S2: The Hollywood Ripper EP 02 The Furnace Guy

Seven years after Tricia Pacaccio's murder, Cook County's Sheriff's Office were now treating it as a cold case. A new investigative team submitted Tricia's fingernail clippings taken from the crime scene as DNA evidence, hoping to get a match. Meanwhile, Michael Gargiulo had moved to Hollywood, where he met 22-year-old Ashley Ellerin, who lived a few blocks from his house. After introducing himself as an air conditioning repair man, "Mike" would eventually start showing up at some of Ellerin's parties uninvited. Ashley was living a glamorous Hollywood lifestyle, partying with some famous actors like Vin Diesel and Ashton Kutcher. The night of February 21, 2001, she had plans to meet Kutcher for drinks after the Grammy Awards, but she never made it there. Ashley was murdered inside her apartment, stabbed 47 times and nearly decapitated in a brutal attack with a knife. We speak with Detective Tom Small of the L.A.P.D., who investigated the case, and began searching for a man who was only known by Ashley's friends as "Mike the furnace guy".

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
Seven years after Tricia Boccaccio was murderedon her family's back doorstep, Cook County
Sheriff Office assigned a new investigation teamto look into what was now being treated
as a cold case. Detectives submittedthe physical evidence for their murder, including

(00:30):
Tricia's fingernail clippings, for DNA testingat the Illinois State Police Crime Lab,
hoping newer scientific methods would lead toa break in the case, but it
took two more years before the investigationwould narrow down potential suspects. Meanwhile,

(00:52):
Michael Garjulo was now living in LosAngeles, California. He had followed his
brother Kenny there, tying to findwork as an actor and eventually landing a
job as a bouncer at the RainbowBar and Grill on Sunset Boulevard. In
nineteen ninety nine, he was firedfor allegedly hitting a patron, and by

(01:14):
two thousand and one, he wasliving in Hollywood, California, with his
Chicago area girlfriend Allison, at theAlmer Apartments on Orchid Avenue. Just a
few blocks away, a blonde,twenty two year old named Ashley Ellerin lived
in a bungalow on Pinehurst Road,walking distance from the Kodak Theater and the

(01:38):
Hollywood Walk of Fame. Ashley wasliving an envious Hollywood lifestyle. She was
enrolled in Fashion Institute of Design andMerchandising and was frequently attending parties and clubs
around LA. She was linked toactors like Vince Vaughn, Van Diesel and

(02:00):
Jeremy Sisto. Let's bring in TomSmall, a retired homicide detective with the
Los Angeles Police Department. Thank youTom for joining us. Tom tell us
a bit about Ashley as a person. I'll go right back to where she
came from. She was born inSilver Spring, Maryland. He was born

(02:27):
I think in July of nineteen seventyeight and grew up through her adolescent years
there and then as a young lady, I think just before high school,
the family moved up to Los Altos, California, which is in the Bay
Area just south of San Francisco,and she grew up there played water polo.

(02:54):
She was quite an athlete from whatI've been told talking to her parents,
and that she had some potential optionsof going on to major college in
the water polo, but she optedinstead. She had this thing about wanting
to get to the big city.So in what was it September, I

(03:17):
think it was in two thousand,she moved down to LA and rented a
Hollywood bungle. I call it justa one story home, two bedroom to
bath home in Hollywood, and shehad a couple of roommates. They were

(03:42):
the first one a guy by thename of Justin Peterson. They were like
best friends and he had some pointmoved out I think about a month or
month and a half prior to Februarytwo thousand and one, and she had
another female roommate that moved in therewhile she was living in Los Angeles.

(04:04):
She did go to fit them,uh fit them as as a fashion school.
I think it's Standford Fashion Institute andDesign and Merchandising I think is what
it all means. But it's downtownon Grand Avenue, I believe it is.

(04:24):
And she attended there, but shedidn't finish because she had she had
other I guess things in mind.She was considering modeling and possibly breaking in,
as a lot of young people dowhen they come to Hollywood. They
want to become some somebody in showbusiness entertainment industry. And actually had actually

(04:51):
She's been in circles with a lotof people that are in show business and
I know you know about Ashton Coocher. She was dating a guy that was
a very close friend of Ashton andthat's how she met him. On February

(05:13):
twenty one, two thousand and one, Ashley's father, Michael, had been
staying with her for the past week, helping her move some of her belongings
and painting the house. She droppedher father off at Lax Airport around five
PM. When she got home,Mark Durban, the landlord, stopped by

(05:34):
around seven pm to fix the ceilingfan. The two had a relationship despite
Durban having a girlfriend at the time. According to Durban, they made love
to each other around seven point fifteenpm. Durbin said Ashley tried to get
him to stay, but he leftthe apartment around eight fifteen, knowing his

(05:58):
girlfriend would be getting home. Aroundten PM. Ashley's roommate, Jennifer,
came home and tried to come inside. She forgot her keys in her boyfriend's
car, but noticed Ashley's car wasparked in the driveway and the lights were
still on, so she knocked onthe door. When no one answered,

(06:18):
she thought nothing of it and spentthe night at her boyfriend's. According to
Ashton Kutcher, he and Ashley spokeat eight twenty four pm that night to
confirm their plans. Then Ashton calledher at ten pm to say he was
on his way to pick her up, but she didn't answer, so Ashton

(06:41):
drove over to the house at tenforty five pm. He knocked on the
door, but no one answered.After peering through the front window, Ashton
noticed a red stain on the carpet. He assumed it was red wine.
He had just attended a housewarming partythere weeks prior and thought it was normal
for the house to be messy.Ashton thought he was being stood up for

(07:05):
being late, so he left.The next morning, Jennifer returned home with
the keys and found Ashley lying acrosstwo stairs near her bathroom, covered in
blood. She originally thought Ashley wasplaying a joke, but when Jennifer went

(07:26):
over and touched her body, Ashleywas cold and blue. Jennifer ran out
of the house and called nine toone to one from her car. LAPD
arrived on the scene and began investigating. Homicide Detectives Tom Small was assigned to
the case, Tom, what canyou tell us about the night Ashley was
murdered. The night of her death, which was February twenty one, two

(07:53):
thousand and one, She was gettingready at the time that she was killed.
We speculate because she had just gottenout of the shower and was getting
ready. We saw like her hairdryer and her curling iron and all that
stuff was in plain view, stillplugged in and hot. And at any

(08:15):
rate, there were a couple ofcalls to her while she was getting ready,
I think one or two. Shedidn't answer one at least probably she
was in the shower, but shegot the message. She returned the call
to Ashton Kacher. That call wasmade at eight twenty four in the evening,

(08:39):
and we speculate that she was probablydead within five minutes of that call.
So that's that's how that transpired.There's another little interesting caveat to that
in that her landlord was a guynamed Mark Durban, and Mark took care

(09:05):
of the rent and all the maintenanceof the bungalow that Ashley rented, as
well as the apartment building that heactually lived in, which was kind of
catty corner and across the street fromthe bungalow, and so he managed that

(09:26):
apartment building as well, and theyhad developed over time a friendship. And
you know, Ashley had a tendencyto be a little free with her affections
and Mark at the time was seeinga lady. They were I don't think
they were engaged at the time,but they were getting close to that.

(09:50):
But he he fell off the tracks, so to speak. And he and
actually had had a little relation shipprior to her going out, so they
did have a little interlude, ifyou might put it that way, I
guess. But then Mark was alittle nervous, so he had to leave

(10:16):
because he had to get home beforehis girlfriend got home, and he was
trying to beat the clock. Sohe left Ashley around eight point fifteen that
evening. Shortly after that was thephone call that she made back to Ashton
Kutcher to make final arrangements for theirdate. And then we have reason to

(10:41):
believe that she was killed sometime beforeeight point thirty. That came about because
an actual friend of Mark durban wholived in the apartment building that Mark did.
In fact, he lived right acrossthe hall from Mark Durbin. He
got home from work at around eightthirty maybe, or excuse me, no,

(11:05):
I think it was. That waseight fifteen, and he had to
take his dog out to the dogpark to let him walk around and do
his business. Dog park was directlyacross the street from Ashley's house, and
he recalls arriving at the dog parkat about between eight twenty five and eight
thirty. He saw nobody on thestreet. Ashley's house was all lit up.

(11:31):
Of course in February it's dark outside, so the whole house was lit
up. Her car was out infront. And this witness, his name
is Jackson, heard two female screamsthat were they were separated by a few

(11:52):
seconds, and it was so unnervingto him that it sent chills down his
point. And his dog alerted onAshley's house, which was only forty feet
away, and the dog wouldn't comeoff it. And when the second stream
scream was heard the same thing,that dog just wouldn't He wouldn't budget and

(12:18):
Jackson had to physically pull him awayand get him in the dog park so
he could finish his business. Andthen they both got out of there.
They went back to their apartment,and they arrived back at his apartment building
probably somewhere around eight thirty five oreight forty, So we speculate that the

(12:39):
time that those screams happened, whichwas somewhere eight twenty five to eight thirty,
was the time that Ashley was actuallybeing murdered. So that's how we
arrive at that timeline. Was thereanything about the scene that stood out as
potential evidence? How was at thestation and I was working with another detective

(13:03):
by the name of Mike Pelletier,and we received a phone call from the
field from an officer out there,a senior lead officer, very senior guy,
and he says, we've got aone eighty seven out here at nineteen
eleven Pinehurst. So that was aboutnine fifteen in the morning of February twenty

(13:24):
second, And as it turns out, actually the phone call to us came
in a little bit later than that. It was nine point fifteen when actually
body was discovered by her female roommate. Mike Pellettier and I immediately went over
there, and you know, bythat time it was light. We observed

(13:52):
that the house is located on astreet that's it's a north south street that
has a dead end. There's alarge parking lot to the south of the
house, which is gated. Thehouse itself is the perimeter of the house

(14:13):
is the periphery is like wrought ironfencing, but you can see through it,
and there were certain foliage and stuffin front. The house was like
fork Knox it was. It wasa wood shingled house, and every single
window in the place was barred,so metal bars, and the doors were

(14:37):
made out of steel security kind ofconfiguration. And I actually had been doing
some work in there, so itwas all freshly painted, the wood working,
the doors, the door frame,so there was no evidence at all
of any forced entry, no toolmarks, not like that. So we're

(15:01):
trying to figure out did she letsomebody in or was the door unlocked,
or how did that work? Youknow. And then we got further into
the house and it was still underrenovation, so it was a mess.
She had ladders and paint and boxesand all kinds of craft in there,
so you kind of had to walkthrough a narrow passageway and the area that

(15:26):
you had to walk on was hardwoodflooring. We noticed that there was a
series of directional blood drops on thefloor and they all seemed to be going
in a similar direction and that wastoward the exit, so we speculated that

(15:48):
that could have been or probably wasfrom the suspect. Also, these blood
drops were adjacent to bloody shoe prints, but they were mostly partial, so
we we could get a Later on, we were able to determine a make
or model of shoe, and atthat time we believed it came back as

(16:14):
an Adidas shoe. But there arebarely some similar styles that are similar to
Adidas, but this was pretty distinct. We located Ashley's body on a very
short hallway. So when you enterthe house, you enter on an angle

(16:37):
and you turn left, and yougo left and there's four steps on that
comes to a carpeted landing, andthat landing is the hallway that connects the
two bedrooms on either end of itand the bathroom that actually used in the
middle between the two bedrooms. Andshe was, you know, she was

(17:03):
clothed. Her she wore a dairycloth robe which was rumpled and up over
her waist, and underneath she hadwhat looked like a Cama sault or maybe
some sleep wear comfort type clothing,like I guess if she was getting ready

(17:27):
to go. She she wasn't dressedyet for the party, but she had
been horrifically stabbed, and looking atthe way she was laid out, there
was blood spatter up and down thewalls, on the doors, on the
door frame. The carpeting was aberber style carpet. It was blood soaked,

(17:52):
and there was a shoe impression leadingdown the step, the bottom step
before the hardwood floor. You couldtell it was a shoe, but you
couldn't get what the tread pattern wasuntil you could see it on the hardwood
floor. But it appears to besimilar in size to what we saw on

(18:17):
the floor. But Ashley was eventhough she was dressed, she was stabbed
front, back, legs, Shehad oh, she had a number of
defensive wounds on her fingers, inhand, her forearm or thigh, her

(18:41):
back, of her head. Mostof the actual deepest stab wounds are in
her back, but she was alsostabbed in the front. So obviously she
had been rolled over, and therewas some evidence on the carpeting the way
the blood pattern was that she hadbeen moved, and there was other evidence
that seemed to indicate that she mayhave been posed. So that was that

(19:08):
that was the signature of something thatyou know, we had something a little
more than the normal homicide that youwould run into like that, so that
that seemed like it was a verypurposeful killing. There was no evidence of
a sexual assault. We had allthose avenues checked by the corner and the

(19:34):
corner's criminalist, so were able todetermine that there was no even a tempt
at that. It was just itseemed like the whole purpose of this was
the killer and and infflict as muchdamage and pain as possible. And the
real coup de gras was when wefound her. She was on her back

(20:00):
and her head was turned to theleft, looking toward her left shoulder,
and she had a really nasty,gaping neck wound and was so bad.
Yeah, I mean you could youcould see things in there that you ordinarily
would to see, and it waspretty pretty bad. As it turns out,

(20:23):
it was almost a decapitation. Theonly thing really holding her together was
the skin that was remaining on herneck, So that that's an indelible thing
in my mind. I'll never getover what I saw there. And I've
seen a lot of murders, butthis one was, this one was something

(20:44):
else. This is one of themore grisly vicious killings that I'd ever seen.
It sounds like a horrible, horribleto die. There were puncher wounds
up to six inches deep. Apiece of our skull was punchured by one

(21:08):
of the blows. According to thecorner, twelve of the wounds were considered
fatal on their own. From there, LAPD then began looking into possible suspects.
Ashton Kutcher was at the house hoursafter Ashley was last seen alive by

(21:29):
her landlord. According to Ashton,when he heard about Ashley's death, he
immediately contacted the authorities because his fingerprintswere all over the door and he was
freaking out. Tom, who werethe initial suspects? As you began to
work through the investigation, Well,Hollywood at that time was we had,

(21:53):
especially in that particular district that wasoff Highland Avenue, just west of Highland
and just above Hollywood Boulevards. Sowe had a number of cases in the
near number of months or a yearinvolving hot prow burglaries, robberies, loitering,

(22:18):
trespassing, a couple of murders,some rapes. So I I initially
looked at all passed circumstances and reportsof those types of incidents and and got
the ball rolling on potentials there.We also looked up potential parolees that are

(22:44):
in the area. Maybe they gaveup a location, or maybe they they
were you know, they had theankle monitors or something like that. So
we looked at all that stuff andthere were a few names that stuck out
that we looked at, but wecouldn't we couldn't tie them in at the

(23:06):
time frame of this murder. Andof course, in talking to Ashley's friends,
Ashley was quite She was a partygirl. I mean she she got
involved in the Hollywood scene pretty extensively, and she had a lot of friends.
She had a lot of parties.In fact, some of her parties
would have as many as sixty peoplecoming in and out of that place.

(23:30):
And so we talked to just abouteverybody that was still in the area that
could know kind of what her associationswere and friendships. And one that stuck
stuck out immediately was a friend ofhers by the name of Chris Duran,

(23:51):
and he and Ashley happened to befixing a flat tire that Ashley had on
her car, and at that timeit was daylight hours, midday, and
a guy came out of the dogpark from across the street and he walked

(24:11):
up to them and he said,can I help you? But he never
helped, He didn't do anything.He got laser focused on Ashley and he
introduced himself only as Mike, andthey had never seen him before, they
didn't know him, but they engagedin small talk, and so Chris Dran

(24:33):
thought it was weird that the guyasked if he could help, but he
didn't lift a finger to help.He was only focused on Ashley. And
you know, I guess it's understandablein a sense because Ashley was a very
attractive young lady, so she wouldgarner attention. But he was kind of

(24:56):
a They described him as kind ofa briggadocious, you know, boastful kind
of guy. He said he workedin the heating and air. He fixed
it, he repaired you know,heating systems and whatnot, and then the
conversation kind of ended. He walkedaway and they didn't really pay attention to

(25:18):
where he went and they got nofurther on him. And a few other
people recalled Ashley and Chris talking about, Yeah, we met this furnace guy
but the only name that ever cameup was Mike. Mark Durbin actually met
him, being that he's the landlordover there. Ashley apparently asked for him,

(25:47):
Mike Mike, to come over andcheck out her furnace, which was
done in the Basement's an unfinished basementas a matter of fact, it's a
dirt floor, but there is abasement in that house. And Mark Durbin
happened to come over and stand by, and Mike came over. He went
down and he looked at it,but he didn't he didn't do anything.

(26:10):
He never fixed anything. He justkind of made his appearance. And then
when Ashley would throw some of theseparties, all of a sudden, this
Mike guy starts showing up. Hewas never invited, he wasn't in the
circle of friends. Uh. Hekind of freaked out several of Ashley's friends

(26:32):
and they they asked her about whois this guy? You know, what's
he doing here? And she said, don't pay any attention to me,
just he's a furnace guy. Hejust comes around for some reason. And
anyways, that was that was afirst red flag on this Mic guy.
But I was trying to determine whoin the hell he was and get some

(26:57):
more lowdown which we also had toinclude Mark Durban and to an extent,
Ashton coacher, although we ruled himout pretty quickly based on the phone call
and the phone records and stuff,so he was never a real bonifide suspect,

(27:18):
and he was nervous about it becausehe said, yeah, I went
over there and it was really late, it was like ten forty five at
night, and I did check thedoor, but she never answered. So
he volunteered a lot of information tous about his whereabouts, and we got
his call records. He actually keptthat call then he received on his cell

(27:38):
phone and showed us so we couldverify all that. Mark Durban, we
looked at him for a long timeand I had him in the hot seat
for probably better part of the year. There were some other aspects of Mark
that were a little bit questionable,but he was always very cooperative. We

(28:03):
actually got he allowed us, gaveus consent to search every part of his
building, his living space, hiscar, the dumpsters. He never scoffed
at Dad. He even volunteered toprovide DNA and everything we ever asked him.
Prince, so he didn't act thepart, and he was always cooperative,

(28:30):
and we never found any linkage tohim other than the fact that he
and actually had sex that night,and that was a volunteered admission on his
part. But we still had tolook at him for a while. And
then I had a lot of conversationswith mister Ellern Ashley's dad, and Ashley's

(28:56):
dad had maintained a kind of anemail relationship with Mark Durbin, and it
was I think around May, Iwant to say May or June of that
year that Ashley was killed, thatMark made a statement on an email to
mister Ellerman that he happened to seethis guy. Mike still doesn't know where

(29:22):
he lives or what his last nameis, but he says this guy was
bragging to him about cashing in ona big lawsuit against the Trizachon Corporation.
Trza Khon was building the new hotel. I think it's a renaissance in that

(29:42):
area where the Academy Awards are held, Hollywood and Highland there. They were
building that at the time, andapparently, as Mike had bragged it up
to Mark Durbin that he was goingto score big on this because one of
their trucks hit him and injured hisback, and he claimed he had a

(30:04):
broken back and everything. But Marksaid it sounded shaky because the guy's standing
up, walking around, he looksperfectly healthy. But I looked into that
aspect and I reached out to thatcorporation. To their credit, they were
very cooperative with me. I spokewith the corporate financial officer and they turned

(30:30):
me over to their legal department.And the legal department looked into it and
said, no, we have hadno incidents whatsoever matching that description. So
there is no lawsuit pending against anyof our subcontractors. So that was a
dead end. And some reason Igot a brainstorm to, well, why

(30:53):
don't I just checked that hole,probably like a ten or twelve block area
square for any type of, youknow, traffic related incidents. And I
got a couple, but there wasone that stood out, and it was
a guy walking a dog and thedog stepped out into the street on Franklin

(31:18):
Avenue at Orchid and apparently a carcame by, didn't hit the dog,
but came close and there was anincident, and so a report was made
because the young lady that was drivingwas scared to death, so she called
the police and they did make atraffic related report and the name of the

(31:45):
dog walker was Michael T. Garzulo, Michael Thomas Garzulo, and he lived
on Orchid, So just a blockdown from the accident. And that location
where he lived at the time wasonly two short blocks from Ashley's house.

(32:09):
In some of the buildings, ifyou get on the rooftop, like of
that building, you could look andsee Ashley's house. So it was that's
how I first came up with whothis guy was. And I was able
to get his DMV photo and putit in a photo lineup and I went

(32:30):
to all the witnesses and they pickedhim out right away. They said,
yeah, that's Mike, the furnaceguy. Well, that's how we came
to find him. But unfortunately,by the time we were able to identify
him, he had already been evictedfrom that location. He wasn't there,
So my partner and I had goneback there and they said, yeah,

(32:52):
he's long gone, but at leastwe knew who he was, and we
got more. We got more focusedon that Mike would talk about his career
as an actor or that he wasa professional boxer training for the Olympics,
and interestingly, he also told storiesabout what brought him to La from Chicago.

(33:16):
He would tell some of Ashley's friendsabout being wanted by Chicago investigators who
were waiting to collect DNA samples fromhim because his best friend's girlfriend had been
murdered. Tom, what else didyou find out about guard Julo's background once

(33:36):
you had a name, Well,the way things evolved, we are on
the hunt now and trying to figureout where this guy is because what we
learned is he really doesn't other thanthat orchid address, he didn't put really
anything in his name. He wouldsponge off women that he would meet on

(33:59):
the internet. And you know,some of these these women, you know,
they weren't the most attractive women,but they were women that would do
things for him because he he wouldyou know, he would stroke them and
he would he would do things thatmade them feel really important. So they

(34:21):
did things in return for him.In other words, they allowed him to
drive their vehicles, or they hadan apartment that he would he would basically
be living in, but it wasin somebody else's name. So he was
a hard guy to kind of trackdown. But There were other incidents where

(34:44):
Guarjula attacked other people, made threatsto other people. There was a young
gal that he had an interest inand one day, you know, they
had a kind of a relationship thatbegan when they when he worked at the
Rainbow Room and on the Sunset Strip, and they knew each other from that

(35:07):
work location years earlier. And hebumped into this gal at a grocery store
sometime later, and so they werekind of seeing each other, not on
a dating relationship, but just thenhe show up as a friend and watched
a TV show or something, andhe leaves. But then one day he

(35:29):
came in. He was dressed allin dark clothing, in a real dark
look on it in his face.His demeanor was weird, and all of
a sudden, he starts talking abouthe was being wanted by the FBI.
His best friend's sister was killed inChicago and they're looking for him. And

(35:52):
then he produces a stun gun withhis left hand out of his jacket pocket
and he stun guns this this younggallon. He puts a couple of burns
on her, and there was areport made, but he split and nothing
was ever done on that case.That was the same year that Astley was

(36:15):
killed, but just later in theyear. So, and there was other
incidents similar to that threatened attacks.He actually threatened a Department of Transportation lady
that had impounded his truck. Hewas going to kill her because his truck

(36:37):
was impounded and he was pissed.So that's that's the kind of guy he
is. He's very volatile, sixtwo and ninety five pounds. At the
time, he fancied himself to bea boxer. He's in good shape,
very strong, hot headed. Sohe's had a long history of being a

(36:59):
a so's that's Mike Arjulo. AsDetective Small dug more into Guardjulo's background.
Detectives in Cook County, Illinois,were finally making progress on the physical evidence
in Tricia Pacaccio's murder. The DNAtest results detected DNA from two people on

(37:23):
Tricia's fingernail clippings. One was Triciaand the other an unidentified person. Detective
Lou Sla from the Cooks County Sheriff'sCold Case Division tracked down more than twenty
witnesses in Tricia's case, collecting DNAsamples from each to look for a match.

(37:46):
By fall two thousand and two,only one name remained, Michael Guardulo.
In our next episode, detectives tryto track down Michael Garjulo. We
learn more about his background and theDNA evidence in Tricia Boccaccio's murder comes under

(38:07):
question. I'm Kelly Hymen, andthis is once upon a crime in Hollywood,
the Hollywood River