Who Was Ashley Ellerin? All About Ashton Kutcher’s Ex-Girlfriend Who Was Tragically Taken by the “Hollywood Ripper”
Justice
It took over a decade of looking for the notorious Hollywood Ripper (aka Chiller Killer, aka The Boy Next Door Killer) to be apprehended. It has taken another decade and a half for him to finally be sentenced.
After several delays, in a trial in 2019 — in which Ashton Kutcher was also called to the stand to testify — Michael Gargiulo was finally found guilty of his awful crimes. He was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances.
Back to the Beginning
Before we talk about this dark time in Ashton Kutcher’s life, though, we need to go back to Gargiulo’s teenage years and his first horrid crimes. According to his friends at the time, Gargiulo was always strange with serious anger issues.
In an interview, a former friend named Scott Olson said, “To watch him in action was something else […] This guy would go from normal to crazy in, like, a second… The switch would flip, and he would just become almost inhuman.”
Tricia Pacaccio
His first victim was close to home. Tricia Pacaccio was the older sister of Gargiulo’s friend, Doug. Tricia was, by all accounts, a smart and sweet young woman just out of high school and en route to college.
She disappeared on Friday the 13th, in August of 1993. The morning after, her brutalized body was found by her father, Rick, on the front steps of the family’s home. The family was devastated by the horrific loss.
Not Enough Evidence
Despite Gargiulo exhibiting some strange behavior toward the grieving family after the crime, like sending them flowers and weird gifts, authorities only thought of him as a potential suspect at the time (instead of their only suspect).
He was suspected due to the fact that he gave Tricia a ride just two days before. But, in interrogation, he accused another teenager of the crime. Unfortunately, while DNA was found under her fingernails, the technology to match it to a suspect was a long way off at the time.
In 2008, the world shook when the serial killer known as the Hollywood Ripper was finally apprehended by authorities. Michael Gargiulo was caught after brutally taking the lives of three known victims, with a fourth woman escaping. Among his victims was a 22-year-old young woman, who was waiting for her boyfriend-at-the-time, famed actor Ashton Kutcher, to pick her up for a date when the Ripper took her life. Here is the full story.