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L.A. Event Planner Charged With Murders Of Model Christy Giles, Hilda Cabrales-Arzola
The two friends were suffering from drug overdoses when they were dumped at separate hospitals on Nov. 13. David Pearce has now been charged with their murders.
A Los Angeles event planner has been charged with murder in the November death of model Christy Giles and her friend, Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola.
David Pearce, 40 — who was already in jail awaiting trial on a string of unrelated alleged rapes — has long been at the center of the investigation into the women’s deaths, but it wasn’t until late last month that Pearce was formally charged with the murder of both women by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, according to The Los Angeles Times.
Pearce, Brandt Osborn, 42, and Michael Ansbach were all captured on surveillance camera footage leaving a warehouse rave with both women around 5:00 a.m. on Nov.13, before the group allegedly headed to Pearce and Osborn’s Olympic Boulevard apartment.
Giles’ lifeless body was dumped outside the Southern California Hospital in Culver City about 12 hours later by two men driving a Toyota Prius with the license plate removed. They told medical personnel they had found her passed out on a curb and were acting as good Samaritans, according to an affidavit in the case obtained by the paper.
A medical examiner later determined that Giles, 24, died of “multiple drug intoxication” and was found to have cocaine, fentanyl, ketamine and gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) in her system at the time of her death.
An unconscious Cabrales-Arzola was dropped at Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles hospital a short time after Giles was left in Culver City.
She spent more than 10 days in critical condition before dying on Nov. 24 of multiple organ failure and multiple drug intoxication, according to records from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office. The 26-year-old was found to have a mix of cocaine, MDMA and “probable other” undetermined drugs in her system.
Both deaths were ruled homicides.
Pearce was photographed partying with Cabrales-Arzola at the rave.
Around 4:00 a.m. she texted Giles, saying “Let’s do a line” and a friend of both women reported seeing Pearce provide the women with something that looked like cocaine, according to the affidavit.
About an hour later, the two women were captured on camera leaving the warehouse with the three men — but once they got back to Pearce’s apartment it appeared that something may have unnerved the women.
At approximately 5:20 a.m. — around 20 minutes after arriving — Giles texted Cabrales-Arzola “Let’s go” along with a wide-eyed emoji.
Cabrales-Arzola responded by texting “yes.”
“I’ll call an Uber,” she added. “10 min away.”
But when the Uber arrived at the property, no one came out and, after waiting for 5 minutes, the driver left.
“One glaring fact is that both Giles and Cabrales wanted to leave Pearce’s residence, as evident by their texts and ordering an Uber,” a detective wrote in the affidavit. “The next time they are seen, they’re dead.”
A woman who lived in the same apartment building later told authorities that she had heard “someone in pain and moaning on and off” for hours from 10:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., investigators said.
When investigators questioned the men at their apartment, Osborn had allegedly seemed “visibly nervous” and denied seeing the women take any drugs.
“I didn’t give them anything, OK, I don’t live like that,” he said.
Osborn claimed he woke up to find the women unresponsive but “making noises” and thought they’d “come out of it” if he left them for a few hours.
However, he said the women were “getting progressively worse” and he panicked.
He allegedly told investigators that he and Pearve hadn’t called 911 because they “didn’t know” the women.
They opted to bring them to separate hospitals because they weren’t sure “how that would look” to bring them to the same place, he said.
Pearce allegedly told authorities, “At the end of the day, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
When contacted about the murder charges against his client, Pearce’s attorney Jacob Glucksman told the paper that his client “adamantly and strongly denies any connection to these women’s unfortunate deaths.”
He added that Pearce plans to plead not guilty.
Oxygen.com reached out to Glucksman’s office and Los Angeles County district attorney’s office but did not receive immediate responses.
In a post on social media, Giles’ family expressed satisfaction that the case against Pearce was moving forward.
“Finally! Justice is coming,” they wrote, according to The New York Post.
Pearce, a freelance event planner, is awaiting trial on charges lodged against him in December for allegedly sexually assaulting four women in a string of unrelated incidents dating back to 2010.
According to an earlier statement from Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, Pearce is accused of: sexually assaulting a woman in August 2010; raping a woman in February 2019; and assaulting two other women in separate incidents in 2020.
In court filings at the time of those charges, Glucksman claimed that authorities had “dusted off” old rape allegations against Pearce as a way to keep him behind bars while the investigation into Giles’ and Cabrales-Arzola’ deaths continued, according to The New York Post.
He argued that two of the accusers had waited a considerable amount of time before ever bringing their allegations to authorities and said the prosecutors hadn't previously filed charges in the other two women’s cases because of “problems of proof.”