LOS ANGELES — Four strikingly similar attacks on women were all planned and executed by a skilled serial killer who studied the lives and California homes of victims who lived near him before savagely stabbing them, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Dan Akemon in his closing argument tried to establish that the killings of three women and the attempted killing of a fourth were all the unmistakable work of 43-year-old Michael Gargiulo.
Akemon said all the attacks were bold but stealthy, coming at night inside or just outside the women’s homes by a man with knowledge of the residences and the surrounding neighbourhood, knowledge of the life patterns of the victims, and knowledge of how to kill quickly and cover his tracks.
“Those similarities point to one man, one killer: Michael Gargiulo,” Akemon said.
The killings involved dozens of deep stab wounds delivered by a strong man, Akemon said. In none of the cases was there evidence of a fight that preceded the stabbing, nor were the victims robbed or sexually assaulted, though prosecutors have alleged that Gargiulo got a sexual thrill from the brutality of the killings. In none of the attacks was a murder weapon found. And all the victims were left in the spot where they were killed.
“These were monstrous, torturous attacks, all four,” Akemon said. “This was someone that was going to take pleasure in plunging a knife into their victim over and over.”
Gargiulo has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers will make their closing argument on Wednesday, when they will likely remind jurors of the dearth of forensic evidence directly tying Gargiulo to the two Southern California killings.
Akemon said Tuesday that evidence is lacking in some areas because Gargiulo was an expert at getting rid of it, and had researched the subject, according to former friends, girlfriends and co-workers who testified during the trial.
The prosecutor said Gargiulo’s track-covering has forced authorities to rely on establishing connections between the killings along with other circumstantial evidence, but argued that that evidence remains overwhelming.
Akemon began his presentation with a tribute to the case’s only surviving victim, Michelle Murphy, who used her “strength and courage” to fight off the man who attacked her as she lay in bed in her Santa Monica apartment in 2008, an act that would lead to Gargiulo’s arrest and eventual charges in three killings dating back to 1993.
“Eleven years ago, a 26-year-old woman had the strength and courage to fight off a killer,” Akemon said. “Thanks to her toughness, not only was she able to survive, but she forced her right-handed attacker to cut himself, leaving a blood trail, and leading investigators to answers they’d been seeking for 15 years.”
Murphy was the first witness jurors heard in the three-month trial, which also included the testimony of Ashton Kutcher, who was supposed to have drinks with fashion-design student Ashley Ellerin on the night she was stabbed to death at her Hollywood home in 2001. Kutcher testified that he arrived very late, looked through Ellerin’s window and saw stains that he assumed were spilled wine, and left because he thought she had gone out without him.
Gargiulo is awaiting trial in Illinois for the killing of Tricia Pacaccio in 1993 when he was 17 and friends with Pacaccio’s younger brother. Prosecutors were allowed to present evidence of the case in his California trial to help establish a pattern between the killings.
He’s also charged with the murders of Ellerin and Maria Bruno, who was stabbed to death at age 32 at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of El Monte in 2005, and the attempted murder of Murphy.
The three murder cases were going increasingly cold until the attack on Murphy set off a chain of events that led to the arrest and charges against Gargiulo, who was living very near each of the women at the time they were attacked.
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Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press
