A trial for murder in the coming years: 3 dead, a suspected serial killer and the frightening reason for the blow that hits Ashton Kutcher remained unanswered

The story looks like a movie, but horribly, it's too real.

On the night of 21 February 2001, Ashley Ellerin had just come out of the shower and was about to get ready for a party during which she was stabbed to death by Michael Gargiulo, prosecutors said in their murder case described to death against the 43-year-old woman, tried for the murder of two women and the attempted murder of another.

Gargiulo pleaded not guilty to all counts.

Ellerin's body, lying just in front of the bathroom entrance, was found only the next day, around 9 am, when his roommate, Jennifer Disisto, returned to the room. rented bungalow that they shared on Pinehurst Road in Hollywood. The paramedics declared Ellerin dead at 22:28 on 22 February. She had been stabbed 47 times, with 12 injuries considered deadly and many defensive injuries to her hands and right forearm.

In a strange twist only in Hollywood, Ashton Kutcherwho was featured on This show of the 70s at the time, it was his appointment for the previous evening. He then told the police – and testified Wednesday in court – that he had spoken to Ellerin at 20:24. to confirm their plans. They were supposed to attend an after party of the Grammys together. He called again shortly after 22 hours. when he was on the way, but she did not pick up. The actor hit around 10:45 pm, he said. There was no answer. He glanced out the window and remembered what wine looked like on the carpet.

His car was in the driveway, but he thought that she might be angry at him because he was late and was not answering on purpose, so he left.

"He was thinking at that time that it had been lifted," said Los Angeles County Attorney General Dan Akemon at the opening of the Gargiulo trial earlier this month. "We now believe that the evidence will show that it was actually blood and that Ashley had already been murdered."

Ellerin, 22, was a student at the Fashion Institute of Fashion Design and Merchandising (FIDM) fashion, as well as a part-time stripper. According to Kutcher 's testimony, she would have met the actor in December 2000 through friends.

"She had tons of boyfriends," said Detective Tom Small, LAPD homicide. LA Weekly in 2010. "At that time, Kutcher was still coming in. He had not yet established his credentials.He met through a common friend.C & # 39; Was a friendly thing, they went out several times. "

Kutcher testified in court that he was dating someone else when he met Ellerin for the first time. He then introduced it to a friend and briefly dated them.

He then went to Ellerin's home about two weeks before his death for a housewarming party, and they were both single at the time, so they planned to have a drink and dinner.

On February 21, 2001, he originally planned to pick her up at 8 pm, but was invited to watch the Grammys at a friend's house. He testified in court that he had called Ellerin around 7:30 pm to tell him that it would be later than eight o'clock, then again to keep her informed of her fate. He left a voicemail message and then called from his roommate Jen's phone saying that the house phone was not working. It was 8:24 pm She told him that she had just come out of the shower and that she was going to dry her hair, Kutcher remembered. His delay was not a problem.

One of the first detectives on the scene later remembered having seen a hairdryer on the toilet seat.

According to Kutcher, shortly after 22 hours. he called to say that he was on the way, and there was no answer. He decided not to go straight there, said Kutcher, because he did not want to introduce himself without touching the base. But when he arrived at 10:45, he thought that she was perhaps angry at him for being late and that's why she did not want to come to the door. He tried the door well, he testified, and she was locked.

Speaking to the police the next day, he recalled during cross-examination, he was certainly "panicked" because he knew that his fingerprints would be on the door handle and he tried to share all the little details he remembered with the detectives.

"Do not worry, you are not a suspect," Defense lawyer Daniel Nardoni said Wednesday.

According to the prosecution, Ellerin first met Michael Gargiulo several months before his death. Gargiulo lived nearby, with a girlfriend, and he had seen Ellerin and a friend in front of her house in the fall of 2000. Gargiulo approached to ask him if he could help them repair a flat tire, then he told them gave a business card announcing his air. air conditioner repair services.

While Gargiulo may have been a legitimate repairer, the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office states that he was also a "serial killer of badual sensations" – destroying the "Hollywood Ripper" in press articles – whose crimes include the 1993 murder, 18 years old. Tricia Pacaccio in Chicago, where Gargiulo, originally from Illinois, lived before moving to LA.

He is tried by L.A. for the murder of Ellerin, as well as for the murder in 2005 of 32 years Maria bruno in El Monte, California, and the attempted murder in 2008 of Michelle Murphy, who survived the attack with a knife and was the first witness of the prosecution when the trial began early this month, after years of delay. He is also charged with first degree murder in the badbadination of Pacaccio in Chicago and should be extradited to be tried at the conclusion of it.

Gargiulo also denied killing Pacaccio.

He has been in prison since his arrest on June 6, 2008, for allegedly attacking Murphy.

Gargiulo "was kind of a braggart and a bull artist," said L.A. County Sheriff's Detective Mark Lillienfeld, who investigated Bruno's death, LA Weekly in 2010. "He told a number of people that he was in the movies and was an upscale plumber for celebrities, and that he was friends with them. He would meet and bond and would badociate with these women, and establish a superficial relationship with them … and finally, they would be dead.It is every woman's nightmare. "

Gargiulo reportedly even talked about Chicago to Ellerin and his former roommate, Justin Peterson, who reportedly said he had already met Gargiulo the next day after seeing him parked in front of their house early in the morning.

"He started talking about the fact that he could not go home last night," Peterson said. 48 hours, "Because the FBI was waiting at his home to collect DNA samples in Chicago, that it's about a case or a murder, the his best friend's girlfriend was murdered, or something else.And I said, "Well, what should you hide? "And he immediately put his leg on the couch and started pulling a knife that was, as you know, attached to his ankle, at which point I took him out of the house in a hurry. "

Prosecutors demand the death penalty for the murders of Ellerin and Bruno. They claim that Gargiulo was hiding in plain sight with perfect coverage: a steady job, a wife and a child.

"What no one has known for years is that Michael Gargiulo was leading a double life," said Akemon.

Ellerin's friends told the police that after meeting him, Gargiulo, who lived a block away, had repaired his heater, but then presented himself uninvited and, on several occasions, he had been seen parked outside, apparently surveying the place.

"Ashley knew that I had" an event "with him and she knew how I felt," said Justin Peterson later, LA Weekly reported in November 2010. "She did not seem worried.He was an incredible person who would make friends with everyone."

"Probably someone came to the door," said detective Tom Small, "and the rest belongs to history." She knew the guy, and according to the people who knew her, if she knew you she would let you in. "

"I felt a trauma," said Jennifer Disisto. 48 hours in 2011, recalling how she had found Ashley's body. "I thought maybe the person was still there and I ran away to get to the car … and call from my mobile phone, 911 … It still traumatizes me to this day."

After a preliminary hearing (Kutcher did not testify, a detective who interrogated him stated what the actor had told him), a judge ruled on June 30, 2010 that the case had to be judged. No date was set, but no one thought it would take nearly nine years to get started. According to Los Angeles Timesthe delay of 10 years in the trial of this case is largely due to the fact that Gargiulo changed his lawyer several times and that he represented himself for about three years.

"[T]Akemon testified in court that Kutcher's testimony had been used to help establish the timeline of alleged events. He was among the approximately 250 names on the list of potential prosecution witnesses in the case.

Daniel Nardoni, Gargiulo 's lawyer, retorted in his opening statement that the prosecution would not be able to present any material evidence that would have bound his client to Ellerin' s death.

"The information we have is that [the suspect] it's presented [to the victim] like a guy of heating and air, "said Small 48 hours in 2011. "In the end, I had some additional information.He was able to produce photos and identify him as Michael Thomas Gargiulo."

Four years after the murder of Ellerin, the criminal complaint alleges moreover that Gargiulo "literally slaughtered" his neighbor Maria Bruno in his apartment El Monte.

"Apartment # 20 is where Maria Bruno lived," Lillienfeld told CBS News. 48 hours in 2011. "So he has a pretty clear shot, he's looking out the window right to his house, he's got a very clear shot on his front door, as well as the living room window and the window. from the kitchen."

She had been killed in bed; her husband, Irving Bruno, from whom she was separated, found her mutilated body. He told 911's dispatcher that her bads had been cut off and that one of her bad had been placed on her mouth.

The investigators found a blue surgical boot with a few drops of Bruno's blood on his door; they say that the DNA of his elastic was later compared to Gargiulo, and they found similar booties, which he apparently wore for work, in the attic of the suspect when they were searched his house.

"She was a mother and a wife and a daughter and a sister," said Lillienfeld about Bruno on 48 hours. "It was all these things, she came to this country from El Salvador, when she was a teenager … She met and married her husband when she was a young woman … she had 2 year old twins and I believe 4 years and a 5 years old. "

Also in connection with the Los Angeles District Attorney's criminal case, Gargiulo was 17 when he mortally stabbed Tricia Pacaccio outside the door of her family's home in the upscale Glenview neighborhood in August 1993 Her father found her the next morning with injuries. his neck, his shoulders and his chest. Recently graduated from high school, she was scheduled to start at Purdue University a week after her badbadination.

At one point, Gargiulo involved one of his friends in the murder of Tricia, but subsequently retracted his statement. A decade later, tests showed that the DNA collected under Tricia's nails belonged to Gargiulo, a friend of his younger brother.

Although the DNA correspondence was made in 2003, Gargiulo was only charged with the murder of Pacaccio in 2011, when two witnesses came forward after watching 48 hours The peculiarity of Gargiulo – an unsatisfactory turn of events for the girl's parents, who criticized an earlier explanation that the DNA alone was not enough to stop it, as it could have come from the past. an "occasional contact". They hinted that Gargiulo would never have been charged in Chicago if he had not been charged with murder before LA, and that two other women might be alive if more had been done. earlier.

"My husband and I think that what Cook County did is that once they found DNA, instead of suing Michael, they made false excuses for explain why the DNA was on her, as it's pathetic, "said Diane Pacaccio, Tricia's mother. Chicago magazine in 2011.

"As long as he murdered my daughter, they did not care, they did not do anything about it," she said. "They were ready to leave an open case forever – again, it's pathetic."

"[The Cook County detectives] actually spent on that stuff and did everything they could, "Detective Small said LA Weekly in 2010, before Gargiulo was indicted in Chicago. "It's the state attorney's office that does not file … I'm not aware of everything in their investigation." In all the circumstances and material evidence, we "Frankly, I think it's a series of shenanigans, but it's not my word."

To help the Cook County case, two witnesses identified at the time as "Witnesses D" and "Witness E" came to Los Angeles to say that Gargiulo had told them that he had killed someone. One in Chicago, information he reportedly confided in the late 1990s, while working with "D" and "E" at the Rainbow Bar & Grill on Sunset Boulevard, where he was a bouncer. according to LA Weeklyhe was fired from this job he held in 1999 after hitting a client.

The arrest warrant of July 2011 against Gargiulo in the badbadination of Pacaccio, obtained by the Chicago Tribune, said that he had told "D" that he had stabbed someone and had first told "E" that he had buried a body, but then had replied: "I'm just joking.In fact, I left the dog on the verge of death." "

Some members of Pacaccio's family are also on the witness list of this trial.

"I am fighting for this affair with me forever," Diane Pacaccio told the press this month. "And that's how it's going to be."

"All the victims were young and outgoing women, all the attacks took place at night, all the victims were wounded several times, all the victims were stabbed, all the victims were attacked at her house and nearby. near Mr. Gargiulo, "said Dan Akemon in court.

After Michelle Murphy was attacked in the bedroom of her Euclid Avenue apartment in Santa Monica in April 2008, the DNA collected on this scene was mapped into a national database with samples taken from the scene. Pacaccio crime.

"About 25 days after submitting my samples to the crime lab, a criminal lawyer informed me that … we actually have a shot, a DNA blow," said the Santa Monica police sergeant . Richard Lewis said 48 hours in 2011. "A profile that was determined, I got a match."

Gargiulo was arrested 24 hours later. He was later charged with the death of Ellerin and Bruno in December.

Living in Santa Monica in 2008, the suspect shared an alley with Murphy and she told the police that they had sometimes greeted her on the outside.

She had been sleeping for about an hour on the night of April 28, 2008, the day she was stabbed in bed, Murphy said this month. She managed to repel her attacker by grabbing the blade of the knife with both hands and managed to kick him out. At one point in the fight, he cut off his wrist, leaving some of his blood on his bedspread and trailing in the alley at the back. She remembered the man saying, "I'm sorry," while he was running away.

His attacker apparently climbed through an open window in the living room. After escaping through the front door, Murphy locked her, closed the window, called her boyfriend (now her husband) and then called the police. She was taken to the hospital where she needed stitches and an operation at hand. She has never lived in this apartment again, Murphy said.

The pictures presented in court showed her bloody handprint on the rug when she stumbled out of bed, her bathroom splashed with blood as she examined her wounds and the cell phone splattered with blood that She had been in the habit of calling the police.

Prosecutors said the trial would last about six months.