LOS ANGELES — For crimes he called “vicious and frightening,” a judge on Friday gave a death sentence to a man prosecutors called “The Boy Next Door Killer” for the home-invasion murders of two women and the attempted murder of a third.
Victims’ family members wept as Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry P. Fidler handed down the sentence to 45-year-old Michael Thomas Gargiulo.
“Everywhere that Mr. Gargiulo went, death and destruction followed him,” Fidler said at the all-day hearing.
Gargiulo’s case received added attention because one of his victims was about to go on a date with actor Ashton Kutcher, who testified at the trial.
The sentencing, delayed by procedural issues and the pandemic, came nearly two years after a jury convicted Gargiulo and recommended his execution.
Gargiulo was found guilty of the 2001 murder of Ashley Ellerin, a 22-year-old fashion design student, in her Hollywood home as she prepared to go out with Kutcher. At the trial, Kutcher said he was late to pick up Ellerin, who did not answer her door.
He looked inside to see blood stains that he thought were spilled wine. Prosecutors used him in their closing arguments, suggesting Ellerin was killed by another man who was jealous of Kutcher.
Ellerin was found with 47 stab wounds.
Her father, Michael Ellerin, who had been visiting his daughter from Northern California hours before she was killed, was one of several victims’ relatives who spoke at the hearing of their suffering as they waited years for justice.
He said he was tempted to imitate his wife Cynthia’s “mournful scream and primal wailing after finding out that Ashley had been murdered.”
“It marked the beginning of an altered, diminished, heartbreaking life,” he said.
Gargiulo was also convicted of the murder of 32-year-old Maria Bruno, a mother of four, in her home in El Monte, east of Los Angeles, in 2005. Bruno’s breasts were cut off, and her implants were removed.
He’s also facing a future trial for a 1997 killing in his Illinois hometown. Prosecutors in his California trial were allowed to present extensive evidence from that case as they sought to establish a pattern and present Gargiulo as a serial killer.
Gargiulo is a former air conditioner and heater repairman, bouncer and aspiring actor whose nicknames from media outlets included “The Chiller Killer” and “The Hollywood Ripper” but was called “The Boy Next Door Killer” by prosecutors because he lived near his victims.
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