Hollywood Producer Found Guilty of Murder in Connection with Fentanyl Deaths of Two Women
David Brian Pearce was also convicted of rape and various sexual offenses against seven additional women from 2007 to 2021.
David Brian Pearce, aged 42, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the fentanyl overdose deaths of 24-year-old model and aspiring actress Christy Giles, alongside her friend Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, 26, who was an architect, in November 2021.
Pearce’s roommate at the time and co-defendant, Brandt Walter Osborn, aged 45, faced two counts of being an accessory after the fact but the jury could not reach a decision on the charges against him. Judge Eleanor J. Hunter of the Los Angeles Superior Court declared a mistrial for these two counts.
The jury deliberated for over two days before reaching a guilty verdict for Pearce.
According to prosecutors, Pearce encountered the two women on November 13, 2021, at an after-hours rave in downtown Los Angeles, took them to his apartment, and drugged them “to prevent anyone from leaving,” administering drugs to enable the sexual assault.
Related Stories
Pearce and Osborn reportedly took the women to two different hospitals instead of dialing 911.
Giles and Cabrales-Arzola were transported to the hospitals roughly two hours apart. Giles was pronounced dead upon arrival at Southern California Hospital in Culver City, while her friend remained in critical condition at Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Hospital until her family made the decision to remove her from life support later that month, just one day before her 27th birthday.
During his testimony last week, Pearce denied administering drugs to the women and refuted the sexual assault claims made by seven women, along with allegations from five additional women who also testified against him.
According to Pearce’s defense attorney, there was no evidence to suggest that Pearce possessed drugs in his residence.
Tablets suspected to be fentanyl are placed on a graph to measure their size at the Drug Enforcement Administration Northeast Regional Laboratory in New York on Oct. 8, 2019. Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images
Deputy District Attorney Catherine Mariano described Pearce as a “sexual predator” and stated that his DNA’s presence on the two women would not be justifiable unless they were drugged and subsequently assaulted, as reported by City News Service.
Pearce’s attorney, Jeff Voll, remarked to reporters that the verdict was “not surprisingly true, given the overwhelming amount of incriminating evidence,” though he anticipated a deadlock on the murder counts.
“To conclude that David Pearce intended to kill Hilda and Christy, you would have to believe he also intended to kill (key prosecution witness) Michael Ansbach, and there’s just no basis for that, no evidence… because they all suffered from fentanyl exposure—all of them, and unfortunately, two of them died,” Voll stated.
He further conveyed that he did not expect Pearce to be released from prison, but added that he anticipates his client will engage another attorney to file a motion for a retrial.
Giles’s mother, Dusty, expressed her pride in the prosecution and the detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department. The family urged authorities not to classify the deaths as accidental overdoses and to thoroughly investigate the incidents, according to her account.
“The man who killed my daughter, I hope, is going away forever,” she commented.
The victims’ deaths were examined as homicides by the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner, which discovered several drugs present in both victims’ systems.
Pearce is scheduled for sentencing on March 13 and faces a potential sentence of 148 years to life in state prison, according to the district attorney’s office.
A pretrial hearing for Osborn is also set for that day.
City News Service contributed to this report.
