DEATH FOR THE RIPPER Jury sets fate of California serial killer
The serial killer dubbed the “Hollywood Ripper” deserves to die, a Los Angeles jury decided Friday.
A jury of six women and six men delivered the recommendation for Michael Gargiulo after the penalty phase of his gut-wrenching trial ended with closing arguments Wednesday.
Formal sentencing for Feb. 28.
Gargiulo, 43, was convicted in August of murdering two women, including a friend of actor Ashton Kutcher, and attempting to kill a third who survived his signature stabbing attack by waging a blood-soaked struggle.
Also dubbed the “Boy Next Door Killer,” Gargiulo slashed the throat of 22-year-old Ashley Ellerin in February 2001 on the same night she had a planned date with Kutcher, jurors previously decided.
He later killed 32-year-old mother of four Maria Bruno in December 2005, mutilating is set her.
When the air-conditioning repairman climbed through the window of Michelle Murphy’s Santa Monica apartment in April 2008 and stabbed her eight times, the bedroom ambush didn’t go as planned.
Murphy, 26 years old at the time, valiantly fought back. Gargiulo ended up cutting himself with the blade and yelled “Sorry” as he ran out her door, leaving a trail of blood that would lead to his arrest, prosecutors said.
While Gargiulo’s 16-yearold son testified during the penalty phase and pleaded with the jury to spare his dad’s life, several relatives of Gargiulo’s victims described how his crimes violently ended the lives of innocent young women.
“I ache for her. I ache to hold her. I ache to hear her voice, to hug her. But that’s not going to happen,” Ashley’s mom Cynthia Ellerin testified.
Gargiulo stabbed Ashley an estimated 47 times inside her Hollywood Hills home the night of the grisly murder, prosecutors said.
Cynthia recalled for jurors the moment her husband broke the news that Ashley was gone.
“I fell to my knees on the floor and started crawling around the bedroom on my hands and knees like an animal, screaming,” she testified.
“Take it back! Take it back!” she recalled yelling at husband Michael Ellerin.
“I’m just empty without her,” the mom said of the daughter she described as kind, funny and remarkably artistic. “I’m sick to my stomach because she was mutilated to death.”
The jury also heard that Gargiulo’s first murder victim was his 18-year-old friend Tricia Pacaccio.
He allegedly killed her in 1993, stabbing her a dozen times and leaving her body on the doorstep of her family’s house in suburban Chicago, prosecutors said.
Gargiulo has not yet faced prosecution for Pacaccio’s murder in Illinois, but her relatives were allowed to testify during his penalty phase in Los Angeles.
“It’s been 26 years. Every single day I think about her,” still-grieving mom Diane Pacaccio said last week.
“Her room is the same. The bedspread is the same, drapes are the same. And my grandkids go in there to play, and that’s how I introduce them to Tricia,” she said through tears, adding that her granddaughter plays dressup with Tricia’s high heels.
“I go in there every day,” the mom said. “But I never get to hold her, laugh with her, cry with her, because she’s not there for that.”
Kutcher testified last May during the guilt phase of the trial, saying he arrived at Ellerin’s door around 10:30 the night of their date and received no answer.
“I noticed all the lights were on, so I assumed she was home. I knocked on the door. There was no answer. I knocked again, again no answer. I kind of looked through the window on the front door,” he said.