The Hot One

by Carolyn Murnick

  I read her assessment one night after hours at my office in a motion drafted by the prosecution that the amateur trial blogger scanned and uploaded. Technically, I read the summary of her assessment one night after hours at my office. It would take me another year to get through the entire seventy-six pages. It was another of those sensitive, potentially draining tasks that I kept saying I’d get to.

  What was I afraid of at that point? What was left? I wasn’t quite sure, but I assumed I’d know it when I saw it and that it was still ahead of me. I couldn’t discount the idea that somewhere, at some point, I might still come across a certain fact or picture or quote that would knock me on my ass and leave me cowering. It was like the coroner’s report all over again, but in many ways scarier. This time there was a living human monster attached to it all and a face I could attach to that. A face I been in the same room with and stared at for hours.

  This was seventy-six pages of details on this killer’s inner life. Seventy-six pages of his sexual perversions and appetite for violence. Seventy-six pages of the horror Ashley had experienced at the end. This was different from the crime scene photos I had thought I was prepared to see. Those had been terrifying, but they had been only the end result and had skipped over everything that had gone before. This would be all the tiny steps that made it come together. This would be “There but for the grace of God go I.”

  Maybe there were some things I still needed to keep in the abstract for my own well-being. Perhaps seeing catalogued in black and white the particulars of how Ashley had been chosen and then, once she was, how powerless she had been to stop the force intent on ending her—that was something I needed to keep at bay. Because what if it had been me? Couldn’t it have?

  Someone close to the case once described their perception of what Gargiulo was really like, not the version we saw in court or the version Chris, Justin, and Ashley might have hung out with years ago. The real Gargiulo, the psychopath mastermind, the one who could really be a cold-blooded killer.

  This person had visited Gargiulo in jail, arriving unannounced. The high-powered floor where Gargiulo lived was kept dark—the inmates would put paper or cellophane over their lightbulbs to keep it that way, they told me. It was dank, too. You had to walk on the far side of the wall so that the prisoners couldn’t reach out their hands through the bars and grab you. Gargiulo was sitting on the floor of his cell when this person arrived, scribbling maniacally into a notebook. He looked up from the floor; he was caught off guard, without time to put one of his masks on, and there it was. “I looked into his eyes and I saw evil,” this person said. “It was chilling. It was not human. That’s the last thing his victims saw. That’s the last thing Ashley saw.”

  • • •

  I picked up the report again on a Friday evening. I was still at my desk, killing time before meeting a friend for dinner downtown, and I had gotten into that strange vortex that sometimes hits you as an office worker. You’ve passed the normal hour at which you should have already left, yet for some reason, you can’t move. Your work for the day is done, so why aren’t you already outside? As you watch one coworker after another head out for the weekend, something mysterious keeps you fixed in your seat, until all of a sudden it is just you and the cleaning crew. Maybe it’s boredom or inertia or muscle memory or the sort of sense confusion that comes from spending eight hours a day under fluorescent light. What was another few more?

  I clicked over to the trial blogger’s site. Updates on other splashy LA cases such as the Grim Sleeper dominated coverage. It had been more than a year since the O’Toole report had been filed. During that time I had been to Los Angeles three more times. I had met with deputy district attorneys and visited another of Ashley’s favorite hotel bars. I had been to Vegas to Ashley’s club and watched a man sharing my banquette get a lap dance from a bored-looking olive-skinned girl while his friend puffed on a fat cigar. If we were talking about the five stages of grief, by this point I felt as though I were somewhere in between bargaining and acceptance.

  In the report there was a lot of overview to get through before things really started turning horrifying. O’Toole characterized the killer’s crimes as “instrumental violence,” as opposed to reactive or affective violence. “Instrumental violence . . . is a specific type of violence that is cold-blooded, purposeful, and goal-directed,” she stated, whereas the other two types are more emotional and typically deployed in response to a real or perceived threat. Ashley’s murder—as well as Tricia’s and Maria’s and Michelle’s attempted murder—had been crimes of instrumental violence. “The emotional state of an offender engaged in instrumental violence is controlled.” Controlled as in placid? As in how one might be pushing his cart down the aisle at Ralph’s, considering a new brand of organic canned chickpeas because they’re on special? Or controlled as if you’re a serial killer and there’s no need to let your pulse quicken when you’re killing a woman because you have the whole thing orchestrated and timed down to the minute and you’ve gotten away with it before? Probably that last one. “This is an offender who does well in what would be extremely stressful and fearful situations for most people,” O’Toole continued. Go figure—this guy sounded like a regular Tony Robbins.

  The report maintained that the four crimes had been committed by the same person based on thirty-seven points of similarity, which O’Toole went on to define. Each had a header, ranging from “Blitz-Ambush Attack” to “Depersonalization of Victims” to “Post-Mortem Mutilation as Sexual Motivation.” The killer was a thrill seeker. He “took multiple and significant risks . . . beyond what was necessary to commit the crimes. He likely engaged in risk-taking behavior to make the crimes even more exciting for him both psychologically as well as sexually.” Among them: killing Ashley at her home with the lights on in a house that was visible from the street; giving himself a small window of opportunity to commit the crime (Durbin had just left her house—who knew if he might unexpectedly return?); and spending more time than was necessary in her home after killing her to mutilate and pose her body.

  A note about the posing. In some ways this was one of the most grotesque elements of the crime to me even though I hadn’t ever learned the specifics. The generals were terrible enough. The thought of it by itself was repulsive, that was clear, but there was a crucial gap in the information around the particular pose Ashley had been found in that had served to inflate things for me over the years. I had heard about it before, both that posing was a thing that psychopath killers did to their victims, and that it was a thing that had been done to Ashley. It was about depersonalization and criminal signature and somehow showing off your ghastly handiwork. I knew the gruesome details of how the alleged killer had mutilated and posed Maria Bruno—slicing off her breasts and nipples and arranging them in her mouth and near her head—but for some reason the details on how exactly Ashley was posed had evaded my notice. The posing had not been described in the preliminary hearing, and it had not been described in any of the preceding motions. I knew only that it had been vulgar and degrading. If I had seen the pictures back at the hearing, the mystery would have been over, but since I hadn’t, I was forced again to speculate. Why were the horrifying details of Maria Bruno’s postmortem pose referred to again and again while Ashley’s were kept in veiled secrecy? Could hers somehow be worse? I found it impossible to imagine what could be worse than having one’s chest ripped open, your own nipples positioned as if you were cannibalistically nursing yourself.

  Was there anything written on Ashley? Had something been stuffed into her mouth? I knew that she had been found clothed and hadn’t been sexually assaulted, so what could it be? My twisted ideas spiraled further downward. I held out hope that those visions would somehow end up being more outrageous than the truth, but I also wasn’t sure why it felt it mattered so much, just that it did. Ashley had been brutally murdered and mutilated postmortem—how did that extra posing element change anything? I suppose it had something to do with the desecra
tion element. That it was mockery and subjugation and twisting the knife into the living.

  I had to wait until page fifty-eight of the report to learn more. Before all that I’d be treated to a veritable epic on serial killer behavior. The killer knew the layout of Ashley’s house, because he had been there before. He knew the kind of street traffic that he might encounter on any given time of day on Pinehurst, because he had been there countless times prior to February 21, 2001. He knew Ashley’s schedule and that of her friends, because he had observed her comings and goings for months—maybe longer—prior to her murder. Perhaps he had documented it all in a secret notebook, in a code, maybe like bird-watching or scoring a baseball game. 0800 large-breasted sparrow enters nest, 82 degrees. In fact, this watching behavior might have even been part of his sexual motivation. Both Ashley and Maria Bruno were murdered shortly after having sex; the report attests that “This offender would most likely have been right outside their windows when this was happening.”

  Crouching in the bushes, maybe? Or perhaps camped out in the dog park across the street with binoculars? Or maybe he was the crossing guard that you pass every day on the way to your car. Take your pick of whatever fright-fest cliché you can think up—at least one of them was likely to be true. Picture the room you’re in right now; maybe it’s the kitchen, or maybe you’re on the train. Now picture the world outside your frame that’s just slightly out of view. Maybe it’s the next train car or the outside of your house just below the windows. Now imagine there’s a serial killer there, tracking your movements and counting down the days or hours until he descends upon you, but you wouldn’t know a thing about it until it’s too late. That was potentially Ashley’s life for the entirety of 2001.

  Of course one can’t go through life worrying about a serial killer next door. Because then the terrorists win. Because statistically, what are the chances? What were the odds that of two little girls who grew up together in rural New Jersey, one wouldn’t reach the age of twenty-three because she’d be brutally murdered by an alleged serial killer in Hollywood? What were the odds? You don’t need to be a mathematician to understand that kind of statistical improbability.

  I learned a new and disgusting word: piquerism. From the French piquer, or “to prick,” piquerism is defined as “sexual arousal resulting from repeatedly stabbing a victim.” I doubted it was something I would ever use in a sentence. Could I get “Piquerism” for $200, Alec? The report goes on to detail all the ways this killer had likely been aroused sexually by committing the crimes even though there was no evidence of sexual assault in any of the victims.

  Chris once told me about a dream he’d had shortly after Ashley had died. They were having breakfast, sitting across the table from each other in the breakfast nook, probably at her house. She was wearing that pink angora sweater that made her look even more voluptuous than usual—Chris still had the sweater; he had picked up her last dry cleaning order. In the dream, he says, he asked her out of nowhere, “Aren’t you scared?”

  His voice breaks when he tells me this part, every time.

  “No,” she said.

  Then he asked again, “How can you not be scared?” And then, in the dream, Ashley pulled up her sweater to reveal a suit of armor underneath her shirt. She told him not to worry. A metal breastplate, a cuirass, I think they’re called? We smiled at each other wanly the first time he told it, at a big Italian restaurant in Pasadena one of the early times we met. “I just remember all the mornings we sat there and had coffee and talked about our nights before, whether we had spent them together or not,” he trails off.

  I love that dream. I love it for its hopefulness and convenience and naked neediness. I love it for the way it shows how the mind tries to protect us, how we cling to magical thinking and spiritual fantasy to cut through muck we can’t compute and to try to make sense of terror. I wish I had one like it of my own.

  Instead what I had was page fifty-eight.

  There appears to be blood smearing between her legs, indicative of the offender positioning her legs. Her left hand with the index finger is pointed toward her inner thigh area and vaginal area. The blood pattern on the back of the left hand indicates it had been moved from the source of the blood where it had been laying. . . . Her legs are spread apart with her left leg bent at the knee and her right leg straight. Her body would not have naturally collapsed in this position. . . . For the offender, seeing these women displayed in this manner, destroyed and ruined, was likely very “satisfying” for him—even enjoyable, fun, and sexually arousing. He most likely wanted to remember them and how they looked and it is therefore likely he would have photographed them.

  Enjoyable! Fun! Sexually arousing! Take that out of context, and you’d think you were reading about the newest couples massage treatment at your hotel spa. There is a sound track of a rushing mountain river behind you, and the masseuse is probably using ylang-ylang essential oil on your temples. How fun! How enjoyable! And how sexually arousing!

  It was hard for me to square that the word fun appeared anywhere in this report. I wanted to put it back where it belonged: describing bike rides in the park and ocean swims and dancing at weddings. Then there was the pictures thing. Not only are there police photographs of this scene, now we learn that there are likely private ones as well. Where could he have gotten them developed? It was 2001, after all; there weren’t digital cameras anywhere. I feel as though we would have heard if he’d had a darkroom in his apartment. Maybe there was some filthy place he went in the Valley that still developed snuff films; it was in the basement of some nail salon, and you had to know a guy who knew a guy to get in. Could he have had a Polaroid? Where are those pictures now? I think about some of the ones Ashley and I used to take, the preteen ones that got a little vulgar: there was some tongue wagging and crotch grabbing in oversized stonewashed jeans, with my pastel comet wallpaper as a backdrop. We were just playing around, we were just kids, but now I look at them and feel ashamed. It’s as if we had been playing with toy guns, barely even considering them real, and then one of us grew up to be killed by an AK-47 in a mass shooting.

  I think of Lindner’s words at the elevator: “Sometimes that can turn out to be a lot to handle, knowing what happened.” At the time I just wanted to get through the conversation and his sentiments felt trite, but now it seemed they were finally starting to sink in. Deputy District Attorney Marna Miller knew what she was talking about. It was indeed a lot to handle. Am I handling it? I think so. In some ways. Sort of. I think I am taking it in my hands and rolling it from side to side, seeing how it feels. I think the wet clay is leaving a sticky, muddy film on my skin. I think it will dry to a chalky finish and make everything feel tight. I think I will wash my hands later today as thoroughly as I can, and then still tomorrow I will notice that some leftover brown dirt has stuck around my cuticles, under the nail beds, and in the tiny fold of skin on my fourth finger knuckle.

  17

  NEAT LITTLE BOW

  I WENT TO a weekend meditation retreat after a bad breakup. I journeyed to the Berkshires during a full moon and slept in a bunk bed in a room with a dozen other women. We rose at 5 a.m. and went to practice yoga and then to eat a vegan breakfast in the cafeteria. Each day we gathered silently for multiple three-hour sessions and listened to our Buddhist teacher instruct us in how not to think. Breathe in, breathe out. Fill your lungs. Notice with the out breath that it’s possible to feel, very physically, a letting go. Direct your attention to the sensations in your body. Listen to your heart, and connect with what brings you here. Where are you holding on to stress? Where are you feeling pain? Where does loss live in your body? At every moment we have a choice, she would say. A choice to be present. A choice to respond instead of react.

  In between our “sits” we would divide ourselves into smaller groups and share where we were in life. A man in my group started to cry before he even spoke. Another woman told of a medical ordeal so emotionally wrenching that I wondered how she could p
ossibly ever leave her bed again. When it got to my turn I thought of Ashley, but instead I said something lame and self-protective about wanting to learn how to be more present and to manage stress. It was easier that way, or so I told myself, but I regretted it the moment the words left my mouth. Everything that came next would be pretending, and I didn’t want to go on much longer like that.

  Some of the exercises would involve staring intently into a stranger’s eyes while the teacher talked above us in voice-over: “The person opposite from you has felt suffering. They’ve felt their body fail them. They’ve experienced heartbreak and deep love and seen the suffering of others.” My partner for the first round was a woman who looked to be in her seventies. She had a scraggly white ponytail and was there alone and had brought her own meditation cushion. I wondered if she was somebody’s grandmother. Mine, when she was living, wouldn’t have known what to make of a room like this one. Doesn’t anyone here have a job? she would have asked.

  Our breathing deepened as we continued, the teacher’s words floating around us like movie trailer narration. “The person opposite you has failed at something that was deeply important to them. They’ve watched a loved one struggle without knowing how to help.” Even as her eyes began to soften in pain, my partner’s gaze did not waver. I wished it would. She was too good at this. Her intensity would not let me look away as much as I wanted to. “The person opposite you has buried a loved one.” Our teacher’s words felt like punches in the chest, each one like having another item of clothing stripped off in front of this stranger. What would be left? It was as if I could feel the grandmother wordlessly appraising all the things about me she couldn’t actually see: the stretch marks on my upper thighs, the scar on my left knee, the way my throat would catch when I thought about the very last time I had seen Ashley, on the downtown C train. How did this teacher know how to trigger protectiveness for all our hidden places? How did she know the things that made us cry out on random icy winter evenings when we slipped on the sidewalk? I had to fight the urge to bolt for the exit by digging into my tongue with my teeth.