Penalty phase begins in trial of ‘Hollywood Ripper’

Penalty phase begins in trial of ‘Hollywood Ripper’

by City News Service

The convicted double-murderer dubbed the “Hollywood Ripper” is a “sadistic, thrill-seeking psychopath” who deserves the death penalty, a prosecutor told jurors Monday.

Meanwile, a defense attorney countered that the killer will die in prison regardless of what punishment the panel recommends.

Michael Gargiulo “has led a life of crime and violence that has left a swath of death, grief and destruction behind him,” Deputy District Attorney Dan Akemon told the panel as the penalty phase of the trial got underway. “He has earned and deserves the maximum penalty of death.”

Defense attorney Dale Rubin said the jurors had already made the most important decision when they convicted his client on Aug. 15 of first-degree murder for the slayings of 22-year-old Ashley Ellerin and 32-year-old Maria Bruno.

“Mr. Gargiulo is going to die in prison,” Rubin said. “The question is when? Is it going to be in God’s time or is it going to be in your time?”

Ellerin was killed in her Hollywood home on Feb. 22, 2001, hours before she was set to go out with actor Ashton Kutcher, and 32-year-old Maria Bruno was slain in her El Monte apartment on Dec. 1, 2005.

Jurors found true special-circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder while lying in wait, making the 43-year-old defendant eligible for the death penalty, and subsequently found that Gargiulo was sane at the time of the crimes.

The panel also convicted Gargiulo of trying to kill 26-year-old Michelle Murphy, who survived being stabbed eight times in her Santa Monica apartment in April 2008, along with of attempting to escape from jail.

During his opening statement in the penalty phase, Akemon said 11 women had been attacked in some fashion by Gargiulo, including a teenage neighbor he threatened at knifepoint and a female jailer who stood in the way of the defendant’s escape.

‘There are no less than 11 different women who have become the targets … of Mr. Gargiulo’s violence,” the prosecutor said. “He’s a sadistic, thrill-seeking psychopath. He kills and maims for his own personal pleasure.”

Rubin told jurors that Gargiulo suffers from mental illness, which should exclude him from being sentenced to death.

“The district attorney called Mr. Gargiulo a serial killer,” Rubin told the panel. “The district attorney called Mr. Gargiulo a psychopath. The district attorney called Mr. Gargiulo psychotic. These are mental issues. In this country, we don’t execute the mentally ill.”

Gargiulo is awaiting trial in Illinois on a murder charge stemming from the Aug. 14, 1993, slaying of 18-year-old Tricia Pacaccio, who was the sister of one of his friends.

All credit goes to City News Service Originally published on https://www.dailynews.com