The brutal knife attacks brought the woman murderer the epithet "Hollywood Ripper" - now threatens the 43-year-old Michael Gargiulo the death penalty. A twelve-member jury decided on Friday (local time) after several days of deliberations for the maximum penalty. The court in Los Angeles said. Gargiulo has shown no emotion in reading the recommendation, wrote the Los Angeles Times.
In the sensational trial, the jury had already pleaded guilty to murdering two women in mid-August and attempted to murder a third victim.
The recommendation of the six men and six women for the death penalty has yet to be confirmed by a judge. This is scheduled for the end of February.
California, the state with the largest number of death row inmates, is currently not executing death sentences. Democratic governor Gavin Newsom suspended the death sentence in March by decree.
Transferred with the help of DNA traces
In his actions Gargiulo had been extremely brutal. He was arrested in 2008 after a knife attack on a neighbor in Santa Monica. The woman survived. He was then linked to the murder of two women in 2001 and 2005 by DNA traces.
The 22-year-old Ashley Ellerin was killed in 2001 in her house with 47 knife wounds. She was a friend of actor Ashton Kutcher. He testified as a witness in the several-month trial.
In 2005, a 32-year-old neighbor Gargiulos victim. The perpetrator stabbed during the nocturnal attack according to police reports many times and cut off his victim's breasts. In another trial, Gargiulo is accused of murdering an 18-year-old in 1993 in Chicago, Illinois.
Gargiulo, a plumber, had denied the murders. The attack on the neighbor in Santa Monica admitted his defenders in the process, however. About their client they said that he had suffered from a mental disorder and could not remember the incident. As a child he was severely abused. Their request for insanity of the offender, however, the jury had dismissed.
Lawyer: "Question of Humanity"
Gargiulo's lawyer, Daniel Nardoni, told the Los Angeles Times about the required death sentence saying it was "not right to kill our mentally ill." It is a "question of humanity".
The prosecution had portrayed the culprit as cold-blooded and calculating. During the day, he led a normal life as a businessman and family man, but at night he turned into a completely different person, said prosecutor Garrett Dameron.
Many of those affected had taken legal position in court for or against the maximum penalty in recent years. The husband of one of the murder victims told in tears how he had to tell his four small children that their mother was no longer alive.
The woman who had survived Gargiulo's knife attack told the jury how she had resisted the intruder with all her strength. Even months after the fact, she could barely sleep and suffered from anxiety, said the 37-year-old, according to the US magazine "People".
The 16-year-old son Gargiulos had come before the jury to avert the death penalty. He was five years old when his father was arrested in 2008. All I see is my father, and I wish he would stay alive so that I could still speak with him, "the Los Angeles Times quoted from the boy's petition in court.