New grisly details have emerged in the horrific Staten Island killing in which a 19-year-old allegedly beheaded his mother’s live-in boyfriend earlier this month.
Police say Damien Hurstel confessed to stabbing and decapitating 45-year-old Anthony Casalaspro, inside the family’s Cary Avenue home in West Brighton on October 6.
Hurstel allegedly scooped out the victim’s brains with a spoon and dumped them in a blender, according to chilling new reports obtained by the <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://nypost.com/2025/10/18/us-news/New York Post. It’s unclear what the teen intended to do with the matter.
A disturbing crime scene photo obtained by The Post showed Casalaspro’s body with a plastic soup ladle placed on the torso – and his severed head lying nearby with a spoon next to it.
Hurstel, who was arrested at the scene that day, was silent as he was led out of the house by police, according to neighbors who spoke to The Independent at the scene.
“Honestly he looked like was free from whatever was happening,” said Jennifer Diaz. “He looked relieved. He was very calm … like he was there but he wasn’t there.”
The teen has been charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter, and weapons possession, and was recently moved from a hospital to solitary confinement at Rikers Island.
On Friday, Hurstel’s attorney, Mark Fonte, met with him at Rikers ahead of a court appearance in Richmond County Supreme Court.
“It was chilling,” Fonte told The Post. “He was having a real difficult time separating fantasy from reality. He wasn’t sure what really happened.”
Fonte said the teen appeared confused about his own arrest and hospitalization.
“I think I might have fought two other people in there,” Fonte recalled Hurstel saying. “I remember punching one in the face but I’m not really sure that happened. I don’t know if that’s like something I’m imagining, or if it really happened.”
Hurstel’s mother, Alicia Zayas, 39, described to The Post the horrifying moment her 16-year-old daughter stumbled upon the bloody scene in the bathroom, and the chilling words her son said afterward.
“She said, ‘Are you gonna hurt mom?’” Zayas recalled her daughter, Bri, asking Hurstel.
“And he said, ‘Do you want her to live?’”
When Bri pleaded for her mother’s life, she was allowed to leave — and she immediately ran outside to call Zayas and warn her.
Zayas said her son had struggled with mental illness for years, beginning around age 13, when he started hallucinating and drawing disturbing images of what he saw. He was prescribed antipsychotic medication, which she said helped stabilize him for a time. But once he turned 18, Zayas said, she was shut out of his medical decisions, and his condition began to spiral.
In January, Richmond University Medical Center allegedly changed Hurstel’s medication without notifying Zayas, she claimed, and that her son deteriorated quickly after that.
Hurstel has entered a not guilty by reason of insanity plea.
