Death Penalty Phase Of Hollywood Ripper Trial Postponed

LOS ANGELES, CA — The penalty phase of trial -- in which jurors will be asked to recommend a death sentence or life in prison for the convicted double-murderer dubbed the "Hollywood Ripper" -- was delayed Wednesday for nearly a month.

The Los Angeles Superior Court panel that found Michael Gargiulo guilty of the grisly slayings of two women in Hollywood and El Monte, along with an attack on a woman in Santa Monica, had tentatively been due back in court next Monday for the start of the trial's penalty phase.

Citing scheduling issues, Los Angeles Superior Court Larry Paul Fidler on Wednesday pushed back the start of the penalty phase until Oct. 7.

Gargiulo, 43, was convicted Aug. 15 of first-degree murder for the Feb. 22, 2001, killing of 22-year-old Ashley Ellerin in her Hollywood home and the Dec. 1, 2005, slaying of 32-year-old Maria Bruno in her El Monte apartment. Ellerin was killed hours before she was set to go out with actor Ashton Kutcher.

Jurors also found Gargiulo guilty of trying to kill 26-year-old Michelle Murphy, who survived being stabbed eight times in her Santa Monica apartment in April 2008, along with attempting to escape from jail, and found true the special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder while lying in wait.

The panel subsequently found that Gargiulo was sane at the time of the crimes.

The violent nature of the attacks earned the killer the moniker "Hollywood Ripper." Deputy District Attorney Dan Akemon also referred to Gargiulo as the "Boy Next Door" killer, noting that he lived near all of his victims and telling jurors that Gargiulo targeted the women in "frenzied knife attacks" that are "inextricably linked."

Gargiulo is awaiting trial separately in Illinois on a murder charge stemming from the Aug. 14, 1993, slaying of 18-year-old Tricia Pacaccio, who was the sister of one of his friends.

After Pacaccio was killed outside her home, Gargiulo moved to Hollywood, where Ellerin's friends noticed that he showed up uninvited to a party and that he seemed to be "fixated" on her, Akemon said.

Kutcher -- best known for his work on the TV sitcoms "That '70s Show" and "Two and a Half Men" -- testified during the guilt phase of the trial that he had spoken to Ellerin on the phone the afternoon she died and showed up at her home two hours later to pick her up. When she didn't answer her door, the actor said he looked through a window and saw what he believed was red wine spilled on the carpet. He said he left because he thought Ellerin had already gone out for the night.

The young woman's roommate discovered her dead the next morning. She had been stabbed 47 times in the hallway outside her bathroom in an attack in which she was nearly decapitated.

Gargiulo subsequently moved to El Monte and lived in the same apartment complex where Bruno was "mutilated" as she slept, Akemon said. The prosecutor said Gargiulo stabbed the 32-year-old woman 17 times, cut off her breasts, tried to remove her breast implants and placed one of her breasts on her mouth.

A blue surgical bootie found outside the apartment contained drops of her blood along with Gargiulo's DNA around the elastic band, and another blue surgical bootie appearing to be the same model was recovered from the attic of the El Monte apartment he had rented, according to Akemon.

Gargiulo was able to escape detection until he accidentally cut himself with a knife during the 2008 attack on Murphy -- near where he lived at the time in Santa Monica -- and left a "blood trail" during that attack, Akemon said.

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. Authorities in Illinois charged him in 2011 with Pacaccio's slaying.

City News Service