A convicted murderer nicknamed the “Hollywood Ripper” has been sentenced to death for killing two women within the 2000s.
Relatives of his victims wept as a judge gave Michael Gargiulo the sentence in l. a. on Friday.
Ashley Ellerin, 22, and Maria Bruno, 32, were both stabbed to death in their California homes.
Gargiulo was caught after another potential victim, Michelle Murphy, then 26, managed to fight him off.
He fled the scene, but left a some blood behind – enabling police to trace him down.
At Friday’s sentencing, Ms Murphy broke down, telling the court how “spending the night alone creates a world of fear in me” quite a decade later.
Gargiulo was convicted of two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder in 2019, but continues to insist he’s innocent.
He is now expected to face trial in Illinois, where he faces a separate murder indictment over the killing of an 18-year-old woman in 1993.
The California murders attracted global attention because one among the victims, Ellerin, was close to continue a date with American actor Ashton Kutcher on the night she was killed in February 2001.
Testifying at the trial, he said he had knocked on the door of Ellerin’s Hollywood home. When she didn’t answer, Kutcher looked in her window and saw what he thought were wine stains on the ground , he said.
A roommate found Ellerin dead subsequent day with 47 stab wounds.
Ashton Kutcher appears in ‘Hollywood Ripper’ trial
During the trial Kutcher told the court he was “freaking out” when he learned that Ellerin had been killed.
Gargiulo killed Bruno, a mother of 4 , in December 2005. She was a neighbour of Gargiulo, who “quite literally butchered” her with a knife while she slept, prosecutors said.
Three years later, Ms Murphy awakened in her Santa Monica flat with Gargiulo on top of her, stabbing her with a knife, but managed to fight him off.
She was a key witness within the trial.
As he announced the sentence, Judge Larry Paul Fidler said: “In this case, everywhere that Mr Gargiulo went, death and destruction followed.”
However, it might be a short time before Gargiulo is put to death. The last execution in California was in 2006 and therefore the practice has been banned since 2019 under Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom.