A sick Long Island music teacher accused of raping and killing his college coed sister-in-law was caught on camera practicing the chokehold he would use in the grisly crime on a stuffed animal, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Joseph Horner, 27, repeatedly broke into the downstairs apartment of 25-year-old Victoria Castle to check out “explicit photos” of his wife’s sister before carrying out the gruesome June 28 attack, Nassau County prosecutors said as they unsealed a murder indictment against Horner.
Prosecutors said the brazen accused killer even took a FaceTime call from his wife during the attack — as if everything was normal.
“This defendant saw an opportunity to follow through on his sexual desires to be with the victim, a woman he admitted to lusting over since 2017,” Assistant District Attorney Alexander DePalo said in court. “He is seen on video practicing the chokehold that he would place her in.
“The defendant, without warning and unprovoked, attacked the victim from behind and placed her in the same chokehold until her body went limp,” DePalo said. “The defendant then removed her clothes and moved her to a nearby bed, at which time the defendant raped the victim until he completed.
“Then he waited for the police on the front doorstep, calm and collected,” the prosecutors said.
Police arrested Horner at the scene and rushed Castle to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Horner’s wife, who had been away on a bachelorette trip at the time, sat in court sobbing Wednesday, comforted by her parents as her husband pleaded not guilty.
The accused killer, a music teacher at the Oceanside School District, was ordered held without bail by Nassau County Judge Howard Sturim.
Castle, a PhD student at Stony Brook University, lived downstairs from Horner and her sister in the North Oak Street home in North Massapequa.
Prosecutors said the accused killer lured her to her death by asking her to help him move a keyboard – but instead ambushed her from behind and allegedly carried out the attack.
Just 15 minutes before the alleged attack, Horner practiced the chokehold on a stuffed animal – and even took a FaceTime call from his wife after rendering her unconscious, acting as if everything was normal before he proceeded to rape his sister-in-law, prosecutors said.
“During that call, the defendant acted as if nothing was wrong, as if he hadn’t just violently attacked her sister,” Nassau County DA Anne Donnelly told reporters. “As if Victoria’s body wasn’t lying motionless just a floor below.”
Prosecutors also released a photo of Horner allegedly practicing the chokehold on a pink stuffed animal in his living room before the attack.
In a tragic twist, Castle beamed over her killer after he married her sister, three years before the sick attack.
“My sister, my person, my partner in chaos, is now married to one of the most wonderful people in the world,” Castle wrote in a haunting Facebook post. “I love you both forever.”
