The Hunt | Ep.4

I often go shopping for the first day. The platform makes me no problem.

“I have many problems, but the platform is not one of them.”

I have the feeling that Shopify is a platform that can only be optimized. Everything is super, simple, integrated and connected. And the time and the money that I can't invest there is no other way around. For Alem in Vax-Tomb.

This podcast explores themes of violence against women, rape and murder.

It includes explicit dialogue. Listener discretion is advised. Please note some of the voices you hear in the series have been performed by actors. Previously, on Mind of a Monster, The Hollywood River. So I go up the stairs and I open the door and she is on the landing covered in blood and blue in the face.

From ID and arrow media, I'm criminal psychologists Dr. Michelle Ward and this is Mind of a Monster, The Hollywood River.

Chapter 4, The Hunt. She had what they referred to as a lentil, occipital dislocation, and simple terms decapitated. The jury was shown the photos from her apartment and it was just covered in blood. It's 2001, Michael Garzulo is living in Hollywood. On February 21st, beautiful fashion student Ashley Ellorin is stabbed to death just before her date with up-and-coming actor Ashden Kutcher.

Ashley's death hits the headlines, it's sickeningly violent, but there are other disturbing details about the killing which are withheld from the media. LAPD homicide detective Tom Small is leading the hunt for the murderer. And could you describe the scene or what injuries there were and how she was positioned? We saw how she was positioned on the floor. It was obvious to us she had been moved so that the person that did this most likely was hovered over her and finishing her off because he watched in my view to see her die.

“And inflict as much harm as he can, and that's what stood out to me.”

Wow, you get so much more information than you think, just hearing you talk about those details that's fascinating that you can get all of that. And between her thighs, there was what looked like rub off blood, so if somebody is covered with blood, and you touch a body with your clothing as blood on it, it's going to rub off on a body. And you could tell because of that smear on her thighs that he was hovered over her. I wrote it in my notes that way, but I wasn't sure. Ashley Ellerin's left hand has been deliberately positioned so that her index finger points down to between her legs.

Detective Small, who's now retired, leads that as a signal from the killer, designed to cause maximum upset. That still shocks me. She was posed, and the person that did this wanted to demonstrate the harm he did there, and highlight her throat, and that her legs were spread about 45 degrees. She was posed. And I noted that in my notes, too, that whoever did this was right over the top of her and wanted her to be seen this way.

“The finger pointing down the legs spread the neck wound foregrounded. After the killing frenzy is over, Michael takes time to do this, increasing the risk of getting caught. Why is it just a sick joke?”

A signal to the investigators? The bombastic arrogance of a serial killer? I discussed this with forensic psychologists, Dr. Leslie Dobbs, and to get her inside. To me, usually posing of bodies is, like, I want everyone to see what I'm capable of. Look at my masterpiece. I can't tell you that I'm the murderer, but I want you to love my art. And at the same time, it's a big fuck you to anyone who loved her. That's so fascinating. It's a trophy. A trophy doesn't have to be physical, right? That pose where he leaves the women. That's a memory. That's embedded in him.

And it must be important to him because it's a big risk to take. When we imagine our trophies, when we think about them, it brings us back to the moment we feel everything we felt right then and there, and this is a guy who can't feel unless he does something like that.

Their emotions are blended. I mean, remorse guilt and empathy, they just have none of. But the other emotions are blended too.

“So, he needs to do extreme things to feel period. Do you think he's getting off sexually from remembering the pose? Does it serve that purpose for him?”

Yes, definitely. I would think he is masturbating to the images of the final poses. It's a brilliant way to look at it on your behalf, but it's a brilliant way for a serial killer to elicit what he wants from the viewer. So he got what he wanted out of the kill and now he's going to get more. This idea that this is a trophy. It's, I want credit for this, but you can't know who I am.

Brilliant if you're Michael, utterly repugnant if you're anybody else. Michael violated Ashley in so many ways, except the obvious one.

Detective Tom Small, were you surprised that she hadn't been sexually assaulted? Yes, and no, because if it was a serial related case, virtually every serial murderer has a sexual connection to what he does. But someone that kills like this may be, and it was later came to be, as I understood the case, that he gets off plunging the knife into the body. And that's where his sexual satisfaction comes from. So in a sense, I was not shocked. To detective Tom Small, this looks like piecarism. The sexual thrill is from penetrating the skin with a knife.

People with piecarism get off on stabbing things. The knife is the penis. It's rare, but I have come across it in other cases.

It's a paraphilic disorder, extreme and unusual, but not always criminal sexual behavior, especially if it's practiced on oneself or a consenting adult.

Paraphilic disorders are recurrent, intense, sexually arousing fantasies, urges or behaviors that are distressing or disabling. The focus of paraphilia, children, underwear, knives, is usually very specific and unchanging. The fact that Michael Garzulo didn't sexually assault Ashley Ellerin could fit with this theory because someone with piecarism gets sexual satisfaction from the knife penetration, and replying the incident in his head over and over again, so he wouldn't have needed to sexually assault her.

Overkill, using more violence than necessary to kill someone, can also be part of it. The more the knife goes in, the bigger the thrill. It's worth noting that Trisha Pocaccio, the 18 year old stabbed death outside her home in Glenview in 1993, was not sexually assaulted either, although remember Michael has yet to stand trial for her murder. And Michael didn't sexually assault Michelle Murphy when he tried to kill her in 2008. Psychologist Leslie Dobson

I was going to ask you what you make of the fact that he doesn't sexually assault these women, and if it is true that he feels rejected by them once them sexually has some sort of sexual arousal associated with them,

“would you make of him not having sex with them when he's got them?”

Well, I don't think he's necessarily aroused by the women. I think he's aroused by the kill. So we do see that right with a lot of serial killers. We'll see some who actually experience orgasm from the killing itself, and they don't sexually violate. It's a form of paraphernalia, right? There's sexually aroused by something that's not considered sexual. There's some thought in this case that there was peak-rism involved, getting sexual pleasure from the knife going in and out. Do you have any thoughts about that?

I don't necessarily know where that would have come from, but he does have a fetish of breaking skin. There is a paraphernalic disorder involved where he is gaining pleasure and stimulation from cutting these women. I'm sitting here on the stool watching the rain on this drizzly day, and thinking about Michael Garjula on his really behavior. This is sick, and it is weird, but it's also confusing if you look at it nationally. If Michael isn't getting his sexual arousal from assaulting his victims sexually, but instead from the knife penetration,

“then why does he only pick women to kill who are attractive?”

Surely any body should do, in thinking through this, for the maximum kick he must have needed to kill someone he found sexually attractive even if he doesn't sexually assault that. Or maybe it's someone who keeps receiving to his twisted way had be checked at him somehow.

His mind is messed up, his killings are messy, but as we know, his crime scenes are not.

Apart from partial blood-use shoe prints, Michael doesn't leave any friends of information about the scene of Ashley Eleon's murder.

“Were you surprised that the killer didn't leave an DNA behind?”

I was shocked because there was so much blood, and this attack was so vicious, and when I'm looking, I'm seeing all the walls surrounding her. And the doors of the closet, the carpeting, and the hardwood flooring going out, I thought this guy had to cut himself. And I insisted with the criminal as I said, "I want every single area of blood checked." And it all came back to Ashley, and then she had hair in twined in her fingers. And there was someone in the floor, and I thought, "Well, chances are it's going to be hers, but we'll check it."

And it all came back to her. He left nothing. Nothing.

Michael is only 25 when he kills Ashley, and he's already learned how to cover his tracks, even at such a chaotic scene, how did he become such a proficient killing machine?

Detective Tom Small established as a timeline of Ashley Eleon's movements that evening. It shows her killer had a very narrow window of opportunity. At 5pm on February 21, 2001, Ashley drops her dad, Michael, off at the airport. He'd been helping Ashley decorate the house. She drives home, and at 7pm Mark Durbin comes around. Ashley had told her housemate Jen Desisto about Mark the night before. Tell us about Mark Durbin. Mark Durbin was the landlord for Ashley's bungalow. During the course of so many visits, they had a little romantic interlude.

And he freely admitted that to us on the night she was killed. So Mark and Ashley had sex that night she was killed. Yes, they did. Mark leaves around 8.15 pm. He needs to get back to his girlfriend, and Ashley has to get ready for her date with Ashley and Kutcher. Was Ashley and Kutcher ever as a suspect for you?

He had to look at him initially because he was supposed to go over there and pick her up around 8 o'clock. But that got delayed. He left the message for Ashley saying that he was running late, which she might if he came later. And I was able to determine that that was true. I could see when he called, when he left the message, and then I could tell her cell records, she returned his call and spoke to him. And that was at 8.24 exactly. Okay.

“And I believe she was probably dead within 6 minutes of that call.”

We had a witness that was walking his dog between 8.25 and 8.30 in the evening on that night. And he was just about to enter the dog park. And he heard a shrill scream very quickly and his dog heard it and stopped dead and looked right at the house. And he turned and he looked and he didn't see anything. He saw the house and he saw the house was all lit up. But he didn't see any people there.

And they had heard a second scream and that was it. And the dog was so agitated by that second scream that it freaked him out.

He never even went into the park and his dog would not come off the house.

He wanted to get out of there. He said, "I don't know what's going on, but we're leaving." So he probably missed the killer coming out by minutes. He probably came out right behind him. Yeah, gosh.

“Do you think Michael Gargilla was listening to that conversation between Ashley and Ashton?”

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The man her friends call Mike the furnace guy. You need to talk to him next. But it was difficult to find him, right? We didn't know who he was. All we knew was Mike the furnace guy.

That's all we had. After the murder, Garjula was not seen again. He just fell off the face of the earth. Nobody knew what he drove where he lived. What his last name was.

Nothing. Nobody knows this guy. Until a few months later, when Mark Durbin has a strange encounter near Ashley's old house. So Durbin sees a guy that he believes is Mike Garjula.

And he's parking a white panel then down the block. And this guy has spiked hair. Frosted tips. He's got a goatie. But Durbin is, you know, he can recognize people. He says, hey, Mike, how are you?

Oh, that must have freaked him out. And he said this guy turned kind of surprised. And looked at him and he said, hey, Mike. You know, he made a couple of attempts and he was walking up to him. He says, I'm not Mike, my name's Tony.

I'm Tony. He tried to fake his identity to a person he knows. He thinks some frosted tips and a goaties and stuff. This guy's not the brightest. Isn't it fascinating?

Right there, we got to see how Garjula thinks he's smarter than everyone. It's a grandiosity like, oh, well, I can just disguise myself. And it's that frustrating sense of self that inflated ego that often is the undoing of a psychopath. But I find it so comical that he's running around in the same area with a little bit of bleach and facial hair.

Give me a break.

It wasn't long after that.

He disappeared again.

“That was the only time he'd been seen since the murder.”

And now nobody knows where he's at and they still don't know his last name. By October 2002, Detective Small finds out Mike's full name. Michael, Thomas, Garjula, and his address. He's one of Ashley's neighbors living in an apartment about 400 feet away. He's now the prime suspect in Ashley Ellerin's murder.

And how close did he live to her? A block. 400 feet. We measured it by 400 feet. Wow. What was his living situation?

He lived at a first floor apartment in a four story brick complex. And a rather bare apartment. Bare, but near. During Michael's trial in 2019, the jury is shown a plan of the neighborhood by prosecutor Dan Ackman.

So if you go to the top of this building, which is open to all the tenants, there's a stairway that goes up and you look across. You can see Ms. Ellen's bedroom happens to be on that side of the house. But he got tossed out.

He was evicted because he never paid his bills.

I learned that Michael is a lot harder to find than any of us would be. He's grooming a string of women who let him stay at their homes and drive their vehicles. Nothing is registered in his name. He rarely spent time in any apartment he was in. He would sleep in his truck or he'd walk the streets at night.

“How was he funding his lifestyle through all these women?”

Occasionally he would get a job. He never held the job very long and he worked for various companies. And he always had issues. A couple of these job sites I went to and I spoke with employees and employers. I said this guy is a freak and he freaks all the ladies out.

We're going to fire him unless he leaves. And he generally leaves. He never stays long. The detective traces Michael through a truck he's been driving. It's registered to an address in Diamond Bar, far east of L.A. So then we go to Diamond Bar and there sits the truck right on the driveway.

After we spot the truck, I see an older gentleman walking toward the house and I stop. I'm going to ask him it. Okay. Is this your truck?

No, that's my daughter's truck.

“I said, do you the she have a boyfriend?”

And he says, well, there's a gentleman that she sees. His name is Mike Garjulo. And I said, well, does he live here? And he says, well, he doesn't really live here, but he gets his mail here. Oh, wow.

And sometimes he comes around. We don't see him that often. A lot of times he'll take the truck and drive it around. She's older than Garjulo. And they met on a chat room deal.

Okay. Okay. And not really his type. And there wouldn't be somebody that he would focus on to target. It'd be somebody that he would focus on to do things for him.

You know, this guy, he's manipulating people. He exerts his power over them. And he either charms him because he needs him to do something. Or he stalks him because he's going to kill him. And I'll call him the Ripper for nothing.

Michael is dubbed the Hollywood Ripper in the media during his trial, because of the extreme violence he inflicted on his victims in LA. And after Jack the Ripper, the unidentified serial killer who murdered and mutilated at least five women in London in 1888.

The word Ripper signifies a killer who dissects or mutilates his victims, almost always women.

What detective Tom Small is telling me is that in Michael's mind, women fit into one of two types. Gorgeous headturners like Ashley Ellarin, who are out of his league, or less desirable women he can use to stalk and kill the first type. Forensic psychologist Dr. Leslie Dobson. I want to talk about the difference between the women he kills in the women he dates.

He does not kill these people he interacts with. He kills virtual strangers. The profile of the women he dates is different than the people he kills. He's killing the women he can't get. That's not to say his other girlfriends weren't attractive. They were.

But it's a different type of woman. Do you have an opinion on why that is?

They could be making him look a little bit more normal while he sets up for the next kill. They could be helping him in some way. You know, he is having sex, he's getting nurtured, he's getting mothered by these women, although he's gone a lot. You know, he's taking his little adventures.

But again, he doesn't have the capacity to have a meaningful connection with another human being. So they have to be a part of strategy. And he may have other homes, right? He may have other points of comfort that allow him to stabilize and then stalk and kill. And then return back to these short-term relationships.

“Yeah, and I think it makes sense that the women he's choosing to spend time with give him various places to hide from the police, right?”

Because he's balancing around quite a bit. And we see that a lot in killers, right? I mean, it's a smart thing to do.

First of all, gives them a new penting round.

But it also helps them with a capture. And this guy, he was able to have a capture for a really long time. He's not a sloppy killer. And so it would be remiss of us to not give him credit for these strategies. But it seems that virtually all women are fair game in Michael's mind.

Going through the court transcripts, I learn about three women who testify in 2019 about Michael's unpredictable and terrifying behavior. All three experienced this in 2001, the year Michael kills Ashley Ellorin. There's Teresa Cordero, she's a parking officer, he has a running with off Hollywood Boulevard.

“She just happens to be there when he discovers his car has been towed.”

I mean, relatable, but this is off the scale.

At first, he's calm, but then he blows up, threatening to shoot the fuckers who had taken his vehicle and shouting, "You fucking bitch, I'm going to get you."

As she rushes back to the safety of her car, she's terrified, but manages to escape. Then there's Dorothy Haas, an old friend Michael's kept in touch with from his bouncer days at the rainbow. One day, he turns up at her flat, he's upset over getting evicted and he's worried about what he's going to do with his dog. Dorothy can't help because she has cats. Out of nowhere, he pulls out a stun gun and shoots Dorothy with it twice.

She screams and crawls out of the apartment. She's shocked, but not injured, and a neighbor calls the police. Later, he leaves her a message. He says that it was an accident. She's crazy and a fucking bitch for calling the police.

“If the police want to pursue this incident, they won't be able to locate Michael because he's been evicted.”

And in 2001, moves into an apartment on Clark Drive in West LA. His neighbor is a woman in her forties with a teenage daughter. She's the third, detective Tom Small. She was a real estate agent, and she would come home sometimes late at night from outings with clients. And she parked in a subterranean parking, often alley, where she lived.

And oftentimes, she'd be getting out of the car and all of a sudden, this guy is standing behind her. Breath and daughter Nick, twice he would say boo, and scared a crap out of her. That's so bad. I don't know if he had designs on her to hunt her because she was a very attractive lady. He went to their apartment, and the little girl was home and answered the door.

And Mike says, "How come your mom doesn't like me?" He knocks on their door when her 17-year-old daughter is home alone. And the daughter was taken back because she's heard all about Garjoolo and scared a death of him.

And he says, "By the way, do you always answer the door for strangers?"

And she says, "No, but I've seen you. I know you live here." And he says, "Well, what would happen if somebody just went off on you or tried to get into your apartment that he pulls out a knife?" Oh, no. He says, "What would you do if somebody had a weapon like this?" Oh, my God. And all of a sudden, he holds a knife up to her throat.

He says, "Now, what would you do?" And she was just totally beside herself. And it was a rear area apartment. Nobody is seeing this, but down the phone rings. And she says, "That's my mom. She's calling. I got to answer that."

So he withdraws the knife and he leaves. He's terrifying. So Michael's butchered one of his neighbors and is doing his best to evade the police. But yet, here he is, playing with fire, seeing what he can get away with by terrorizing other women.

Michael enjoys torturing women, not always physically. He clearly gets a kick out of scaring them.

He's close enough to see the fear in their eyes, which must bring him a tiny bit of the pleasure he gets when he kills someone. Back to October 2002. Twenty months after Ashley's murder and Michael Garjulo is the number one suspect. And in that same month, Detective Tom Small finally catches a break. I get a call. He's Cook County Sheriff's Police Investigator.

And he was in town investigating a case from 1993. Wait, what? They're a cold case detectives from Illinois. And they're reinvestigating the Trisha Picachio murder, which is still unsolved. And they wanted some help locating a witness in Hollywood area. So I said, who are you looking for?

They said, "Well, we're looking for a guy named Michael Garjulo."

“Where were you in your investigation when that happened?”

I was hunting for Garjulo because I wanted to bring him in. I didn't have any proof connecting him to the murder other than this behavior, the stalking behavior.

So I wanted to bring him in and basically interrogate him.

I said, Michael Garjulo, that's interesting. What are you looking for? He said, "Wow, he's a witness on this case we're investigating." And we need to touch bases with him and get some DNA from him. Did they know you were investigating him as well?

No, no, pure coincidence. This is pure coincidence. Oh my gosh. And they showed up at the station and I had the print out with his picture. I says, "Is this Mike Garjulo that you're looking for?" He says, "Yeah, how'd you get that so fast?"

I said, "Because I'm looking for him too." He said, "Oh, I said, "What kind of case do you have?" They said, "Well, we're investigating a murder of a young girl."

I said, "Oh, how was she murdered?"

“Well, she was stabbed a number of times.”

And it was pretty vicious. And they showed me a crime scene photo. And the photo was almost identical in layout that the way Ashley was. So I said, "Well, we're looking for him too, but he's a suspect in our case.

We got a murder too." Wow, that must have been mind blowing. We got a young girl, not much older than your girl. He said, "They're victim was 18." I said, "My victim is 22."

I said, "They're both very pretty girls." And he said, "Well, how would your girl go?" I said, "She was stabbed." And I mean, blurtured. Almost 50 times in her throat was cut.

I said, "Our girl was stabbed, but her arm was fractured."

“A spiral fracture, like somebody really strong”

taking that arm and twisting it. To put her in a position so we could kill her. At this point, was your mind blown and were you thinking, "Oh, my gosh. I actually have a serial killer."

What was your reaction? And I said, "Oh, geez, I wonder how many more." You know, 'cause guys like this, they don't stop at one or two. They'll keep killing. Your adrenaline must have been racing

because now you're against the clock, too. Well, there was so much pressure from my top. There was political pressure, and there was the media constantly pounding, and then the families.

I would get a call from the other end's daily. Mmm, poor family. I'm trying to figure out what happened here. So just bear with us. I said, "I'm going to work this case

'til the cows come home, but I need you to stay with me on this." It's nine years after Trisha Piccacho was stabbed to death on the stoop of her home, close to where Michael lived. But police in Illinois don't view Michael Garjulo as a suspect.

Instead, as a witness, Cook County PD have a suspect. Someone who they believe killed himself after murdering Trisha. But they have to rule out everyone else

before they can assume his body. They also have a DNA profile from samples extracted from underneath Trisha's fingernails in 1993. But it's not a match to anyone in the police system. They've come to LA to track down Michael

and get his DNA. From now on, the detectives join forces with the common aim.

Detective Tom Small also travels to Glenview

to dig into Michael's background.

“I met Michael Garjulo's former girlfriend”

from high school who he handcuffed and raped and never charged. That's Suzanne. In chapter two, we heard her account of what happened when she was 17. I met some of the neighborhood guys at

what the school of him that didn't like him, but they still live in that neighborhood. And I met some of the guys that he was on the football team with. And they didn't like him.

It was massively strong. But he had this problem where he just liked to hurt people. That comes throughout virtually.

Everybody I talked to that grew up with him.

They said he just likes to hurt people. He used to say things like you see that girl over there and I like the killer. Yeah. He would say things like that a lot.

Doug Pocaccio, Trisha's brother, used to charm around him,

“but then he said Mike got a little too weird for him.”

And he would just pick a fight. He'd find a weakling and just go assault him. Because he could. So these anecdotal stories really suggest he was pretty violent

and aggressive even back then.

So this is he's been violent, aggressive.

His whole life. Detective Tom Small's research paints a very different picture of the family dynamics than the one presented in court by the defense. In this version, Michael is the aggressor, not the victim. On October 29, 2002,

nearly two years after Ashley's murder, and nearly nine years after Trisha Pocaccio was killed. Detective Small serves search warrants in L.A. for multiple addresses connected to Michael. We hit all the paths simultaneously.

I had detectives at every location. One location is a particular interest.

“The apartment where he threatened his neighbor's 17-year-old daughter”

with a knife. The only place that Julia ever had his name on our rent receipt was on a place in Clark Drive on the west side of L.A. One block from Beverly Hills. That day, Detective Small is carrying out the search warrant

at another property linked to Michael when his phone rings. And I get a call. He says, "Guess who just showed up?" As you got to be kidding. He said, "No, he tried to bust through all four of us." He walked up out of the alley and detectives were outside

and two of the uniforms said, "Hey, no." And that's our Julia. And they say, "Mike, come on over here. We'd like to talk to you." And then the detectives come charging out and boom. They had a little scuffer.

But he wound up going to Cedar Sinai Medical Center. So we got the blood hair and saliva from him. Detective Small searches Michael's apartment. It was very sparse. There was no bed and a couple of items

that clothing hanging at one closet. There was a blanket in a pillow on the living room floor with a black bag. And I call that a go bag. It's like a bag that a criminal might use.

Inside that bag was one of those clear masks that maybe somebody wants to disturb their features. Super creepy looking. And there was also a 38 snub nose revolver there. Which turned out to be a stolen gun.

And then a super creepy discovery. A collection of dolls perfectly protected in their original packaging. There was something like 150 to 200 of these foolish dolls. We had them all stashed and stocked up in this bedroom.

Dr. Gagel's Texas chainsaw massacre. Some of these other horror type days. A real bloody gory with knives. Because he was a huge horror movie night. That must have been intimidating to walk in and see that.

Pissure like, "Okay, I'm on to something here." Well, yeah. Then I knew I had a freak in my hands here. That's where he gets inspiration. That's his art form.

Michael's obsessed with slasher movies and is an avid collector of the merch. He's also a violent video games. He's got the Mortal Kombat Dragon tattooed on his arm. A game notorious for its graphic violence. In court, the defense psychologist mentions Michael's alleged exposure

as a teenager to violent films of women being sexually tortured.

who's an expert in child abuse and neglect. So let's talk about these films. He was allegedly forced to watch. What is your take on that? Many people watch that and don't do it. And what's available on the internet now.

We know more and more youth have access to different types of pornography and what have you. And again, the majority of people can watch this and never think let me reenact it. You make a great point that watching slasher films does not a serial killer make.

“But would you argue that it might be what a killer could seek out?”

Something to be interested in. Absolutely.

I mean, like I never in a million years would watch it.

You know, I once went to a Clint Eastwood film that began with a rape. And I walked out, you know, like I helped people through these things. But I don't want to see it on the big screen. So, you know, so absolutely people may seek it out. Yeah.

You know, we know children watching violence increases the likelihood of them showing aggression. But again, aggressions on a spectrum and, you know, serial killers off the charts. Yeah. And those studies were kind of temporal in nature. They would exhibit aggression shortly thereafter.

But longitudinally, they weren't more aggressive as, um, as time went on. Detective Tom Small doesn't have enough evidence to arrest Michael. So he has to let him go. He's put under surveillance while they await the DNA test results. Well, got you a move around.

And he drives all over the place.

“He surveils, he's picking targets, you know.”

And he's hunting, basically.

He's like a polar bear. You're hunting him. And he's hunting you right back. In fact, we actually, uh, we crossed Passa. I followed him to, uh, his brother's apartment building in Hollywood.

And I saw that he parked the truck. Went inside. So I went inside to see where he goes. And it wasn't on any floor until I got to the fourth floor. And he was coming out of an apartment.

And we passed in the hallway. Out gosh. He probably made me as a cop. I didn't, I didn't pay any note to him because I wanted to tip him off. I was watching him.

You started just following him yourself.

Not, not even because you were working.

“Just, you just, gonna go spend time looking at him.”

Huh. Yeah, I didn't want anybody else getting killed. Uh, this guy's a savage. But at any rate, uh, we had to let him go. So, and then he went off the radar again.

He's off the grid. So you had him under surveillance. Any disappears. Yes. Because our surveillance wasn't continuous all the time.

We didn't have the bodies to do that. Because we had other murders. By now, it's 2003. A decade since Trisha Pocaccio's murder, and two years since Ashley was killed.

Michael is 27. And it will be a pivotal year for him. His girlfriend, Wilma Carillo, gives birth to a baby boy. Michael becomes a father. In September, Detective Small gets another call from Illinois.

The unknown DNA found under Trisha Pocaccio's fingernails has been matched. Two Michael. Detective Small is convinced he's got his man. But his hands are tied. At this point, you have DNA.

Why is it he's not arrested? The DNA that I had from him didn't match a thing in Ashley's house. There was no Carjulo DNA that we were able to uncover. And we trapped the walls, the door knobs, the flooring, everything. In this case, there just wasn't enough for me to arrest him on.

Just as the net is closing in, Michael outsmarts the cops yet again. They've got his DNA on Trisha Pocaccio. But he's left nothing at the scene of Ashley Ellerin's murder. He knows detectives are watching his every move, so he buys his time until the surveillance operation is called off.

Then, suddenly, he vanishes. Tom Small's worst nightmare. And nobody knows where he's at. And I'm getting kind of frantic because I know it's a matter of time. He's going to kill again.

Next time on Mind of a Monster, the Hollywood Ripper. In addition to committing these murders, he had a history of domestic violence. And he gets behind me and I'm facing my apartment door and he puts me in a headwalk. The attack on her was so vicious, so callous that it almost was like a personal thing.

And really, this representation of like each ship.

“I slam a paper ship, holy ship, holy ship.”

I'm running around like, oh my god, it's him.

It's him. What am I going to do?

“Mind of a Monster, the Hollywood Ripper, is produced by Arrow Media, a free mantle company for ID.”

I'm your host, Dr. Michelle Ward.

You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts.

“And we'd love it if you could take a second to leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.”

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