In the early morning hours of Saturday, August 14, 1993, Rick Pacaccio was up early & grabbed his cup of coffee & had just stepped outside to walk the family dog when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He saw two tennis shoes sticking up by the side door & realized that his 18-year-old daughter, Tricia Lynn Pacaccio was splayed out on the stoop of the side door. Rick dropped his coffee cup & ran to her & saw that she had been stabbed to death at their Glenview, Illinois home.
Rick tried in vain to revive his daughter & in the meantime, Tricia’s brother Doug woke up to a bloodcurdling scream as he heard his dad screaming for him to call 911. After the police arrived, Rick had the horrific task of calling his wife Diane to break the devastating news that their baby girl was gone. Over the phone, he only told Diane that she needed to come home because Tricia had been hurt. When she arrived, an officer basically had to tackle Diane as she screamed & ran toward Tricia to prevent her from seeing her own daughter in that condition.
The medical examiner later determined that Tricia had been stabbed at least a dozen times in a murderous frenzy. There were deep wounds to her heart, lungs, abdomen, collarbone & back. Her left arm was fractured & proved that Tricia had fought her killer before she died. Tissue was found under Tricia’s nails from an unknown person but because DNA technology was still in the early stages, the samples were not able to pinpoint her killer. There were no indications of sexual assault, although a sexual component to the crime could not be ruled out.
As police started their investigation, they learned that Tricia was an amazing student & her parent’s pride & joy; everyone that they spoke with had nothing but positive words about her. Tricia was devoted to her high school sweetheart & was someone who stayed out of trouble. Rick & Diane could not wrap their heads around who would have done this to her. She was a responsible girl that never did anything to put herself in harm’s way & her parents always knew where she was & what she was doing, never truly needing to worry about her. Experts indicate that stabbing murders are rarely random & the attackers are usually known to their victims. There was no robbery, no sexual assault & the brutality of the crime indicated that it was a very personal, rage-feuled attack.
Tricia had only recently graduated from high school & spent the last night of her life participating in a scavenger hunt with friends. It was their last hurrah before they all went off to college. The group ended the night at a restaurant & after Tricia dropped a couple of friends off, police believe that it was about 1 am when she walked toward the side door of the house with her keys in hand. As she approached the door, the killer grabbed her left arm, twisting & breaking it & then stabbed her 12 times in a blitz attack.
Despite the fact that a neighbor within the cul-de-sac was hosting a pool party that night, no one reported hearing anything out of the ordinary, so police assumed that the killer had stifled Tricia’s screams as she was attacked. Tricia was a self-motivated girl who knew exactly what she wanted out of life & she was set to start freshman year where she planned to study engineering at Purdue University when her life was tragically ended. She was the older sister to her 17-year-old brother Doug & her 13-year-old brother Tommy. Many considered her to be one of the most energetic & positive people they had ever met.
As investigators spoke with neighbors to determine if they had seen or heard anything on the night of Tricia’s murder, one name came up time & time again. This was the name of 17-year-old Michael Gargiulo who had the reputation of being a bully with a very short temper & issues with self control. On the flip side, he was also known to be charming when he wanted to be. He lived with his parents & siblings five houses down from the Pacaccios. Despite the Pacaccio family always welcoming their children’s friends into the home at any time, Michael always seemed socially awkward & uncomfortable when visiting. After Tricia’s murder, he began sending the family random gifts which they found odd since they barely knew him.
When Michael was brought in for questioning, he admitted that he knew the Pacaccio family & hung out with Tricia’s brother Doug on occasion. He & Tricia had attended Glenbrook South High School at the same time, but were never friends. Because there was no proof that Michael played any role in what happened to Tricia, he was free to go.
After Tricia’s murder, the family couldn’t bear to live in the home where Tricia had been brutalized so they moved out for four years & went to stay with Diane’s mother until they eventually decided it was time to come back home. Shortly after their return, it was a fall day in 1998 & they had an unexpected visitor when Michael knocked at the side entrance.
Michael told Diane that he wanted to talk to Rick & ended up sitting at their kitchen table for over an hour as he waited for him to come home from work. Diane found this exceptionally strange since he never stayed in their home for more than five to ten minutes at a time before Tricia’s murder. When Rick walked in, he recalls Michael having a look on his face as if he wanted to say something. Before he had a chance to speak, Michael’s father & one of his sisters arrived, not even bothering to knock as they busted through the door & told him that they had to go. Rick & Diane were speechless & believed that Michael may have had something to do with their daughter’s murder. This was the last time they saw him.
Rick & Diane spoke to authorities about this incident but by that time, it was too late & Michael had disappeared. As time went by, Tricia’s parents, Rick & Diane were warned by Cook County police that some murders do go unsolved. Diane refused to believe that her daughter could be attacked & murdered just outside their door & get away with it. The case soon grew cold & a decade would pass before a suspect was identified & in the meantime, other victims would sadly lose their lives.
Soon after Michael left Chicago, he headed 2,000 miles away to Los Angeles, California with the dream of getting into acting & was hired to play the role of a boxer, Rocco, in a film called “Boxing’s Been Good to Me” which was created by a USC Film School student. During this time, he was known to be surrounded by women since he was a clean-cut, muscular, good looking guy. After his acting career hit a wall, Michael went on to work as a bouncer at a nightclub & then moved onto a heating & cooling company. He was the kind of guy who tried to make himself bigger than he actually was & loved to control & impress people.
In February of 2001, about seven & a half years after Tricia was murdered, 22-year-old Ashley Ellerin was living in the Hollywood Hills of California. She was splitting her time between classes at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising during the day while spending her nights working at a gentlemen’s club. She chose this line of employment because the money was right & allowed her to afford her bungalow where she lived with a roommate. Ashley was described as an amazing woman who was gorgeous, fun, spontaneous, the life of every party & made friends with most anyone she met.
When Ashley wasn’t consumed with school & work, she spent time with a new boyfriend who just so happened to be an up-and-coming actor from “That 70s Show,” Ashton Kutcher. The two had met through friends in December 2000 & their relationship was new & still more of a friendly thing, only having gone out a couple of times.
On the night of February 21, 2001, Ashton & Ashley had plans to get together, but because he was running late, he continued to push his arrival time back. At 8:24 pm, Ashton called & spoke with Ashley who had just gotten out of the shower & planned to blow dry her hair. He arrived at her home at 10:45 pm; her red BMW was outside & all of the lights were on inside, but there was no answer when he knocked on the door. When he peered through her window, the house looked a mess, but this wasn’t unusual since renovations were being made. He turned the door knob but the door was locked so he assumed that she must be upset with him for arriving later than planned. Ashton went to the side of the house & looked through a window, but saw no sign of Ashley. He did see a maroon-colored stain near the entrance to Ashley’s bedroom & made the assumption that it must be wine that had spilled. He left Ashley’s apartment that night without ever going inside.
Ashley’s roommate, Jennifer Disisto, came home the next morning at about 9 am after spending the night at her boyfriend’s & was met with a horrific sight. As she headed back toward her own room, she came upon Ashley’s body, lying just outside the bathroom door, across two stairs, covered in blood; she was wearing a turquoise terry cloth robe, silk boxer shorts & a camisole. Jennifer was hysterical & ran from the house, terrified that the killer could still be inside. As she got into her car, she called 911.
When paramedics arrived, Ashley was pronounced dead at 9:28 am & the case was handed over to the coroner. An autopsy revealed that Ashley had been stabbed 47 times with such viciousness that the blade had exited her body on the other side. Twelve of the wounds were considered fatal & there was a deep wound to her neck that was so brutal her head had nearly been severed. Her hands & arms were covered in slash marks that were deduced to be defensive wounds. Like Tricia, no evidence of sexual assault was found. Police deduced that Ashley had been attacked from behind just after taking a shower. There was a struggle in the area right outside her bathroom.
Jennifer couldn’t imagine who would have done such a thing to an amazing person like Ashley. It was her belief that Ashley must have let the person in since the house was secure & double gated.
When Ashton saw the news report about Ashley’s murder, he immediately contacted police & was fully cooperative with the investigation. It was only after he learned the gruesome details of the case that he realized that the maroon-colored substance he’d seen wasn’t wine, but instead Ashley’s blood.
All of Ashley’s previous boyfriends, including Ashton had been eliminated as suspects when friends of hers came forward to tell police about a potential suspect. There was a man in the neighborhood that was giving Ashley an unhealthy amount of attention that bordered on an obsession.
However, Ashley had an exceptionally large social circle to weed though & when police went looking for this man, they only knew that his name was Mike & he was an air conditioning technician & they were unable to locate him. They eventually did learn that his full name was Michael Gargiulo & he had moved out of the area shortly after Ashley’s murder. Ashley’s former roommate, Justin Peterson had several disturbing interactions with Michael before Ashley’s murder. In one instance, Justin confronted Michael when he was lurking around Ashley’s house in the early morning hours. Michael mentioned that he couldn’t go home because the FBI was waiting for him to collect DNA samples about a murder case in Chicago. Justin asked Michael what he had to hide & Michael pulled up his pant leg & unsheathed a jagged knife that had been strapped to his shin. Justin quickly rushed him from the house.
As this was happening, detectives in Los Angeles were contacted by investigators from Illinois who were investigating the cold case murder of Tricia Pacaccio after they learned that their one & only suspect had relocated to California in 1998. The DNA results from Trisha’s murder were now usable & police hoped that they could match Michael to the crime.
The Pacaccios received a phone call from a Hollywood homicide detective in 2006 & learned an absolute bombshell. In the fall of 2002, detectives from Illinois had flown to LA to collect DNA samples from Michael & in September of 2003, the results finally came back & the foreign DNA on Tricia’s fingernails belonged to Michael. No one had ever bothered to update the Pacaccios with this immense fact. The evidence was handed over to the Illinois’ State’s Attorney who determined that it was insufficient to issue an arrest warrant because they wanted corroborating evidence. They worried it could be argued that because Tricia knew Michael, his DNA could have gotten onto her by casual contact. Just the day before Tricia was murdered, Michael & his friend were driving Michael’s father’s van & saw Tricia walking. They offered to drive her to her boyfriend’s house where she was headed. Michael’s friend who was in the passenger seat, Scott Olson, insisted that there was no physical contact between Michael & Tricia that day, but prosecutors remained unwilling to bring charges despite the fact that Scott agreed to testify. Because of this, both murder cases were put on hold pending further developments.
In 2005, 32-year-old mother of four, Maria Bruno, was struggling in life as the year was coming to an end. The native of El Salvador had recently separated from her husband, Irving & she had moved into an apartment in El Monte, just east of LA only weeks earlier. She specifically chose that location because it was considered very safe & was in a gated complex. Before her separation, she & Irving had gotten into several violent fights that once involved her husband punching her in the face.
As Maria was relocating to her new home, she left her four children, who were all under age five, in the care of Irving. It was the night of December 1, 2005 & Maria was asleep in her new apartment when a man slipped through her kitchen window & grabbed a knife from the kitchen.
The next day when Maria didn’t arrive as scheduled to pick up the children, Irving headed over to her apartment & was met with a truly horrifying scene. Maria had been mutilated in her own home & the autopsy showed that she had been stabbed seventeen times. In a sadistic act, the killer had removed Maria’s breasts & placed one of her excised nipples over her mouth.
Despite the fact that it appeared that the murderer had covered their tracks, investigators did find a hospital style bootie discarded in the courtyard outside of Maria’s apartment & DNA was able to be recovered from this piece of evidence. The sole of the bootie had one drop of blood that was a match to Maria. Her husband was a top suspect & drops of blood were even found in his car. Irving told police that he & Maria had tried to rekindle their relationship & had gone out to dinner earlier that evening & Maria cut her finger. The manager of the restaurant confirmed this story & soon, Maria’s case grew cold.
Three years had gone by since Maria’s murder & it was the night of April 28, 2008 & 26-year-old Michelle Murphy had finished doing laundry & went to sleep in her Santa Monica home. She had been startled awake by a burning sensation in her arm & chest & initially believed she had been having a nightmare. This was when she realized, in horror, that there was a man on top of her who had stabbed her in the arm with a large knife.
Despite being only 5’1” & 90# Michelle began fighting her attacker & put up such a fight that she was able to catch him off-guard. She began to punch, kick & flail around like a wild animal which allowed her to knock the knife-wielding lunatic off the bed & onto the floor. The assailant was stunned as they uttered an apology before scurrying off into the night. Michelle immediately called her boyfriend who then called 911. The police phoned Michelle & she was able to tell them that her attacker was a man who was wearing pants & a long-sleeve sweatshirt. Because she had been sleeping & the room was dark, the description was limited & she hadn’t been able to see his face. She guessed he was about 5’11”.
Investigators saw that the assailant gained access through a window that had been open a few inches. Once inside, he opened the front door as an escape route & entered the bedroom where Michelle was sleeping. Detectives soon realized that the perpetrator had accidently cut themselves before they made their escape & there was a trail of blood that started on the bed & led out the door.
Michelle had been stabbed eight times in her chest, shoulder & right arm. She’d also suffered several wounds to her hands while she attempted to grab the knife that was being plunged into her. She was bleeding profusely by the time the person had fled her home.
Detectives entered the DNA from the blood found at Michelle’s home into the CODIS database & twenty-five days later, they got a hit. The sample was a match to a now 32-year-old Michael Garguilo because his DNA had already been collected & was on file from Tricia’s case.
After Michelle vaulted Michael off her body & he fled through the front door, bleeding along the way, he ran toward the alley to an adjoining apartment complex. This was the apartment Michael had lived in since 2007 in a second-floor unit that he shared with his wife Ana Luz Gonzalez. The positioning of his unit would have allowed Michael to see right into Michelle’s bedroom if she had the blinds open.
Within twenty four hours of the match, Michael was arrested in a Rite Aid parking lot on June 6, 2008 for the assault of Michelle Murphy. When he was taken into custody, he asked “which agency is this?” The question told officers that he wasn’t sure which crime he was being charged for, indicating there was more than one out there. They tracked where he had been during various times that he was in California & discovered that he had only lived a few blocks away from Ashley Ellerin when she had been murdered in her home in February of 2001 as well as Maria Bruno when she was murdered in December of 2005. After Ashley had been murdered, Michael relocated to a gated apartment in El Monte where Maria lived. He lived close enough to Maria to also watch her & she had told her friends about interactions with the “strange guy across the way.”
Police were able to secure a search warrant for Michael’s former residence after they discovered that he actually lived in the same apartment complex as Maria when she was killed. As they searched the location he previously lived in, they discovered another hospital-style bootie hidden away in the attic of his apartment that matched the one found at Maria’s apartment. When the DNA from this bootie was compared to the crime scene bootie, both matched Michael.
As the investigation continued, detectives learned that Michael, who was 24-years-old at the time, first saw Ashley Ellerin when she was outside while her friend changed a flat tire. He came walking along & offered to help. While Ashley’s friend Chris worked on the tire, Michael stood & spoke with Ashley & during their conversation they exchanged numbers. At the time, he lived about a block away from Ashley. Her friends remember him as a guy named “Mike” who continued to try to spend time with Ashley after their meeting & often called her house.
Eventually, he began showing up to her house without warning & one night, he walked into her house while she was hosting a party. He sat down & was laser-focused on Ashley, but Ashley caught the attention of many men during that time & she just wasn’t interested in Michael.
Three months after his arrest for the attempted murder of Michelle Murphy, Michael was formally charged with the capital murders of Maria Bruno & Ashley Ellerin. By this point, Michael was a father of two & had been dubbed the “Thriller Killer” as well as the “Hollywood Ripper” & maintained that he had been falsely accused despite all of the concrete evidence against him.
While in prison & awaiting trial, Michael allegedly told one of his fellow prisoners that the fact that his DNA was found at the crime scenes, didn’t mean that he had killed the ten women involved. At this point, he was only being charged with two murders which made police question if there were other victims involved.
Michael’s day in court didn’t come until almost nine years later, on May 2, 2019, after years of pretrial hearings, legal issues & postponements. Much of the delays were a result of Michael changing attorneys several times & for about three years he even represented himself. The California murders attracted global attention because the case was attached to celebrity Ashton Kutcher.
Ashton Kutcher had taken the stand to recount the events of the fateful night in February, 2001, eighteen years earlier. Ashton’s testimony was very important because it solidified the timeline for the night that Ashley was murdered & the window of opportunity for someone to get inside & murder her was very narrow. This made investigators believe that the person must have been watching. In Ashley’s case, despite investigators scouring the crime scene, there was zero physical evidence that linked Michael to the case; no DNA, eyewitnesses or fingerprints.
Ashton said that when he called Ashley to iron out plans that night, she sounded upbeat & showed no signs that she was in any danger. The manager of Ashley’s rental house was aspiring actor Mark Durbin, who was having an affair with Ashley at that time & happened to be at her house when Ashton called. Ashley & Mark had been intimate that very evening, only hours before Ashton arrived. Mark Durbin testified that when Ashley got Ashton’s phone call at 8:24 pm which was verified by phone records, he left her home. A neighbor testified that around 8:25 or 8:30 pm, he heard two horrible screams from a woman from Ashley’s house. Mark Durbin had been considered a suspect since the timeline of his visit was so tight in relation to the screams, but he was cooperative & ultimately cleared.
A bit more than an hour later, Ashton called Ashley again to let her know that he was running late & this time, she didn’t answer & it went to voicemail. He made the assumption that she was likely occupied & headed over to her apartment. When she didn’t answer the door, he never suspected that anything was amiss & left Ashley’s, going on with his own evening. Ashton admitted that when he learned that Ashley had been murdered, he was “freaking out” & knew that his fingerprints were on Ashley’s door & worried he would be a suspect.
Michael’s lawyer didn’t allow him to take the stand in his own defense despite the fact that he was chomping at the bit to do so. Because of his unpredictable behavior & a temper that was likely to fly off the handle, they couldn’t trust that he would keep control while being questioned.
During the testimony about Maria Bruno’s murder, the prosecution argued that based on the pattern of blood, the killer was left-handed, just like Michelle’s attacker & just like Michael Gargiulo. In this attack, he left the bootie behind & his DNA was found around the elastic band. The defense argued that Maria’s estranged husband, Irving, was the murderer since they had a fractured marriage with a history of violence. The two rekindled their relationship that very night & he was the last known person with her on the night she was murdered. After they went out to dinner, they were intimate & then he left. A neighbor said they heard crying at about 1:30 am.
In regards to the discarded blue bootie with a drop of Maria’s blood on it & Michael’s DNA on the elastic band, the defense reminded the jury that Michael lived across the courtyard & was a repair man. He was known to wear booties & one had likely fallen out of his pocket when he was coming home from work & had picked up a drop of Maria’s blood that was on the sidewalk.
When Tricia’s case was discussed & the fact that Michael’s DNA was on Tricia’s fingernails, the defense reinforced that she was in his van just the day before. A forensic expert at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Nathan Lents, was asked if it was likely that sitting in a car would be enough to pick up DNA & keep it on a body for 24-36 hours. This would be a case of secondary transfer & he had never seen secondary transfer that lasted that long since there aren’t enough cells that would survive, especially on your arm or hands which are frequently touching things or being washed. The fact that the DNA on Tricia’s fingernails was a 50/50 match between herself & Michael, was significant since a 50/50 mixture normally means that there was a lot of DNA which would require extensive contact. This would likely result from Tricia directly scratching Michael.
Michelle Murphy took the stand to testify & described how she wrapped her hands around the blade of the knife as she was startled awake by the stabbing & at some point, was able to get her legs against his chest & shove him off the bed. She described how she chased him out of the room & down the hallway as he told her, “I am sorry” before slipping out the front door. She never saw his face but noticed that he was left-handed.
In Michelle Murphy’s case, there was no refuting the DNA evidence which was all over her home after she managed to fight him off. The courtroom was surprised when Michael’s attorneys didn’t deny the fact that he attacked Michelle, but insisted that he wasn’t in his right mind when he did it & it was as if another personality had taken over, as if he was possessed. Two mental health experts were called in & it was claimed that Michael suffered from dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder.
The trial lasted three months & called 79 witnesses to the stand & after three-&-a-half days of deliberation, on August 15, 2019, Michael Gargiulo was found guilty & convicted of the capital murders of Ashley Ellerin & Maria Bruno in addition to the attempted murder of Michelle Murphy, the only known survivor. Michael sat without emotion as he heard the verdicts.
The penalty phase began on October 7, 2019 & Michael’s teenage son took the stand to beg for his father’s life. The jury members did sympathize with the boy, but felt compelled to sentence him to death. Because of additional delays, the sentencing wasn’t held for nearly another two years, on July 16, 2021. A judge agreed & Michael was sentenced to death by lethal injection. When the judge gave Michael the sentence in LA, family members of his victims wept. Michelle Murphy broke down & told the court how, “spending the night alone creates a world of fear in me” more than a decade later.
Tricia’s parents were contacted right away about the news & told that it was now their turn to get justice. Her case was only included in the California trial as supporting evidence of Michael’s criminal pattern. As he remained in San Quentin awaiting an execution date, Illinois authorities worked to extradite him back to Chicago to stand trial for Tricia’s murder. Her family remains cautiously optimistic since they have been let down by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office before & have criticized that office for being slow to charge Michael despite the DNA match.
In 2011, “48 Hours” reported on Tricia’s case & after, a witness came forward with reports that they worked with Michael as a bouncer in the late 1990s at a Hollywood nightclub & one day while he & another man were driving with Michael, he confessed to killing a girl in Illinois. He specifically said, “Yeah, I buried a b**ch. I left the b**ch on the steps for dead.” He indicated that he had stabbed the girl to death. “48 Hours” put the two witnesses in touch with Chicago authorities shortly after & they ended up being key witnesses at Michael’s LA trial. Each of the members of Tricia’s family were also there to testify & recall the horrific details of the morning that Tricia was found mutilated on the stoop of her own home. It’s not lost on Tricia’s family that had something been done in 2003 when it was discovered that the DNA on Tricia’s fingernails were a match for Michael, Maria Bruno would still be alive & Michelle wouldn’t be suffering from the trauma of being attacked in her own home.
Michael continues to maintain his innocence & his motives for his brutal crimes are not clear. Though there were no signs of sexual assault in any of these cases, it was still believed that the murders were sexually motivated. It was theorized that he received sexual gratification from the act of stabbing his victims in what is known as a sadistic behavior called piquerism. This is defined as a sexual interest in penetrating the skin of another person with a sharp object.
Michael had attacked four young, attractive & outgoing women just for the thrill of it. He staked them out, stalked them & made his attack with a knife in & around their homes from 1993 through his arrest in 2008.
After suddenly waking from a sleep within the safety of her own home, Michelle was able to fight off her attacker. Despite surviving the attack, her emotional scars remain & she became paralyzed with the idea of being alone, especially after dark. She also felt survivor’s guilt, but managed to slowly begin the long road to healing that continues to this day.
Michael’s execution likely won’t happen anytime soon; the last execution in California was in 2006 & the practice has been banned since 2019 under Democratic Governor Gavin Newsome. There are currently 650 individuals on California’s death row, the largest in the Western Hemisphere.
On the surface, Michael Gariulo gave the appearance of being a friendly neighbor with pure intentions. Under this innocent facade, lived a monster who lurked in the dark & stole the lives & safety from innocent women. He was violent towards women, interested in serial killer Ted Bundy & studied forensic science. He learned from other killer’s mistakes & had studied a book that explained how to kill with a knife via “The Anarchist Cookbook.”
This year will be thirty-one years since Tricia was brutally murdered & her parents still wait for justice. Diane Pacaccio said that Tricia was always so helpful to others & deserves the justice she has yet to get.
References:
- Medium: All the pretty girls: The chilling story of the serial slayer known as the “Thriller Killer”
- Y! Entertainment: The Hollywood Ripper: Who is Michael Gargiulo & where is he now?
- BBC: ‘Hollywood Ripper’ Michael Gargiulo
- CBS News: The Hollywood Ripper: How “48 Hours” helped crack the case of convicted serial killer Michael Gargiulo
- Chicago: Did Alleged “Hollywood Ripper” Michael Gargiulo kill Tricia Pacaccio?
- Death Penalty Focus: California Death Penalty Facts
- E! News: The chilling details of the murder of Ashley Ellerin & the “Hollywood Ripper” trial
