Michelle Murphy, 37, claims Michael Gargiulo stabbed her ‘seven or eight times’ during an attack at her Santa Monica apartment in April 2008
The lone surviving victim of the ‘Hollywood Ripper’ struggled to fight back tears in court today as she told of how she woke up naked in bed to find a hooded attacker straddling her and repeatedly stabbing her with a serrated knife.
Michelle Murphy, 37, claims Michael Gargiulo stabbed her ‘seven or eight times’ as she ‘grabbed the knife with both hands to try to stop him’ during the 2008 attack, she told a Los Angeles courtroom.
Gargiulo, 43, is accused of attempting to murder her and killing two other women – Ashton Kutcher’s girlfriend Ashley Ellerin and mother-of-four Maria Bruno.
During the frenzied attack at her Santa Monica apartment, Murphy testified that she screamed at her attacker, ‘Why are you doing this?’ But he said nothing – until he ran out the door of her apartment and said ‘I’m sorry’ before he was gone, she said.
During Murphy’s more than two hours of dramatic testimony, the jury was shown graphic photographs of the deep and bloody gashes inflicted to her right arm, chest and hands – wounds she still bears the scars of today.
Gargiulo, 43, (pictured) is accused of attempting to murder Murphy and killing two other women – Ashton Kutcher’s girlfriend Ashley Ellerin and mother-of-four Maria Bruno. Pictured: Gargiulo in LA Superior Court last Thursday
Murphy, is the prosecution’s star witness, since she is the only one who survived an alleged attack by Gargiulo (pictured) after she kicked her hooded attacker off of her
Brown-haired Murphy, who wore a black shirt and black pants, is the prosecution’s star witness, since she is the only one who survived an alleged attack by Gargiulo.
The shaven-headed former air-conditioning and heating repairman was dressed in a striped blue and white shirt, blue patterned tie and dark pants, as he stared blank-faced at Murphy.
She sat in the witness box recounting how on April 28, 2008, she returned from work to her apartment – across the alley from where Gargiulo was living at the time.
After doing her laundry, Murphy – then 26 – worked out in the alley next to her home, skipping rope and doing sprints. Then, after showering and watching some TV, she went to bed, naked, around 10.30pm, she told the court.
The next thing she knew, she woke up and ‘there was someone on top of me stabbing me. My arm was being stabbed.’
Murphy – whose roommate was away for the night – said her attacker straddled her with one foot on the ground and one on the floor. Motioning with her left hand, she demonstrated to the court how the man kept stabbing her with his left hand.
‘I could tell it was a knife. I though it was serrated,’ she said. ‘I grabbed at the knife with both hands to get some leverage to keep him from stabbing me. But he still stabbed me.’
Pictured: The bloody hands of survivor Michelle Murphy were shown to the jury after she fought off her attacker and survived. The defendant, dubbed ‘the boy next door killer’, is said to have stabbed Michelle multiple times at her Santa Monica home
Prosecutor Daniel Akemon told the jury 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 (pictured)
Pictures from inside Murphy’s bathroom (left) show the aftermath of her attack as she tried to stem her heavy bleeding. Diagrams of the wounds to Ashley Ellerin’s body are pictured right
Murphy – who is only 5ft 1in tall – told how she battled her assailant, who was wearing a dark hoodie with the hood up, and at one point screamed at him: ‘Why are you doing this?’ But he ‘said nothing,’ Murphy said.
As she struggled for her life, Murphy recalled to the court: ‘I brought my legs up toward my chest…and I kicked him off me. He fell off the bed and ran out.’
Murphy said the knifeman ran down the hallway, into the living room, where he allegedly said ‘I’m sorry’ before running out of her front door and into the night.
A hysterical Murphy ran to the front door, slammed, and locked it. Then she called her boyfriend, Vincent Bruno, who is now her husband, the court heard.
‘I just wanted someone else to know what happened,’ sobbed Murphy, recalling why she called Bruno first, before calling 911.
Assistant district attorney Garrett Dameron played the jury a recording of Murphy’s 911 call in which she cries and sobs as she tells the police about her terrifying encounter with a would-be killer who had entered her apartment by cutting the screening on an open window in her living room.
The jury was also shown pictures of her blood-spattered sheets and comforter, a trail of blood along the apartment hallway, bloodstains on her front door and a bloody hand-print on the floor where Murphy had put her hand down to steady herself ‘when I felt like I was going to pass out,’ after the attack.
Santa Monica police officer Stephen Smetzer was first on the scene. Smetzer told the court that, after making sure the attacker was gone, he checked out Murphy’s apartment and found a ‘large amount of blood’ in her bedroom and living room.
When he examined the crime scene, he also spotted a shoe print on the railing below the open window where the attacker had cut the screen to gain entry.
He also found a trail of blood leading from Murphy’s front door and out along a walkway toward the back alley where Gargiulo’s apartment was just 100 feet away.
Gargiulo is believed to have killed up to 10 women, including Maria Bruno, 32,(right) in 2005 and 18-year-old Tricia Pacaccio in 1993(left)
Murphy was so traumatized by her brush with near death that she ‘never returned’ to that Santa Monica apartment, instead moving to a new place and having friends and family pick up her belongings.
After leaving the hospital following the attack, she needed surgery on her right hand, then physical therapy. She also sought counseling to help her through the post traumatic effects of the violence she suffered.
She told the court that she’s much more careful in her life today, saying: ‘I’m much more aware of the people around me and my surroundings. And I make sure everything is always locked.’
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.
Another of Gargiulo’s alleged victims, Ashton Kutcher’s ex Ashley Ellerin (left), 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
This map shows the floorplan of Ellerin’s Hollywood Hills bungalow where she was murdered. It depicts where her body was found stabbed to death
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 pictures 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.’
In earlier testimony, Gargiulo’s one-time business partner Gustavo Bone – who ran a firm called Gus the Plumber with the accused killer from 2006 to 2008 – told the court that a white van with the name ‘Gus the Plumber’ on the side and parked under Gargiulo’s apartment across the alley from Murphy’s home, belonged to Gargiulo.
Bone also told the court that in his work van, Gargiulo always kept a large supply of blue bootees that he used when working in customers’ homes – the same kind of bootees as the one found at the scene of the Bruno’s murder.
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.