As the California trial begins for alleged serial killer Michael Gargiulo  the court was shown the bloodied hand of the brave woman who survived the ‘Hollywood Ripper’.
Grisly crime scenes are shown to a jury along with the knives he used to cut off the breasts of another victim and a diagram showing the stab wounds of Ashton Kutcher’s ex girlfriend during the frenzied attack which left her dead.
Michael Gargiulo is accused of murdering two women, the actor’s former partner Ashley Ellerin, 22, and Maria Bruno, 32, as well as trying to kill another, Michelle Murphy, in the Los Angeles area between 2001 and 2008.
Gargiulo, 43, was separately charged with killing a third woman. 

18-year-old Illinois woman, Tricia Pacaccio, was found fatally stabbed on their family’s doorstep by her dad, with her house key still in hand in 1993.
Of the four victims identified, Murphy is the lone survivor.
Disturbing images from inside the home of Michelle Murphy, show her bloody bedding and the blood splattered walls and floors of her apartment as she fought off her attacker and survived.

  Images of the bloody hands of Michelle Murphy after she fought off her attacker and survived were shown to the jury . The home invader attacked and stabbed Murphy multiple times at her Santa Monica home

Michael Gargiulo’s DNA was found on Murphy’s comforter [photo] which was introduced into evidence by the prosecution

 

Prosecutor Daniel Akemon told the jury Thursday that Gargiulo, a neighbor of each victim at the time of the attacks, could watch Michelle, who said she woke to find him in her home one night. The prosection also presented evidence that the defendant’s DNA was found on a comforter in the victim’s home..
The defendant, dubbed ‘the boy next door killer’, is said to have stabbed Michelle multiple times at her Santa Monica home before she bravely fought him off and survived the attack in 2008.
A diagram shown to the jury indicated just how close Michelle lived to Gargiulo, an air conditioning repairman, who would allegedly ‘watch, shadow, stalk and hunt down’ his victims who lived nearby before fatally stabbing them for sexual pleasure

Images seen by the jury show the window to Michelle’s apt with a sliced open screen, [left]. The knife pack used to mutilate Maria Bruno was found on the kitchen floor [right], with the chef’s knife missing.

Among the images seen by the jury was a series showing the window to Michelle’s apartment with a sliced open screen. Another from inside her bathroom show the aftermath of her attack as she tried to stem her heavy bleeding.
Even more sickening is the hand prints left on her hallway floor as she fell trying after being stabbed and images of the defensive wounds on her hands from fighting off her attacker, which has left her scarred for life.
Prosecutor Daniel Akemon told the jury Thursday that Gargiulo – a neighbor of each victim at the time of the attacks – could watch Michelle, who said she woke to find him in her home one night. They also argued his DNA was on her comforter.

Another of Gargiulo’s alleged victims, Kutcher’s ex Ellerin, was found dead in 2001 in her Hollywood Hills home. The actor told police he went to pick up the fashion student-model for a post-Grammy Awards party, but she did not answer the door.
He checked a back window and spotted what he thought were red wine stains on the carpet and then left.
Her body was discovered the next day by a friend.
The prosecutor showed diagrams of the stab wounds next to the actual photos of Ellerin’s body to the jury as the trial got underway Thursday.
Ashley was stabbed to death in the hallway outside her bathroom,’ Akemon told the jury. ‘She was stabbed over 47 times…she was almost decapitated.’
Ellerin was left with gaping wounds – some up to six inches deep -by a knife-wielding intruder who attacked her while she was taking a shower.
Akemon also showed horrifying images from inside the home of 32-year-old Maria Bruno, found stabbed to death in suburban El Monte in 2005.
Bruno’s breasts had been cut off during the brutal attacks and the jury were shown the graphic photos from the crime scene after her estranged husband, Irving Bruno, found her lying in a ‘pool of blood’.
The knife pack used to mutilate her was found on the kitchen floor with the chef’s knife missing, pictures showed. A desperate Irving Bruno called 911, saying: ‘They took her breast…my wife has breast implants…they placed it over her mouth.’

Prosecutor Akemon said: ‘What you will hear is that Michael Gargiulo for almost 15 years was watching, always watching. And his hobby was plotting the perfect opportunity to attack women with a knife in and around their homes.’
Gargiulo was living a ‘double life’, the court heard.
On the one hand he was a husband and father, jurors were told. On the other, ‘he was attacking women and killing them and he was able to go undetected for almost 15 years,’ said Akemon.

Gargiulo has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and an attempted-murder charge stemming from attacks in the Los Angeles area between 2001 and 2008. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. He will be tried separately for Pacaccio’s murder in Illinois in 1993.