Friends of Ellerin told police that, after she met him, Gargiulo, who lived a block away, at one point fixed her heater, but then would show up uninvited to the bungalow, and on multiple occasions he was spotted parked outside, seemingly watching the place.
"Ashley knew I had 'an occurrence' with him and she knew how I felt," Justin Peterson later said, LA Weekly reported in November 2010. "She didn't seem concerned. She was an amazing person who would make friends with everyone."
"Probably someone came to the door," Detective Tom Small said, "and the rest is history. She knew the guy, and according to the people who knew her, if she knew you, she would let you in."
"A sense of trauma just came over me," Jennifer Disisto told 48 Hours in 2011, recalling how she found Ashley's body. "I thought maybe the person was still there, and I kinda ran out, and getting to the car... and calling from my cell phone, 911... It still traumatizes me to this day."
After a pretrial hearing (Kutcher did not testify then; a detective who interviewed him testified as to what the actor told him), a judge ruled on June 30, 2010, that the case should proceed to trial. No date was set, but surely no one thought it would take almost nine years to get underway. According to the Los Angeles Times, the decade-long delay in trying this case is largely due to Gargiulo switching attorneys several times, and for about three years he was representing himself.
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