AdminMichael Gargiulo Biography
Michael Gargiulo (Michael Thomas Gargiulo) is an American alleged serial killer who may have killed as many as ten women. He is accused of brutally stabbing three women to death and attempting to murder a fourth.
Michael Gargiulo’s Description of alleged crimes
Gargiulo is a native of Glenview, Illinois, where he may have stabbed his neighbor, 18-year-old Tricia Pacaccio, to death on her backdoor step. Pacaccio’s corpse was found by her father the morning after on August 14, 1993. She was stabbed 47 times. In 1998, Gargiulo moved to Los Angeles, allegedly to escape scrutiny from police in Illinois.
Michael Gargiulo is accused of three murders in Southern California between 2001 and 2008. On February 21, 2001, Gargiulo allegedly stabbed Ashley Ellerin 47 times to death in her home in Hollywood. Ashley Ellerin was left to die with “a gaping wound to her neck, so deep that only her spinal cord kept her head from being severed.
The rest of Ashley’s body was covered with deep puncture wounds—to her chest, stomach, and back—some up to six inches deep. One of the blows “actually penetrated the skull and took out a chunk of skull like a puzzle piece.” Ashley was dating Ashton Kutcher at the time and they had planned to go to a post-Grammy-Award party the night she was killed.
On December 1, 2005, Gargiulo allegedly stabbed his neighbor, Maria Bruno, to death at her home in El Monte, California. She was stabbed 17 times. Gargiulo is also charged with the attempted murder of his neighbor, Michelle Murphy, in her home in Santa Monica on April 28, 2008. She fought off the attack, and blood matching Gargiulo’s DNA was found at the scene.
Michael Gargiulo PhotoMichael Gargiulo Arrest and prosecution
Gargiulo was arrested on June 6, 2008 by the Santa Monica Police Department. On July 7, 2011, the Cook County State’s Attorney charged Gargiulo with the first degree murder of Tricia Pacaccio. Although Gargiulo is charged in the two California murders as well as the Pacaccio murder in Chicago, police have not linked him to any other murders.
He allegedly told authorities in the Los Angeles County Jail that just because 10 women were killed — and his DNA was present — doesn’t mean he murdered anyone, leading investigators to believe that there are more victims. Media in Los Angeles dubbed Michael Gargiulo the “Hollywood Ripper” as well as the “Chiller Killer.”
Michael Gargiulo Trial
He is being held at Los Angeles County Jail awaiting a capital murder trial. A pre-trial hearing was held June 9, 2017 in Los Angeles Superior Court. In April 2019, jury selection began for his trial. Garguilo will be going on trial for murdering the following women: Ashley Ellerin, Tricia Pacaccio, and Maria Bruno.
Michael Gargiulo Age
He was born on 15 February 1976 in Northfield Township, Illinois, United States. He is 43 years old as of 2019.
Michael Gargiulo Wife
Gargiulo is married to Ana Luz Gonzalez. There is no information or news about his wife or other members of his family.
Michael Gargiulo News
Ashton Kutcher testifies in trial of serial killer suspect Michael Gargiulo
When Ashton Kutcher went to pick up Ashley Ellerin for a first date on the night of the Grammys in 2001 and she didn’t answer the door, he figured he’d screwed up.
He was late, and she hadn’t been answering his calls.
“I knocked on the door. There was no answer. Knocked again. And once again, no answer,” he testified Wednesday. “At this point I pretty well assumed she had left for the night, and that I was late, and she was upset.”
But before he left, he peeked through a window. All the lights were on. It was messy inside, and it looked like red wine had spilled on the carpet. None of that was alarming, though. Kutcher said he had just been at a housewarming party at her home about a week prior and people had been drinking.
“I didn’t really think anything of it,” he said.
When he found out the next day that Ellerin had been killed, he spoke with police.
“I was freaking out,” he said during cross-examination, noting that his fingerprints were on the door.
“Don’t worry, you’re not a suspect,” Gargiulo’s attorney Daniel Nardoni told him.
“Thank you,” Kutcher replied.
Kutcher delivered this testimony in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom during the capital murder trial of Michael Gargiulo, whom prosecutors have calleda “serial sexual-thrill killer” who derived pleasure from slaughtering beautiful women.
Gargiulo watched Kutcher intently, sometimes sitting forward with his eyebrows raised, as several jurors took notes.
Gargiulo faces two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder in attacks in the Los Angeles area between 2001 and 2008. He has pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors said Gargiulo’s alleged series of attacks began in the Chicago area in 1993.
One night in August of that year, Tricia Pacaccio, 18, was celebrating her high school graduation with friends before they each headed off to college. She dropped a friend off about 1 a.m. before heading home. She walked up to her door carrying her house key, but never made it inside.
Her father found her on the doorstep later that morning with numerous stab wounds to her chest, shoulder and neck.
Just 17 at the time, Gargiulo was a friend of Pacaccio’s younger brother. It wasn’t until a decade later that investigators discovered that the DNA collected from her fingernails was his.
By then, prosecutors say, Gargiulo had moved to the Los Angeles area and killed Ellerin.
Gargiulo first met Ellerin, a 22-year-old fashion student, when he walked up and offered to help her change a flat tire. Later, he offered to help fix a problem with her heater, and from then on he’d show up uninvited and unannounced to her apartment.
Some reported seeing him park in front of her home at all hours, staring at her residence for long periods of time. Her roommate thought he was a stalker.
Prosecutors allege he entered Ellerin’s Hollywood home one night in February 2001 and stabbed her 47 times, slashing her throat so severely that he almost decapitated her.
Gargiulo later moved to the El Monte area, into the same apartment complex as Maria Bruno, 32.
In 2005, prosecutors allege, Gargiulo attacked her as she slept and “quite literally butchered her,” slashing her throat and slicing off her breasts.
His last alleged attack, in April 2008, was unlike the others. Michelle Murphy survived.
Gargiulo and Murphy, who was 27 at the time, lived across from each other, sharing an alley in Santa Monica. In the months leading up to the attack, Gargiulo would greet her outside her apartment.
One night, prosecutors say, she woke up to him stabbing her arms and chest. She kicked him off, causing him to cut his wrist and flee. Investigators found his blood on her bedspread and in the alley.
After his arrest less than two months later in connection with the Santa Monica attack, detectives linked him to the killings of Ellerin and Bruno. Gargiulo wasn’t charged in Illinois with Pacaccio’s slaying until 2011. He is to be extradited after the Los Angeles trial concludes.
Source: www.latimes.com