Silverwater Maximum Security Correctional Complex has been home to some of Australia’s most infamous female prisoners.
Hardened women with horrific histories, like knife-obsessed Katherine Knight, who butchered her husband and boiled his head in a stew before setting the table with place names for his children.
Or evil mother Rachel Pfitzner, who murdered her toddler Dean Shillingsworth by swinging the little boy by his hood until he choked.
She then carefully packed the two-year-old’s body in a suitcase and tossed it in a pond.
Then there is the woman known only as SW, a cruel Valium addict who starved the youngest of her three daughters, seven-year-old Ebony, to death.
But despite the cells being full of deadly females whose crimes shocked Australia, there are two women so depraved they are banned from ever seeing each other again.
Jessica Camilleri, 37, who chopped off her own mother’s head then paraded it down the street, and Rebecca Jane Butterfield, 50, who murdered her only friend by stabbing her 33 times, have become sworn enemies since meeting inside prison walls.
‘They have a non-association order,’ a jail insider tells Daily Mail Australia.
Jessica Camilleri decapitated her own mother before dumping her head in the street
Ever since Jessica killed Rita Camilleri (pictured), she has become notorious within the walls of Silverwater Correctional Complex for pulling out the hair of guards and other inmates
A non-association order is a court-imposed restriction that prohibits an offender from associating with specific individuals.
This can mean not being in the same place as that person or communicating with them in any way.
‘They hate each other and Butterfield even claims that when Camilleri talks about chopping her mum’s head off, which she frequently does, it sets her off on violent outbursts,’ our source says.
Both women hail from respectable and loving families: Butterfield’s father was a high-ranking detective and Camilleri’s mother Rita was her full-time carer.
Their initial brushes with the law were relatively minor. Camilleri made prank phone calls and Butterfield was convicted at 21 of illicit drug use, malicious damage and assaulting police.
But over time both women’s criminal behaviour escalated, until they each snapped, committing the grotesque acts for which they are notorious today.
Butterfield began her prison sentence as a low-risk inmate in 2000 for assaulting a neighbour who was trying to provide help with wounds after she’d self-harmed.
But since then, she has long been considered one of the most aggressive and unpredictable criminals in the prison system.
In 2003, she killed her fellow inmate and only friend Bluce Lim Ward, by stabbing her 33 times with industrial scissors before watching her bleed to death.
Rebecca Jane Butterfield murdered her only friend by stabbing her 33 times
Silverwater Correctional Complex has housed some of Australia’s most notorious female prisoners, including Katherine Knight and Rachel Pfitzner
Filipina Lim Ward was nearing the end of her six-year sentence for fraud.
Butterfield’s extensive Corrective Services NSW file contains reports on more than 110 disciplinary matters, including 40 assaults, as well as slitting her own throat and bashing her head against a wall 105 times until she cracked open her skull.
According to court documents, the high-risk offender used a variety of tactics to lure guards and prison staff to her cell throughout her almost a quarter-of-a-century stretch behind bars before attacking them.
During one violent episode, she stabbed a guard in the face, while on other occasions she threw her colostomy bag at prison officers, and also assaulted a nurse who was treating her.
In July 2020, she lunged at officers while wearing ankle bracelets and threatened to take their guns.
Later, in November that year, she pounced on a nurse who was trying to take her blood.
During one outburst, Butterfield screamed: ‘I am going to kill again. I will kill when I get out.’
‘Butterfield spirals with any mention of her stepmum which is probably why Camilleri talking about her mum triggers her,’ adds the source.
‘She gets moved every three to six months to give officers a break because she can be “nice as pie” to an officer and staff will think there is good rapport with her. Then the next minute she will hot water you.’
‘Hot water’ is a term used in prison to describe the act of throwing boiling hot water from a kettle into someone’s face.
Camilleri is also considered one of the most dangerous women in prison – a ticking time bomb ready to explode.
She is serving 21 years and seven months for the manslaughter of her mother, whom she decapitated in July 2019 before carrying the head outside and dropping it on the footpath.
Just two years into her sentence, she violently attacked two prison guards, ripping the hair from their heads.
And her rap sheet is growing, with prison bosses at their wits’ end.
‘She has become an ongoing problem,’ another prison insider tells Daily Mail Australia.
‘She has to be monitored at all times because she will use any opportunity to cause harm.
‘There has already been time added to her sentence for attacks involving extreme hair-pulling. She has scalped people with her bare hands and anything can set her off.’
Both women now have a strict non-association order against their names in regards to one another.
Butterfield was initially transferred from Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre, in Sydney’s west, to Long Bay prison in 2024.
But on May 5, 2024, she was quietly released from jail and immediately admitted to a secure forensic hospital, where she will receive ongoing treatment for a range of severe mental health disorders as an involuntary patient.
Doctors at the facility are now responsible for deciding if and when the deranged killer will be allowed to re-enter the community.
The legal system has struggled to contend with how to manage the volatile inmate, who actually completed her full-term sentence almost eight years ago.
Camilleri is currently serving time at Dillwynia Correctional Centre in Sydney’s west, where she allegedly ripped ‘clumps of hair’ from another female prisoner earlier this year.
Inmates reportedly gathered around Camilleri during the alleged altercation on February 15.
It’s the sixth time Camilleri has been accused of pulling out hair of inmates or prison officers.
