Speaker 1: Wait, the Lucky Land Slots.
Speaker 2: You can get lucky just about anywhere.
Speaker 1: It's your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and the
Speaker 1: weather's fine, but we're just gonna circle up here a
Speaker 1: while and get lucky. Oh no, nothing like that. It's
Speaker 1: just these cash prizes add up quick, So I suggest
Speaker 1: you sit back, keep your trade table up right, and
Speaker 1: start getting lucky.
Speaker 2: Play for free at lucky landslots dot com.
Speaker 1: Are you feeling lucky?
Speaker 3: No purchase necessary void, We're prohibited by Law eighteen plus.
Speaker 1: Terms and conditions apply.
Speaker 2: See website for details.
Speaker 1: Lucky Land Casino asking people what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 1: gotten lucky?
Speaker 3: Lucky in line at the Delhi I guess ah, in
Speaker 3: my dentist's office more than once. Actually do I have
Speaker 3: to say?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 1: You do?
Speaker 3: In the car before my kid's PTA meeting? Really yes,
Speaker 3: excuse me?
Speaker 1: What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 2: I never win and tell.
Speaker 1: Well, there you have it.
Speaker 3: You can get lucky anywhere playing at lucky landslots dot com.
Speaker 1: Play for free right now? Are you feeling lucky? No,
Speaker 1: we're just necessary ONID. We're gona be my Law eighteen
Speaker 1: plus terms conditions playing.
Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK. Every week,
Speaker 5: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking.
Speaker 4: And infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 4: your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski. Good Evening, a
Speaker 4: true crime coming of age story with a tragic twist,
Speaker 4: a New York editor's quest to uncover the truth about
Speaker 4: the brutal murder of her wild and seductive friend in
Speaker 4: a riveting, thoughtful examination of how we grow up and
Speaker 4: apart as girls. Growing up in rural New Jersey in
Speaker 4: the late nineteen eighties, Ashley and Carolyn had everything in common,
Speaker 4: two outsiders who loved spending afternoons exploring the woods. Only
Speaker 4: when the girls attended different high schools did they begin
Speaker 4: to grow apart. While Carolyn struggled to fit in, Ashley
Speaker 4: quickly became a hot girl, popular, extroverted, and sexually precocious.
Speaker 4: After high school, Carolyn entered college in New York City
Speaker 4: and Ashley ended up in Los Angeles, where she quit
Speaker 4: school to work as a stripper and an escort, dating
Speaker 4: actors and older men, and experimenting with drugs. The last
Speaker 4: time Ashley visited New York, Carolyn was shocked by how
Speaker 4: they had grown apart. One year later, Ashley was stabbed
Speaker 4: to death at age twenty two in her Hollywood home.
Speaker 4: Carolyn would discover she was the victim of serial killer
Speaker 4: Michael T. Garritt Rialliol.
Speaker 6: Originally engaging, The Hot One is the story of Carolyn's
Speaker 6: emotional quest to find out what really happened to her
Speaker 6: oldest friend. It's a journey that takes her through the
Speaker 6: hills of Hollywood, into courtrooms in Los Angeles, to strip
Speaker 6: clubs in Las Vegas, and back to her own childhood
Speaker 6: memories as she tries to unravel why she and Ashley
Speaker 6: became so different. How did Ashley end up the overtly
Speaker 6: sexual risk taker, the Hot One, while Carolyn was seen
Speaker 6: as the smart one, the observer. Caroline's memoir will shock
Speaker 6: and fascinate readers as he explores the power of female
Speaker 6: friendships and pays tribute to the ones that stay with
Speaker 6: you long after they're gone. The book that we're featuring
Speaker 6: this evening is The Hot One, a memoir of friendship
Speaker 6: Sex and Murder with my special guest, journalist and author
Speaker 6: and editor Carolyn Mrnick. Welcome to the program, and thank
Speaker 6: you for very much for agreeing to this interview. Carolyn Mrnick,
Speaker 6: Hi there, thanks for having me. Thank you very much
Speaker 6: for this interview. Tell us a little bit about your
Speaker 6: background before we talk about this book, The Hot One,
Speaker 6: and your personal involvement in this very very personal memoir
Speaker 6: true crime book.
Speaker 2: I'm an editor at New York Magazine for the past decade,
Speaker 2: and before that I had kind of worked my way
Speaker 2: up in New York City journalism, seen as a writer
Speaker 2: in fact checker at various culture and lifestyle magazines. So
Speaker 2: I had been kind of in the media world for
Speaker 2: a while, but I had no professional experience doing anything
Speaker 2: involving crime or courts or investigation. So by the time I,
Speaker 2: you know, at the time that I started my book,
Speaker 2: I was really having figured it all out as I
Speaker 2: went along.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about it as you read, just introducing the
Speaker 6: book that you you're twenty two years old at this time,
Speaker 6: but this is in February two thousand and one. Tell
Speaker 6: us what you find out and how you.
Speaker 2: Found tell us, sure, well, I grew up in New
Speaker 2: Jersey and my first childhood best friend was a girl
Speaker 2: named Ashley, and she and I were close from the
Speaker 2: age of nine years on, and we liked to play
Speaker 2: piano and go to art classes together, and we lived
Speaker 2: in a pretty rural area spend time in the woods.
Speaker 2: And then her family moved away in the middle of
Speaker 2: high school and we lost touch a little bit, but
Speaker 2: so I show her a few more times between high
Speaker 2: school and the beginning of college, and then we had
Speaker 2: what I didn't know would be our last weekend together
Speaker 2: in New York in the summer of nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: when she came to visit me at my college apartment,
Speaker 2: and I go into detail about the sort of reckoning
Speaker 2: and everything we did together that weekend, and the confusion
Speaker 2: I felt about feeling that she and I had very
Speaker 2: little in common anymore, and I didn't know whether our
Speaker 2: our friendship would be able to endure that. And then
Speaker 2: about a year and a half later, I learned in
Speaker 2: our child in our town newspaper in New Jersey that
Speaker 2: she had been found murdered in her home in Hollywood,
Speaker 2: and you know that she had been That was sort
Speaker 2: of a small local newspaper story about a former local
Speaker 2: resident in this unsolved crime case. And immediately, you know,
Speaker 2: I was shocked and numb, and I had so many
Speaker 2: questions about what had happened to her at the end,
Speaker 2: and I felt like when, if, and when I ever
Speaker 2: write a book, you know, I wanted to be about
Speaker 2: learning more what happened, about what happened to her, and
Speaker 2: about kind of honoring the power of childhood friendships for
Speaker 2: girls especially, and how you really kind of shape your
Speaker 2: identity around each other and that this person. Everyone sort
Speaker 2: of has a person that is still a part of
Speaker 2: their lives, whether or not they are even still in
Speaker 2: touch with them.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about just what you find out from newspaper reports.
Speaker 6: You write in the book that you don't find out
Speaker 6: till five years, five days later, but this occurs in
Speaker 6: February twenty second, two thousand and one in Hollywood Hill.
Speaker 6: So tell us what you just find out, and then
Speaker 6: take us back, like you do in the book, to
Speaker 6: your friendship and how you actually grew up with your
Speaker 6: childhood friend and the friendship that you developed.
Speaker 2: Sure, well, you know what I learned in the in
Speaker 2: the Bernersville News that was our town in New Jersey,
Speaker 2: you know, was very little it said that this former
Speaker 2: pepac resident that was the town that she lived in
Speaker 2: had been found murdered, and there was some quotes from
Speaker 2: a family friend saying that she was, you know, very
Speaker 2: talented and she had been taking classes at the Fashion Institute.
Speaker 2: Didn't say anything about suspects. It didn't say I believe
Speaker 2: there was some incorrect information about you know, a boyfriend
Speaker 2: finding her, when later I would learn that it was
Speaker 2: her female roommate who found her body much later, and
Speaker 2: you know, immediately I was I was shocked and really confused,
Speaker 2: and I thought back to the last time I had
Speaker 2: seen her in the summer of nineteen ninety nine, when
Speaker 2: she had come to visit me. I knew that she
Speaker 2: was living in la at the time, and I assumed
Speaker 2: that she was also a college student like I was.
Speaker 2: But through the course of the weekend, she revealed that
Speaker 2: actually she wasn't spending much time in classes and had
Speaker 2: a much more party, party focused lifestyle in Hollywood. She
Speaker 2: said that she was working as a stripper occasionally and
Speaker 2: sometimes even an escort, and that she was dating older
Speaker 2: guys that were paying for various things in her life.
Speaker 2: Her Mercedes and you know, some of them were actors
Speaker 2: who were flying her out to meet them on set,
Speaker 2: and she talked casually about drugs and a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff that felt so so farn and exotic to me
Speaker 2: that I that I didn't even know what to think,
Speaker 2: and I just all I knew was that being around
Speaker 2: her made me feel really insecure myself, because she appeared
Speaker 2: to have so much confidence and to be enjoying life
Speaker 2: so much when I was a you know, I was
Speaker 2: an insecure twenty year old and I was sort of
Speaker 2: just figuring out dating and trying trying to make my
Speaker 2: way in the world. Actually seemed like she had it
Speaker 2: figured out and was having a lot of fun doing it.
Speaker 2: And of course, you know that was that she wasn't
Speaker 2: like that as a nine year old. I mean at
Speaker 2: the book is the core of the book is really
Speaker 2: about how the two of us started out so similarly.
Speaker 2: You know, we were both in childhood, bonded over pretty
Speaker 2: sort of innocent and creative hobbies and activities. We both
Speaker 2: came from loving homes, and it seemed like, you know,
Speaker 2: we had everything in common and we're going on parallel tracks.
Speaker 2: But then at the time of her death, we were
Speaker 2: living very very different lives and so this book is
Speaker 2: also tracing how she got to you know, from where
Speaker 2: we started to where she ended up. And then the
Speaker 2: book also takes takes on my journey to find out
Speaker 2: answers about what happened to her over the next you know,
Speaker 2: I spent close to fifteen years on this. Well she
Speaker 2: was I won't give away too much, but I started
Speaker 2: working on the book seven years after her murder when
Speaker 2: I learned that a man had been arrested in connection
Speaker 2: to her death, and as well as three other victims.
Speaker 6: As you're write in the book, but this, as you've
Speaker 6: just explained, is more so, especially because this is loaded
Speaker 6: with celebrity. You can name drop all kinds of people
Speaker 6: in this and also this serial killer that I mangled
Speaker 6: his last name, so you can tell us Michael's name,
Speaker 6: and you say, seven years afterwards, when you become involved
Speaker 6: in this, you find out details about this killer. Tell
Speaker 6: us what you find out at that time, and tell
Speaker 6: us how you start to take on this investigation. And
Speaker 6: also this exploration, well what.
Speaker 2: I you know at the throughout my twenties. You know,
Speaker 2: she was killed in two thousand and one. I was
Speaker 2: twenty one at the time and she was twenty two.
Speaker 2: You know, her family had moved back to California, and
Speaker 2: we weren't able to connect with, you know, finding out
Speaker 2: any new information. So to the best of my knowledge
Speaker 2: that I thought that it was still an unsalt case.
Speaker 2: I did not have context to be able to learn
Speaker 2: more from law enforcement about even if there were active
Speaker 2: investigations going on. And so seven years went by exactly
Speaker 2: like that. And it wasn't until the fall of two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight. You know, I had been googling her
Speaker 2: every few months and not really coming up with much.
Speaker 2: And finally, in the fall of two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: I had just gotten a new job that gave me
Speaker 2: access to the Lexus Nexus database, so I decided to
Speaker 2: google her again look her up there, and I learned
Speaker 2: and I discovered that big news had happened. A man
Speaker 2: had been arrested and for an attempted murder in the
Speaker 2: Los Angeles area. The woman survived, and now he was
Speaker 2: in jail waiting trial. And he had been connected to
Speaker 2: two other unsolved murders in Los Angeles going back to Ashley.
Speaker 2: And then there was someone else in two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: and he was also a person of interest in an
Speaker 2: unsolved murder of his high school classmate in Illinois. He's
Speaker 2: from suburban Chicago, and so all at once I was like,
Speaker 2: you know, I was shocked. I had no idea that,
Speaker 2: you know, this is this an alleged serial killer. Who
Speaker 2: is this person? How is he connected to her life?
Speaker 2: And it wasn't until two years later, when I was
Speaker 2: able to attend the preliminary hearing for the Sky that
Speaker 2: I learned much more about who he actually was and
Speaker 2: how he was, how he had infiltrated his way into
Speaker 2: her life. You know. But I also want to say
Speaker 2: not to give away, you know, not to give away
Speaker 2: the book, but the case has still not gone to
Speaker 2: trial yet as of April twenty nineteen, So this guy
Speaker 2: has been in jail waiting trial for eleven years. We
Speaker 2: can't necessarily we can't call him, you know, convicted yet, right, What.
Speaker 6: Did you find out about your friend Ashley came in
Speaker 6: contact with this killer?
Speaker 2: Well, I learned that in the preliminary hearing, you know,
Speaker 2: I had listening to her friends testified, listened to her
Speaker 2: friend's testify and talking to them outside of the courtroom.
Speaker 2: I learned that this guy was someone who lived down
Speaker 2: the street from them in Hollywood, and he one day
Speaker 2: just appeared on the on the road when her friend's
Speaker 2: car had a flat tire, and he said that he
Speaker 2: would help them fix it, and he also said he
Speaker 2: was an air conditioning repairman, and he gave them his card.
Speaker 2: And so then a couple of days after that, they
Speaker 2: realized that their boiler had broke, and so they decided
Speaker 2: to call him, and he came over. And then from
Speaker 2: then on he would stop by unannounced and you know,
Speaker 2: tried to was trying to ingratiate themselves into himself into
Speaker 2: their social circle because they were, you know, this house
Speaker 2: in this cul de sac in Hollywood was you know,
Speaker 2: an active social center that people would stop by, they
Speaker 2: would have parties, and so it wasn't completely unusual that
Speaker 2: this new person was stopping by unannounced. But a few
Speaker 2: of her friends testified that they always felt he was
Speaker 2: creepy and they didn't like having him around. But Ashley
Speaker 2: felt that he was harmless and it was no big deal.
Speaker 2: And at the time, he was also only a few
Speaker 2: years older than she was, so he was in his
Speaker 2: mid twenties. I think he was twenty six at the
Speaker 2: time of her murder, and she was twenty two. He
Speaker 2: was also one more thing I was just sort of say.
Speaker 2: He was also relatively good looking. He had told people
Speaker 2: that he came to Hollywood to try to make it
Speaker 2: as a boxer or an actor, and he had been
Speaker 2: in a student film, and so you know, the other
Speaker 2: thing about him is he didn't necessarily stand out in
Speaker 2: her crowd of kind of good looking young people. He
Speaker 2: fit in as someone that, you know, seems like he
Speaker 2: could belong more or less.
Speaker 6: You write in the book about that last meeting that
Speaker 6: you have that is unnerving and part of this focus
Speaker 6: of this book and what you call the book the
Speaker 6: Hot One. Tell us a little bit about that visit
Speaker 6: with her and what is the the events that demonstrate
Speaker 6: to you some of the things that you hadn't seen
Speaker 6: before in terms of attention from men, and sort of
Speaker 6: that the difference between you, of the stark difference between
Speaker 6: you that was demonstrated in that last meeting that you
Speaker 6: had with her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know a b A big theme of
Speaker 2: this book is how for girls you are really figuring
Speaker 2: out your place in the world and your identity and
Speaker 2: reference to one another. And you might look at a
Speaker 2: friend and be like, hmm, she is you know, she
Speaker 2: seems to be confident about talking to guys on the street,
Speaker 2: or you know, she's trying that drug. Maybe I should
Speaker 2: try that drug. You're you're looking at your friends and
Speaker 2: they cause you to question your own decisions and sometimes
Speaker 2: kind of show you who you want to be or
Speaker 2: brings up issues of jealousy. And you know, was this
Speaker 2: that was a lot of what I was going through
Speaker 2: in that last weekend of Ashley. You know, it started
Speaker 2: out that when I met her coming off the I
Speaker 2: believe she took the bus into New York City, she
Speaker 2: just looked like a totally different person. She had, you know,
Speaker 2: bleached blonde hair, and she was wearing a you know,
Speaker 2: as I remember, it just very different La sort of clothes.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure anyone who's been to LA knows that
Speaker 2: in LA everyone's beautiful and they and they wear fewer
Speaker 2: clothes and they do New York and they wear more
Speaker 2: body conscious clothes, and there's more of a sort of
Speaker 2: sexualized aesthetic out there. And that was not something I'd
Speaker 2: seen before at the time. I mean, this was before
Speaker 2: now everyone wears leggings everywhere. Back then, seeing someone wearing
Speaker 2: leggings as pants in the year nineteen ninety nine was
Speaker 2: a little bit shocking. And that was the kind of
Speaker 2: stuff that Ashley wore. She had leggings as pants, she
Speaker 2: had see through T shirt, she was wearing you know,
Speaker 2: glitter eye makeup, and she had you know, her hair
Speaker 2: was a different color. And I struggled to make to
Speaker 2: recognize her in a way when I first saw her,
Speaker 2: I was like, I struggled to connect her to the
Speaker 2: girl that I had known. And you know, as we
Speaker 2: proceeded to spend the weekend together and doing things like
Speaker 2: you know, going out to a club and you know,
Speaker 2: meeting the guy that I was dating at the time,
Speaker 2: and I just saw how much more confidence she was
Speaker 2: and how much more sexually forward she was than I was,
Speaker 2: and you know, going to a bar with her, how
Speaker 2: many were magnetized her energy. I had never seen anything
Speaker 2: like it. Once it at once made me feel you know,
Speaker 2: distant from her, and it also made me feel bad
Speaker 2: about myself. And you know, after she left that weekend,
Speaker 2: I remember thinking, I don't know if I can handle
Speaker 2: that again. Maybe, you know, maybe actually and I will reconnect,
Speaker 2: you know, later on in life, but I'm not sure
Speaker 2: that this is going to work anymore.
Speaker 6: In this investigation that you undertake to find out what
Speaker 6: really happened with your friend Ashley. You meet her friends
Speaker 6: that end up testifying at the preliminary that you go to,
Speaker 6: and you meet other players like detectives, small and other
Speaker 6: people and journalists and other people that help you with
Speaker 6: everything that you were trying to investigate and trying to
Speaker 6: do with this with this book and trying to find
Speaker 6: out more about your friend. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 6: about to your experiences with some of Ashley's friends and
Speaker 6: sort of the picture that they paint or they have
Speaker 6: for you as to the character that she develops into
Speaker 6: Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it was a very fascinating thing because
Speaker 2: if you can put yourself back in the stage of
Speaker 2: life as of being like twenty twenty one, it's a
Speaker 2: big time of transition. Is the time when you're meeting
Speaker 2: a lot of new people and you know you're figuring
Speaker 2: out if your relationships from high school or earlier are
Speaker 2: still serving you. And so the friends who I met
Speaker 2: who would go on to meet the preliminary hearing who
Speaker 2: are will be testifying in the trial, most of them
Speaker 2: were people who had only known her for about a year,
Speaker 2: and you know, it was fascinating to me that they
Speaker 2: knew her in a totally different way than I did.
Speaker 2: They knew her as someone that, you know, would go
Speaker 2: to movie premieres and hotels of him and would do
Speaker 2: drugs and was very glamorous. And one friend was her friend.
Speaker 2: Chris was a fashion stylist at the time, and he
Speaker 2: told me that he would sometimes borrow clothes that he
Speaker 2: had been working with on shoots and that Ashley would
Speaker 2: put in these put on these amazing designer gowns, and
Speaker 2: they would go out to fancy hotels and have drinks
Speaker 2: and everyone would everyone would be staring at her, and
Speaker 2: you know, so that was fascinating for me to hear
Speaker 2: because it was, you know, totally different. They knew her
Speaker 2: in a totally different way than I did. But you know, ultimately,
Speaker 2: some of these people, Chris in particular, is someone that
Speaker 2: I've developed my own friendship with over the years. And
Speaker 2: I also recognized that this group of friends, as we
Speaker 2: all did, experienced a great trauma with this murder, and
Speaker 2: it sort of I came to understand broke everything a
Speaker 2: part for this kind of care free group and the
Speaker 2: way that they had been living basically after the murder happened,
Speaker 2: her roommate never never again went back to that home,
Speaker 2: and they really hadn't seen each other in many, many years.
Speaker 2: Because I think what happened with them is in the
Speaker 2: months following the murder, you know, they were all being
Speaker 2: contacted by police a lot and trying to piece things together.
Speaker 2: And then as the investigation either stalled or went in
Speaker 2: a different direction, they stopped hearing from people and even
Speaker 2: stopped seeing each other. And I think that, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm imagining that it felt like reconnecting was very painful.
Speaker 2: And so when I saw when I was meeting them
Speaker 2: all at the preliminary hearing nine years after the murder,
Speaker 2: it was clear that that was the first time in
Speaker 2: a long time that any of them were seeing each
Speaker 2: other again. And so, you know, it's a real comment
Speaker 2: on how a loss like this tram just it has
Speaker 2: such a long reverberation in people's lives, and those friends
Speaker 2: and you know me as well, will will always sort
Speaker 2: of be connected in a very somber and painful way
Speaker 2: by having this loss of this shared person. But we
Speaker 2: may not, you know, we may not actually be talking
Speaker 2: every day, or it may be painful to see.
Speaker 6: Each other you write about the undo, I guess focus
Speaker 6: on this story because of actor Ashton Kutcher's involvement. Tell
Speaker 6: us just a little bit about the preliminary that he
Speaker 6: was people speculated that he might be appearing at that preliminary.
Speaker 6: Tell us his minor involvement in this story, right.
Speaker 2: So, one of the reasons this case has gotten a
Speaker 2: lot of me attention is that on the night of
Speaker 2: her murder, actually was supposed to be going on a
Speaker 2: date with the actor Ashton Kutcher. And at that time
Speaker 2: he was young and sort of of just starting to
Speaker 2: break out. He had been on the second he was
Speaker 2: on the second season of that seventy show, and you know,
Speaker 2: he was he was someone that they knew in their
Speaker 2: world of you know, going to Chateau MArmand and other
Speaker 2: sort of Hollywood places where actors hung out. And what
Speaker 2: I understood was that he had been to a couple
Speaker 2: of parties at their house before, and that this night
Speaker 2: that Ashley was killed was the Grammy Awards and they
Speaker 2: had made plans to hang out on their own for
Speaker 2: the first time, and he was going to pick her
Speaker 2: up and take her to some Grammy Awards after party,
Speaker 2: and he you know, so his involvement in that night,
Speaker 2: you know, it's would have been minor, except that it
Speaker 2: turns out that he's an important figure in establishing the
Speaker 2: timeline of what happened that night, because they had talked
Speaker 2: on the phone a few times I think at around
Speaker 2: nine pm or eight pm, and then he arrived at
Speaker 2: her house around ten pm. He saw the lights were on.
Speaker 2: He knocked on the door, she didn't answer. He called
Speaker 2: her again, I think, and she didn't answer, and then
Speaker 2: he looked around the side of the house and saw
Speaker 2: what he later told police he thought was spilled red
Speaker 2: wine on the carpet, and then he left. And so
Speaker 2: it wasn't until the next morning that her body was
Speaker 2: found by her roommate, who also, in a twist, did
Speaker 2: not was not able to stay at home that night
Speaker 2: because she also arrived at their house earlier in the
Speaker 2: night and realized that she had forgotten her keys, so
Speaker 2: she decided so she went to her boyfriend's house that night,
Speaker 2: which is why Ashley was one in the house. So
Speaker 2: as Ashton started to get more famous in the mid
Speaker 2: two thousands after he married to me Moore, you know,
Speaker 2: all sorts of tabloid magazines were doing splashy stories about
Speaker 2: him and this his connection to this crime came up
Speaker 2: again and he was and he a big feature and
Speaker 2: in Touch magazine dug it up and sort of focused
Speaker 2: everything on him that like Ashton had this tragedy from
Speaker 2: his past, Ashton's connection to this this unsolved Hollywood murder.
Speaker 2: And after that, you know, the story has international attention.
Speaker 2: Now you can google her name and see and see
Speaker 2: stories and all sorts of languages about Ashton Kutcher's tragedy.
Speaker 2: And that's something that I that's something that I grapple
Speaker 2: with in the book, and the way that so far
Speaker 2: too often stories of female victims come about the men
Speaker 2: and their life and what happened to them is eclipsed
Speaker 2: by either you know, people being fascinated with the male
Speaker 2: killer or people being drawn to either the the men
Speaker 2: orbiting around the women. So what I really wanted my
Speaker 2: book to do was kind of push back at that
Speaker 2: way that often formulate crime storytelling can too often eclipse
Speaker 2: the female victim's life entirely.
Speaker 3: Hey, Guysida is Ryan. I'm not sure if you know
Speaker 3: this about me, but I'm a bit of a fun fanatic.
Speaker 3: When I can, I like to work but I like
Speaker 3: fun too. It's a thing, and now the truth is
Speaker 3: out there, I can tell you about my favorite place
Speaker 3: to have fun, Chumba Casino. They have hundreds of social
Speaker 3: casino style games to choose from, with new games released
Speaker 3: each week. You can play for free anytime, anywhere, and
Speaker 3: each day brings a new chance to collect daily bonuses.
Speaker 3: So join me and the fun. Sign up now at
Speaker 3: Chumba Casino dot com. No, we're just necessary dripod where
Speaker 3: I lost the terms conditions eighteen plus.
Speaker 1: Lucky Land Casino asking people what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 1: gotten lucky?
Speaker 3: Lucky in line of the Delhi, I guess ah, in
Speaker 3: my dentist's office more than months. Actually do I have
Speaker 3: to say?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 1: You do?
Speaker 3: In the car before my kid's feet. Really yes, excuse me?
Speaker 1: What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 2: I never win?
Speaker 1: And tell Well, there you have it.
Speaker 3: You can get lucky anywhere playing at Lucky Landsloughts dot
Speaker 3: com play for free right now?
Speaker 1: Are you feeling lucky? No, we're just necessary void for
Speaker 1: my long eighteen plus terms conditions plus every deails.
Speaker 6: In this preliminary as well, you find out more about
Speaker 6: the crimes of Michael garrittar aldol and U. But also yeah, sorry,
Speaker 6: but at the same time, not only that you write
Speaker 6: in the book that you are hesitant to find out
Speaker 6: everything there is to find out in terms of the details.
Speaker 6: Tell us why you are hesitant to find out all
Speaker 6: of the details of your friend Ashley's demise, but also
Speaker 6: what you find out about this killer and other crimes
Speaker 6: that he's well suspected for in charge for.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think, as anyone knows who gets
Speaker 2: immersed in crime stories and and trying to learn more
Speaker 2: about an unsolved case, there's always going to be there's
Speaker 2: always going to be new things to learn. You're never
Speaker 2: going to get to the end of all the data
Speaker 2: and all the people that could be interviewed, and you know,
Speaker 2: all the details of you know, the pattern of violence
Speaker 2: that he inflicted on women. And as I sat through
Speaker 2: the plumary hearing, I learned a lot more details, you know,
Speaker 2: and I and then I would go on to request
Speaker 2: reports and read about you know, how many stab wounds
Speaker 2: each victim received, and you know, very very horrific, horrific
Speaker 2: elements of trauma that were described in some of these
Speaker 2: expert reports and ultimately I found myself. You know, in
Speaker 2: the beginning, I would I felt a duty to sort
Speaker 2: of bear witness to this trauma that Ashley had endured.
Speaker 2: And I, you know, I read her autopsy report very seriously,
Speaker 2: and I thought, and I looked at you know, what
Speaker 2: was written about the condition of her organs at her
Speaker 2: time of death, and the you know, the position of
Speaker 2: the wounds, and you know, the speculation about the murder
Speaker 2: weapon and the murder you know, scene, and the motive
Speaker 2: and all of that. But finally, you know, as years
Speaker 2: went on, I realized, I'm not sure what this is.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure this is helping me or helping anyone anymore.
Speaker 2: And in fact, like there's always going to be more
Speaker 2: to learn and so but that's but those things are
Speaker 2: not helping me achieve closure. I'm not actually sure that
Speaker 2: closure is ever really possible with something like this. And
Speaker 2: so after a time I had to start practicing how
Speaker 2: to let go and recognize that, you know, there will
Speaker 2: always be more more things to learn and more reports
Speaker 2: and more gory details to uncover, but I don't I
Speaker 2: don't actually think that that will ever will ever make
Speaker 2: anything okay, And it is not is not what I
Speaker 2: need in my life?
Speaker 6: How did you approach this? Then, if you say that
Speaker 6: there were certain things that you didn't want to focus on,
Speaker 6: what did you focus on in this and why did
Speaker 6: you hang in there? You talk about deciding to leave
Speaker 6: not wanting to You talk later about reading the report
Speaker 6: from O'Toole. All the seventy six pages tell us who
Speaker 6: you go to for comfort and who helps you through
Speaker 6: this in this process?
Speaker 2: You know this, this was a this was a book,
Speaker 2: and this was a project that I worked on for
Speaker 2: you know, about eight years. So a lot of things
Speaker 2: happen in my life along the way, and through it
Speaker 2: all I was I was just sort of pushed along
Speaker 2: by this sense that this is an important story that
Speaker 2: needed to be told. And you know, it wasn't just
Speaker 2: the story of her death. It was the story of
Speaker 2: the power of female friendship. And that as when I
Speaker 2: would talk about actually in my relationship to her with
Speaker 2: other people, I started to recognize that people would tell
Speaker 2: me their own stories of their lost friends. Whether or
Speaker 2: not someone knew someone who had been murdered, everyone had
Speaker 2: a friend who got away, and that was a that
Speaker 2: felt like a universal experience that was that was painful
Speaker 2: or that was complex for people, and then women in
Speaker 2: particular also had they had their own stories about you know,
Speaker 2: a certain friend that either was sexually more advanced than
Speaker 2: they were, or someone that got pregnant early earlier in
Speaker 2: their lives, and you know, how they think about what
Speaker 2: happened to that person versus where they are now, and
Speaker 2: how you really carry with you that sense of self comparison.
Speaker 2: So I knew that those ideas were big ones and
Speaker 2: important ones that I that I wanted that I felt
Speaker 2: I owed it to myself and to actually to put
Speaker 2: that out there and tell that story. However, originally I
Speaker 2: had set out to do a completely different book when
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, the preliminary hearing was in twenty ten.
Speaker 2: I thought that the trial is usually one to two
Speaker 2: years after that, and I thought that I would be
Speaker 2: attending the trial and structuring the book around that, and
Speaker 2: I would have something very different and much more closed
Speaker 2: instead of the open ended book that it became. Because
Speaker 2: due to so many judicial and administrative you know, tangles,
Speaker 2: this case has still not gone to trial, which is
Speaker 2: you know, very very unprecedented, the fact that this guy
Speaker 2: has been awaiting trial even years, and so that really
Speaker 2: changed the scope of what I or of what I did,
Speaker 2: and so along the way, you know, there were many
Speaker 2: people I talked about who I was looking for guidance around,
Speaker 2: like how how can I shape this story? What am
Speaker 2: I after that has the beginning, middle, and end, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, without the trial, And I found guidance from
Speaker 2: all over. Sometimes that was Sometimes that was journalists that
Speaker 2: I worked with at New York Magazine who I really respected,
Speaker 2: And you know, I also connected with journalists from the
Speaker 2: LA crime reporting world who had been covering this case
Speaker 2: for a while. One of them Christine Pelisek. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure if you're familiar with her work, but she would
Speaker 2: be a great person to have on the show as well.
Speaker 2: She has written a book about the Grim Sleeper serial
Speaker 2: killer in LA but at the time when I met her,
Speaker 2: she was covering the guard Julio Primary here for LA Weekly,
Speaker 2: and she and I have stayed in touch and she's
Speaker 2: been a professional resource for me. And she was also
Speaker 2: someone that I learned a lot from just observing how
Speaker 2: she conducted herself in court and what it looked like
Speaker 2: to be, you know, dedicated to a story but not
Speaker 2: be personally involved in the same way that I was
Speaker 2: and I took lessons from just watching.
Speaker 6: That you write that part of the reason for this
Speaker 6: extraordinary delay is that something that is unusual or is
Speaker 6: this pro per? What was the decision by the jaw
Speaker 6: gend first by the killer in terms of this pro per?
Speaker 2: Explain that please, Yeah, So part of what's taken so
Speaker 2: long is that since this California, the prosecutor is calling
Speaker 2: for the death penalty. You know, there's all sorts of
Speaker 2: systems in place that in situations like this, they need
Speaker 2: to be very very careful that the everything is done
Speaker 2: by the book for in the lead up to the
Speaker 2: trial and during the trial, so that the verdict can't
Speaker 2: won't be overturned in appeal. And so they have to
Speaker 2: really make sure that there's no appearances of the defense
Speaker 2: ever being rushed or the defense not having the resources
Speaker 2: that they need, et cetera, et cetera. And so that's
Speaker 2: part of the reason why a case like this can
Speaker 2: really stretch out, because the judge is never the judges
Speaker 2: has the really hard is trying to avoid having to
Speaker 2: having to say it's time we get you know, you've
Speaker 2: taken too long, It's time we get to the trial,
Speaker 2: because then later potentially the defense can use that for
Speaker 2: overturning the verdict. So in this case, the defendant has
Speaker 2: court appointed attorneys and he's been allowed to, you know,
Speaker 2: work with one for a year, and then they have
Speaker 2: a personality conflict and he gets rid of them, and
Speaker 2: another one is appointed who he works for with for
Speaker 2: two years, and then that person gets fired. And so
Speaker 2: he's been allowed to have this council change over and
Speaker 2: over again. And in the middle of all that, he
Speaker 2: also decided he wanted to represent himself, and so he
Speaker 2: had I think a court appointed attorney sort of assisting him,
Speaker 2: but he was attempting to speak for himself in hearings,
Speaker 2: and he wasted about two years time with that plea. However,
Speaker 2: you know, I've heard different things that perhaps he was
Speaker 2: never actually interested in He was never actually interested in
Speaker 2: representing himself in trial. He just wanted to, you know,
Speaker 2: continue to waste people's time. And he is excited by
Speaker 2: being able to be the puppet master of these proceedings,
Speaker 2: even from behind bars. And that perhaps when you have
Speaker 2: this pro per pro se, you know, status, you get
Speaker 2: extra privileges in jail that perhaps he wanted for other reasons,
Speaker 2: which is I think having to do you know, having
Speaker 2: to do his phone and computer usage. But he was
Speaker 2: never actually interested in representing himself a trial, so that
Speaker 2: wasted a couple of years. Then he got another attorney
Speaker 2: on top after that, who lasted a couple of years.
Speaker 2: There was an issue with him. Now he's finally with
Speaker 2: someone that seems like things are you know, moving along,
Speaker 2: and the case is finally in jury selections, so it
Speaker 2: shouldn't be going to trial this, you know, the next
Speaker 2: couple of months.
Speaker 6: We haven't told the audience exactly all these charges. We
Speaker 6: just maybe we didn't get into any detail, but you
Speaker 6: talked about finding out the details of Maria Bruno, thirty four,
Speaker 6: mother of four from Al Salvador who lived in an
Speaker 6: La suburb of al Monte. Tell us about the victims.
Speaker 6: Just we won't get into the details, but just the
Speaker 6: victims that he was charged for.
Speaker 2: And wait, well, you know things have even things have
Speaker 2: changed even since his initial charge in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: At that point, I think he was charged with maybe
Speaker 2: seven felony accounts and that covered three victims. So there
Speaker 2: was actually in two thousand and one Maria Bruno in
Speaker 2: two thousand and five who was as you said, a
Speaker 2: mother who lived in a housing complex that I think
Speaker 2: he was also living in or living near. And then
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eight, he broke into a woman's
Speaker 2: home and repeatedly stabbed her while she was sleeping, and
Speaker 2: she managed to kick him off of her and he
Speaker 2: ran away. And that was the one who he was
Speaker 2: finally picked up for because he left DNA evidence at
Speaker 2: the scene, and so that victim, you know, that victim
Speaker 2: has survived. And so there was those three, you know,
Speaker 2: so two murders and one attempted murder in two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight and Santa Monica. And then he's also connected
Speaker 2: to the murder of his high school classmate, Trisha Poccaccio
Speaker 2: in Glenville, Illinois, and that was from nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: and he was always a person of interest in that
Speaker 2: case that they were never able to charge anyone because
Speaker 2: of you know, all sorts of issues and you know,
Speaker 2: perhaps plays into also things happening in Cook County and
Speaker 2: political stuff that I can't even really speak about. But
Speaker 2: after he was after he was put in jail in
Speaker 2: California waiting trial, you know, California and Illinois law enforcement
Speaker 2: were able to connect and there was also a CBS
Speaker 2: forty eight hours episode about this nonsalved Illinois case that aired,
Speaker 2: I believe in twenty twelve or twenty eleven, And after
Speaker 2: that show came on, a new witness came forward who
Speaker 2: said he knew Guardulo in Hollywood and he had confessed
Speaker 2: in passing to killing someone his high school girlfriend and
Speaker 2: ILLINAI a long time ago. So that new witness was
Speaker 2: enough to finally charge him for Tricia Papaccio from nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three. However, you know, it's really up in the
Speaker 2: air if that case will ever get to trial either,
Speaker 2: because that's not going to even get started until the
Speaker 2: whole California situation ends. But he's now, you know, formally
Speaker 2: charged with four victims.
Speaker 6: You include a haunting story on account from Tricia, Tricia's
Speaker 6: Picassio's parents, father Rick, as you write in the book
Speaker 6: tell us about this, Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, from what I learned about that case in
Speaker 2: Glen View. And you know, the other the other commonality
Speaker 2: between Guardulo and all his alleged victims is that he
Speaker 2: lived very close to all of them and they and
Speaker 2: they were you know, most of them were people that
Speaker 2: he knew socially, prior to the murder. So Tricia was
Speaker 2: a you know, talented, beautiful, college bound girl, and everyone
Speaker 2: had This was the summer before everyone was about to
Speaker 2: leave for college. And on the night of her murder,
Speaker 2: the kids had organized some sort of scavenger hunt throughout
Speaker 2: the neighborhood and people were driving around to different locations,
Speaker 2: and Tricia got dropped off at her house at you know,
Speaker 2: close to I think, very late at night when it
Speaker 2: was dark out, and she also lived on a culled
Speaker 2: effect and guard Julio lived a couple streets away. And
Speaker 2: then the next morning, her father came out to walk
Speaker 2: the dog and sounds his daughter's body on the steps,
Speaker 2: and you know, sounds the most traumatic side ever. And
Speaker 2: her parents you know, continue to I think, be incredibly.
Speaker 2: It just kind of her parents are still stuck in
Speaker 2: the trauma of that day, and they still live in
Speaker 2: that house, and they're still, you know, every day committed
Speaker 2: to fighting for justice for her. And what I've read
Speaker 2: from other accounts in the years after Tricia's murder, Michael
Speaker 2: still lived down the street and it was reported that
Speaker 2: there was one instance when you know, he kept stopping
Speaker 2: by the Paccaccio's house and you know, he used to
Speaker 2: be family friends with the parents and was friends with
Speaker 2: Tricia's older brother, and so he kept stopping by and
Speaker 2: it was if you know, he somehow felt like he
Speaker 2: wanted to be around. And at one point I saw
Speaker 2: I read in the story that there was a night
Speaker 2: when Tricia's father wasn't home, but the mother was there,
Speaker 2: and Michael came in and looked really, you know, really distressed,
Speaker 2: and you know, said he had something to say, and
Speaker 2: you know, was was really agitated, and the mother was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: sit down. And you know, then before he could speak,
Speaker 2: his brothers like burst in the door and pulled him away.
Speaker 2: And and then just a few months later he left town.
Speaker 2: And then that was when he made he started making
Speaker 2: his way to Los Angeles, and a couple shortly after
Speaker 2: that is when he would come up with Ashley's crowd.
Speaker 6: Right in this book, you write about your hemped, your
Speaker 6: contact with gurdrilal tell us about that firm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, for a time, I thought maybe he
Speaker 2: would be someone that I would want to interview. And
Speaker 2: I did write to him once and you know, kept
Speaker 2: a kept a po box down the street for the
Speaker 2: return address for a letter if he chose to write
Speaker 2: back to me. But we never got anywhere with that,
Speaker 2: and ultimately I was grateful for that, because I'm not
Speaker 2: sure what I was prepared to do. I think I
Speaker 2: just felt like, you know, maybe I was influenced by
Speaker 2: maybe I was influenced by all the crime storytelling I
Speaker 2: had read in the past, as if somehow speaking to
Speaker 2: the killer was like the holy grail of contact or
Speaker 2: information that you could get. But as time went on,
Speaker 2: I realized not only did I did not actually want
Speaker 2: to speak to him, you know, I didn't believe that
Speaker 2: he was holding all the answers or holding any answers,
Speaker 2: and that my book really wasn't about him, and I
Speaker 2: didn't need to give him any more attention.
Speaker 6: Now you write about this trial still up in the air.
Speaker 6: He's delayed this it has been delayed, and obviously the
Speaker 6: as you wrote, as you mentioned that the goal or
Speaker 6: the objective or the book has changed in terms of
Speaker 6: its focus and your idea of closure. Again, it's overly used,
Speaker 6: this closure or the idea of closure. But again, when
Speaker 6: you written this the hot one, what did you find?
Speaker 6: Where did you two people, you two friends that had
Speaker 6: so much in common in this exploration what was at
Speaker 6: least least a partial conclusion as to what happened to
Speaker 6: create this difference.
Speaker 2: I think it's very complicated, and I think that unfortunately,
Speaker 2: you know, at twenty two when Ashley was killed, you're
Speaker 2: really just starting out your life and you have no
Speaker 2: idea what you're going to become, and and it's I
Speaker 2: think it's a time of experimentation for most people. And
Speaker 2: so the real tragedy to me is we never got
Speaker 2: to find out, and she never got to find out
Speaker 2: what she would do with her life. But you know
Speaker 2: what I did reflect on and I still think about
Speaker 2: a lot. It's just how powerful kind of the how
Speaker 2: powerful the male gaze is in a in a girl's
Speaker 2: life and growing up you may not even know what
Speaker 2: it is, but you recognize that things are different for
Speaker 2: girls versus boys, and you're going to be the assumptions
Speaker 2: are going to be made about you based on how
Speaker 2: you dress and how you know, how friendly you seem,
Speaker 2: and that comes with dangers. And these are things that
Speaker 2: girls in their teenage years are starting to figure out
Speaker 2: and try to gather information about what is the world
Speaker 2: of men and sex and how safe do I feel?
Speaker 2: And how comfortable am I? You know, how comfortable am
Speaker 2: I experimenting with new ways of being and ways of
Speaker 2: you know, asserting that or owning that power. And the
Speaker 2: fact is, as a twenty two year old, as a
Speaker 2: twenty one year old, none of us really understands what
Speaker 2: that's actually about, but we do. You know, you still
Speaker 2: feel the power of male objectification, and when you're a
Speaker 2: young woman, it can feel, it can feel i think, intoxicating,
Speaker 2: It can feel like, you know, perhaps this is what
Speaker 2: I had, this is the what I have to offer
Speaker 2: right now. And so what I think the biggest things
Speaker 2: that affected Ashley and me, you know, being in different
Speaker 2: places in that point, is our different attitudes around kind
Speaker 2: of embodying our sexuality and our comfort level with kind
Speaker 2: of exploring that world. And I think that, you know,
Speaker 2: perhaps many years later, when I was in my thirties
Speaker 2: even and when I was at a different stage with
Speaker 2: dating in my relationships, I think I even started to understand,
Speaker 2: I started to understand more the place that actually might
Speaker 2: have been in her twenties that you know, as much
Speaker 2: as she was someone that attracted a lot of attention,
Speaker 2: was getting asked out on dates, having older guys wanting
Speaker 2: to buy things from her that didn't that didn't actually
Speaker 2: mean that she was having positive and meaningful relationships with men.
Speaker 2: And I think ultimately that's what we all want. And
Speaker 2: this is a long winded answer to say, I think
Speaker 2: it all comes back to objectification of girls and women
Speaker 2: and how to and how different girls are, you know,
Speaker 2: navigating that those complicated dynamics of the world.
Speaker 6: Speaking about objectification, it's very some striking visual images arise
Speaker 6: from reading this book. And you go to the strip
Speaker 6: club where she you find out that she would go
Speaker 6: weekends and go to Vegas and work on the weekends
Speaker 6: there to make even more cash than she'd been making
Speaker 6: dancing in the club that she normally worked in. And
Speaker 6: you talk about in your journey you actually want to
Speaker 6: go on the pathway that this killer would have seen.
Speaker 6: I've talked about objectification in the clubs, but you went
Speaker 6: to the pathway to see what what did you find
Speaker 6: on the actual pathway in terms of what he could
Speaker 6: see mm hmm, what he desired and what that attention
Speaker 6: had drawn, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, I had, you know, close close to the
Speaker 2: end of the book when I'm when I'm you know,
Speaker 2: recognizing that this is a story that will always consume me,
Speaker 2: and that there's no clear ending and it's like getting
Speaker 2: time for me to let go. I had learned, you know,
Speaker 2: I learned, and I had been advised by one of
Speaker 2: the prosecutors that, uh that the you know what I
Speaker 2: spoke about in the beginning of Guardula just appearing on
Speaker 2: the street when Ashley's friend had a flat tire. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure it'll ever be provable, but you know, it's
Speaker 2: been suggested that all of that was was sort of orchestrated,
Speaker 2: that he had potentially been stepped being her and you know,
Speaker 2: stalking her from afar for weeks and maybe months, and
Speaker 2: that's maybe his pattern of his pattern of surveillance on
Speaker 2: all his victims that he had already you know, he
Speaker 2: had been plotting and calculating and orchestrating the scene of
Speaker 2: the murder for a long time, down to you know,
Speaker 2: knowing her comings and goings from her house and who
Speaker 2: she spent time with, and knowing, you know, the time
Speaker 2: of day that she gets up and goes to bed,
Speaker 2: and who who is coming in the house of this
Speaker 2: house and why and one of the ways that he
Speaker 2: managed to pass while doing this sort of covert surveillance
Speaker 2: was that he had a dog, and I had been
Speaker 2: I've been told that, you know, that's sort of a
Speaker 2: that's an easy cover for someone that's trying to pass
Speaker 2: that actually he has a reason to be out in
Speaker 2: the neighborhood walking a dog. But what he's really doing
Speaker 2: during that time is, you know, studying his targets and
Speaker 2: their environment. And Ashley's house happened to be across the
Speaker 2: street from a dog park, and you know, I had
Speaker 2: been told that, you know, that was that was the
Speaker 2: place where he was coming, perhaps had been coming routinely
Speaker 2: to look into her house and study study the rhythms
Speaker 2: of it with his dog.
Speaker 6: Yeah. You write also that in this investigation, and as
Speaker 6: I call it exploration, you found out some alarming things
Speaker 6: from I mentioned a woman named O'Toole and her report
Speaker 6: of seventy six page report, and you something that again
Speaker 6: the big true crime fan might know about. But tell
Speaker 6: us about what you found out about Piekarism and its
Speaker 6: relation to this case.
Speaker 2: Oh right, I mean, this is this is getting into
Speaker 2: the really the really gory sensational stuff about the book
Speaker 2: that I almost I would almost like to leave for
Speaker 2: the reader to uncover. However, I'll just say that one
Speaker 2: aspect of the book is me going through and processing
Speaker 2: a report done by this former retired serial killer profile
Speaker 2: expert Mary Ellen O'Toole, who your listeners might be familiar with.
Speaker 2: She appears on a lot of shows, and she had
Speaker 2: conducted a years long examination of all the crime scenes
Speaker 2: associated with Guardulo. So that was the four different victims
Speaker 2: in Illinois and the three different areas of LA and
Speaker 2: she had identified multiple points of commonality amongst all of them,
Speaker 2: and they were things that were common to you know,
Speaker 2: his all the victims shared the they all happen to
Speaker 2: live near Guardel at the time, things like that, And
Speaker 2: it was also commonalities around his manner of inflicting violence
Speaker 2: and you know, what his what his methods might have been.
Speaker 2: And that was some of the most disturbing stuff and disturbing,
Speaker 2: upsetting and kind of really just kind of shattering material
Speaker 2: to read about someone you had known. And you know,
Speaker 2: many readers have really responded to that part as if
Speaker 2: as as a quite just just quite you know, Mike's
Speaker 2: quite makes quite an impact because I talk about that
Speaker 2: that's that's that arrives pretty much in the last quarter
Speaker 2: of the book, and so at that time, you've really
Speaker 2: the reader has learned a lot about Ashley and learned
Speaker 2: a lot about you know, the journey that I've been
Speaker 2: on over the years. And you know, some might suggest
Speaker 2: that including that kind of graphic detail is potentially exploitative,
Speaker 2: but I really wanted it to actually, I wanted it
Speaker 2: to make an impact around by the time you've gotten
Speaker 2: to this place in the book, you know this victim
Speaker 2: in a personal way, and reading about her in this
Speaker 2: depersonalized way now is jarring and should not be taken lightly.
Speaker 2: And to me it was, you know, one of the
Speaker 2: most powerful ways of just really hitting home the significance
Speaker 2: and the trauma of what crime storytelling what crime is
Speaker 2: about you know, this is a real person's life, that
Speaker 2: this is a real person's life that absolutely as who
Speaker 2: has had inhumane and you know, outrageous, outrageous things done
Speaker 2: to her.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, Now you talk about this exploitation, but I got
Speaker 6: to say that in this book you go to extreme
Speaker 6: levels to leave this to the very end for any
Speaker 6: kind of detail, the lack of sensationalism with this, given
Speaker 6: the opportunities that you had to do that, I got
Speaker 6: to commend you for I got to say, this is
Speaker 6: a total lack of exploiting on the things that you
Speaker 6: very much could with this, and the focus is the
Speaker 6: relationship that you had with your friend, and really it
Speaker 6: really did confound you that she could end up in
Speaker 6: the place that she did in comparison to your life
Speaker 6: and the differences that happened after she moved to California.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I hope that I hope that I
Speaker 2: hope that readers definitely feel that sensitivity, because I know
Speaker 2: that this is a case that has been treated also
Speaker 2: of ways in the media, whether it's you know, telling
Speaker 2: the story through the lens of her killer, or through
Speaker 2: Ashton Kutcher, or just you know, describing her as a
Speaker 2: Hollywood party girl who worked in the sect industry. And
Speaker 2: to me, she was always She's a complex person who
Speaker 2: has a history and has you know, deep relationships and
Speaker 2: people that remember her, and she is the victim of
Speaker 2: a of a heinous, violent crime, and I wanted to
Speaker 2: I wanted to lay out all of that for the reader,
Speaker 2: and you know, there's no easy way to make sense
Speaker 2: of all that because it doesn't make sense. And I
Speaker 2: hope that you know, at the end of the book,
Speaker 2: the readers really kind of understand the complexity of these
Speaker 2: questions and and and this loss.
Speaker 6: I think it. I think you really do uh explore
Speaker 6: the idea that she was much too young for or
Speaker 6: anyone in any context to be able to make an
Speaker 6: evaluation or an assessment of her life. To sum it
Speaker 6: up as like you say, the couple times you heard
Speaker 6: and very annoyed you to be her to be depicted
Speaker 6: as a party girl again twenty one, twenty two, you
Speaker 6: describe the almost magnetism that this girl has at that
Speaker 6: young age. She's just a beautiful, nice you know, a
Speaker 6: friend to people. She's a beautiful person, a beautiful person.
Speaker 6: So she succumbed. She really truly was a victim. And
Speaker 6: that you said that she didn't have the opportunity like yourself.
Speaker 6: You write that you were pregnant with your with your daughter,
Speaker 6: and the life that you had. You wouldn't, you know,
Speaker 6: trade for anything. You had a difficult you had difficulties.
Speaker 6: But in this book you write about really her her
Speaker 6: personality very much. In most books you don't get that.
Speaker 6: You get a brief summary about how she lit up
Speaker 6: the room and how she was a great girl. And
Speaker 6: you've done an admirable job of going and exploring who
Speaker 6: she became and why, And unfortunately you're there to bear
Speaker 6: witness at this preliminary and you planned to be at
Speaker 6: the trial to to to bear witness to your friend's
Speaker 6: murder and the see justice done. However, as you write,
Speaker 6: closure is is something that's just a maybe overused cliche.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I really appreciate, I really appreciate
Speaker 2: that sensitive, sensitive take on the book. I'm I'm so
Speaker 2: glad you found it, and I'm you know, I look
Speaker 2: forward to hearing what your listeners think of it.
Speaker 6: Yes, absolutely, for those that do you have a Facebook
Speaker 6: page or a website for people that might want to
Speaker 6: find out more information about this and this book.
Speaker 2: Sure, you can find me on Twitter at Carolyn Murnick
Speaker 2: and my website is Carolyn murnick dot com. I'm also
Speaker 2: on Instagram at c murnick, and I have been writing
Speaker 2: for The Cut at New York Magazine on some of
Speaker 2: the recent things happening with the trial, and that's probably
Speaker 2: we're all. We're all place some essays when I'm out
Speaker 2: covering the trial. So check out The Cut at New
Speaker 2: York Magazine and also my website Carolyn Murnick dot com
Speaker 2: for the latest.
Speaker 6: It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for talking
Speaker 6: about the Hot One, A memoir of friendship, sex and murder.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much, Carolyn Murnick, you have a great evening.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Thank you too. Byde bye