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A prosecutor told jurors Thursday that evidence will show that three women, including a fashion design student who was set to go to a Grammy Awards party with actor Ashton Kutcher the night she was slain, were murdered by a “boy-next-door killer” who lived near each of them and plotted to attack them with a knife in their homes.
Deputy District Attorney Daniel Akemon told the downtown Los Angeles jury in his opening statement that Michael Thomas Gargiulo, 43, was able to escape detection for nearly 15 years before accidentally cutting himself with a knife and leaving a “blood trail” during an April 2008 attack in Santa Monica in which the 26-year-old victim, Michelle Murphy, survived.
Gargiulo, 43, could face the death penalty if convicted of the Feb. 22, 2001, slaying of Ashley Ellerin in a Hollywood bungalow and the Dec. 1, 2005, killing of Maria Bruno in an El Monte apartment. He is also charged with trying to kill Murphy and trying to escape from jail.
The prosecutor told jurors that they would also hear evidence about a third killing — the Aug. 14, 1993, slaying of Tricia Pacaccio, an 18-year-old Glenview Illinois, woman who was repeatedly stabbed on her front door step after returning home from a night out with friends. But he noted that the panel will not be asked to determine whether Gargiulo is guilty or innocent of Pacaccio’s killing, telling jurors that it will be used to show motive and intent.
“The methodical and systematic slaughter of women by Michael Gargiulo — the boy-next-door killer — that’s what this case is about,” Akemon told the panel, saying that the defendant’s favorite hobby was plotting to attack women with a knife around their homes. “They all lived near Gargiulo. He had targeted them for murder and he ultimately attacked all of them with a knife.”
Gargiulo subsequently bragged to two friends about Pacaccio’s killing, telling one, “I actually left the bitch on the step for dead,” and informing another that he had stabbed a girl, according to the prosecutor. The defendant’s DNA was found on the fingernails of the high school graduate, who had been set to start at Purdue University, Akemon said.
After Pacaccio’s killing in Illinois, Gargiulo moved to Hollywood, where Ellerin’s friends noticed that he showed up uninvited and that he seemed to be “fixated” on her at one party, Akemon told jurors. She was stabbed 47 times in the hallway outside her bathroom in an attack in which she was nearly decapitated, the prosecutor said.
Kutcher — who had spoken to the 22-year-old woman on the phone a little over two hours earlier — arrived at her house that night and left after looking through a window and seeing what he believed were wine stains on the floor, Akemon said. The young woman’s roommate discovered her dead the next morning.
Gargiulo subsequently moved to El Monte and lived in the same apartment complex where Bruno was “mutilated” as she slept, the deputy district attorney said. He alleged that Gargiulo stabbed and slashed the 32-year-old woman multiple times, cut off her breasts, tried to remove her breast implants and placed one of her breasts in her mouth. A blue surgical bootie that was found outside the woman’s front door contained drops of her blood along with Gargiulo’s DNA around the elastic band, Akemon said.
The defendant’s “killing spree” ended after the April 28, 2008, attack on Murphy, who fought back after being confronted while she was asleep, the prosecutor said. Gargiulo ran from the woman’s residence, bleeding profusely and yelling “I’m sorry,” according to Akemon.
Gargiulo was arrested in June 2008 by Santa Monica police in connection with the attack on Murphy, and was subsequently charged with the killings of Ellerin and Bruno.
The murder charges include the special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder by means of lying in wait, along with allegations that he used a knife in the commission of the crimes.
Authorities in Illinois charged him in 2011 with Pacaccio’s slaying.
Gargiulo — who has a 1997 felony conviction for burglary in Cook County, Illinois — lived one block away from the high school graduate at the time of the slaying and was good friends with one of her two younger brothers, according to an arrest warrant filed in Cook County.
“We have never given up on Tricia Pacaccio or her family and their search for justice in this case,” Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez said in a statement released shortly after Gargiulo was charged in Illinois. “It has been a very difficult and challenging investigation, but we are extremely pleased to be finally bringing this charge and hopefully providing some measure of closure to a family that has been devastated by a violent crime that no one should have to endure.”
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