L.A. man convicted in drug overdose deaths of two women, serial rapes
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A self-proclaimed nightlife promoter who dumped two women at L.A. hospitals after they overdosed at his home was convicted of two counts of murder and seven counts of sexual assault on Tuesday.
David Pearce, 42, was arrested in November 2021 for his role in the deaths of Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela Cabrales Arzola after he was caught on camera driving their limp frames to hospitals in a car with no license plates.
Prosecutors alleged he provided the drugs that caused their overdoses, then failed to get them medical attention for hours. Both women were dumped at hospitals about 12 to 14 hours after passing out at Pearce’s Olympic Boulevard apartment. Giles died a short time later of an overdose of fentanyl and cocaine, and Arzola spent 11 days in a coma before dying of organ failure and cocaine intoxication.
News of Pearce’s arrest led at least a dozen women to come forward and accuse him of sexual assault, with many saying he posed as a well-connected Hollywood figure to lure them to his apartment after nights of partying. Some said they lost consciousness or felt “paralyzed” after he served them a drink, and awoke to Pearce assaulting them.
A former colleague of David Pearce — who is on trial for the 2021 deaths of two women and several additional sexual assaults — described both women’s final hours in court Friday.
“He’s the guy you fear your daughter encountering while out celebrating a birthday. He’s the guy you fear at a bar. … He’s the guy you fear your friend connecting with on a dating app,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Catherine Mariano said in her opening statement last month.
Pearce did not betray any reaction as the verdict was read. Jurors could not reach a verdict against his co-defendant, Brandt Osborn, who faced two charges of being an accessory to murder. Prosecutors alleged he helped Pearce destroy evidence related to the women’s deaths.
A toxicology screen found gamma-hydroxybutyrate — the date rape drug commonly referred to as GHB — in Giles’ system, but Pearce was not charged with raping either of the women who died of overdoses after partying with him that night in November 2021.
Police had previously investigated Pearce for sexual assault, but L.A. County prosecutors declined to charge him in 2014. The district attorney’s office has not responded to requests for comment on the matter or a public records request seeking documents related to the case.
In the courtroom, Giles’ mother, wearing a “Christy’s Mom” shirt, and several other women who showed up in support of the victims could be seen hugging and dabbing their eyes.
Pearce denied all wrongdoing. Near the end of the two-week trial, he took the stand in his own defense, where he admitted he was living a drug-fueled lifestyle that often involved people passing out drunk or high at his apartment. But he denied providing drugs to either Giles or Arzola and said he wasn’t even in the room when they took what prosecutors believe to be their fatal bump of cocaine.
David Pearce took the stand in his own defense Tuesday to deny committing multiple rapes and say he did everything he could to try to save two women who prosecutors allege died after ingesting drugs at his apartment in 2021.
Michael Ansbach — who was originally arrested alongside Pearce and Osborn before becoming a witness for the prosecution — testified Pearce served him and the women a mysterious batch of cocaine that left him in serious pain. Ansbach said he became violently ill and took charcoal tablets to induce vomiting and purge the drugs from his system the next day. Ansbach said when he pleaded for someone to take the unconscious women to the hospital, Pearce appeared more concerned with protecting himself.
“’Dead girls don’t talk,’” Pearce said, according to Ansbach’s testimony. “It’s a phrase that echoes in my nightmares and disturbs me.”
Prosecutors did not offer Ansbach immunity in exchange for his testimony. Months after his arrest, Ansbach provided a statement through an attorney implicating the other men. Under cross-examination, Pearce’s attorney, Jeff Voll, repeatedly hammered on the fact that Ansbach did not tell police any of the things he would later testify to at trial.
“I was scared,” Ansbach said. “I’d never been in that situation before, and I had no idea what to do.”
“So you lied?” Voll asked.
Arzola studied architecture in Mexico and was working as a project manager before her death, according to an employment profile. She graduated from the University of Monterrey in Nuevo León, Mexico, at the top of her class in 2019 and befriended Giles when she moved to Los Angeles. Giles, born in Alabama, moved to Los Angeles to pursue modeling. She met her husband, Jan Cilliers, several years ago and the two quickly got married during a ceremony at the Burning Man festival in Nevada, according to an attorney for Giles’ family.
Pearce grew up in Bethesda, Md., where he showed an interest in drama and the theater and was something of a social butterfly, according to his mother, Ilene Granat-Pearce. He studied at UCLA, moved to Los Angeles permanently after graduation and entered the entertainment industry, she said.
Although prosecutors say Pearce represented himself as a Hollywood player, evidence of any tangible success in his career is sparse. He booked an appearance on teen drama “Dawson’s Creek” in the 1990s, according to his IMDb page and his mother, but he hasn’t been publicly credited in anything since 2006.
Granat-Pearce said the portrait of her son as a hard-partying nocturne that emerged in court was not the boy she raised.
“David’s got some unique qualities that people would never know because he would never show it to them,” she said.
Pearce called her several nights after Giles’ death to explain what happened, and Granat-Pearce said he gave her the story he told in court — that he’d left the room when Ansbach and the women lost consciousness.
But even she didn’t sound sure of his innocence during an interview the day before the verdict was announced.
“If he is [guilty], then he should be punished,” she said. “The bottom line for me is I love my son. … I may not like him. I may not like what he does. But he’s still my son. And it is very, very difficult to hear people say bad things about your children.”
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