More On: George Gascón
Hollywood producer David Pearce who is accused of killing two women might have killed more
LA County District Attorney George Gascón said that a Hollywood producer was charged with the murder of a model and her friend who died from an overdose of drugs. He was also charged with sexual assault in two unrelated cases, and there could be more victims.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Gascón made it official that David Pearce was being charged with the deaths of model Christy Giles and her friend Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola. Their bodies were found on November 13, 2021, at two different hospitals.
Pearce, who was 37 at the time, was arrested and charged with raping and sexually assaulting four women the next month.
Gascón said on Tuesday that investigators had found enough new evidence to link Pearce to the deaths of Giles and Cabrales-Arzola, as well as to the rapes and sexual assaults of three other people.
Gascón said at the press conference, "We knew this was going to be a long investigation, so we started with the charges we knew we could prove." "Most had to do with taking drugs and giving them to other people.
“The LAPD did a lot of work here as well as our prosecuting team because we knew that they were murders and we wanted to prove that, and that is the reason why the outstanding charges have been confirmed,” said Gascón.
Pearce is charged with multiple felonies in addition to the two counts of murder. These crimes are said to have happened to seven different women between August 2010 and November 2021.
There are three counts of rape by force, two counts of sexual penetration by an object other than a human body part, one count of sodomy, and one count of sexual penetration by force.
He is also charged with selling or offering to sell a controlled substance to Giles and Cabrales-Arzola, which is a separate crime. Gascón said that if Pearce was found guilty, he could get up to 120 years in prison.
Pearce's lawyer, Jacob Glucksman, told The Post on Tuesday that his client is being held without enough proof.
“All the allegations, including the new charges, are based on extremely weak evidence,” Glucksman said. “The DA’s office is prosecuting under the premise of ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.’ The problem is, they haven’t yet located any fire.”
Pearce's friend, the actor Brandt Osborn, who is 42 years old, was also charged with two counts of aiding and abetting.
Osborn, who was born in Staten Island and hangs out in Hollywood, was arrested on Dec. 15, but LA County sheriff's records show that he was released two days later after the DA's office rejected his arrest information.
Gascón said on Tuesday that there is a warrant out for Osborn's arrest.
Investigators from the LAPD said that Pearce, Osborn, and the third man, cinematographer cameraman Michael Ansbach, met Giles and Cabrales-Arzola on Nov. 13 at a warehouse party in Los Angeles after hours. They then spent the rest of the night at Pearce's apartment on Olympic Boulevard.
The LAPD said that two men in a Toyota Prius without license plates drove Giles' dead body to a hospital in Culver City. Shortly after that, the men dropped Cabrales-Arzola off at Kaiser Permanente in West LA.
Cabrales-Arzola died on November 24, five days before she turned 27. Her family said that she was brain dead.
Soon after the men were arrested, a picture of Cabrales-Arzola at the warehouse party with Ansbach and Pearce in the middle came to light.
Actors who worked with Osborn, Alexandra Creteau and David Murrietta Jr., told The Post that Osborn told them during a November shoot that he had been drinking with women and then helped dump their bodies.
“He told me how they’d partied, two girls came back to their place, and the girls had a bunch of drugs,” Murrietta said.
Murrietta added Osborn told him he left his apartment to get a COVID-19 test for a commercial shoot, and when he returned, his roommate informed him that Giles was dead.
“He checked her pulse, freaked out, decided not to call 911, and they decided what to do with the body,” Murrietta said.
The LA County Department of Medical Examiner-Office Coroner's says that Giles died from a combination of cocaine, fentanyl, gamma-hydroxybutyric acid, and ketamine. Cabrales-Arzola died from cocaine, Ecstasy, and other drugs that caused her organs to fail.
The coroner said that both of the women had been killed.
Jan Cilliers, Giles's husband, told The Post on Tuesday that he was very happy that Pearce and Osborn have been charged by the LA County District Attorney's Office.
“There can never be true justice for the death of Christy and Marcela,” Cilliers said. “Nothing will ever bring them back, and their deaths will affect the rest of our lives. The best we can hope for now is that the full truth comes out and that they are put away for the maximum amount of time so they can no longer hurt anyone else.”
Pearce remains in jail in lieu of a $3.4 million bail. He is scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing on July 11.
Ansbach, 47, was released on Dec. 16 on $100,000 bond. Prosecutors have yet to file charges against him.
