Maria | Ep.5

It includes explicit dialogue. Listener discretion is advised.

“Please note some of the voices you hear in this series have been performed by actors.”

Previously, on Mind of a Monster, the Hollywood Ripper.

She painted a picture that you probably could never really imagine.

The idea that someone is in your bedroom at night is probably a fear that a lot of people have. He is gaining pleasure and stimulation from cutting these women. I'm getting kind of frantic because I know it's a matter of time. He's going to kill again.

From ID and Arrow Media, I'm criminal psychologist Dr. Michelle Ward.

“And this is Mind of a Monster, the Hollywood Ripper, chapter 5, Maria.”

Jurors in an LA courtroom listen intently to a 911 call.

Irving Bruno is distraught as he tries to tell the call handler what's happened. It's 740am on December 1st, 2005, and he has just found his wife Maria dead in bed. In court, 14 years after that call, District Attorney Dan Ackman is setting out the case against Michael Garzulo. Michael's on trial for the attempted murder of Michelle Murphy and for the murders of Ashley Ellaren and Maria Bruno. Garzulo entered Maria's apartment through a window, put on blue, surgical booties, and mutilated Maria

with a knife as she slept.

He cut off her breasts, attempted to remove her breast implants and placed one of her breasts in her mouth.

Leaving Irving to find his wife's naked, desecrated body. The 17 days before her murder, Maria had moved out of the family home. Her marriage to Irving is in trouble with the report of domestic violence. Maria's beautiful slim, petite with dark hair and a warm smile, and she's the mother of Irving's four young children. She'd chosen her new home carefully, art in way apartments seemed safe and secure.

I've tracked down Daniel Nardoni, one of Michael's defense attorneys in his 2019 murder trial.

“I want to talk to you a little bit about Maria Bruno, do you remember that particular murder?”

I do. That was a little bit more challenging from the defense standpoint as a freshward marriage. Despite their problems Irving and Maria go out together on November 30, the night before she's killed. For whatever reason, Maria and Irving Bruno got together the evening prior. They went out together for, I believe, drinking, possibly dinner, here in the city of Pasadena. So they got back together for the evening at least.

And they get back to the apartment, I believe, around 1230, and according to the testimony of Irving, they have sex. Irving leaves Maria's apartment at about 245 AM, but he's back the next morning to give her a ride to work. He knocks, rings, when he gets no reply, he climbs in through the ground floor kitchen window. What he finds is beyond words. The attack on her was so vicious, so callous, that it almost like it was like a personal thing and I'll tell you why.

Both her breasts were cut off, her implants, breast implants were partially pulled out. The nipple of one of her breasts was cut off in place in the mouth, so I mean, this was horrible. There's blood everywhere in the immaculate apartment Maria has just furnished by everything brand new. On her kitchen floor, there's a three pack of knives still in their plastic packaging. Detective wounds that there was a set of kitchen knives of some sort, and one of the knives were missing.

The chef's knife is gone. Forensic teams move in and seal off the area, hunting for evidence. Michael's murder of Maria is violent in the extreme, just like Ashley Ellerins.

I need to unpack this with Forensic psychologist Dr. Leslie Dobson.

The killing of Maria Bruno, they cut off both of her breasts, tried to remove her implants and put

“one nipple in her mouth, and I think another on her shoulder.”

What do you make of that? I have thought a lot about it, and the timing of it, it was so rageful. I mean, it was so personal, and the cutting of the breasts that I was very curious about the cutting of the breasts, because a lot of the time implants are sewn in, and I'm wondering if he just did not realize how implants were actually put into the body, you know, some are over the muscle,

some are under the muscle. I'm wondering if once he got into that he could actually quite figure it out,

and maybe the implants would have been a trophy, but again, it's this dehumanization of a very feminine part of the body, and then putting the nipple in her mouth is really this representation of like each fit, and it's defiling what makes her attractive, what makes her a woman. Yeah, the mutilation in that case is particularly telling and disturbing, because it's all the things that make her sexual that he's mad about, and of course we have other sexual organs,

but that's not what's on display. What's on display is her physique, her and her large chest. Why do you think he was looking at his neighbors?

“I think there's an element of ease of accessibility. I think there's, he was heavier on the surveillance”

side. He built that fantasy. He wanted to have the kill very precise disimulation moment,

very small with that window. He needed a lot of information to do what he did, and at the same time he wanted to be with these people. He wanted to be one of them. Yeah, and I think that comports with my original thought, which was, you kind of what you see. So he doesn't know who he's going to want or be attracted to next, and of course the people you're around the most are the people you develop fascinations with. That's even if you're not a

stalker, they say just when something's pervasive, like a song, even, met here at once, and it doesn't do anything to you, but if you're forced to listen to it over and over again,

“all of a sudden you love it. So there's that element of, you know, he's a little bit lazy,”

you know, so it's easier to surveil somebody if they're your neighbor, but it's also easier to want them or want that target, because you've been exposed. It's ubiquitous at that point. And that, that is a very, very scary thing. It kind of lends to, he doesn't necessarily have a type that he doesn't have control over who he begins to have this erotomatic, delusional disorder obsession with. That is scary. When Michael kills Ashley Ellaren, he doesn't leave a trace of DNA,

despite the bloody in frenzy to attack, but this time with Maria, Michael makes a mistake, attorney Daniel Nardoni. So there is a piece of evidence found in the courtyard outside of the apartment of Maria's and keep it mine. Michael guard you live from the apartment, complex across the courtyard upstairs. There was a booty. When I said booty, it's one of those things that sometimes workers will wear, put on their shoes or their feet when they come into

your house to do repair work, things of that nature. And that booty contained a droplet of Maria's blood. The booty is sent to the crime lab for analysis. Skin cells are found on the elastic of the booty, but it is an until 2008 after the attack on Michelle Murphy that DNA from these cells is identified as Michaels. Okay, pardon the panting dog. The booty that gets left behind, it shows that Michael's careful in one way and he's using the booty so that he doesn't leave

bloody footprints like he didn't Ashley Ellaren's house, but then he's also sloppy because he drops it outside of the apartment as he flees. When Maria moves into what she thinks is an ultra-secure complex, she doesn't realize she's moving in with a killer. The apartment that she lived in who moved into, Michael guard you all live there. Maria lived in the apartment on the ground for in the center of the courtyard. Michael lived across the courtyard. An aerial shot showing just

how close Michael is to Maria is shown to jurors in 2019 by prosecutor Dan Ackman.

his sister, or Julis, is from the angle for Mr. Guard Julis living room. It can look right down

“and look into this room as part of it. Oh god, now he's shooting where he is. Maria only moved in”

seven days before, so is his killing speeding up or is he just getting a sloppy and he hasn't even looked there very long. Michael only moved into the Elmani complex in September 2005, a month or so before Maria Bruno. He's already the prime suspect in the 2001 murder of Ashley Ellerin, and he's someone police want to talk to about Trisha Pocaccio's death in 1993. He's being hunted by LAPD homicide detectives, but he's disappeared. The police last

new of his whereabouts in 2002, and I've found out he became a father in 2003. So what has Michael been doing from 2003 to 2005, and where has he been hiding? Shooter form, he's seeing and abusing multiple women, using them to evade the police. In 2004, he meets Maria Grola when she responds to a flyer advertising his aircon repair business. She's one of 10 women brave enough to testify against Michael during his trial in 2019. She says when she tries to end the relationship

after three months, he stalks her and follows her to her kid's school. One night, he gets into her bedroom and threatens to kill her. He hits her so hard that the blow to attaches her retina. She files a restraining order against him. Maria Grola bears the scars of her three-month relationship with Michael, but she escapes with her life. Other women like Maria Bruno aren't so lucky. Around 2005, Michael meets 26-year-old Yadira Reyes in the children's clothing shop where she works.

Yadira is never introduced to Michael's friends or family, and she suspects he's married.

He's furious when she challenges him about it. Yadira is also called as a prosecution witness in 2019. She tells the court the relationship ended after six months when he forces her into the back of his van and rapes her. Afterward, he threatens her and her family and she doesn't go to the police. When Michael moves to El Monte, 2005, he's living with girlfriend Grace Kwak. She's five months pregnant with his second child. During secretly recorded conversations with Selmaids,

he doesn't have anything good to say about Grace.

“I think they learned that from birth. I think they learned that before,”

as you've mentioned, she's been trying to ruin my life, my ex-girlfriend. It was always

threatening you saying, "Oh, you threatened to kill my parents with a gun." She just lines or she can get full custody. Ironic, considering how many women don't report his criminal in controlling behavior because he threatens to harm or kill them in their loved ones. Obviously, Michael's violence and abuse toward women is malignant. I review his relationships with forensic psychologists Dr. Leslie Dobson. They were short-lived relationships, and if we're

looking at violence risk and psychopathy, longevity of relationships is extremely important to the trajectory of recidivism and violence. You know, is someone going to do it again? Well, if they can maintain living with somebody for two years, that significantly reduces their risk of violence. But where does this hate-filled attitude toward women come from? Dr. Joan Kaufman is a psychologist who specializes in child neglect in abuse cases. Do you think any of this was learned

or an artifact of how he was brought up? We did not hear anywhere about there being any domestic

violence. So what we learned, you learned through multiple ways, but he ultimately made choices.

“You know, he had free will and chose to act in certain ways, and I think it was a thrill to him.”

Michael doesn't kill people. He's had relationships with. He's saving that for women. He doesn't know, like Maria Bruno. She's beautiful, petite, out of his league, exactly his type of victim. What do you make of the fact that he only kills these attractive, outgoing women? They're not the type of women he necessarily did? Did that mean anything to you when you read about that? You can hypothesize that there was some kind of jealousy and resentment feeling like potentially

there's nothing in any of the documents I read where those sorts of statements came up.

“But that's what it makes you think when he's specifically targeting young, attractive,”

outgoing women. And to me, it's smack of what we see in an increasing problem with Insel behavior. He was having sex. He was having relationships. He is not a traditional insult. Insel is a, it's a made up word to indicate involuntary celibacy. So people who want to date want to have sexual and romantic relationships, but are denied. And then it has become this kind of platform for aggression and argument that men are entitled to sexual relationships with

attractive women. And it's increased the violence, you know, we have killers who contribute their motivation to being that. They deserve it and they're killing the women who aren't giving it to them. Do you sense any sort of Insel behavior with this guy? Because to me, it's like these doesn't carry psychopath. But it's, he's not a clever serial killer. I mean, he gets away with it for a long time. But some of that was just an artifact of the time and limited law enforcement capabilities

and other types of bureaucratic red tape. But he is killing where he lives. He's coveting what he sees. And he's leaving a trail of bodies with his zip codes. If you were to put him in a

“box, what would you classify him as? I think he's a psychopath. You know, every feature,”

every one. Yeah, yeah, except he's not very charming. I mean, and I guess, you know, what strikes

me, you know, we never heard once about any remorse. You know, I have seen youth with bipolar disorder

who sometimes when they're manic do things like that, you know, they're ashamed of afterwards. I had a boy go after his parents for the baseball bat. And then what he was no longer manic, you know, had such remorse and couldn't believe he had done it. So we have none of that process that we've heard any whiff of is ongoing here. And that's the hallmark of psychopathy. It's no remorse. Right. Right. Again, we never got to hear anything from him. But the manner in which he did these killings,

you know, these were not, these, they, they use the word instrumental. They are planned. So they're not an act of passion. It's not like he was with his girlfriend and found out she was cheating and lost his head. This is someone he stalked. This is something he planned. You know, he's also choosing to use a knife which is very, you know, up close and personal, you know, and in the case of Maria Bruno, mutilating her body afterwards. You know, he's being very particular and thinking

about these women being found and what they should look like and how there should be a shock

“effect. It's almost like he hated them. There's almost a rage to the killing, right?”

But he didn't really know them. So, you know, again, so if the hate is it's, you know, based on some sort of internal process which we're not privy to. Dr. Kaufman's correct, we aren't privy to Michael's internal process. But we do know what he says about Maria Bruno, thanks to those

secretly recorded conversations in jail. Michael first says he didn't know Maria and then changes

his story. Yeah, some chicken, I tell you, whatever, they said that my unit looked over her. She's beautiful in this and that. I kind of think I know what they're talking about because I thought I associated with that person with her. So, I mean, I've, I've nothing to, I thought you didn't know her. Yeah, she, she was an acquaintance man and something happened to her, whatever. But I'm in a place a few times, woke her, carried a lot of laundry, her groceries, and, you know, I'd been in her house

and, you know, I could explain it. They could say anything they were. They said she was with a track, big busted. To me, no attraction to me. I'm not in the big chest of women.

I don't even remember what the person I never did pay attention to her. And I just taught

the other one, man. But the reality is, he's been watching Maria since she moved in to the apartment in November 2005. Someone spots him. Neighbor Robert Rasmussen testifies at Michael's trial that in the days before her murder, he saw a man shadowing Maria. Prosecutor Dan Ackman. Mr. Rasmussen saw man matching Gargila's description, wearing a black hat and follow Maria into her apartment. He saw the man back out like this with his palms up,

indicating that he was not welcome in the apartment. Just as he had invited himself and to

parallels with Ashley Ellerin's murder. Michael attacks at night, but he could easily be seen

or caught in the act. Maria's apartment is in full view of others in the complex. Forensic examinations reveal Michael didn't sexually assault Maria. Ashley Ellerin and Trisha Focaccio had not been sexually assaulted either. Maria's body is horribly mutilated. Retired L.A. PD homicide detective Tom Small, whose leading the hunt for Ashley's killer, thinks Michael was planning a similar act with Ashley. There was a cut of down her right

breast underneath the curvature of her breast. Like somebody was experimenting with the knife,

but hadn't gotten all the way to the point of, you know, disfigurement.

As in the Ashley Ellerin case, Michael attacks Maria Bruno just after she's had sex.

“Could this be a sign of a criminal mastermind deliberately trying to frame another man?”

After he's murdered his neighbor, Michael takes a very unusual step and usual for him at least. He doesn't disappear this time. He sticks around. And soon after Maria's murder, another woman moves into the complex. What was going on for you around the time that you moved into the apartment complex in Omani? I was when I had been separated and we had just gotten back

together. So we needed a place to live. We've known of that apartment complex, but it used to be

really just hideous, but they agreed done everything and it looked brand new. And so we thought, okay, let's take a look, right? Was good, whatever. So we moved in. Michelle Wells is a pretty brunette in her mid-30s. She slimmed and outgoing. In February 2006, she moves into the Omani complex with her husband in five-year-old son. She hasn't heard about Maria Bruno's murder just a few months earlier, or that detectives are still hunting the killer. Michelle Wells remembers seeing

her new neighbor a couple of weeks after she moves in. So when were you lucky enough to meet Michael Garjulo? He was outside. It was black, Volkswagen, Jenna. He had, I guess it stayed a girl in a car scene, up on the hood, but he was not badly looking at the time. So I'm pulling up trying to park and I noticed him noticing me. And I thought, oh, well, that's nice. I still got whatever few days a week later. His ex-girlfriend, Grace Quack, she said, you live here and I said, yeah,

she goes, could you give me a favor? I've got this Thomas guide for those kids that don't know

“that is, that's an old school map book and the apartment key. Can't I leave it with you?”

And Michael's boyfriend, I'm leading, can he come pick it up? And I said, sure, not annoying, but I was inviting. So about 1130 that night, I get a knock on the door. And this is what I really like to talk to you about for my own cell. Yeah, I opened the door and he steps over the threshold. And that freaked me out and did not sit well with me because what you do when you're not going to door, you knock and you back up, you stand back. Well, this dude comes right over the threshold.

And all of my comments said, what's going, whoa, what are you doing? But I'm ready, right? And then spent close to three hours outside, yeah, yeah, with him. It was like 130 or so when I got back in the house. Oh, but I don't consider myself a pushover. Do you know what I mean? Because we're horrible with boundaries. And we're trained to trust people. It's not about being a pushover. There's certain expectations that you have when meeting somebody. He's already

kind of, you know, stepped over it quite literally over the threshold. But then we are ingrained to not be rude. And that is, you don't know this man is a killer. You just know that he knows somebody who had, you know, given you this thing to give to him, what do you do? But I've explained him and that conversation as he, he's the dude where he can smell your dinner burning, he can see your grass flooding and he's still going to continue to stand there and talk about himself. He's got no

“no social cues. Did you sense that that was narcissism or just being unaware?”

Total narcissism because it's been the course of that conversation. He talked about being back in Chicago and the cops had stopped him for something. Is that you, Gorgelo? Is that you, Gorgelo? No, you, Gorgelo. Like, I felt even then. I felt like this dude really wants

wanting me. Okay, so you know all you need to know, I'm used to all kinds of people. You become

therapists and really might, might be as monitor was going off all over the, you know, he said, I'm an MMA fighter. I, I was an Olympic boxer, but at one point he says to me, you look like you could take care of yourself. And I said, well, I'd like to think I could. And he gets behind me and I'm facing my apartment door and he puts me in a headwalk. And he goes, what would you do if I did this? And I said, I don't know, you know, and then he grabs my opposite arm and puts it behind

my back and said, now what would you do? In 1993, Trisha Piccato's killer twisted her arm behind her back and broke it while stabbing her to death. Michael is due to stand trial for Trisha's murder in

Illinois. And this is why I say I carry some shame and embarrassment, because I don't even remember

what I said. And it probably wasn't appropriate for what was like, get your fucking hands off of me, would have been the, the thing you think I would say, but it wasn't. I was just kind of coy,

“which is not me. I don't know. And but here's the thing, you're not prepared. You're looking at this”

with hindsight. And I do this too. We are not prepared to meet a serial killer. And your, your brain has a really hard time adjusting to this social moral is that you expect an conversation, juxtaposed to against this sudden chokehold. You're not going to be the, what the hell are you doing, because then you are kind of the weirdo. So you're maintaining the social decorum. He's stepping slightly out of it, but you don't know how to read it. And you're not really concerned that you're

with a violent criminal, he's a neighbor. So did you kind of like him in the beginning, an affable friendly neighbor? That goes back to the bartender thing. He was amusing to me. There was an entertainment factor because he was so full of shit. Everything was so fantastic to all that you're just like, okay, well, I'm sitting here having my cigarette go ahead. There's accountability in being neighbors, right? Can't get away with much, you know where he lives.

“Were you at all scared after the incident or did that fear come later?”

No, that came later. Over the next 18 months, Michelle becomes increasingly wary of her weird neighbor. One time, he gives her a jump scare standing right outside the kitchen window staring at her. Another time, he asks to borrow a pen and follows her uninvited into her apartment. I go to my jump drawer, I turn around to go back out and I bump into him because it's right behind me.

And my son and my husband are asleep in the bedroom. So it's like 11 or so. And I will hate you. Okay, there's a pen. Wow, hurting him, chewing him back out the door. And now, with hindsight, I look at it, he was checking out your apartment. He wanted to understand the lay of the apartment. And suddenly, that's what he did with Maria Bruno. Yeah, that was the exact same, you know, she was seen telling him to get the hell out.

She obviously had a lot better bound to be sent out because from what I heard she wasn't as soft and polite about it as I was, you know. And not only has he been in your apartment, made it through that, across that boundary, he had jump scare due. He also had tested your strength.

“That's why he was saying, what if somebody puts you in this chocolate? What would you do?”

He's testing your strength? Yeah. Now, it would be very advice for him to crap or he eats again. He was just checking, but it's like, okay, check, check that. I scared to freak out the window, check. I made it into your apartment, check. And I'm sure there was some kind of weird psychological fetish thing there, knowing that Maria's apartment was across the way. And he'd already done it, you know. He would say, you and your husband don't fight, do you?

I said, no, not really. And he goes, I never hear any yelling or anything. He goes, that's weird.

He's watching. He was very impressed and, oh, he just gave me chills. And he's not even close enough. He wasn't, wasn't idiot, am I? I'm not trying to break myself, but you just really seriously rang a bell. I didn't even go there with pain attention, but yeah, how the hell do you know? Or enough to say, you know, fight with your husband, do you? He's not located closely enough to know that. He's stalking you. He's a predator. And this is predatory behavior.

you guys fighting or not fighting, because he's spending time watching you guys walking down there,

“trying to understand potentially windows of opportunity. We'll never know. But you do become,”

you are a more difficult target than Maria was, because you don't live alone. Right? But he's behaving in a way that I would expect a serial killer to behave. Michael's not stupid enough to kill Michelle, another woman in the same complex, but he is stalking her, toying with her. It's a deeply ingrained pattern of behavior, and he's probably doing it to multiple women all the time. Michelle's got plenty of life experience, yet Michael still manages to manipulate her,

and she feels guilty about it to this day. I was making dinner, and all of a sudden I realized

I didn't have no cheese, so I am going to go to several living on a wing in the prayer that they've actually got cheese there. But I'm walking out and he's sitting at the base of the stairs down

“for his apartment. And he said, "Hey, where are you going?" And I said, "Oh, I need cheese."”

Because I got cheese. You need cheese? I said, "No, it's okay." And he's like, "No, really, I've got cheese. You need cheese." I'm like, "Shit." Okay, he goes, "Come on." So we went up to his apartment and he hands me the cheese and he says, "Oh, before you go, he goes, I just got this mattress. It's the best fucking bed in the world. You've got to see this. It's like a $5,000 mattress. And I said, "I'm cooking. I have to go." Because no, no, really, you just got to see it.

Fine. There's no bedding on the bed. There's pair of lemons underwear on the floor at the foot of the bed. There's a hay couple of hangers with a couple of shirts in the closet. Again, that looking back now, I go, "Oh, this is it, too, that was ready to leave." If he had to leave. So I sit down and he goes, "Now, oh, you got to leave." Lay back, I'm like, "No, I have to go. I have to go." And this is pathetic, but that's all I've got to go.

And he just laid down on the bed. And it was the way he said it and on very important quiet. The key had gone to where he's across the door, Jim, arm up above his head and feet, cross at the bottom when he told me to lay down. I fell backwards. It seems not heavy at the bed. I sat back up. And as soon as I did that, he moved over to the side. So it was very much it you did when I said, "Now, you can leave." That feels really controlling. E, E, and I got up.

And man, I feel like I had just done something wrong. Because again, I've got my husband and my son downstairs. And here I am, up in this dude's house, laying on his bed.

“Feel like such a fool for not catching on earlier. Do you know?”

Okay, I'm going to disabuse you of that belief right now. I have been studying serial killers, murderers in general, predatory criminals, for 25 years. To this day, Michelle, I can walk out of one of my interviews. I could be on death row, could be in Huntsville, Texas. And I'll be like, "Oh, he didn't do it." He did. I get dupped to this day with all of my training and all of my history.

There is no way in a million years with what you have told me that I would have

thought that I was in the clutches of a predator. Being creepy is not a crime. And it's frankly not that unusual. There's creepy guys everywhere. Yeah, but okay, so you're the criminal psychologist. And this is a big question I have in one of the reasons I was like, "Yeah, I wanted to do this. If I maybe get a little psycho analysis or help, what do you do if a serial killer makes you uncomfortable and your instinct is to say, "No, fuck you." Now you have pissed off a serial killer.

So now what? The serial killers don't work like that. They're not impulsive. They're not. They plan their murders quietly when they're not mad. They're calculated that they don't have, I mean, he could experience rage, of course, but he's not going to chop you up right then and there. That's just not how they operate. So, in hindsight, I don't think you did anything that that's weird. It's a neighbor. But moving forward, you have the benefit of experience being a

little bit older and I use humor when I'm uncomfortable. I'll be like, "Hey, no, no, really. I'm being serious." I keep it friendly. Whatever it is, or my husband will, you know,

into a serial killer ever again. But you might run into other men who make you uncomfortable. And I have learned and I try to teach my daughter that you can use humor to put up a boundary a lot easier than you can use anger. Because anger makes you weird, right? It's interesting to

me that he's always there when you need something or you're, or you're, because he's watching

“you, right? Looking back, do you feel that way that you could have been one of these victims?”

Yeah. Helen, I've been married and lived alone, absolutely. But I wondered that. What, because he had all these girlfriends that he looked with and we know why, I'm sure, so that nothing was in his name ever. So what makes you a girlfriend? What makes you a rape victim? What makes you someone that gets toyed with? And what makes you the ultimate victim? How do they categorize? And what is that about? Well, interestingly, Michelle,

there's this misconception that serial killers have an MMO that they stick with forever. And it's just

not the case. They tend to be a little sloppy in the beginning and then they perfect their craft. And then once they're emboldened by not getting caught, they can become a little sloppy again.

“But more than that, they get bored. So the highs that they seek, whether it's sexual or just the”

high of the hunt in the kill, that starts to attenuate it. So they'll make, they'll might change their crime. They might change the method in which they kill. They might not kill at all. They might rape. They might rob a bank. They might change their victim profile because the way they caught is because when they have the same victimology, the same MMO and they are somehow connected geographically or otherwise to the victim. But there is this wrong idea that that doesn't change and it absolutely

does. So he can't kill there again. You've got a husband. It doesn't mean he's not still praying upon you. It's just that he might not know what he's going to do. And there might be lots of

women he's accosted in certain places. He's watched from afar and had plans for, but they don't always

kill. There could be all sorts of things we don't know about. So we don't have to go as far to say he was going to kill you. But he was definitely behaving in a predatory fashion toward you.

“Because didn't he talk to you or ask you if you had heard about Maria Bruno?”

Yeah, he did. He says, "Did you hear what happened at that chick over there?" And I said, "Yeah, I did." And he goes, "Where do you think about that?" I said, "It's fucked up." And he goes, "Well, would you move to her if you knew about it?" And I said, "No." Well, why not? And I said, because I believe in energy and I believe that this building is just contained. The whole freaking neighborhood is contaminated by that. I don't want to, I wouldn't have moved in.

In 2007, two years after Maria's murder and six years after Ashley Elevand's stabbing, there's another push to find Maria Bruno's killer. A sketch of a man the police want to question a guy seen peering into the window of Maria's apartment is published again in the newspaper. There's a sketch of him. So of course I ran to the liquor store and I grabbed it. I came home. I was by myself. I opened it up and I looked at the picture and that did alone didn't do it.

And then I started reading the description and it said, "Six one to six, whatever it was, Mediterranean male." I slammed a paper shut. Holy shit. Holy shit. I'm walking around in my apartment. I lied to cigarette, holy shit. I go and I stick the paper in my kitchen door and close it. Holy fucking shit. I'm running around going, "Oh my God, it's him. It's him. What am I going to do?" I'm like this freaked out shaking. Every interaction you ever had with him is playing

through your brain. Yes. Yes. So I get in the car because I'm going to call at least that I'm not going to call from my apartment. I go to my mom's house. I need to make a full call. I get on it. I don't even tell her what I'm doing. Call the number and I say, "I live this building if you talk to Michael Gargula." Nothing happens after Michelle's tip-off. She thinks it's because she wouldn't give the police her name a number because Michelle wanted to remain anonymous.

There's no record of that call. Michael Gargula isn't arrested and the trail goes cold in the

That's because he's met someone new and this one's a keeper. Do you remember your last

interaction with him? That had to be, "Well, that was him coming to show me the ring." It's spring 2007, not long after Michelle has told the police that she suspects Michael is Maria

“Bruno's killer. He's met as fiancee and again, I think this time I was standing at the doorway”

smoking a cigarette. He's like, "Oh, I'm going to propose to my girlfriend this is the ring."

And it was this honking diamond ring. Michael's stalked and slaughtered two of his neighbors

“in this time. He stuck around to admire his handiwork and casually terrorize more women.”

Now it's time to move on to a new wife, a new life, and a new victim. But this time he won't quite finish the job. Next time on Mind of a Monster, the Hollywood River.

“He enjoys killing. He enjoys stalking and he enjoys the moment of the attack. He gets a sexual”

arousal by plunging a big knife. I didn't look him in the face. I was like too scared. The Godzilla case was perhaps one of the most graphic cases I've ever defended. Mr. Kutcher I could tell he was very nervous when he came to the courtroom. Mind of a Monster, the Hollywood River, is produced by Arrow Media, a free mental company for ID. On your host, Dr. Michelle Ward, you can follow our show wherever you get your podcast sent. We'd love it if you could take a

second to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.

And that's the time for the game to be done. Now let's test the Godzilla test on Shopify.de.