Michael Gargiulo

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Why couldn’t the Cook County Sheriff’s Office solve the 1993 Tricia Pacaccio murder?
The Cooks County Sheriff’s Office was unable to solve the murder in 1993 due to lack of enough evidence against the suspect.
The state Attorney of the time Richard A. Devine instructed the police not to arrest Gargiulo at that time as his prosecutor argues that the DNA present on Pacaccio may have been left there by the suspect innocently.
What evidence did they have?
Evidence present at the time was foreign DNA that was located in Pacaccio fingernails. This evidence was however deemed not admissible in court as Gargiulo had been present in the victims’ house the night before. This made the detectives rule out that the DNA could have been from “casual contact” between the victim and the suspect.
What mistakes were made that hindered the investigation?
By allowing the suspect to move out to California even with a pending investigation on him, the Sheriff’s Office made a mistake. Travel restrictions should have been imposed until the case is closed.
The presence of DNA should have been evidence enough to have the suspect taken in and charged with murder, but the sheriff’s office went a bit sloppy in implementing this verdict.
What were potential leads/evidence in each case (Pacaccio, Maria Bruno, and Ashley Ellerin)?
The presence of the suspects DNA in the three cases provided the best lead in building this cases.
The suspect was the only thing connecting these women who happened to be mysterious murdered.

What were the similarities in the three crimes?
In all the three different murders, the victims were young, gorgeous and all of them lived near the suspect.
All the attacks involved a break-in into these women’s homes during the night.
The attacker in all the cases was using a knife a weapon.
How were the cases connected?
Detective Lou Sala was investigating the murder of Pacaccio. As he was calling the list of individuals who had previously given information about the case, he came across Michael Gargiulo whom he asked to come and submit a DNA sample. This did not happen, and it forced the detective to travel to California to obtain the sample. However, Gargiuolo did not turn up as planned. The detective ended up taking with an L.A detective Tom Small who had been investigating the murder of Ashely Ellerin. He had ruled out all the suspects except one heating repair guy who happened to be Gargiulo. They then compared notes and found out that it is the same suspect they are after (“True Crime Diary”).Work Cited
“True Crime Diary.” Truecrimediary.com. N.p., 2018. Web. 28 Oct. 2018.