her killing, Patrick Camilli, her daughter's boyfriend, used what she described as a stick — prosecutors say it was a knife — to stab his own neck.
Camilli, now 59, whose self-inflicted wound missed all vital structures in his neck, sat before state Superior Court Judge James Sattely on Sept. 17 as Casale was the first to take the stand for the prosecution. As of Thursday afternoon, with a few days off in between, Camilli would be five days into his trial on charges of first-degree murder and two counts related to his possession of a kitchen knife he allegedly used to end Huber's life.
Bergen County Assistant Prosecutors Yomara Castro and Craig Becker have tag-teamed during the trial, with witnesses who have included law enforcement officers, first responders and Huber's brother-in-law, Flaviano Sanzari.
Sanzari and Huber's sister, Kathy, had visited the couple at the condominium just hours before Huber's death, when the group shared dinner and many consumed alcoholic beverages. The couple left the home shortly before the killing is believed to have taken place, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors were expected to wrap up their case this week or Monday. Camilli's defense attorney, Landry Belizaire, said he planned to present a witness or witnesses, but did not anticipate that it would take more than a day.
Mary Huber's death: Was it deliberate or due to mental illness?
Becker, one of the assistant prosecutors, kicked off opening statements by describing the 29 times Camilli allegedly stabbed Huber, leaving a gouge on her forehead, slashes on her scalp and a large gash in her neck before turning the knife on himself in an attempted murder-suicide.
"This wasn't an accident or a mistake," Becker said. "Domestic violence is never complex. It's tragic and far too prevalent, but simple and motived by one thing: control."
Camilli and Huber had been together for about 18 years, but there was friction between the couple due to Camilli's inability to hold steady work or contribute to the household, Becker said. It all came to a head on Oct. 23, 2021, Becker said, when the duo began talking and Camilli, prosecutors said, got angry, felt emasculated and "wanted to shut her up."
Camilli told the first officer who arrived on scene, "I killed her. Please save her," and later told an EMT in the ambulance about what had transpired, "We were talking, she started berating me. Next thing I knew, I was hitting her and I couldn't stop," prosecutors said, based on reports in evidence.
But Camilli's defense attorney countered the prosecutors' statements, telling jurors that their presentation was "designed to shock" them, and urged them to appeal to their good sense and "look at the evidence under the bright light of a rational mind."
Belizaire described a scene in which his client had no intention to harm Huber, but instead went through a "psychological ailment" he described as depersonalization, which is a term used by psychologists to describe a mental health condition in which someone feels detached from their body and thoughts. The ailment will help support a diminished capacity defense, which Belizaire said he anticipates introducing when he places a doctor on the stand. If the jury finds that Camilli had an altered state that left him incapable of purposefully stabbing and killing his girlfriend under the defense, the jury will likely have the option to consider a lesser charge, such as manslaughter. It differs from an insanity defense, in which a jury could acquit a defendant.
Camilli was "beside himself" once he understood what he had done, Belizaire said, asking the jury to question what the motive would be of a man who considered Huber the "love of my life." There had been no evidence of premeditation and no history of violence between the duo, he said.
'It was like she was sleeping,' Mary Huber's mother said
Casale, Huber's mother, remembered her daughter as a workaholic — Huber was a New York University graduate who worked in market research — who had befriended Camilli when she visited Atlantic City with her husband, Kenny Huber. Mary Huber was technically still married to her husband at the time of her death, prosecutors said. Huber would visit Camilli when she and girlfriends would go to Atlantic City, where Camilli was a dealer in a casino.
Casale described her daughter's relationship with Camilli as one in which Huber was always helping him stay afloat financially, but she declined to say they were "lovers." They lived together in Atlantic County for several years before moving in with Casale in her Lexington Court condo.
Their relationship status was unclear; Casale alluded to her daughter not being in love with Camilli and instead being a friend who helped him financially, despite their sleeping in the same room in her home. Casale said that although her daughter and her husband, Kenny, did not live together "as man and wife," it was believed they were still in love. She described Camilli as a paramour, a term often used to describe an illicit lover or someone who engages in sexual relations with a married person. Belizaire said Camilli had fallen in love with Huber "at first sight" and had a loving relationship with her for 18 years.
Casale had left her home around 5 p.m. on Oct. 23, 2021, to babysit her great-grandsons in Mahwah, and returned home around 11:30 p.m. to find Camilli, who had no top on and was in cargo shorts, on top of her daughter. She noticed that a rocking chair was broken and that her daughter appeared to be sleeping, a term she later clarified to mean "sleeping in death." She had met eyes with Camilli, who did not say anything but appeared to be "turning a stick around" in his neck, she said. She repeated several times "get off her" and ran downstairs to call 911, she said.
Casale said she never returned to live in the condominium, and later sold it.
Email: lcomstock@njherald.com ; Twitter: @LoriComstockNJH or on Facebook .
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: 'Get off her:' Murder trial underway as Bergen County man is accused of 2021 killing
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