The ex-wife of Staten Island decapitation victim Anthony Casalaspro says the doomed city sanitation mechanic had “big plans” to spend his retirement in Florida — but his girlfriend’s son, who cops say brutally ended his life, didn’t want the troubled family to leave New York.
Casalaspro’s girlfriend’s son, Damien Hurstel, 19, is accused of stabbing him to death in their Cary Ave. home near North Burgher Ave. in West Brighton Monday afternoon, chopping off his head and leaving the knife sticking out of his neck in the blood-soaked bathtub.
“This is horrendous,” the victim’s ex-wife Valerie Casalaspro told the Daily News in an exclusive interview. “I’m shattered.”
Anthony Casalaspro, 45, tried to do right by his accused killer, she said.
“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.”
Hurstel was arrested at the scene for murder.
Trouble had seemingly been brewing in the home for years. Anthony Casalspro’s girlfriend had called cops five times on him in recent years, police source said, accusing him of breaking things in the home on one occasion and slapping Hurstel on another.
But Anthony Casalspro’s ex-wife said the victim told her Hurstel was hard to handle.
“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 Casalspro 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 (Hurtel) was going to be violent because he was a teenager,” she said.
Anthony Casalaspro, who recently retired from the city Sanitation Department because he was going blind, amicably split with his ex-wife in 2019.
“I literally talked to him two weeks ago. He was doing good. He was talking about getting a house in Florida,” she said. “He had very big plans.”
But Hurstel didn’t want to upend his life and leave his Staten Island pals behind, Valerie Casalaspro said her ex told her.
“I don’t know if that’s what caused friction with them,” she said. “But something definitely caused friction in this house to be this bad.”
Police had responded to five domestic incident reports made against Casalaspro to the Cary Ave. home in West Brighton over the years, cop sources said, mostly involving incidents stemming from his drinking.
His ex-wife countered, though, that he was never violent in their 12 years together.
“He had drinking problems back in the day but he also did get help for that and has been clean now for about two and a half years,” she said.
She stressed how they remained friends even after separating.
“He was a great, great person. We had our ups and downs but that kid did everything for me, everything for my son, took him in like his own,” she said. “So I have nothing bad to say about him … Very good spirited, always the life of the party, always made sure that people laughed, always in a good mood.”
His outlook changed after his brother went missing in 2014, then washed up dead on a shore off Bayonne. But that didn’t stop him from continuing to help others.
“Even when I struggling, he called me and was like ‘Do you need anything? Let me help you.’ You know, lent me money when I needed help,” Valerie Casalaspro said. “Honestly, he was one of the great ones.”
