By the time Ashton learned of Ashley's fate the next day, he was "freaking out".
“My fingerprints are on this door and I was freaking out,” he said from the witness stand on Wednesday.
“I told [an officer], ‘Let me tell you what happened.’”
Ashton said he told police that he believed he had been stood up when Ashley didn't answer her phone or the door to him when he visited her home that evening.
He told police that before he left, he peered through a front window.
“I saw what I thought was red wine spilled on the carpet. But that wasn’t alarming because I went to her house party [days before] and it was like a college party. I didn’t think much about it,” Ashton testified.
But prosecutors believe the stains were from blood.
“I tried the front door knob and it was locked,” he told the court.
Ashley’s roommate found her body the following morning.
Gargiulo has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and an attempted murder charge stemming from attacks that took place in the LA area between 2001 and 2008.