An aspiring actor dubbed the “Boy Next Door Killer” has been found guilty of fatally stabbing two women, one of whom was killed the night she was planning to meet actor Ashton Kutcher for drinks.
The jury also found Michael Gargiulo guilty of the attempted murder of a woman who fought back and sent him fleeing, leading to his arrest in all three cases and a fourth for which he is awaiting trial in Illinois.
Gargiulo, 43, was convicted in the murder of 22-year-old Ashley Ellerin in her Hollywood home in 2001 on a night when she was about to meet Kutcher, who testified at the trial.
Her father was in court for the verdict.
Gargiulo also was convicted of the 2005 murder of 32-year old Maria Bruno in her El Monte home, and with the 2008 attempted murder of Michelle Murphy in a stabbing attack in her Santa Monica apartment.
Jurors who deliberated for three days also found Gargiulo guilty of several special-circumstance allegations, including lying in wait and multiple murders, which make him eligible for the death penalty or life in prison with no possibility of parole.
A final phase of the trial is set to start on Tuesday, when jurors will determine whether Gargiulo was sane at the time of the killings.
Gargiulo showed no reaction when the verdict was read.
His lawyers declined comment outside court, while prosecutors and victims’ family members did not speak to reporters.
A native of the Chicago area who moved to Los Angeles in the late 1990s, Gargiulo had acting aspirations and worked as an air conditioning repairman and 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 connectively, citing uncannily similar patterns in home-invasion attacks that were all in places near his residence at the time.
While some media outlets referred to him as the “Hollywood Ripper”, prosecutors dubbed him the “Boy Next Door Killer”.
Allowed to cite evidence from the Illinois case, they said all four attacks were the work of a skilled serial killer who studied the lives, homes and habits of victims that he stabbed quickly, powerfully and repeatedly with a knife that he knew how to use, and 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.
The defence relied heavily on the lack of forensic or eyewitness evidence putting Gargiulo at the scenes of the killings.
Kutcher, who in 2001 was a rising star of That ’70s Show, testified early in the trial that he and Ellerin were just getting to know each other and had made plans to go out together for drinks.
He said he arrived at her Hollywood home very late and assumed she had gone out without him when he got no answer at the door.
“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 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 evidence against him was so overwhelming that defence lawyers conceded it was him, though they argued his mental state was such that he did not know what he was doing.