'Hollywood Ripper' faces death penalty for murdering two women including Ashton Kutcher date

A “stone-cold serial killer” could face execution after being killing two women, one of whom was stabbed to death on the night of a planned date with actor Ashton Kutcher.

Michael Gargiulo, 43, was also found guilty of the attempted murder of a third victim who fought back and later testified against him in court.

Kutcher also gave evidence during Gargiulo’s trial, having seen bloodstains on the floor of Ashley Ellerin’s Hollywood home as he arrived to collect her for drinks in February 2001.

The 22-year-old fashion student was later found dead with more than 47 stab wounds.

Gargiulo, a former aspiring actor, was found guilty of the 2005 murder of 32-year old Maria Bruno in her El Monte, California, and the attempted murder of Michelle Murphy, who he stabbed in her Santa Monica apartment in 2008.

Gargiulo is eligible for the death penalty or life in prison with no possibility of parole.

He showed no reaction when the verdicts were read on Thursday following three hours of jury deliberations.

A final phase of his trial at Los Angeles Superior Court is set to start on Tuesday, when jurors will determine whether Gargiulo was sane at the time of the killings.

A Chicago native who moved to Los Angeles in the late 1990s, Gargiulo worked as an air conditioning repairman and a Hollywood nightclub bouncer at the time of the attacks.

With little physical evidence tying him to the scenes of two killings, prosecutors urged jurors to look at the cases jointly, citing similar patterns in home-invasion attacks that all took place near where he was living at the time.

While some media outlets dubbed him the “Hollywood Ripper“, prosecutors called him the “Boy-next-door Killer“ and painted him as a “stone-cold serial killer”.

The prosecution was allowed to cite evidence from a second alleged murder in 1993 for which Gargiulo is awaiting trial in Illinois.

Jurors were told Gargiulo was a meticulous killer who studied the lives, homes and habits of the women he preyed on. All four victims were stabbed quickly, powerfully and repeatedly with a knife by their attacker, who studied ways to cover his tracks.

“Those similarities point to one man, one killer: Michael Gargiulo,“ deputy district attorney Garrett Dameron said during closing arguments.

Gargiulo’s defence lawyers relied heavily on the lack of forensic or witness evidence putting him at the scenes of the killings.

Kutcher, who in 2001 was a rising star of the sitcom That ‘70s Show, testified early in the trial that he and Ellerin were getting to know each other and had made plans to go out together for drinks.

He told the court he arrived at her Hollywood home several hours late and assumed she had gone out without him when she did not answer the door.

He recalled looking through the window and seeing what he believed to be were wine stains, but later proved to be Ellerin’s blood.

“I remember the next day, after I heard about what happened, I went to the detectives and said, ‘My fingerprints are on the door,“‘ Kutcher testified. “I was freaking out.“​

The first and most important witness in the case was Ms Murphy, a fitness enthusiast who fought off the much larger Gargiulo and caused him to cut himself, leaving a trail of blood as he fled.

That evidence against him was so overwhelming that defence lawyers conceded he was Ms Murphy’s attacker, although they argued he suffered from a dissociative disorder which left him in a “fugue state“ and did know what he was doing,