California jury finds man described by prosecutors as a serial killer guilty of fatally stabbing two women and attempting to kill a third.
FILE - In this May 2, 2109 file photo Michael Gargiulo appears in Los Angeles Superior Court for opening statements on his trial on murder charges, in Los Angeles. Jurors have reached a verdict Thursday, Aug. 15, in the case of Gargiulo, who is charged with fatally stabbing two women in their Southern California homes and attempting to kill a third.
Gargiulo was charged with the murder of 22-year-old Ashley Ellerin in her Hollywood home in 2001 — on a night when she was supposed to have drinks with Ashton Kutcher, who testified at the trial. With little physical evidence tying Gargiulo to the scenes in the two murders, prosecutors during the trial urged jurors to look at the cases connectively, citing uncannily similar patterns in attacks that were all in places near the place where Gargiulo lived at the time.
The defense relied heavily on the lack of forensic or eyewitness evidence putting Gargiulo at the scenes of the killings of Ellerin and Bruno. A shoe-covering bootie with Bruno’s blood and Gargiulo’s DNA was found near her apartment in a complex where they both lived. Gargiulo’s attorney Daniel Nardoni suggested that the apartment manager, who had been with Ellerin when she received a call from Kutcher on the night of her death, was driven to a jealous rage.
The first and most important witness in the case was Murphy, a fitness buff who fought off the much larger Gargiulo in 2008 and caused him to cut himself, leaving a trail of blood as he fled that made the physical evidence against him so overwhelming that defense attorneys conceded that it was him.
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