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A Hollywood producer has been charged with murder in the drug overdose deaths of an aspiring model and her architect friend, who were dumped unconscious outside separate hospitals in Los Angeles last year.
David Pearce, 40, has been jailed since Dec. 2021 on unrelated rape charges, and last week the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office filed new murder counts against him in connection with the deaths of 24-year-old Christy Giles and 26-year-old Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, reported Los Angeles Times.
In addition, actor Brandt Osborn, 42, was charged as an accessory to the women’s murders. He is currently out on bond, but a warrant has been issued for his arrest.
A third man who was initially collared in the case, identified as 47-year-old cinematographer Michael Ansbach, was not charged.
Giles’ family welcomed the news, writing on Instagram Stories: “Finally! Justice is coming.”
Pearce’s lawyer said his client plans to plead not guilty when he is arraigned on July 11.
Attorney Jacob Glucksman told the newspaper Pearce “adamantly and strongly denies any connection to these women’s unfortunate deaths.”
Giles’ lifeless body was dropped off outside a Culver City, California, hospital, on Nov. 13, 2021, by two masked man in a Toyota Prius with no license plates.
A short time later, the same men left Cabrales-Arzola at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in West Los Angeles. She died on Nov. 24 after spending 11 days in a coma and being declared brain-dead.
The LA County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office has ruled the women’s deaths homicides.
Officials have determined that both Giles and Cabrales-Arzola died of “multiple drug intoxication.”
Giles had a lethal cocktail of cocaine, fentanyl, ketamine and the notorious date rape drug gamma-hydroxybutyrate acid, or GHB in her system at the time of her death.
Cabrales-Arzola tested positive for cocaine and MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, as well as other undetermined drugs, resulting in multiple organ failures.
Pearce was initially arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, while Osborn and Ansbach were accused of being accessories to manslaughter.
Police said all three suspects had attended a warehouse party with the victims in the hours before their deaths, and the women later continued the night at Pearce’s apartment.
Two days after his arrest, Pearce was hit with charges of rape involving four women between 2010 and 2020.
He previously pleaded not guilty to two counts of forcible rape and one count each of rape of an unconscious or sleeping person and sexual penetration with a foreign object, but last week prosecutors added new sexual assault counts against Pearce, who now stands accused of violating seven women.
One of the alleged victims told police that Pearce offered her a whiskey that made her black out and then penetrated her with a wine bottle. After she managed to fight him off, the producer allegedly threatened to hurt her family, a probation officer wrote in a report obtained by the LA Times.
Another woman claimed that Pearce raped her while she was unconscious and then also threatened to harm her loved ones, according to the report.
