THE HOT ONE-Carolyn Murnick

two outsiders who loved spending afternoons exploring the woods. Only when the girls attended different high schools did they begin to grow apart. While Carolyn struggled to fit in, Ashley quickly became a hot girl, popular, extroverted, and sexually precocious. After high school, Carolyn entered college in New York City and Ashley ended up in Los Angeles, where she quit school to work as a stripper and an escort, dating

actors and older men, and experimenting with drugs. The last time Ashley visited New York, Carolyn was shocked by how they had grown apart. One year later, Ashley was stabbed to death at age twenty two in her Hollywood home. Carolyn would discover she was the victim of serial killer Michael T. Garritt Rialliol.

as the smart one, the observer. Caroline's memoir will shock and fascinate readers as he explores the power of female friendships and pays tribute to the ones that stay with you long after they're gone. The book that we're featuring this evening is The Hot One, a memoir of friendship Sex and Murder with my special guest, journalist and author and editor Carolyn Mrnick. Welcome to the program, and thank you for very much for agreeing to this interview. Carolyn Mrnick,

Hi there, thanks for having me. Thank you very much for this interview. Tell us a little bit about your background before we talk about this book, The Hot One, and your personal involvement in this very very personal memoir true crime book.

And then her family moved away in the middle of high school and we lost touch a little bit, but so I show her a few more times between high school and the beginning of college, and then we had what I didn't know would be our last weekend together in New York in the summer of nineteen ninety nine, when she came to visit me at my college apartment, and I go into detail about the sort of reckoning and everything we did together that weekend, and the confusion

I felt about feeling that she and I had very little in common anymore, and I didn't know whether our our friendship would be able to endure that. And then about a year and a half later, I learned in our child in our town newspaper in New Jersey that she had been found murdered in her home in Hollywood, and you know that she had been That was sort of a small local newspaper story about a former local

resident in this unsolved crime case. And immediately, you know, I was shocked and numb, and I had so many questions about what had happened to her at the end, and I felt like when, if, and when I ever write a book, you know, I wanted to be about learning more what happened, about what happened to her, and about kind of honoring the power of childhood friendships for girls especially, and how you really kind of shape your

identity around each other and that this person. Everyone sort of has a person that is still a part of their lives, whether or not they are even still in touch with them.

Didn't say anything about suspects. It didn't say I believe there was some incorrect information about you know, a boyfriend finding her, when later I would learn that it was her female roommate who found her body much later, and you know, immediately I was I was shocked and really confused, and I thought back to the last time I had seen her in the summer of nineteen ninety nine, when

she had come to visit me. I knew that she was living in la at the time, and I assumed that she was also a college student like I was. But through the course of the weekend, she revealed that actually she wasn't spending much time in classes and had a much more party, party focused lifestyle in Hollywood. She said that she was working as a stripper occasionally and sometimes even an escort, and that she was dating older guys that were paying for various things in her life.

Her Mercedes and you know, some of them were actors who were flying her out to meet them on set, and she talked casually about drugs and a lot of stuff that felt so so farn and exotic to me that I that I didn't even know what to think, and I just all I knew was that being around her made me feel really insecure myself, because she appeared to have so much confidence and to be enjoying life so much when I was a you know, I was an insecure twenty year old and I was sort of

just figuring out dating and trying trying to make my way in the world. Actually seemed like she had it figured out and was having a lot of fun doing it. And of course, you know that was that she wasn't like that as a nine year old. I mean at the book is the core of the book is really about how the two of us started out so similarly. You know, we were both in childhood, bonded over pretty

sort of innocent and creative hobbies and activities. We both came from loving homes, and it seemed like, you know, we had everything in common and we're going on parallel tracks. But then at the time of her death, we were living very very different lives and so this book is also tracing how she got to you know, from where we started to where she ended up. And then the book also takes takes on my journey to find out answers about what happened to her over the next you know,

I spent close to fifteen years on this. Well she was I won't give away too much, but I started working on the book seven years after her murder when I learned that a man had been arrested in connection to her death, and as well as three other victims.

us how you start to take on this investigation. And also this exploration, well what.

investigations going on. And so seven years went by exactly like that. And it wasn't until the fall of two thousand and eight. You know, I had been googling her every few months and not really coming up with much. And finally, in the fall of two thousand and eight, I had just gotten a new job that gave me access to the Lexus Nexus database, so I decided to google her again look her up there, and I learned

and I discovered that big news had happened. A man had been arrested and for an attempted murder in the Los Angeles area. The woman survived, and now he was in jail waiting trial. And he had been connected to two other unsolved murders in Los Angeles going back to Ashley. And then there was someone else in two thousand and five, and he was also a person of interest in an unsolved murder of his high school classmate in Illinois. He's from suburban Chicago, and so all at once I was like,

you know, I was shocked. I had no idea that, you know, this is this an alleged serial killer. Who is this person? How is he connected to her life? And it wasn't until two years later, when I was able to attend the preliminary hearing for the Sky that I learned much more about who he actually was and how he was, how he had infiltrated his way into

her life. You know. But I also want to say not to give away, you know, not to give away the book, but the case has still not gone to trial yet as of April twenty nineteen, So this guy has been in jail waiting trial for eleven years. We can't necessarily we can't call him, you know, convicted yet, right, What.

And so then a couple of days after that, they realized that their boiler had broke, and so they decided to call him, and he came over. And then from then on he would stop by unannounced and you know, tried to was trying to ingratiate themselves into himself into their social circle because they were, you know, this house in this cul de sac in Hollywood was you know, an active social center that people would stop by, they would have parties, and so it wasn't completely unusual that

this new person was stopping by unannounced. But a few of her friends testified that they always felt he was creepy and they didn't like having him around. But Ashley felt that he was harmless and it was no big deal. And at the time, he was also only a few years older than she was, so he was in his mid twenties. I think he was twenty six at the time of her murder, and she was twenty two. He was also one more thing I was just sort of say.

He was also relatively good looking. He had told people that he came to Hollywood to try to make it as a boxer or an actor, and he had been in a student film, and so you know, the other thing about him is he didn't necessarily stand out in her crowd of kind of good looking young people. He fit in as someone that, you know, seems like he could belong more or less.

try that drug. You're you're looking at your friends and they cause you to question your own decisions and sometimes kind of show you who you want to be or brings up issues of jealousy. And you know, was this that was a lot of what I was going through in that last weekend of Ashley. You know, it started out that when I met her coming off the I believe she took the bus into New York City, she

just looked like a totally different person. She had, you know, bleached blonde hair, and she was wearing a you know, as I remember, it just very different La sort of clothes. And I'm sure anyone who's been to LA knows that in LA everyone's beautiful and they and they wear fewer clothes and they do New York and they wear more body conscious clothes, and there's more of a sort of sexualized aesthetic out there. And that was not something I'd seen before at the time. I mean, this was before

now everyone wears leggings everywhere. Back then, seeing someone wearing leggings as pants in the year nineteen ninety nine was a little bit shocking. And that was the kind of stuff that Ashley wore. She had leggings as pants, she had see through T shirt, she was wearing you know, glitter eye makeup, and she had you know, her hair was a different color. And I struggled to make to recognize her in a way when I first saw her, I was like, I struggled to connect her to the

girl that I had known. And you know, as we proceeded to spend the weekend together and doing things like you know, going out to a club and you know, meeting the guy that I was dating at the time, and I just saw how much more confidence she was and how much more sexually forward she was than I was, and you know, going to a bar with her, how many were magnetized her energy. I had never seen anything like it. Once it at once made me feel you know, distant from her, and it also made me feel bad

about myself. And you know, after she left that weekend, I remember thinking, I don't know if I can handle that again. Maybe, you know, maybe actually and I will reconnect, you know, later on in life, but I'm not sure that this is going to work anymore.

out more about your friend. Tell us a little bit about to your experiences with some of Ashley's friends and sort of the picture that they paint or they have for you as to the character that she develops into Los Angeles.

still serving you. And so the friends who I met who would go on to meet the preliminary hearing who are will be testifying in the trial, most of them were people who had only known her for about a year, and you know, it was fascinating to me that they knew her in a totally different way than I did. They knew her as someone that, you know, would go to movie premieres and hotels of him and would do drugs and was very glamorous. And one friend was her friend.

Chris was a fashion stylist at the time, and he told me that he would sometimes borrow clothes that he had been working with on shoots and that Ashley would put in these put on these amazing designer gowns, and they would go out to fancy hotels and have drinks and everyone would everyone would be staring at her, and you know, so that was fascinating for me to hear because it was, you know, totally different. They knew her

in a totally different way than I did. But you know, ultimately, some of these people, Chris in particular, is someone that

I've developed my own friendship with over the years. And I also recognized that this group of friends, as we all did, experienced a great trauma with this murder, and it sort of I came to understand broke everything a part for this kind of care free group and the way that they had been living basically after the murder happened, her roommate never never again went back to that home, and they really hadn't seen each other in many, many years.

Because I think what happened with them is in the months following the murder, you know, they were all being contacted by police a lot and trying to piece things together. And then as the investigation either stalled or went in a different direction, they stopped hearing from people and even stopped seeing each other. And I think that, you know, I'm imagining that it felt like reconnecting was very painful.

And so when I saw when I was meeting them all at the preliminary hearing nine years after the murder, it was clear that that was the first time in a long time that any of them were seeing each other again. And so, you know, it's a real comment on how a loss like this tram just it has such a long reverberation in people's lives, and those friends and you know me as well, will will always sort of be connected in a very somber and painful way

by having this loss of this shared person. But we may not, you know, we may not actually be talking every day, or it may be painful to see.

sort of Hollywood places where actors hung out. And what I understood was that he had been to a couple of parties at their house before, and that this night that Ashley was killed was the Grammy Awards and they had made plans to hang out on their own for the first time, and he was going to pick her up and take her to some Grammy Awards after party, and he you know, so his involvement in that night, you know, it's would have been minor, except that it

turns out that he's an important figure in establishing the timeline of what happened that night, because they had talked on the phone a few times I think at around nine pm or eight pm, and then he arrived at her house around ten pm. He saw the lights were on. He knocked on the door, she didn't answer. He called her again, I think, and she didn't answer, and then he looked around the side of the house and saw what he later told police he thought was spilled red

wine on the carpet, and then he left. And so it wasn't until the next morning that her body was found by her roommate, who also, in a twist, did not was not able to stay at home that night because she also arrived at their house earlier in the night and realized that she had forgotten her keys, so she decided so she went to her boyfriend's house that night,

which is why Ashley was one in the house. So as Ashton started to get more famous in the mid two thousands after he married to me Moore, you know, all sorts of tabloid magazines were doing splashy stories about him and this his connection to this crime came up again and he was and he a big feature and in Touch magazine dug it up and sort of focused everything on him that like Ashton had this tragedy from his past, Ashton's connection to this this unsolved Hollywood murder.

And after that, you know, the story has international attention. Now you can google her name and see and see stories and all sorts of languages about Ashton Kutcher's tragedy. And that's something that I that's something that I grapple with in the book, and the way that so far too often stories of female victims come about the men and their life and what happened to them is eclipsed by either you know, people being fascinated with the male killer or people being drawn to either the the men

orbiting around the women. So what I really wanted my book to do was kind of push back at that way that often formulate crime storytelling can too often eclipse the female victim's life entirely.

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that he inflicted on women. And as I sat through the plumary hearing, I learned a lot more details, you know, and I and then I would go on to request reports and read about you know, how many stab wounds each victim received, and you know, very very horrific, horrific elements of trauma that were described in some of these expert reports and ultimately I found myself. You know, in the beginning, I would I felt a duty to sort of bear witness to this trauma that Ashley had endured.

And I, you know, I read her autopsy report very seriously, and I thought, and I looked at you know, what was written about the condition of her organs at her time of death, and the you know, the position of the wounds, and you know, the speculation about the murder weapon and the murder you know, scene, and the motive and all of that. But finally, you know, as years went on, I realized, I'm not sure what this is. I'm not sure this is helping me or helping anyone anymore.

And in fact, like there's always going to be more to learn and so but that's but those things are not helping me achieve closure. I'm not actually sure that

closure is ever really possible with something like this. And so after a time I had to start practicing how to let go and recognize that, you know, there will always be more more things to learn and more reports and more gory details to uncover, but I don't I don't actually think that that will ever will ever make anything okay, And it is not is not what I need in my life?

the power of female friendship. And that as when I would talk about actually in my relationship to her with other people, I started to recognize that people would tell

me their own stories of their lost friends. Whether or not someone knew someone who had been murdered, everyone had a friend who got away, and that was a that felt like a universal experience that was that was painful or that was complex for people, and then women in particular also had they had their own stories about you know, a certain friend that either was sexually more advanced than they were, or someone that got pregnant early earlier in

their lives, and you know, how they think about what happened to that person versus where they are now, and how you really carry with you that sense of self comparison. So I knew that those ideas were big ones and important ones that I that I wanted that I felt I owed it to myself and to actually to put that out there and tell that story. However, originally I had set out to do a completely different book when I thought, you know, the preliminary hearing was in twenty ten.

I thought that the trial is usually one to two years after that, and I thought that I would be attending the trial and structuring the book around that, and I would have something very different and much more closed

instead of the open ended book that it became. Because due to so many judicial and administrative you know, tangles, this case has still not gone to trial, which is you know, very very unprecedented, the fact that this guy has been awaiting trial even years, and so that really changed the scope of what I or of what I did, and so along the way, you know, there were many people I talked about who I was looking for guidance around,

like how how can I shape this story? What am I after that has the beginning, middle, and end, uh, you know, without the trial, And I found guidance from all over. Sometimes that was Sometimes that was journalists that I worked with at New York Magazine who I really respected, And you know, I also connected with journalists from the LA crime reporting world who had been covering this case

for a while. One of them Christine Pelisek. I'm not sure if you're familiar with her work, but she would be a great person to have on the show as well. She has written a book about the Grim Sleeper serial killer in LA but at the time when I met her, she was covering the guard Julio Primary here for LA Weekly, and she and I have stayed in touch and she's

been a professional resource for me. And she was also someone that I learned a lot from just observing how she conducted herself in court and what it looked like to be, you know, dedicated to a story but not be personally involved in the same way that I was and I took lessons from just watching.

won't be overturned in appeal. And so they have to really make sure that there's no appearances of the defense ever being rushed or the defense not having the resources

that they need, et cetera, et cetera. And so that's part of the reason why a case like this can really stretch out, because the judge is never the judges has the really hard is trying to avoid having to having to say it's time we get you know, you've taken too long, It's time we get to the trial, because then later potentially the defense can use that for

overturning the verdict. So in this case, the defendant has court appointed attorneys and he's been allowed to, you know, work with one for a year, and then they have a personality conflict and he gets rid of them, and another one is appointed who he works for with for two years, and then that person gets fired. And so he's been allowed to have this council change over and

over again. And in the middle of all that, he also decided he wanted to represent himself, and so he had I think a court appointed attorney sort of assisting him, but he was attempting to speak for himself in hearings, and he wasted about two years time with that plea. However, you know, I've heard different things that perhaps he was never actually interested in He was never actually interested in representing himself in trial. He just wanted to, you know,

continue to waste people's time. And he is excited by being able to be the puppet master of these proceedings, even from behind bars. And that perhaps when you have this pro per pro se, you know, status, you get extra privileges in jail that perhaps he wanted for other reasons, which is I think having to do you know, having to do his phone and computer usage. But he was never actually interested in representing himself a trial, so that

wasted a couple of years. Then he got another attorney on top after that, who lasted a couple of years. There was an issue with him. Now he's finally with someone that seems like things are you know, moving along, and the case is finally in jury selections, so it shouldn't be going to trial this, you know, the next couple of months.

he was also living in or living near. And then in two thousand and eight, he broke into a woman's home and repeatedly stabbed her while she was sleeping, and she managed to kick him off of her and he ran away. And that was the one who he was finally picked up for because he left DNA evidence at the scene, and so that victim, you know, that victim has survived. And so there was those three, you know, so two murders and one attempted murder in two thousand

and eight and Santa Monica. And then he's also connected to the murder of his high school classmate, Trisha Poccaccio in Glenville, Illinois, and that was from nineteen ninety three, and he was always a person of interest in that case that they were never able to charge anyone because of you know, all sorts of issues and you know, perhaps plays into also things happening in Cook County and

political stuff that I can't even really speak about. But after he was after he was put in jail in California waiting trial, you know, California and Illinois law enforcement were able to connect and there was also a CBS forty eight hours episode about this nonsalved Illinois case that aired, I believe in twenty twelve or twenty eleven, And after that show came on, a new witness came forward who said he knew Guardulo in Hollywood and he had confessed

in passing to killing someone his high school girlfriend and ILLINAI a long time ago. So that new witness was enough to finally charge him for Tricia Papaccio from nineteen ninety three. However, you know, it's really up in the air if that case will ever get to trial either, because that's not going to even get started until the whole California situation ends. But he's now, you know, formally charged with four victims.

leave for college. And on the night of her murder, the kids had organized some sort of scavenger hunt throughout the neighborhood and people were driving around to different locations, and Tricia got dropped off at her house at you know, close to I think, very late at night when it was dark out, and she also lived on a culled effect and guard Julio lived a couple streets away. And then the next morning, her father came out to walk the dog and sounds his daughter's body on the steps,

and you know, sounds the most traumatic side ever. And her parents you know, continue to I think, be incredibly. It just kind of her parents are still stuck in the trauma of that day, and they still live in that house, and they're still, you know, every day committed

to fighting for justice for her. And what I've read from other accounts in the years after Tricia's murder, Michael still lived down the street and it was reported that there was one instance when you know, he kept stopping by the Paccaccio's house and you know, he used to be family friends with the parents and was friends with Tricia's older brother, and so he kept stopping by and it was if you know, he somehow felt like he

wanted to be around. And at one point I saw I read in the story that there was a night when Tricia's father wasn't home, but the mother was there, and Michael came in and looked really, you know, really distressed, and you know, said he had something to say, and you know, was was really agitated, and the mother was like, Okay, sit down. And you know, then before he could speak, his brothers like burst in the door and pulled him away. And and then just a few months later he left town.

And then that was when he made he started making his way to Los Angeles, and a couple shortly after that is when he would come up with Ashley's crowd.

sure what I was prepared to do. I think I just felt like, you know, maybe I was influenced by maybe I was influenced by all the crime storytelling I had read in the past, as if somehow speaking to the killer was like the holy grail of contact or

information that you could get. But as time went on, I realized not only did I did not actually want to speak to him, you know, I didn't believe that he was holding all the answers or holding any answers, and that my book really wasn't about him, and I didn't need to give him any more attention.

Where did you two people, you two friends that had so much in common in this exploration what was at least least a partial conclusion as to what happened to create this difference.

a lot. It's just how powerful kind of the how powerful the male gaze is in a in a girl's life and growing up you may not even know what it is, but you recognize that things are different for girls versus boys, and you're going to be the assumptions are going to be made about you based on how you dress and how you know, how friendly you seem,

and that comes with dangers. And these are things that girls in their teenage years are starting to figure out and try to gather information about what is the world of men and sex and how safe do I feel? And how comfortable am I? You know, how comfortable am I experimenting with new ways of being and ways of you know, asserting that or owning that power. And the fact is, as a twenty two year old, as a twenty one year old, none of us really understands what

that's actually about, but we do. You know, you still feel the power of male objectification, and when you're a young woman, it can feel, it can feel i think, intoxicating, It can feel like, you know, perhaps this is what I had, this is the what I have to offer right now. And so what I think the biggest things that affected Ashley and me, you know, being in different places in that point, is our different attitudes around kind of embodying our sexuality and our comfort level with kind

of exploring that world. And I think that, you know, perhaps many years later, when I was in my thirties even and when I was at a different stage with dating in my relationships, I think I even started to understand, I started to understand more the place that actually might have been in her twenties that you know, as much as she was someone that attracted a lot of attention, was getting asked out on dates, having older guys wanting to buy things from her that didn't that didn't actually

mean that she was having positive and meaningful relationships with men. And I think ultimately that's what we all want. And this is a long winded answer to say, I think it all comes back to objectification of girls and women and how to and how different girls are, you know, navigating that those complicated dynamics of the world.

I've talked about objectification in the clubs, but you went to the pathway to see what what did you find on the actual pathway in terms of what he could see mm hmm, what he desired and what that attention had drawn, right.

the street when Ashley's friend had a flat tire. I'm not sure it'll ever be provable, but you know, it's been suggested that all of that was was sort of orchestrated, that he had potentially been stepped being her and you know, stalking her from afar for weeks and maybe months, and that's maybe his pattern of his pattern of surveillance on all his victims that he had already you know, he had been plotting and calculating and orchestrating the scene of

the murder for a long time, down to you know, knowing her comings and goings from her house and who she spent time with, and knowing, you know, the time of day that she gets up and goes to bed, and who who is coming in the house of this house and why and one of the ways that he managed to pass while doing this sort of covert surveillance was that he had a dog, and I had been I've been told that, you know, that's sort of a that's an easy cover for someone that's trying to pass

that actually he has a reason to be out in the neighborhood walking a dog. But what he's really doing during that time is, you know, studying his targets and their environment. And Ashley's house happened to be across the street from a dog park, and you know, I had been told that, you know, that was that was the place where he was coming, perhaps had been coming routinely to look into her house and study study the rhythms of it with his dog.

associated with Guardulo. So that was the four different victims in Illinois and the three different areas of LA and she had identified multiple points of commonality amongst all of them, and they were things that were common to you know, his all the victims shared the they all happen to live near Guardel at the time, things like that, And it was also commonalities around his manner of inflicting violence and you know, what his what his methods might have been.

And that was some of the most disturbing stuff and disturbing, upsetting and kind of really just kind of shattering material

to read about someone you had known. And you know, many readers have really responded to that part as if as as a quite just just quite you know, Mike's quite makes quite an impact because I talk about that that's that's that arrives pretty much in the last quarter of the book, and so at that time, you've really the reader has learned a lot about Ashley and learned a lot about you know, the journey that I've been

on over the years. And you know, some might suggest that including that kind of graphic detail is potentially exploitative, but I really wanted it to actually, I wanted it to make an impact around by the time you've gotten to this place in the book, you know this victim in a personal way, and reading about her in this depersonalized way now is jarring and should not be taken lightly.

And to me it was, you know, one of the most powerful ways of just really hitting home the significance and the trauma of what crime storytelling what crime is about you know, this is a real person's life, that this is a real person's life that absolutely as who has had inhumane and you know, outrageous, outrageous things done to her.

really did confound you that she could end up in the place that she did in comparison to your life and the differences that happened after she moved to California.

Hollywood party girl who worked in the sect industry. And to me, she was always She's a complex person who has a history and has you know, deep relationships and people that remember her, and she is the victim of a of a heinous, violent crime, and I wanted to I wanted to lay out all of that for the reader, and you know, there's no easy way to make sense

of all that because it doesn't make sense. And I hope that you know, at the end of the book, the readers really kind of understand the complexity of these questions and and and this loss.

So she succumbed. She really truly was a victim. And that you said that she didn't have the opportunity like yourself. You write that you were pregnant with your with your daughter, and the life that you had. You wouldn't, you know, trade for anything. You had a difficult you had difficulties. But in this book you write about really her her personality very much. In most books you don't get that. You get a brief summary about how she lit up

the room and how she was a great girl. And you've done an admirable job of going and exploring who she became and why, And unfortunately you're there to bear witness at this preliminary and you planned to be at the trial to to to bear witness to your friend's murder and the see justice done. However, as you write, closure is is something that's just a maybe overused cliche.