Michael Gargiulo, the 'Hollywood Ripper', 43, will go on trial May 2 facing two counts of murder and one of attempted murder
Accused 'Hollywood Ripper,' Michael Thomas Gargiulo - who police believe may have killed up to 10 women, including Ashton Kutcher's one-time girlfriend Ashley Ellerin - goes on trial in Los Angeles tomorrow.
Gargiulo, 43, is facing two murder charges: the 2001 killing of lovely, 22 year-old Ellerin who was stabbed 47 times in her Hollywood home, with her head almost severed from her body; and the 2005 slashing death of mother-of-four Maria Bruno, 32, at her apartment in Monterey Park, east of LA. Both are capital crimes that carry the death penalty.
The former heating and air-conditioning repairman - called 'Mike the Furnace Man' by people who knew him - is also charged with the 2008 attempted murder of Michelle Murphy who, though stabbed multiple times at her Santa Monica home, bravely fought off and survived the attack and is expected to be the prosecution's star witness at Gargiulo's trial, which could last six months.
It was the failed murder attempt on Murphy in April of 2008 that ended what police claim was a 15-year killing spree by Chicago native Gargiulo.
DNA evidence collected at Murphy's apartment not only led to his arrest in June 2008 for his alleged attack on her, but also linked him to the Ellen and Bruno murders, say prosecutors. He was indicted for those killings just two months later
Cops also claim that those DNA traces from the Murphy crime scene also tied Gargiulo to the 1993 murder of 18-year-old Tricia Pacaccio who was brutally stabbed to death on the porch outside her home in the Chicago suburb of Glenview where Gargiulo lived at the time.
He is accused of fatally stabbing Ashely Ellerin, 22, in her home in2001 - who at the time was dating actor Ashton Kutcher
Ashton Kutcher has been named as a potential witness in Ashley Ellerin's murder after he claimed to have gone to her home the night of the murder but she never answered the door
Gargiulo was a close friend of Pacaccio's brother and detectives had long suspected him in the killing. But they could never put together enough evidence to charge him with Pacaccio's murder - until the attack on Michelle Murphy 15 years later.
Prosecutors have branded Gargiulo 'a serial, psycho-sexual thrill killer who engages in the systematic slaughter of beautiful women because he takes sexual pleasure from manipulating, stabbing and killing his victims.'
At Gargiulo's murder trial - being held before Judge Larry Fidler at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown LA - Two and a Half Men star Ashton Kutcher, 41, is expected to be called as a witness.
Kutcher was 23 and starring in his first TV hit, That 70s Show, when his then girlfriend, Ashley Ellerin, was murdered on the night of February 21 2001.
Ashley, a model and student at the Los Angeles Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, was supposed to be going with Kutcher that night to an after-Grammy party.
But when he showed up at 10.45pm to her apartment behind the famous Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and knocked on the door, she didn't answer - even though her lights were on and her car was parked outside.
Kutcher looked through her window and saw what he thought was red
