Vicious serial killer Michael Gargiulo avoided detection for 15 years – why did it take so long to bring him to justice?
Dressed in a suit and tie and sporting a trimmed moustache, Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher took to the witness stand and gave his testimony. Across from him, sitting next to his defence lawyer, sat serial killer Michael Gargiulo.
It was all taking place in a packed Los Angeles courtroom, but the drama wasn’t being played out for the benefit of movie cameras. Instead, Gargiulo, 43, was on trial for the murders of two young women, and the attempted murder of another. Ashton was, quite literally, the star witness.
The trial of Michael Gargiulo – AKA the Hollywood Ripper – began on May 2, 2019. It wasn’t until almost a month in that Ashton took the stand to talk about his relationship with Ashley Ellerin, 22, who was murdered on February 21, 2001, the night that the pair were meant to be going on a date.
The actor was 23 when he first met Ashley, who was studying at Los Angeles’ Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, at a mutual friend’s birthday party in December 2000.
His star was already on the rise in hit TV comedy That ’70s Show and he had also just had his first box office hit with Dude, Where’s My Car? After the pair hit it off, Ashley invited Ashton to the house-warming party at the bungalow she shared with her friend Jen DiSisto, now 40.
Speaking exclusively to Fabulous, Jen reveals that it was easy to see why Ashton would be attracted to her housemate. “She was a fun, vibrant person,” she says.
“I had only been living with her for six weeks, but we had become friends because we both considered ourselves tough chicks, and we shared a similar sense of humour.”
A few weeks after the party, on February 21, Ashton was supposed to be taking Ashley to a Grammy Awards after-party for their first official date.
Recalling the events of that night in court, he revealed how he called her at around 7:30pm and left a message to tell her that he would pick her up later that evening. She called back at 8:24pm to say that she was still getting ready and was only just out of the shower.
“I told her I would be a little late and she said: ‘OK, see you later’,” Ashton told the court. But he would never see Ashley alive again. In fact, Ashton’s voice was almost certainly the last one Ashley ever heard as, according to the prosecution, soon after she put the phone down she answered the door to her killer.
Immediately, after I opened the door, I knew something was terribly wrong. I approached her and she was frozen and blue. I ran out of the house and called 911.
Jen DiSisto, Ashley Ellerin's friend
Ashton told the jury that he called again just after 10pm to say he was on his way, but there was no answer. When he arrived at 10:45pm, Ashley’s red BMW was in the driveway and all the lights in the apartment were on. “I knocked on the door and there was no answer,” an emotional Ashton told the courtroom.
“At this point I assumed she had left for the night, and that I was late and she was upset. I thought it was odd that the lights were on.”
He revealed to the jury that he looked through the window and saw what he believed to be spilled wine on the carpet. “I wasn’t alarmed because I had just been at her house-warming party and that was kind of a college party,” he said. The wine stains were actually Ashley’s blood.
Her body lay undiscovered until the following morning when Jen returned home. “I came back at 9:15am to change for work,” Jen, now an art agent in Los Angeles, remembers. “Immediately, after I opened the door, I knew something was terribly wrong. I approached her and she was frozen and blue. I ran out of the house and called 911.”
The post mortem recorded 47 stab wounds on Ashley’s body, 12 of which were considered fatal in their own right. Her hands and right forearm were criss-crossed with wounds where she’d tried to put her hands up to defend herself.
Incredibly, given the shockingly violent nature of the attack, there was no physical evidence of the perpetrator. However, her friends did name one man who had been behaving suspiciously – Michael Gargiulo, Ashley’s air-conditioning repairman. He was always making unannounced visits to her apartment and, on one occasion had been seen sitting in his car watching her house in the early hours of the morning.
Gargiulo had also been the suspect in the 1993 murder of 18-year-old Tricia Pacaccio, who grew up just streets away from him in their hometown of Glenview, Cook County, Illinois.
On August 13, 1993, Tricia was stabbed to death on the steps of her family home at 1:15am after arriving home from a party. Police had looked closely at Gargiulo, who was friends with Tricia’s younger brother, as he had given her a lift just days before her murder, but with a lack of hard evidence, the case hit a dead end.
Gargiulo’s preferred victim profile was pretty young women who he was able to watch from afar.
Kris Mohandie, Forensic Phsycologist
In 1998, Gargiulo moved thousands of miles away to California, where he ended up in the same Hollywood neighbourhood as Ashley Ellerin. Following her murder, police questioned him and put him under surveillance while they investigated, but once again the lack of evidence meant they had no grounds to → charge him. The case went cold – until seven years later.
In Santa Monica on April 29, 2008, Michelle Murphy, 27, came home from work, did a skipping workout in the alleyway behind her building, showered and went to bed at around 11pm. It was a warm night, so she slept naked, left a fan on and opened a second-floor window, which was covered by a screen.
Her attacker was watching from his apartment across the alleyway and when he saw her light go out, he sliced through the screen with a knife and entered her apartment. Michelle testified that she had been sleeping for about an hour, when she woke up to a man sitting on top of her stabbing her arm.
Michelle was able to kick her attacker, which resulted in him slashing his own wrist, stopping his attack. He ran from the room, leaving his blood on the bedspread and trailing it into the alley.
Samples from the blood were submitted to the crime lab by detectives and 25 days later they were told that they had a DNA match to Michael Gargiulo. Within 24 hours of the DNA hit, he was arrested in Santa Monica and charged with the attempted murder of Michelle.
The pieces quickly slotted together, as police identified a pattern of frenzied knife attacks on women who lived in close proximity to Gargiulo, as well as a cooling-off period in between attacks.
“Gargiulo’s preferred victim profile was pretty young women who he was able to watch from afar,” reveals Kris Mohandie, an LA-based forensic psychologist and author of Evil Thoughts: Wicked Deeds.
“Being local meant he could learn their habits and the comings and goings of those who might interrupt him, with less likelihood of being detected as someone who didn’t belong in the area.
“Offenders of this type know that if they strike again too soon, they will get caught. They’re prepared to stop for a little while, particularly if there is suspicion upon them. Plus, if his ritual is to silently watch, study, and fantasise about the victim first, the opportunity may simply have not presented itself.”
Looking at Gargiulo’s movements between Ashley’s murder and his attack on Michelle, detectives soon realised that he had struck a fourth time – a mum of four named Maria Bruno, who was murdered on December 1, 2005, in El Monte, just outside Los Angeles.
The assailant had climbed into her apartment in the early hours, picked up a knife from the kitchen and stabbed her 17 times. Gargiulo lived in an apartment opposite; however, he wasn’t under any police surveillance at the time and officers investigating Maria’s murder never made the link.
On September 4, 2008, while awaiting trial for the attack on Michelle, Gargiulo was indicted on two additional charges – the murders of Ashley Ellerin and Maria Bruno. On July 7, 2011, another charge was added for the 1999 murder of Tricia. Even with all the evidence stacked against him, it still took Gargiulo longer to go to trial than any other inmate in the history of the LA County Jail – 11 years.
There were nearly 100 hearings as he repeatedly fired his lawyers, and at one point even tried to represent himself. During the trial, his defence team portrayed Gargiulo as a victim himself, growing up in a physically and mentally abusive family.
A neuropsychologist testifying for the defence revealed that Gargiulo spent most of his primary school years in special education because of behavioural problems, and he was often angry and abusive towards adults. A serial cheat, he had a child with one of his many girlfriends and was married to another woman all while carrying out the murders. Prosecutors alleged that this was all a cover so that Gargiulo could hide in plain sight and not be seen as a loner.
Showing no emotion in court, on August 15, 2019, Gargiulo was found guilty of Ashley and Maria’s murders, and the attempted murder of Michelle. Tricia’s case will be tried separately later this year in Illinois.
On Friday October 18, 2019, a jury recommended that Gargiulo should face the death penalty. However, capital punishment is currently suspended in California, and the judge is due to deliver his final verdict on February 28, 2020.
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Even though Gargiulo’s killing spree ended more than 10 years ago, the wounds still haven’t healed for the friends and families of the women whose lives he brutally ended. Speaking after the verdict Tricia’s Pacaccio’s mother Diane told reporters: “It’s always painful. I just tell people it’s something that I have to live with now and deal with now and try to cope with for the rest of my life.”
Apart from his testimony, Ashton has remained silent in respect of Ashley and her loved ones. Jen, meanwhile, is just happy that her friend’s killer is finally paying the price.
“It took a long time but the police did a great job and they got him. They pieced together a crime from 26 years ago and matched it to the maniac I know as Michael Gargiulo,” she says. We won and I hope more than ever that every person affected by this nightmare can find solace. Ashley, you are always in my broken heart.”
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