Hollywood Ripper victims Ashley Ellerin, Tricia Pacaccio and Maria Bruno.Photo: Los Angeles County Sheriff and LAPD
When authorities were closing in on “Hollywood Ripper” serial killerMichael Gargiuloas a suspect in the slayings of two women, they came across some creepy items in their search.
Inside Gargiulo’s Los Angeles apartment, authorities found more than 100 horror figurines in his bedroom. In the living room, investigators found a clear mask that distorts the user’s features. They also found knives.
Gargiulo, authorities say, was extremely elusive and hard to track down. He rarely put bills in his name and sometimes slept in his van.
“He was a hard guy to track,” says former LAPD homicide detective Tom Small. “It was like he was constantly counter-surveilling.”
Gargiulo, an air conditioning repairman and former bouncer, was convicted in 2019 of the killings of 22-year-oldAshley Ellerinin 2001 andMaria Bruno, 32, in 2005. Bothwomen were viciously stabbed multiple timesin their Los Angeles-area homes and posed after death. Gargiulo was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Michelle Murphy, 26, who was attacked in her Santa Monica home in 2008.
The investigation into the case is explored onPeople Magazine Investigates: The Hollywood Ripper, airing tonight at 10 ET/9 CT on Investigation Discovery and streaming on discovery+. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)
Los Angeles County prosecutors described Gargiulo as a “serial, psychosexual, thrill killer” who stalked and then viciously stabbed his unsuspecting victims — all young women who lived near him.
Santa Monica Police Dept./ZUMApress.com.
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Gargiulo, who moved to Los Angeles from Illinois around 1997, was 24 when he first met Ellerin, a student at L.A.’s Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, outside her home, asking her if she needed help fixing a flat tire.
Ellerin’s friends later told police that Gargiulo, who lived less than a block away from Ellerin, would show up to her house uninvited. Another friend said he saw Gargiulo parked outside her bungalow at odd hours, surveilling her home.
Ellerin was found stabbed 47 times in her Hollywood bungalow in Feb. of 2001.
After Ellerin’s death, Gargiulo moved to a gated apartment complex in El Monte, Calif.. On Dec. 1, 2015, just 10 days after Bruno moved into the complex, Gargiulo fatally stabbed her.
Three years later, Gargiulo attacked again. On April 28, 2008,Michelle Murphywoke up to a man stabbing her in the arms and chest as she was sleeping inside her Santa Monica second-floor apartment. Murphy was able to kick off her attacker, who cut himself during the confrontation and fled.
Gargiulo was arrested on June 6, 2008 after his blood linked him to the Murphy attack as well as the killing of Tricia Pacaccio, an Illinois teen whose brother was close friends with Gargiulo. She was found stabbed to death on her porch after she attended a school rally with friends in 1993.
In 2011, Gargiulo was charged in Illinois with the murder of Pacaccio but the case has yet to go to trial.
For more on how police connected a series of brutal attack to a serial killer, watch the episode of People Magazine Investigates: The Hollywood Ripper, airing tonight at 10 ET/9 CT on Investigation Discovery and streaming on discovery+.
source: people.com
