Ashton Kutcher Testifies - ‘Hollywood Ripper' To Justice?

The trial of an alleged serial killer takes a dramatic turn when a star connected to one of the victims takes the stand

- Sandra Sobieraj Westfall and Christine Pelisek

At the time, it seemed like an unremarkable night with a familiar story line—just a guy late for a first date with a girl who had gotten tired of waiting and refused to come to the door when he finally showed up. But 18 years later, on May 29, actor Ashton Kutcher reconstructed every minute detail of it for a rapt, packed Los Angeles courtroom. On Feb. 21, 2001, Kutcher, then shaggy-haired and just starting toward stardom with his TV role in That ’70s Show, had made plans with fashion student Ashley Ellerin, whom he’d met at a party months before. Appearing nervous as he relived that evening from the stand, Kutcher recalled how Ellerin sounded unfazed when he called a half hour before their 8 p.m. dinner plans that night to say he was watching the Grammys on TV and suggested that “instead of having dinner, maybe we’d just have drinks.” By the time he knocked at Ellerin’s front door three hours later, the lights inside were on, but there was no answer—not at the door or at the two phone numbers he had for her. “I looked through the window, didn’t see anything and just assumed that she had gone out with her friend and bailed [on me],” Kutcher testified. In a conservative blue suit, his hair neatly parted, he guessed that he had left just two messages on her phone that night: “I was trying to take her on a date, and I didn’t want to seem, like, overeager.” With one last peek inside the house (“The place was a little bit of a mess,” he said; “...I saw what I thought was red wine spilled on the carpet”), Kutcher got back in his car and never saw Ellerin again. “I figured that I screwed up and showed up too late.”

The next morning Ellerin’s roommate came home to find that what Kutcher mistook from afar for the remnants of a party were, up close, a bloody horror: Ellerin was dead—stabbed more than 47 times.