Notorious: Hollywood Ripper

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It's one of the most shocking murder cases in Hollywood history.

She was a beautiful, vivacious young girl.

Everyone who knew her said she was incredibly open and friendly.

A young woman who came here to pursue her dreams is stabbed to death in her own home.

There's no DNA evidence at the scene, no evidence of forced entry.

Police have few clues to follow until a 10-year-old cold case from Chicago puts a suspect in their sights.

The guy that came out of the woodwork.

He's moving around in a way that is going to make him very hard to find.

It was before social media.

It was a lot easier to just sort of disappear.

Then a third young woman is murdered in an equally violent act.

But a fourth victim hits back.

He actually cuts himself with the knife as she's fighting him off.

An arrest quickly follows as four police departments piece together a pattern of crimes.

All of the victims are women.

They're all somewhat young.

They're all physically fit.

This guy, he lives practically next door.

A predator who stalked and targeted young women faces the death penalty.

But a star witness turns his trial into a media frenzy.

Ashton Coocher was the last person that spoke to her.

Will a tidal wave of attention overwhelm the heartbreaking loss of life?

Children

needed their mother.

The answer to that question comes when a monster who'd been living in the shadows finally steps into the spotlight.

Those common characteristics of these crimes point to one man.

This was someone who felt no remorse.

A guy like this, there's a real possibility there may be other victims.

Los Angeles, California.

Every day of every year, young people from across the country arrive here, hoping to make their dreams come true.

Some yearn to become movie stars.

Others want to make it big in the music industry or the world of high fashion.

But not everyone who comes here shares those types of hopes and dreams.

Among the stars, the glitz and the glamour, there are those who come to escape their past, a sinister past.

And in a city where outsiders rarely draw suspicion, they can easily blend in unnoticed.

Back in 2001, one young woman's dreams would end in a vicious knife attack.

Her connection to a Hollywood celebrity would turn her tragic death into a tabloid sensation.

There's more to this story than the spectacle of a TV star's cameo role in the night of a young woman's murder.

In truth, it's a decades-long tale of a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game between law enforcement and a calculated killer.

A man who targeted not one, but four young women for his gruesome acts.

A serial killer who would come to be known as the Hollywood Ripper.

February 21st, 2001.

It's Grammy Awards night in Hollywood.

And 22-year-old fashion student Ashley Ellerin is getting ready for a date with one of Hollywood's most promising young stars.

But it's a night that will see Ashley's bright future ripped away in a brutal act of violence.

Around 9 a.m.

the following morning, Jennifer DeSisto opens the front door of the house she shares with Ashley

and finds her lying in a pool of blood.

She immediately dials 911.

It was about 9.15 when we got the call.

And when I got into that crime scene and I saw the condition that she was left in, it was probably one of the more gruesome crime scenes that I've seen.

Her curling iron was sitting on the toilet.

The bathtub was still damp.

Her hair still looked as if it had not been dried yet.

She had her hair dryer on the counter, so she was getting ready.

She was stabbed front, back,

neck, back of the head.

She had defensive wounds on her hands, on her arms.

She was stabbed over 47 times.

And her throat was cut.

She was pretty much decapitated.

Detective Small radios for LAPD forensic units to begin processing the crime scene.

Then he takes the painful step of notifying Ashley's family.

I'm thinking, how can they live with this?

They lost their their daughter, their only daughter.

Ashley was 22 years old.

She was a beautiful, vivacious young girl.

In September of 2000, Ashley Ellerin chose to leave her hometown of Los Altos, a small town outside San Francisco, and make the move to LA to make it in the fashion industry.

With her bright and welcoming personality, it didn't take her long to fit in.

She came to Hollywood and right away she embraced the Hollywood culture.

She was incredibly open and friendly.

No one had anything bad to say about her.

Everybody who surrounded her just thought she was the friendliest, most open people in the world.

She was enrolled and going to school at the L.A.

Fashion Institute downtown.

The Fashion Institute is a serious place where people do go on to do serious things.

So the opportunities sort of abound for people in her position.

In just a few short months, Ashley had begun to make her dreams a reality, but those dreams had now been destroyed.

It was an absolutely ferocious attack.

She was clearly utterly overpowered.

It suggests a level of hatred or resentment, a level of intent.

This was something that they were desperate to do.

What forensic evidence did you find pointing to anyone,

an unknown, at the scene?

We had

blood all over the place.

We had blood from floor level up to four or five feet on the walls, the doors, the carpeting was saturated.

We had bloody shoe prints that were heading out toward the front door.

But despite all the blood, other than the shoe print, the killer left behind no hair, fingerprints, or DNA evidence that could tie them to the scene.

So how did you approach this investigation?

Well, you start at the body and you work out.

So we able to eliminate robbery because we saw that there was a big wad of cash up to $300 nearby.

She still had her jewelry on, able to rule out sexual assault.

And looking at that scene, there was no evidence of a forced entry at all.

Maybe she knew him.

So now we talk to her friends and associates.

Around the time police start questioning Ashley's inner circle, they get a call from one of Hollywood's hottest young actors, Ashton Kutcher, who called police the moment he got wind of Ashley's murder.

That evening, we sent one of our detectives, Tom Shevelik, went over and he interviewed Ashton.

Ashley met him a couple of times.

They didn't really have a thing at that time.

He was fresh off a relationship and she was a nice girl and he liked her and he wanted to get to know her a little better.

It was the night of the Grammys.

They had casual plans to hang out, say, you know, around 8 o'clock.

He calls her a couple of times.

She doesn't pick up.

He called at 8.24 p.m.

We saw that on his cell phone and we got call records that verify that.

He was supposed to come by and pick her up, but he was running late.

That's the reason for the conversation.

Well, he got there.

it was about 10 45

ashley's car was outside so everything looked normal walking up

so he knocked on the door he got no response he tried to call nothing happened

he looked through the side window and you could see the the hardwood floor so he sees things on the floor that he described as looking like wine Maybe somebody spilled something.

That was his thought.

And he doesn't think a whole lot of the fact that she's not there.

So he just thinks that he has screwed up and he's going to have to apologize later and he leaves for the night.

Kutcher's cell phone records confirm his alibi and he's quickly eliminated as a suspect.

But in speaking to Ashley's friends, detectives discover that Ashton Kutcher was not the only romantic interest in Ashley's life.

The apartment manager, a fellow by the name of Mark Durbin,

had a brief liaison with her.

and he was over there that night of her death.

He freely admitted it.

What detectives learn about Ashley's apartment manager, Mark Durbin, immediately makes him a suspect.

He was one of the few people who might have access to Ashley's home.

He was one of the last people to see Ashley, but also he had a girlfriend as well.

He was trying to essentially hide Ashley from his girlfriend.

We searched his entire apartment.

We found his shoes.

We looked looked in his hampers.

We examined his cars.

And it was fairly soon after she was discovered.

So we didn't find a thing that would indicate any connection to the killing.

So we ruled him out.

After an extensive review, Mark Durbin is taken off the suspect list.

And with few clues to follow, detectives must begin their investigation from a blank slate.

Hunting a killer who committed an act of unspeakable violence,

disappeared without trace, and who's still on the loose.

Somebody wanted her dead.

Getting up close and personal.

Hovering over somebody, plunging a knife into their stomach and chest.

I can describe that as just pure evil.

Coming up, as the case goes cold, another one heats up.

with terrifying similarities to the murder of Ashley Ellerin.

She'd been stabbed almost 20 times.

Her throat had been viciously cut.

These were women that he would place on a pedestal.

His desire made him powerless.

He was going to get that power back in the most horrific way.

22-year-old Ashley Ellerin came to LA with dreams of pursuing a career in fashion.

But on the night of February 21st, 2001, she's stabbed to death inside her own home by a man who will come to be known as the Hollywood Ripper.

Given the level of violence and the lack of forced entry, investigators still believe Ashley's killer may have known her personally.

They begin pressing her friends for information about her wider network of acquaintances.

I couldn't find anybody in her sphere that would have had the capability, the mentality, and no evidence of any animosity or jealousies.

Interestingly, a couple of witnesses that were close to her talked about a furnace guy, a heating and air guy that came out of the woodwork.

One day, Ashley, her friend Chris, they're changing attire.

And out of the dog park comes this guy, male white, described as looking sort of italian and he offers to help but he doesn't change attire he doesn't lift a hand but he's engaging ashley completely ignoring chris

and in the conversation he says he's mike he's a furnace guy he's a heating and air guy soon after that he starts showing up more unannounced

this went on for weeks He was always asking for Ashley.

He was making phone calls to the house.

At a few of her parties, he started showing up.

He wasn't invited.

Nobody knew him, but he showed up.

Mike, the heating and air guy, Mike, the furnace man.

Where does he live?

I don't know.

Nobody knows anything about the guy.

Again, before social media, this is the first-name world.

It was a lot easier to just sort of drift through somebody's life in this very loose way where it's also very easy to disappear.

And you don't leave any kind of a footprint.

Are you trying to find him?

What are you doing about it?

I'm attempting to identify who he is, but I'm still trying to identify other people in the area because Hollywood being so transient.

We have a lot of drug activity.

We have a lot of parolees.

We have registered sex offenders in the area.

I'm not ruling anybody out.

I didn't want to get tunnel vision.

It's the worst thing you can do with a case like this.

But the more Detective Small and his team canvass the area, the more alarming details they learn about Mike the mysterious furnace guy.

Before Ashley's murder, her roommate, Justin was walking home from a party late one night, and he sees that vehicle, engines running, there's somebody in it, and the person in it, he's watching the house.

He thinks that's Mike.

Mike's in that truck.

He couldn't sleep all night, he said.

So Justin looks up at 6.30 in the morning and he sees that pickup slowly driving by.

And a few minutes later, there's a knock at the door.

Michael's standing on the porch.

He walks in.

He's not invited and he walks in.

He tells Justin, where's Ashley?

I got to see Ashley.

So Justin says, you got to get out of here.

And he basically escorts him out.

And he's freaked by this.

Months pass with no new leads.

And Ashley's family is growing desperate for answers.

I would talk to them every single week, and I was honest with them.

I told them, I said, right now, I got nothing.

But we're working some leads, and I'm staying on it.

How sure were you that you would solve this?

I wasn't sure at all.

But I just had the feeling that this guy is going to make a mistake.

And ultimately, that's what happened.

It's during one of these conversations with Ashley's father that detectives uncover another detail about Mike the Furnace guy, relayed to him by apartment manager Mark Durbin.

After the murder, Mike was gone.

He hadn't been seen.

Now all of a sudden, he's back months later

and Mark Durbin saw him.

He says, hey, Mike, how are you doing?

Mike had a different look.

He had frosted tips on his hair.

His hair was spiked and he grew a goatee.

And he says, Mike, I'm not Mike.

I'm Tony.

But he's driving.

Wait a second.

Mark Durbin is sure that was...

He's absolutely positive.

No, that's

the guy I met over at that bungalow several times.

He was there at parties, but he said his name's Tony.

Yeah, and he was breaking it up about how he got hit by some big contracting dump trucker, and he's suing him for millions.

So, then what I did is I just took a shot in the dark and I picked out a quadrant and I ran every single traffic collision that occurred in that quadrant over a period of time.

And I got a hit.

I got a guy walking his dog in 1999 at the corner of Orchid and Franklin.

And his dog went out in the traffic, got clipped by a car.

Dog was fine, bounced right up.

And it turns out the dog walker was Michael Garjuvo.

This young girl, she was going to pull over and he panicked her.

She felt like she was under attack, so she split.

So he made a report.

to the CHP.

That's how I came up with his true name, date of birth, a DMV photo.

He lived a block and a half from Ashley's house.

So now I take that information and I put together a photo array and I go to all my witnesses again and I'm putting the photo array in front of them and that's the guy.

That's Mike the Furnace Man.

Who are you showing the photos to?

Mark Durbin, Justin Peterson, Chris Duran,

a host of Ashley's girlfriends, all the people that were at her parties.

And we actually have a photograph taken of Ashley and her immediate close friends.

And in the back is a picture of Mike Garjulo.

He's at the party.

He's in the photo.

He's in the photo.

Detective Small has identified a potential suspect in Ashley's murder.

A man who lived just 400 feet away, a man who would watch her house at night.

There's just one small problem.

Couldn't find him, didn't know where he was.

Mike was nowhere to be found.

Then, in the fall of 2002, a remarkable coincidence turns the investigation on its head.

Homicide detectives from Cook County, Illinois, come to Los Angeles in search of a person of interest in a cold case they recently reopened:

the 1993 murder of 18-year-old Tricia Picaccio.

The case was a little over seven years old.

Myself and my partner were actually talking to two other detectives, and the next cubicle over was Tommy Small, detective with LAPD.

What kind of case you got?

I got a murder.

What do you have?

It's a murder.

Young girl, August of 1993, she was stabbed at her doorstep.

I said, stabbed?

Yeah, repeatedly.

We were down to two people that were considered persons of interest in the case.

I said, Who are they looking for?

Maybe we'd do some prep work.

And I said, Mike Garjulo.

And Tommy said, Who did you just say?

Michael Garjiolo.

My jaws on the floor.

He says,

You can't make it up.

In the year that follows Ashley Ellerin's brutal murder, police investigate a series of strange encounters reported by Ashley's friends that lead them to a prime suspect.

Known as Mike the Furnace Guy, he's identified by LAPD Detective Tom Small as 26-year-old Michael Garjulo.

In the fall of 2002, Small learns from Crook County Detective Lou Sala that Garjulo might be tied to a similarly gruesome crime in the Chicago suburbs.

The 1993 murder of 18-year-old Tricia Piccaccio.

Just like Ashley, Trisha was a bright young woman with a life full of potential.

Trisha's friends described her as being very vivacious, smart, caring, and also very friendly.

She had a lot of friends around her, and she had everything to look forward to.

And this was a great time in a young girl's life.

She was going to go off to college.

Any parent would have been ecstatic to have a daughter like Tricia Picasso.

She was a member of the debate team,

didn't smoke, didn't drink.

She was somewhat an angel.

On the night of August 14th, 1993, Tricia and her friends spent the evening enjoying one of their last days together before heading off to college.

It was one of these nights that we all may have experienced at one time as teenagers, that exciting night, that day when we're getting together with friends that we've known all our lives, before we go on our separate ways and go into the future.

According to friends, Trisha decided to head home around midnight, dropping off a couple of people on the way.

Then, as she was about to enter her own home, she was viciously attacked.

Trisha was stabbed 12 times in the chest, back, abdomen, and arm.

Whoever committed this murder was very, very strong.

The person grabbed her so hard by her arm that it caused a spiral fracture, actually broke the bone while stabbing her with the other hand.

That's a pretty strong person.

And stabbing is very up-close and personal.

Usually when you see something like that, it's somebody that knows the victim or is mad at the victim.

Despite the brutal nature of the attack on Tricia, her parents don't discover her body until the following morning.

It was a very, very hot, humid August night, and the Picasso family at that time had window air conditioners.

They had them all on

and they're fairly noisy.

They had a dog.

Even the dog didn't hear it

because of all the noise of those air conditioners.

this happened on her step, where she lives, where she walked each day, where her neighbors saw her, walking in and out, growing up as a little girl.

The killer left behind nothing in the way of physical evidence.

However, both Trisha's injuries and the location of her murder offer some insight into who killed her.

What did that scene tell you?

Whoever was there must have felt somewhat comfortable in being in that neighborhood because the chances of somebody seeing you are tremendous.

There was a pool party going on across the street.

All kinds of cars parked out there and everything.

There was a porch and there was a light and it was like a naked 100-watt bulb.

Glenview was one of those tight-knit areas where the kids played together, the neighbors knew each other.

This was an incident that had a profound impact on that neighborhood.

Despite the bold nature of the murder and the outcry from the community, cops lack the evidence to lead them to an arrest, and the case goes cold.

However, seven years after Trisha's death, and just a few months before Ashley Ellerin's murder in LA, Detective Salah's commanding officer takes a personal interest in the case and assigns it to him and his partner, Nick Tatusa, hoping a fresh look can break it open.

I said, I will die trying to solve this case as there won't be any retirement because we were determined to solve this case.

Back in 1993, when Trisha was killed, DNA testing was in its infancy and rarely used in Illinois.

But the technology has grown rapidly.

And Salah convinces the Illinois State Crime Lab to reprocess the forensic material originally gathered from Trisha's body using the advanced DNA technology now available.

Got pretty lucky and came up with the DNA from Trisha's fingernail clippings, an unknown male.

What are you looking for in fingernails?

When you're struggling and you're fighting for your life, there's a good possibility you'll get skin cell DNA underneath the fingernails or on top of the fingernails.

Armed with the unidentified DNA profile taken from Trisha's fingernails, Salah and his partner re-questioned everyone the police initially interviewed.

collecting DNA swabs for people they believed might have been in contact with Trisha the night she was murdered.

We must have buckle-swabbed probably 18 to 20 people.

Teachers, people who were with Trisha the night that she was murdered, the family members.

But there was one individual Salah and his partner were having trouble tracking down.

We were down to Mike Garjulo.

Did he know the Picachios?

Oh, he knew the Picachios.

Mike knew Trisha's brother, Doug, very well.

They both played on the football team together.

They were very good friends.

And he lived close?

He lived a block away.

So

we have to look at Mike.

As a teenager attending Glenbrook South High School, Garjula was known as a star athlete.

But he soon racked up a series of arrests, including a battery incident in 1996 and for breaking into a vehicle.

Mike was a very hot-tempered, violent kid when he was growing up.

He was very strong.

He worked out a lot.

I interviewed kids that he went to high school school with, kids that he got in fights with and beat up.

He was just a violent type person.

When he went to question Garjulo, Salah learned that he had moved to Hollywood.

However, in 2002, he located Garjulo through his brother, who also lived in Hollywood at the time.

I actually was able to talk to Mike on a cell phone, and he said he would make himself available for the DNA swap.

Because I explained to him, I just want to eliminate you.

Salah then flew to Los Angeles to meet with Garjiolo, but Garjiulo was a no-show, which is how Salah ended up in the LAPD's Hollywood station, speaking with Detective Tom Small.

I said, is this the guy you're looking for?

And I show him a photo, a DMV photo.

Yeah, can you guys help us?

I said, yeah, we'll help you with that.

As the two detectives swap information on their respective cases, It's not only the same suspect that raises a red flag, but the striking similarities between the two murders.

Late at night attack, a blitz-style attack, overwhelming control, multiple stabbings in vital areas, the chest and breast area, the sides, the back, the neck.

Both victims were young, both very attractive, very petite girls.

Nothing was taken from these girls.

There was no sexual assault on either one.

This guy, in both of these cases, he lives practically next door.

The more Salah and Small compare notes, the more it looks like their prime suspect is a man who left a dark past in Chicago, found a second victim in Hollywood, and could now easily strike again.

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It's the fall of 2002.

Detective Tom Small of the LAPD meets Detective Lou Salo from Chicago in a chance encounter.

It turns out both are hunting down the same murder suspect, Michael Garjulo.

The commonality between these crimes was the brazenness and the physicality of the attack.

These were knife attacks that were perpetrated at very close proximity, as though

the face of the victims.

Those commonalities speak volumes.

Worried they might have a serial killer on their hands, Detective Small works with an LAPD tactical unit to track down Garjulo and within a week they have an address.

We had information that he had an apartment on Clark Drive just a block from Beverly Hills.

I sent four detectives out from our squad.

He walked up on them.

Mike Garjiulo is a strong guy.

He's 6'2 ⁇ .

He's probably 190 pounds at the time.

So what does he do?

Instead of being cooperative, he bolts and runs and tries to bust through these guys.

Then they got into a knockdown on the street and they had to take him down.

He fought with the LA police officers and two of them

went to the hospital for treatment.

With Garjulo subdued, detectives enter his apartment.

We hit that pad.

Nothing in it.

No bedding.

There was only a little kitchen table with a chair.

And in the back bedroom, it's full of these ghoulish dolls.

These are all like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Dr.

Giggles.

And he had them on his wall.

Instead of a picture, he put those up.

Police take Arjulo to a hospital to obtain samples of his DNA.

But even before the test, their suspect starts asking some eyebrow-raising questions.

He they made some spontaneous remarks

to the detectives unsolicited

and he would ask them like uh how long does dna stay on a body

if you had a case that was over 10 years old and there's maybe some blood on keys could you get dna off of that

of course our detectives just listened wrote it all down

despite garjulo's curious behavior detective small doesn't have a warrant to arrest him all he can do is collect his dna

And since there's no DNA found at Ashley's crime scene, Small sends the samples to Detective Lu Sala in Chicago.

Tommy said exit to me, and I submitted it to the state lab, and

bingo.

In September 2003, Michael Garjiolo's DNA is matched to the cells found on Tricia Poccio's fingernails.

They got a hit.

I think the ratio at the time was 1 in 97 million.

Did you feel confident at that point that you had the right guy?

I did.

I thought, you know, this is great.

But despite the DNA match, the state's attorney in Crook County decides not to file charges due to a statement from one of Garjulo's friends who was interviewed during the 1993 investigation that puts Tricia and Garjiulo together just two days before her murder.

Tricia was walking down the streets in the

afternoon and Garjiolo is with a friend by the name of Scott Olson.

So they invited her into the vehicle to take a ride.

So she gets in the back seat.

Garjulo's up in the front.

They went up to the corner, maybe two blocks, and she got out.

The state's attorney believes Scott Olson's statement could provide an alternate explanation as to why Garjiulo's DNA was found on Tricia Poccio's fingernails.

But Detective Sala and Small aren't buying it.

I asked Scott Olson at any time, did she touch either one of you guys, shake hands, give a hug?

No, she wouldn't do that.

She wasn't really in our circle of friends.

She must have hugged and kissed 20 people goodbye the night she went out to their party.

And my question is, where's their DNA?

The only other DNA I located on her was Mike.

Nevertheless, the state's attorney refuses to move forward and file a a murder charge.

I totally understood our state's attorney's explanation.

They would not want to charge him prematurely and try him and lose the case without having cooperating witnesses and never have the opportunity to try him again.

The Picascos were very vocal, and I don't blame him because if that was my daughter, I would have went to the President of the United States if I had to.

After 10 years waiting on a cold case, Cook County's decision not to prosecute Garjiolo is a devastating blow for Trisha's family.

And back in Hollywood, Detective Tom Small still can't tie Garjulo to Ashley's murder and must keep building his case while his prime suspect, a possible serial killer, goes free.

The decision not to prosecute him essentially lets him roam the streets free in LA.

It just puts fear in your heart.

September 2003, Hollywood, California.

Michael Garjiulo is the prime suspect in the brutal murder of 22-year-old Ashley Ellerin.

Garjulo's DNA has also been found under the fingernails of Tricia Picccio, who was murdered 10 years earlier in the Chicago suburb where she and Garjiolo both attended high school.

Yet the state's attorneys there decide not to charge Garjiolo.

And with no direct evidence linking him to Ashley Ellerin's murder, Mike Garjiulo continues to live in Los Angeles, a free man.

Over the next several years, he'll live in several different parts of the LA area.

He works as a bouncer for a while, and he works as an air conditioning repairman, moving around in a way that is going to make him very hard to find, hard to track.

LAPD detectives continue to investigate Ashley's murder.

Then, on December 1st, 2005, in the town of El Monte, 25 miles east of Hollywood, local police receive a 911 call reporting the murder of a 32-year-old woman named Maria Bruno.

Because it's outside the LAPD's jurisdiction, the case is taken on by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.

Maria was born and raised in Central America.

She immigrated to the United States at a very young age.

She had been married for about seven or eight years.

She had twins that were around two or three years old.

Then she had like a three-year-old and a five-year-old.

Maria had just moved to a new apartment and she was excited to start a new chapter in her life.

Her and her husband had kind of decided mutually that the marriage was likely going to dissolve.

So she had separated from him about a week and a half earlier.

She actually was going to open her own business.

That was kind of her goal, becoming self-sufficient and everything.

So she certainly had, you know, the American dream in mind.

Detective Mark Lillefeld is one of the first to respond to the scene.

Can you describe what you saw?

Her apartment was very clean.

It was newly painted, newly carpeted.

There were still tags on a bunch of the household items.

The dishes, the microwave oven, all that stuff was brand new.

Maria was nude on a bed.

She'd been stabbed, I believe, almost 20 times, and her throat had been viciously cut and the body had been posed.

Did you find any forensics tying an unknown person to the scene?

We did not.

There were no fingerprints.

There were no hairs.

There were no fibers.

There was no DNA that was foreign to the apartment that we could find at all.

What they do find is a little booty of the kind that you would use to put over your shoes if you were a repair person.

One of those is found outside of her apartment.

There was a drop of blood on the sole of the booty.

We identified that blood as also being Maria's.

You can somewhat read a crime scene and infer certain things.

In order to walk into the apartment building itself, you either had to have a code or you had to have a remote device.

So we knew we were looking for somebody who is familiar with and comfortable in their environment.

Police learned that the 911 caller who found Maria's body is in fact her estranged husband, Irving Bruno.

And while Maria had been dating other men since their separation, the two of them had been out together the night she was murdered.

Detectives questioned Irving Bruno at the El Monte police station for over 15 hours as he relates every detail of Maria's last night.

Maria Bruno had a night with her husband Irving, a night together alone without the children, where they are doing a little bit of reliving their married life.

They go out and have quite a few drinks.

They go back to her apartment in El Monte.

There they had relations and because they were newly separated, a nanny was watching the children.

So her husband went back about two o'clock in the morning and he kind of relieved the nanny of her duties.

Irving Bruno sleeps for a few hours at his home.

And since Maria doesn't drive, he then returns to her apartment to take her to work.

She didn't answer her cell phone and she wasn't responding to his knocks on the door.

He thought perhaps she was still sleeping or maybe even in the shower.

He didn't have a key to the apartment, so when he noticed the screen was missing and that the window was slightly ajar, he decided to let himself in through that.

He sees an empty knife package on the floor, which strikes him as kind of unusual.

He walks through the kitchen and he turns into Maria's bedroom and finds that she has been stabbed to death in her bed.

I think somewhat he goes into shock a little bit.

He actually touches a portion of her.

He then gets on his cell phone and he calls 911.

A distraught Irving Bruno seems to be telling the truth, and detectives rule him out as a suspect.

So once you've ruled Irving Bruno out, where do you go with your investigation?

Cops have been solving murders for a couple hundred years in this country, and we did what we did a couple hundred years ago and started knocking on doors, talking to people.

People in the apartment building, those that knew Maria, liked her.

They thought she's very polite, very attractive girl, and she seemed to be very friendly to everybody.

However, one of Maria's friends tells detectives about a disturbing encounter Maria had just a couple of days before her murder.

After she had moved into the building within a matter of a week or so, she had her hands full.

She was carrying something into her apartment from the parking lot.

And when she turned around and she got inside of her apartment, there was a man standing there.

And she kind of yelled at the guy, like, who are you?

What are you doing here?

Get out of my damn apartment.

And it turned out that he was a resident of the building and he actually lived across the courtyard from her.

So we kind of seized that as, gee, that's interesting.

We'd like to identify that man and find out who he is.

Me and my partner knocked on all 80 of those doors.

We wanted ultimately identifying and contacting most of the people that lived in that building.

But sadly, during the inquiry, we were never able quite to come up with an identification of who that person was.

What Detective Lillefeldt doesn't know at the time is that the murder of Maria Bruno will be tied to the murders of Ashley Ellerin and Tricia Picaccio, and that the killer who would come to be known as the Hollywood Ripper will set his sights on another victim.

Michelle Murphy finds him on top of her.

And she fought back.

God bless her.

The man who attacked these four women is the same man.

It's a story from the darkest corner of Hollywood, but tragically, it's real.

In February 2001, 22-year-old aspiring fashion designer Ashley Ellerin is stabbed to death in her Los Angeles home.

Years of diligent police work eventually leads LA detectives to a prime suspect, one Michael Garjulo, who, as it turns out, has also been tied to the 1993 murder of 18-year-old Tricia Poccaccio in Cook County, Illinois.

Despite DNA evidence tying Garjiulo to Trisha's murder, authorities in Illinois decide it's not enough to file charges, leaving Garjiulo free to roam the streets of LA.

Three years later, in 2005, and some 25 miles east of Hollywood in the town of El Monte, 32-year-old Maria Bruno is murdered in yet another vicious knife attack.

Detectives from the LA Sheriff's Department are unable to identify her killer.

But two and a half years later, a shocking crime in another Los Angeles community will link her death to Ashley's and Trisha's and give the people of LA a glimpse at a killer they'd come to know as the Hollywood Ripper.

Garjulo at this point was living a double life.

He was married, he had a child.

He seemed like a normal guy who was friendly and approachable, and nobody suspected that he was actively stalking women.

April 28th, 2008, is just past 11.30 p.m.

in the beachfront community of Santa Monica when police receive a frantic 911 calling them to an apartment on Euphlid Avenue.

As first responders arrive on the scene, they find 26-year-old Michelle Murphy.

who tells police she's just been attacked by a knife-wielding intruder.

Michelle was in bed sound asleep.

This was about 11, 11:30 at night.

It was a hot evening, so Michelle had her window slightly open.

Whoever got in there was able to use this wrought iron fence, pull himself up to the second floor window, and with one hand grab onto that and use his knife to slice the screen.

and pull himself up and enter her apartment.

He unlocks the door, so he's he's got a way out.

And he goes into her bedroom and he straddles her.

Michelle Murphy suddenly finds this guy on top of her, stabbing at her.

She wakes up to a plunge to her chest.

She's very small, but she's very strong for her size.

She fought back, you know, God bless her.

And she's fighting, and he is just going at it.

So her whole arm, her hands, her shoulder, top of her neck and chest.

He actually cuts himself with a knife as she's fighting him off.

She was able to fight this bastard off.

She was able to get her feet under and kick him in the groin area and he fell off the bed.

He stands up.

He's still got the knife.

And he looks at her and says, I'm sorry.

And he runs out the door.

Unfortunately, Michelle never got a good look at her attacker's face.

But the fact that she was able to successfully fight back gives police critical evidence to identify her assailant.

He left his blood on her comforter, on her carpeting, and basically a breadcrumb right down the steps across the alley.

Crime scene investigators collect the blood evidence, and when detectives enter it into the National DNA database, they get a hit.

It matches a sample filed in Chicago three years earlier.

I get a call from Karen Thompson, the detective at Santa Monica, and she made notification to me

based on what Cook County relayed to her.

How's the name Michael Garjiulo strike you?

And I said, wow.

Santa Monica Police informed Detective Small that Mike Garjiulo's last known residence is an apartment located a mere 30 feet from Michelle Murphy's.

It's near there, on June 6, 2008, that detectives arrest Michael Garjiulo.

He's charged with attempted murder and held held on $1.1 million bail.

But even after Garjulo's arrest for the attack on Michelle Murphy, detectives need more evidence tying him to the murders of Ashley Ellerin and Maria Bruno.

In Hollywood, Tom Small begins re-interviewing Ashley's friends.

It came out, but a witness that I spoke with, Monica Grandi, was her name.

And I wanted her to identify him because she was very close with Ashley and she was in with Ashley planning a big party and it was the party that Garjulo's photo was captured in.

She freaked when she saw his picture.

She broke out in tears and she went into a fetal position on the couch and she just threw that thing down and she says I thought of something that I never told anybody before.

She and Ashley planning this party there by themselves.

The door is locked and closed.

In walks Mike Garjiolo with a key.

So he stole a key from the house.

That would be my speculation and explains why there was no damage to the door.

It's a critical piece of circumstantial evidence.

At the same time, Garjulo's arrest in Santa Monica proves vital to detectives investigating the murder of Maria Bruno in El Monte.

The Santa Monica police detective filled in the suspect's name and that the suspect had a prior address in the city of El Monte.

We were able to obtain DNA from him and we were able to develop a DNA profile off of the blue cotton booty we had found at the crime scene.

It was obvious that Mr.

Garjulo or a male adult relative very close to him was the contributor to the DNA on the booty.

In addition to the DNA evidence, the El Monte address provided by Santa Monica Police places Garjiolo in an apartment close to Maria Bruno's at the time of her murder back in 2005.

The apartment had been rented out to three or four different occupants.

But when we got there, the apartment was empty.

It was spotless.

And my partner and I climbed up into the attic and sure enough, right at the edge of the attic was a plastic bag.

And inside of that bag was the blue cotton booty that matched exactly the booty we had found at the crime scene.

June 2008.

Following a trail of blood, police in Santa Monica have arrested Michael Garjiulo for the attempted murder of 26-year-old Michelle Murphy.

As detectives working the murders of Ashley Ellerin and Maria Bruno compare notes, it becomes clear that in all of the attacks Garjiulo is accused of, the M.O.

is disturbingly similar.

All of the victims are women.

They're all attractive.

They're all somewhat young.

They're all physically fit.

The time of day was selected.

The locations were selected.

He knew ingress and egress.

He could get in and out, all pre-planned.

All the women were stabbed to death.

The offender in all of the murders was left-handed.

And the weapon is the same.

It's always a knife.

It's a large knife.

Garjulo lived nearby, each one of them.

In some cases, 100 feet, some cases, 400 feet, some cases, 70 feet, 30 feet.

He's looking in their windows.

He's staring at them.

And he's imagining what it would be for him to be a part of that existence.

Then the fantasy turns from looking at this and imagining this type of life to rage, anger, and hate.

These were women that he would place on a pedestal.

They're all beautiful, beautiful young women.

That he desired them.

His desire made him powerless.

He was going to get that power back in the most horrific way.

I mean, if there was ever a poster child for profiling behavior analysis, it would be Mr.

Garjiolo.

Between the identical MOs, his place of residence at the time of each crime, and the matching shoe cover found in the apartment he was living in at the time of Maria Bruno's murder, there's more than enough circumstantial evidence pointing to Michael Garjulo.

On September 4th, 2008, L.A.

prosecutors charge him with the murders of Ashley Ellerin and Maria Bruno, adding to the attempted murder charge for the attack on Michelle Murphy.

News that a single individual has been linked to all three crimes hits the headlines.

But media interest in the case heats up even more when Hollywood aid lister Ashton Kutcher appears at a pretrial hearing and reveals what he saw the night Ashley Ellerin was murdered.

Ashton Kutcher's presence really kind of means everything.

His name was usually mentioned very high in every story about the case, but a lot of news outlets went for him and then stayed because it was a compelling case that did sort of deserve the coverage.

After Kutcher's testimony, the press bestows a nickname on Garjulo, the Hollywood Ripper, a moniker detectives worry will give the alleged killer some kind of morbid satisfaction.

For a perpetrator like Garjulo, there is, sadly, a level of gratification to be sort of dominating the headlines, to recognize that all eyes and all attention is on you.

Essentially, he's in control and he's reliving the experience through the media talking about him.

The media's fascination with the case does have an upside when CBS's 48 Hours airs a report about Garjulo's ties to the Tricia Poccio murder, a crime for which he still hasn't been charged.

Somebody in upstate New York had seen the show, went all crazy and said, yeah, I know that guy.

They were working together in Hollywood.

They were security for

a late-night bar and restaurant.

And he told me he killed a girl in Chicago.

Garjiulo's alleged admission of guilt, coupled with advances in DNA technology, prompts Cook County prosecutors to take action.

And on July 7th, 2011, they charge Michael Garjiulo with the murder of Tricia Picccio, 18 years after her death.

So how how would you describe the Picaccios that day?

They were very happy, very happy, because our state's attorney fully intends to extradite Mike Beck from California and try him here.

First, Garjula must stand trial in L.A.

But just as proceedings are about to get underway, Garjulo begins a strategy to thwart the trial, one that could permanently derail the near-decade-long quest for justice.

Coming up.

The man who attacked these four women is the same man.

The physical evidence is very thin.

But when that jury went into that room and it went day one,

day two,

day three, now I'm starting to get a little worried.

May 14th, 2012.

After a decade-long investigation, Michael Garjiulo is on the cusp of standing trial for the murders of Ashley Ellerin and Maria Bruno and the attempted murder of Michelle Murphy.

If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

But before the trial can even begin, Garjilo pulls an unexpected stunt and fires not one, not two, but five defense attorneys who signed on over the years and announces he will represent himself in court.

That move is so telling because it so reflects the grandiosity that is present.

The sense of, well, I didn't go to law school, but I am prepared to be here in my own defense, and required the district attorneys to have to directly correspond with him.

It's a completely distorted sense of one's own power in the world.

In a grotesque twist of fate, the move also potentially grants Garjulo access to photos of his alleged victims.

We actually had to litigate what he was going to be allowed to have in his cell regarding the documents, the materials, the reports, as well as bloody, graphic crime scene photographs.

To him, that's his pornography.

More importantly, Garjiulo has created a way to delay his trial almost indefinitely.

Throughout that entire almost decade of delays, the government repeatedly announced that they were prepared and ready to go to trial.

Judge Fiddler was assigned.

He said, we're setting a trial date and no more games.

That's when he backed off representing himself and went with his new attorneys.

Finally, on May 2nd, 2019, Michael Garjiulo's trial begins.

The courtroom is packed with reporters eager for another glimpse of the Hollywood Ripper.

The parties are present, the jurors, and audience are present.

Prosecutors open by pointing out the many similarities between all of Garjiulo's alleged victims.

All young, attractive, and outgoing.

Each victim stabbed multiple times.

Significant force resulting in deep penetration.

Wearing booties, not leaving fingerprints.

Evidence disposal.

The defense counters by citing the lack of physical evidence connecting Garjulo to either Ashley Ellerin or Maria Bruno.

Let's look to see what physical evidence that connects Michael Garjulo with the Ashley Ellerin murder.

And the answer is none.

There is none.

There was no DNA found inside or at the crime scene.

Not one fingerprint came back identifiable to Mr.

Michael Garjuglo.

It's a powerful argument, but the prosecution's star witness is equally compelling.

Michelle Murphy, I mean, that girl suffered and lived to tell about it.

And now she had to confront this guy at the trial.

It took a whole entourage to convince her that she's safe to testify.

I mean, she had a near-death experience because of this guy, and to get up there and point your finger at him, that takes a great deal of courage, and she had it.

Michelle's gut-wrenching testimony also gives the jury a chance to learn more about Garjulo from his reaction.

This was someone who, when faced with a victim's anguish, there's no reaction to it.

If anything, the most likely feeling that Garjulo was experiencing was contempt and inconvenience.

That's very much a signature of the psychopathic defendant.

Garjulo's attorneys admit their client attacked Michelle Murphy, but in a surprise move, they argue that Garjilo was in an altered state of consciousness at the time and therefore should not be held accountable for what happened.

This is a mental health disorder that is listed in the DSM-5.

As for Ashley and Maria, Garjulo's attorneys claim both women were murdered by jealous lovers.

In Maria Bruno's case, they claim her ex-husband was responsible.

Regarding Ashley Ellerin, the defense argues that her apartment manager and romantic partner, Mark Durbin, killed her in a violent rage after learning of her upcoming date with Ashton Kutcher.

This guy, Mark Durbin, says he was there when Ashley was showering it.

He was there when she got the phone call.

I'm not going to beat around the bush with you.

I think there's suspicion that Mr.

Durbin did this murder.

As in the preliminary hearing, Kutcher is called to testify.

And once again, the Hollywood press is there.

His presence was so quiet, it really seems like he's just there to establish, you know, some of the basic facts of the case.

But the defense chose to make.

Mark Durbin their alternate suspect.

He testified later in court.

The two of them had sex.

And the defense suggests that Mark Durbin was jealous of Ashton and try to pin the killing on him.

In the first week of August 2019, attorneys deliver their closing arguments.

The man who attacked these four women is the same man.

Mr.

Aikman and I are asking that you return guilty verdicts of first-degree murder.

I believe as it relates to Ashley Ellerin,

Your verdict should be not guilty.

As it relates to Maria Bruno, it should be not guilty.

Garjulo's fate is now in the hands of the jury.

Juries make me nervous.

You never know what's in their minds, you know.

But I was concerned.

The physical evidence is very thin.

So the longer that the jury is out, the more you start to think that maybe they're going to acquit.

But when that jury went into that room and it went day one,

day two,

day three, now I'm starting to get a little worried.

Eleven years after Michael Garjulo is arrested for the murders of Ashley Ellerin and Maria Bruno and the attempted murder of Michelle Murphy, a jury of his peers is set to decide his fate.

I wasn't sure what I was expecting, how long it was going to take.

It did start to feel like maybe there was a little bit of doubt creeping in, and that maybe he wasn't going to be guilty.

After four days of deliberations, the jury finally returns on August 15th, 2019.

Clerk will read the verdicts.

We, the jury, in the above entitled Action,

find the defendant, Michael Garjulo,

guilty of the crime of first-degree murder.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, are these your verdicts?

So say you one, so say you all.

They looked at everything and they came up with, I believe, a right conclusion.

And my hat's off to them.

Guilty of two murders and one attempted murder.

The Hollywood Rippers' reign of terror is finally over.

At the penalty phase that follows the guilty verdict, the jury finally gets to hear from the victim's loved ones.

The children

need

their mother

that was taken from them.

The ability to have that relationship with their mother, to form that bond

with their mother.

Well, she came home from kindergarten one day.

Oh, and she was so excited.

And she ran in the kitchen and she said, mommy, mommy, I heard the most wonderful man today sing.

I listened to him and the song was so beautiful.

Promise me, mommy, promise me that you'll listen to that song.

And then this little five-year-old says to me, and listen to the lyrics.

And I said, well, yes, I will.

What is it, ashley and she said oh it's mr louis armstrong and it's a wonderful world

promise me you'll listen to the lyrics and when i hear that song today it breaks my heart that that was ashley

the jury was polled and they all agreed it was unanimous and that decision was death

if you look up death penalty in the the dictionary, there should be a photograph of Mr.

Garjulo.

He is the quintessential candidate for death.

And I am, in fact, not a big fan of the death penalty.

Once Michael Garjulo is confined to California's death row, he'll be extradited to Cook County, Illinois, where, after 26 years, he'll finally be tried for the murder of his first alleged victim, Tricia Picaccio.

I was in California with the Picachios.

They were happy with the verdict in the case, but it's still not their verdict.

They still want to see justice for their daughter.

While Garjulo could stand trial for Trisha's murder as soon as this year, his death sentence in California will face a series of appeals that might even reach the U.S.

Supreme Court.

And every step of the way, the media is sure to follow.

I don't know if media coverage in this case was helpful or not.

It brought other witnesses out and people perhaps we would not have otherwise identified.

But as far as the negative side of the media, every time there's a video clip or a news tease or something in the paper,

you're putting a knife into the heart of the victim's family.

God forbid the media talk about that.

So it's a two-edged sword.

Beyond the spectacle of Garjulo's trial, if the media focus calls attention to his uniquely gruesome crimes, it could now bring more of them to light.

A guy like this that's done it once,

done it again, and now done it four times, there's a real possibility there may be more.

All these women were outgoing.

They had promise in their lives.

That's something that he wanted and he coveted.

So the way to get that was to take the life from them, to take the promise.

And now that becomes his to control, to have for the rest of his life.

God bless Michelle Murphy.

Had he completed the act and murdered Michelle, Mr.

Garjulo would have unequivocally, absolutely continued killing and wouldn't have stopped.

Do you think he's done this more than the times he's been caught?

I do.

I believe Mr.

Garjulo is responsible for other unidentified, uncharged murders.

That's why I'm here.

As of March 2020, Garjulo has still not officially been sentenced, and his lawyers have filed a motion for a new trial, claiming there was tainted testimony and that prosecutors withheld evidence from them.

With the connection to an A-list celebrity, every new turn in the case puts it back in the headlines.

But the true heart of this story is the tragedy of Garjulo's victims.

Their vibrant, outgoing personalities drew the admiration of all around them, but tragically also made them targets of a predator seeking his prey.

And a city where people come to follow their dreams became the hunting ground for a man hiding a dark past, a killer who stalked these young women and ripped their dreams away.

For more information on the Hollywood Ripper, go to oxygen.com.

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