The death sentence for the Hollywood killer took the lives of two girls, one of them before she met Ashton Cochter

CNN highlighted the death sentence issued by a US court to Michael Gargolo, known as the "Hollywood Killer", for the murder of two women in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Relatives of his victims wept when a judge sentenced Michael Gargolo in Los Angeles on Friday. Ashley Ellerin, 22, and Maria Bruno, 32, were stabbed to death in their California homes.

Gargolo was arrested after another potential victim, 26-year-old Michelle Murphy, was able to fight him off. Although he fled the scene, he left some blood behind - enabling the police to track him down.

In Friday's ruling, Murphy broke down, telling the court how "spending the night alone creates a world of fear inside me" more than a decade later.

Gargolo was convicted of two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder in 2019, but he still insists he is innocent.

He is now expected to stand trial in Illinois, where he faces a separate murder charge for the murder of an 18-year-old woman in 1993.

CNN reported that the California murders attracted worldwide attention because one of the victims, Irene, was about to go on a date with American actor Ashton Kutcher the night she was murdered in February 2001.

Testifying at the trial, he said, he knocked on the door of Elerin's home in Hollywood. When she didn't answer, Kutcher looked out her window and saw what he thought were wine stains on the floor, he said.

A roommate found Irene dead the next day after she had sustained 47 stab wounds. During the trial, Kutcher told the court that he was "terrified" when he learned of Irene's death.

Gargolo Bruno, a mother of four, was killed in December 2005. Prosecutors said she was his neighbour, and "literally butchered" her with a knife while she slept.

Three years later, Murphy wakes up in her Santa Monica apartment to find Gargolo on top of her and wants to stab her with a knife, but she manages to resist him. She was the main witness in the trial.

"In this case, wherever Gargolo went, death and destruction followed," said Judge Larry Paul Fiedler when he announced the verdict.

However, it may take some time before Gargolo is executed. The last execution in California was in 2006 and the practice has been outlawed since 2019 under Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom.