On February 22, 2001, Ashley Ellerin was found dead by her roommate in the Hollywood Hills apartment that they shared. The 22-year-old fashion-design student had been stabbed 47 times and was nearly decapitated. Because her body had also been posed in an odd position, police were led to believe that her murder was the work of a serial killer. Michael Gargiulo—nicknamed the “Hollywood Ripper”—was found guilty of killing her and another woman 20 years later and sentenced to death.
Ellerin was murdered the night before her body was discovered, and interestingly enough, was waiting for a well-known celebrity to pick her up for a date when she was killed. Ashton Kutcher, who was still appearing on That ‘70s Show at the time, met Ellerin at a party a few months earlier and was scheduled to take her out the evening of her death. He last spoke to her at around 8:30 p.m. and unsuccessfully tried to reach her four times afterward. Kutcher didn’t end up arriving at her house until almost 11 p.m.
Ashton Kutcher Was Supposed to Pick Up Ashley Ellerin the Night She Was Murdered
While testifying during Gargiulo’s murder trial in 2019, Kutcher said that he knocked on Ellerin’s door a couple of times, but she didn’t answer. At that point, he assumed she’d gone out and was mad at him for being late. Prior to leaving, Kutcher looked through her window and noticed what he initially thought were wine stains on the floor, though he didn’t give it a second thought. Little did he know then that what he saw was actually Ellerin’s blood.
When Kutcher heard what happened the next day, he understandably freaked out. Worried that detectives would think he killed Ellerin, he went right to the police station to tell them why his fingerprints were on her door. They quickly ruled him out as a suspect, and it took several years for them to connect Gargiulo to the murder. Gargiulo was arrested in June 2008, following an attack on a woman in her Santa Monica apartment that thankfully wasn’t fatal; he was charged with Ellerin’s murder that September after DNA evidence connected him to her case.
The post 25 Years Ago, Ashton Kutcher Showed Up for a Date and Became Part of a Hollywood Murder Case appeared first on VICE.
