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California: Jury recommends death penalty for 'The Boy Next Door Killer'

Michael Gargiulo
A Los Angeles jury has recommended the death sentence for a man dubbed The Boy Next Door Killer.

In August, Michael Gargiulo, 43, was found guilty of murdering 22-year-old Ashley Ellerin in 2001 and 32-year-old Maria Bruno in 2005. 

Ellerin was actor Ashton Kutcher's then-girlfriend, who was found dead hours before they had a date planned, and Bruno was a mother-of-three found stabbed to death at her home. 

He was also found guilty of the 2008 attempted murder of Michelle Murphy. 

Gargiulo, head shaven and wearing glasses, remained emotionless as the jury recommended the death penalty at 1.30pm on Friday after deliberating for more than a day. 

He will be sentenced by a judge in February.   

Prosecutors called Gargiulo 'The Boy Next Door Killer' because he lived near all of the victims. 

Gargiulo - also known as the Hollywood Ripper - committed his first murder in 1993 when he killed Tricia Pacaccio, 18, outside of her home in Glenview, Illinois.

Gargiulo was 17 years old at the time and was a friend of Pacaccio's brother. In fact, he lived just around the corner from the family. 

After the murder, he moved to Los Angeles, where he met Ashley Ellerin.

Gargiulo lived less than a block away and, on the day they met, allegedly asked if she needed help changing a flat tire.

He became 'obsessed' with Ellerin, showing up to her home announced and surveying her from a parked car across the street. 

Ellerin was found stabbed to death in her home in February 2001, hours before she had plans to go out on a date with Ashton Kutcher.

The young woman was allegedly stabbed so brutally that her head was almost completely severed from her body. 

At the time, Kutcher was a rising star of the Fox series That '70s Show but not yet the household name he is today. 

Kutcher testified that the pair last spoke at 8.24pm when he told Ellerin he was running late and she told him she had just gotten out of the shower. 

When he arrived at her Hollywood home very late, he said he got no answer when he knocked on the door.

Kutcher testified that he looked inside and saw what he thought were wine stains. He said he left thinking she had gone out without him in frustration.

'I remember the next day, after I heard about what happened, I went to the detectives and said, 'My fingerprints are on the door,'' Kutcher said. 

'I was freaking out.' 

Gargiulo moved, yet again, this time to a gated apartment complex in El Monte - 16 miles away - where he murdered his neighbor, Maria Bruno, in December 2005.

Then, in 2008, he attempted to murder Michelle Murphy, then 26, at her home in Santa Monica by stabbing her 17 times.

Murphy was a fitness buff and fought off her attacker, which caused him to cut himself and leave a trail of blood.

This set off the chain of events that led to the arrest and charges against Gargiulo.  

The physical evidence against him was so overwhelming that defense attorneys conceded that it was him.

They offered, as their only defense, that Gargiulo suffers from split personalities and did not know he was in Murphy's apartment. They noted that he said 'sorry' as he fled.

Prosecutors praised Murphy during their closing arguments, saying her resistance against Gargiulo led to his arrest in all of the other cases as they grew increasingly cold.

'Michelle Murphy, because of her strength and courage, allowed investigators to work backwards,' the prosecutor said. 

'This case begins and ends with Michelle Murphy.' 

Murphy testified during the trial's penalty phase that she lived in fear for years after the attack.   

The killer has since been linked to the murder of a third woman. He is currently awaiting trial in Illinois for the 1993 killing of Tricia Pacaccio.

Prosecutors were allowed to present evidence of the case in his California trial to help establish a pattern between the killings.   

Pacaccio's father found her fatally stabbed on their family's doorstep with her house key still in hand.

Gargiulo was a close friend of Pacaccio's brother and detectives had long suspected him in the killing.

But they could never put together enough evidence to charge him with Pacaccio's murder - until the attack on Murphy 15 years later. 

Her father discovered her body on the back doorstep the next day. 

'It's been 26 years,' he mother, Diane, said on the stand. 'Every single day I think about her. 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.'   

Source: Mail Online, Mary Kekatos and Lauren Fruen, October 18, 2019


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

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