{"id":967486,"date":"2026-07-29T20:00:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T20:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/967486\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T20:00:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T20:00:32","slug":"long-islands-joseph-horner-facetimed-wife-while-killing-victoria-castle-prosecutors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/967486\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Island’s Joseph Horner FaceTimed wife while killing Victoria Castle: prosecutors"},"content":{"rendered":"

A sick Long Island music teacher accused of raping and killing his college coed sister-in-law<\/a> was caught on camera practicing the chokehold he would use in the grisly crime on a stuffed animal, prosecutors said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Joseph Horner, 27, repeatedly broke into the downstairs apartment of 25-year-old Victoria Castle to check out \u201cexplicit photos\u201d of his wife\u2019s sister before carrying out the gruesome June 28 attack, Nassau County prosecutors said as they unsealed a murder indictment against Horner.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said the brazen accused killer even took a FaceTime call from his wife during the attack \u2014 as if everything was normal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis 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,\u201d Assistant District Attorney Alexander DePalo said in court.\u00a0\u201cHe is seen on video practicing the chokehold that he would place her in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe defendant, without warning and unprovoked, attacked the victim from behind and placed her in the same chokehold until her body went limp,\u201d DePalo said. \u201cThe defendant then removed her clothes and moved her to a nearby bed, at which time the defendant raped the victim until he completed.<\/p>\n

Joseph Horner, 27, is arraigned in Nassau County criminal court on July 28th for the killing and rape of Victoria Castle, in North Massapequa, Long Island. Stephen Yang for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cThen he waited for the police on the front doorstep, calm and collected,\u201d the prosecutors said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Police arrested Horner at the scene and rushed Castle to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Horner\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The accused killer, a music teacher at the Oceanside School District, was ordered held without bail by Nassau County Judge Howard Sturim.<\/p>\n

Castle, a PhD student at Stony Brook University, lived downstairs from Horner and her sister in the North Oak Street home in North Massapequa.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said the accused killer lured her to her death by asking her to help him move a keyboard \u2013 but instead ambushed her from behind and allegedly carried out the attack.<\/p>\n

Nassau County DA Anne Donnelly holds a photo of Horner practicing a chokehold he used to allegedly kill Castle. Stephen Yang for NY Post<\/p>\n

Horner allegedly plotted for nearly a decade to kill and rape Castle. Victoria Castle \/ Instagram<\/p>\n

Just 15 minutes before the alleged attack, Horner practiced the chokehold on a stuffed animal \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring that call, the defendant acted as if nothing was wrong, as if he hadn\u2019t just violently attacked her sister,\u201d Nassau County DA Anne Donnelly told reporters. \u201cAs if Victoria\u2019s body wasn\u2019t lying motionless just a floor below.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prosecutors also released a photo of Horner allegedly practicing the chokehold on a pink stuffed animal in his living room before the attack.<\/p>\n

In a tragic twist, Castle beamed over her killer after he married her sister, three years before the sick attack.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cMy sister, my person, my partner in chaos, is now married to one of the most wonderful people in the world,\u201d Castle wrote in a haunting Facebook post. \u201cI love you both forever.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sick Long Island music teacher accused of raping and killing his college coed sister-in-law was caught on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":967487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,6084,5248,27813,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,12650,22598,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-967486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-long-island","tag-metro","tag-murders","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-rape","tag-teachers","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117005046654027580","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=967486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/967487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=967486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=967486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=967486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}