The Hot One

by Carolyn Murnick

  On the subject of energy, I’ve gradually adjusting to the feeling of being in the same room with him, the defendant. Mr. Gargiulo. That guy. The guy. The first time it happened last year, the whole thing went by so quickly, I didn’t have time to register a vibe. Now I’ve had hours of sitting here to take it all in, the idea that we’re both occupying space in the same confined area. The years and the actions and the sequence of events have brought us here for completely different reasons, but still, we both knew her. Our breath molecules are probably mingling together somewhere in the middle of the room, hovering above everything that’s going on before floating up to burn away against the buzzing fluorescent lightbulbs.

  When there’s a lull in the goings-on, I watch the side of his face, reading his lips. I size up his jawline, his hairline, his slumped posture: I’m a few feet away from the guy who killed Ashley. What the fucking fuck. And then sometimes: Is this really the guy who killed Ashley? How can we really know for sure with no DNA match and no witnesses? What’s he thinking right now? What must it be like to be trapped in this never-ending cycle of being in and out of a room where your life is on the line? Why does he look so unconcerned? And then some moments I’d wonder if I was a horrible person even to consider his perspective at all. Who does that? Does that make me unsympathetic? A bad friend? A bad person? A few times Gargiulo turns toward the gallery and we almost make eye contact, but I quickly avert my eyes. What do I think will happen if we actually exchange a glance?

  • • •

  Jen starts to answer the party-girl, question, and District Attorney Miller surprisingly doesn’t interject. Most of the questions from Lindner are met by a swift objection from Ms. Miller. I’m glad she’s a woman. I have quickly bestowed upon her herolike status as a crusader for justice and female victims’ rights, but that’s not hard to do when the defense seems determined to portray Ashley as a reckless, coke-snorting whore.

  “In fact, Miss Ellerin slept with her landlord. . . . Do you know if he had keys?”

  (This is news to me.)

  “At any time while you were in the house, were there any male visitors in her bedroom that you saw?”

  “I’m going to object as vague and ambiguous as to time,” says Miller. The judge asks for clarification.

  Other versions of the question showed up later with Chris. “Did Miss Ellerin have a reputation as being sexually available to men?”

  “Objection! A reputation?”

  “Sustained.”

  “Do you have an opinion?”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained.”

  It goes on like this for some time, Lindner pushes the envelope with most people from Ashley’s crowd only to be shot down by Miller, rinse, repeat. How many ways are there to pretend not to be asking if Ashley was a slut? What does that even mean, anyway? If we were in the Victorian era, we might ask: “Was she a loose woman, the kind you’d turn your head from if you passed her on the street?” If we were in the fifties, perhaps: “Would she be the type your mother would warn you against?” If it were the sixties, maybe we’d call her a free-love counterculture type. But if we could be straight up, we might just ask, “Did she have a lot of sex? And does that justify her murder?” It’s unfortunate that the easiest way might be to say it just like that, but all the talking around the issues has the effect of making it sound much nastier, scarlet letter–ish, town square public-stoning style. I’m taking notes through all of this, and my fingers are flying over the keys, transcribing phrases and questions verbatim that sound straight out of a dark thriller. Drugs, sex, adultery—and we’re only into the first few hours of the first day.

  • • •

  I had no idea everything would be happening this quickly and this aggressively. I had no idea there would even be so much focus on Ashley—I had assumed I’d be hearing a lot about the other victims, too. I’m learning stories about Ashley’s life that I was only able to speculate about, and the truth is crazier than anything I thought up on my own. It’s like every stereotype of the good girl gone bad, the ingenue eaten up by the great big seductive, manipulative, unforgiving city of Los Angeles. How much of this is accurate, and how much is the defense’s fault? Am I just hooking on to Lindner’s ideas because he’s adding more zing? And in that case, will a jury do the same?

  I assumed there would at least be some kernel of familiarity in the person being described up there, some hint of recognition of the Ashley I knew or even the one I had spent time with a decade ago that week in New York. She was jaded and cynical and way more experienced than I was, but she was also curious about me and thoughtful and excited about things other than drugs. What about piano? Or, I don’t know, helping her neighbors or stuff about school? Was there any of that? Instead, all this has me picturing a truly hardened, reckless person who I’m not sure I ever would have spent time with or even crossed paths with, for that matter. She was sleeping with her landlord on the same day she had a date with Ashton Kutcher? She did crack? She was out of my orbit in every sense.

  I hate that feeling, and even worse than that, I know that the defense is doing a good job in picking at the state’s case. Since we’re just at the preliminary hearing phase, the state’s burden is only to prove probable cause that the defendant committed the murder. During the trial, they will have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. I can imagine how the defense might just line up the details of Ashley’s comings and goings and attempt to reduce her to a careless, risk-taking, unflattering trope. It’s incredibly hard to hear and feels deeply unfair, but I get it. Both of the attorneys are just doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and who knows who really believes what. Can there be a reasonable doubt that the defendant, Michael Gargiulo, actually did it? Couldn’t it have been any number of people, ’cause, hell, this girl barely closed the door to her house, let alone her legs? Objection! Sustained! And on it goes. All of that doesn’t change the fact that Ashley was murdered or suggest that she deserved to be, but still. Just putting it out there, folks. You can draw your own conclusions.

  • • •

  It was just a few hours into testimony, but it was already easy to pick out the competing narratives the two sides were throwing down about Ashley. Marna Miller mostly stuck to the facts; she called witnesses to speak about the crime scene and some background witnesses who told anecdotes of Gargiulo’s creepiness. One woman alluded to an incident that couldn’t be discussed on the record, and another who lived in his apartment building said he had once put a knife to her throat. “He asked if I know how to defend myself in case somebody ever held a knife to my throat,” she recounted on the stand, saying that Gargiulo had asked her that one day out of the blue. She stayed calm as she said it, not looking at him. The story continued chillingly: she had said no, and then he had come up behind her and done it. She had stayed frozen with fear, she said, and then he had just laughed. Christ.

  I learned that Ashton Kutcher had been excused from the preliminary hearing for some reason, but his statement was read by Detective Thomas Chevolek. It was brief and contained nothing I hadn’t already learned from InTouch and others: he and Ashley had plans that night to meet for drinks around 10:30 p.m. He was going to the house of someone named Christy to watch the Grammys but told Ashley they’d hook up after. He called her three times that day. She called him at 8:24 p.m. He called her back. There was a lot of calling. When he got to Ashley’s house around 10:45 p.m., the lights were on and her maroon BMW was parked in the driveway. Ashton knocked on the door several times, looked in the window, and saw what he thought was red wine on the carpet to her bedroom. He left, figuring she had blown him off.

  Marna Miller also placed Gargiulo at the scene prior to the night of the murder through testimony about all the times he had stopped by Ashley’s house unannounced after the two of them had met on the street when he’d helped Chris change a flat tire, the day that had started it all. Chris, then a fashion stylist, now a hairstylist, had showed up one afternoon after a p
hoto shoot, as he did most days, and parked in front of Ashley’s house to pick her up to go out for lunch or coffee or tanning, one of those things they always did together. When they’d come out a few minutes later, the car’s back tire was mysteriously flat. Chris had gotten down on the ground and begun checking it out, and Ashley had just laughed. Did he really know how to change a tire? He did and was about to begin doing so when suddenly Gargiulo had appeared, walking down the hill toward them. At the top of the hill was a dead end. Where was he coming from?

  Later, Chris would tell me that when he took his tire in to be repaired, the auto shop told him it wasn’t actually a regular flat—it had been slashed.

  • • •

  Lindner, for his part, was cross-examining witnesses about the number of parties Ashley had had at the house, introducing the suggestion that Gargiulo and Ashley might have been more than friends and asking for details about her drug use, stripping, and apparently very active sex life. He pushed the boundaries in a big, cringe-making way, and it didn’t seem to matter when he got overruled. Lindner only needed his questions to be on the record, and even if the witness didn’t end up having to answer, eventually, the jury would be listening.

  A few months back I had begun reading the comments online from stories about the case. Most were benign or garden-variety crazy—I worked at a website; I had an intimate understanding of online commenter crazy—but a few felt more threateningly pointed. One from a message board for unsolved crime geeks connected to the A&E Cold Case Files show struck me as particularly gross. When I came upon it, I instinctively shook my head like a scolding librarian. Then I cut and pasted the lines into a Word document and hit save:

  This chick was a one-woman Boneathon. A good defense attorney should be able to raise plenty of reasonable doubt due to the “carefree” way she lived her life.

  Why did I want a record of that line? I wasn’t sure, except that it seemed to underscore the sad fact that Ashley’s life no longer belonged to her in an especially cruel manner. It made my protective impulses flare up in a new way. Ashley didn’t deserve any of this. She had suddenly been made a public figure for the worst possible reason, and she wasn’t around to defend herself or do anything at all, really. She was now being talked about on message boards and in tabloids and in courtrooms by attorneys who had never even met her, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. They could call her whatever they wanted in an open court, and all that could be said was “Objection!” Not to mention, so what if she had slept with lots of guys? Did that make her less entitled to live her life without getting murdered? Did that make the loss of her less painful for her friends and family?

  And here I was, watching it all play out in front of me in real time just as the Internet troll had said it would: a good defense attorney, a chick being described as a Boneathon, reasonable doubt creeping in: check, check, check—and we weren’t even at the real trial yet.

  • • •

  When the judge finally pauses things for lunch, I am more than ready for a break. Christine and the two other media people—one other woman from CBS News arrived later—rush up to the bar behind DA Marna Miller to introduce themselves. I follow them, idly, because it seems like the thing to do. She’s gathering her papers together and not looking up when Christine gets her attention. She asks her if she can get her card, and in response Ms. Miller is terse. She sighs and looks up at the lot of us; it feels as if she’d prefer not to deal with us. We stand facing her in a row expectantly, and she goes down the line. “Who are you writing for?” “Who are you writing for?” she asks. LA Weekly, CBS News, NBC come the answers. Christine asks if she has time to talk later, and Ms. Miller says probably not. Then it’s my turn. “Who are you writing for?” she asks, barely looking up.

  I have been asked this before, so this time I am a tiny bit less nervous, though I’m worried she might be confused as to why I’m hanging with the press crowd. It’s true I’m an editor, and the thought has crossed my mind that one day maybe I’d write about some of this, somehow. At this moment, though, I have no idea what form it will take and if or when it will ever happen. I want to be transparent, but this feels like too much to explain. “I’m not on assignment,” I say. “I’m Ashley’s childhood friend.” Ms. Miller looks up. She makes eye contact with me. She puts her hand on my shoulder and cocks her head to the side. The transformation is striking.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says. “If you need anything at all or would like to talk about what’s going on, please let me know.” Then she hands me her card. I thank her, and we chat for a moment longer—How long am I in town? Where am I from?—as she gathers her things. I feel a surge of connection with DA Miller. I feel her graciousness and her civic duty, and I imagine what it would be like to be her friend. She’d be harried and late for drinks most of the time, but when she finally arrived you’d instantly forgive her. You’d give her a gift certificate for a massage on her birthday, and she’d never get around to using it. She cares. She struggles. She exhibits grace. She fights the good fight.

  When I look behind me, all of the other press people are gone. I feel a small bit of guilt about what feels like special treatment from Ms. Miller, the immediate trust she’s placed in me and the elevated status that comes with it, no questions asked. Do I deserve it? Am I an imposter? Am I one of them, or am I one of the others?

  The DA and I walk out of the courtroom together, and there’s Christine, chatting with the CBS woman in the hall outside. They’re standing close together, but the two of them catch my eye as we pass and give me a “Well, look at you, missy” nod. I smile wanly.

  • • •

  In the afternoon it’s Chris’s turn on the stand. Watching him up there is the most wrenching yet—he’s the most emotional of anyone who’s testified so far. He’s teary and choked-up almost from the get-go, and I feel for him, even as my cynical side questions the display. It’s almost histrionic—isn’t this a little excessive for a person you knew only eight months? It’s also been nine years since. Was it really possible to get that close in such a short time and for the wound to be still so open?

  But as I got to know Chris over the coming years, I’d grow to understand more about what this was really all about, where the tears were coming from and where they often headed to, and how the way a person carries loss with him can be as individual as a fingerprint.

  • • •

  I’d learn that Chris came on the scene through Justin. They had first connected online in an AOL gay chat room and had even hooked up a few times, but Justin had said he lived with his girlfriend. Weird, but whatever, man, not my business, Chris had thought. Once, Justin invited Chris over to the house when Ashley was home and suggested that the three of them go out together. Chris was confused. Why would he want to go out with his hookup partner and that guy’s girlfriend?

  Right away, Chris and Ashley hit it off, and that put him into a tricky position. Finally he just went for it. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” he told Ashley, “but your boyfriend’s gay.” Ashley got a kick out of that one and assured Chris that she and Justin were just friends. “Good, ’cause you didn’t seem that stupid,” Chris said.

  After that they were inseparable. Breakfast, lunch, coffee, drinks, tanning. They both ran in a young celebrity crowd, so they already knew a lot of people in common. They saw each other just about every day and were always getting into something. Chris spent the night there a lot, too. In Justin’s bed, in Ashley’s bed, on the couch—he treated it like a second home. He and Ashley had similar attitudes about drugs, too—a passing interest in coke and crystal, mostly. It could be fun if it was around, but it wasn’t really their style to get strung out. Every so often they’d agree that they needed to take it easy, but they were never too worried about it.

  The same went for men. For Ashley, they were everywhere, and they wouldn’t let up! Chris told me he couldn’t believe how much male attention she attracted, wherever they went and no matter what sh
e was wearing. People were always asking if she was an actress, and then it would start from there. Rich dudes, models, Hollywood types—they all sort of blurred together.

  I could easily picture what he meant; I had seen it myself when Ashley and I had gone out in New York, how captivated and shameless the guys were. I wondered how it felt to Chris, a gay man, to observe it all at the time. To me, a straight woman, I remembered it feeling brutal. Seeing the way men looked at Ashley to me felt like power, power I had felt outside of.

  In the years since, my feelings had shifted; the male gaze felt like power only up to a point; it could just as easily be disempowering. Sure, it was fun to flirt when someone cute noticed you, but how about when your boss looks inappropriately at your chest during a meeting? How about when you’re walking home alone and there’s someone following you? Or how about, God forbid, a serial killer moves in down the road and you happen to catch his eye?

  Harnessing male desire in and of itself would always be a losing game and potentially a dangerous one, as men would always have the upper hand. Playing the game might open a few doors, it might lead to some fleeting excitement, but it wasn’t the path to a deeper fulfillment or even a good relationship. It had taken me most of my twenties—a time in which I gradually came into a sense of sexual confidence I imagined Ashley had felt early on—to figure that out. Sexual power didn’t lead to happiness or fulfilling relationships with men. That sort of confidence, that sort of groundedness, was about something much more hard won than the right makeup and heels.