For more than three years, the families of two young women who died after being given a fatal cocktail of drugs, their bodies dumped outside Los Angeles-area hospitals by masked men, have been living a nightmare as they waited for justice.
That day finally came this week when a jury convicted David Pearce, 42, on two counts of murder in the overdose deaths of 24-year-old model Christy Giles and her 26-year-old architect friend Hilda Cabrales-Arzola.
Pearce and his actor pal Brandt Osborne partied with the women at a warehouse rave in Los Angeles on November 12, 2021, and then lured them back to Pearce’s apartment where they provided the drugs that prosecutors say “ultimately killed them.”
The jury’s decision on Tuesday not only brings some closure for the families of the victims but also for Allison Pearce, the accused killer's own sister, who tells The Independent that “karma finally caught up to him.”
Since first hearing about her brother’s involvement with the deaths three years ago, Allison has weighed whether she should speak out.
“I think I was a little shocked at first, but the more I thought about it, it didn't really surprise me,” she told The Independent.
“I never thought to myself, ‘oh my brother would have never done this,’ because well, yeah maybe. Would he take it THIS far? I don’t know. I guess it’s not so much further from where I saw him as a human being.”
Her relationship with Pearce, a self-described “entertainment professional” who was trying to make his way in Hollywood as a producer, had always been a tumultuous one.
She recalled turning points over the years that pushed them further apart, leading to their eventual estrangement. One incident involved an argument between Pearce and his sister, who was visiting him in LA, that culminated with him driving away and leaving her stranded, she said.
After Pearce was arrested in December 2021 and later charged with murder in the deaths of the two women, Allison had no desire to see him at all.
At Pearce’s murder trial, prosecutors say the men gave Giles and Cabrales-Arzola a fatal cocktail of drugs – which included cocaine, fentanyl, ketamine, heroin, MDMA, and the date rape drug GBH – before dumping their bodies outside two separate Los Angles hospitals 12 hours later.
Giles was already dead when she was left at the hospital and Cabrales-Arzola was in critical condition. She was taken off life support later that month, a day before her 27th birthday. The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner determined their deaths to be drug-induced homicides.
While in custody, Pearce was also charged with three counts of forcible rape, two counts of sexual penetration by use of force and one count each of rape of an unconscious person and sodomy by use of force, after seven women came forward in unrelated cases. A jury found him guilty of those charges.
Allison has struggled to come to terms with her brother’s actions, a gnawing pain that’s prompted her to speak out for the first time – and apologize to the victims’ families.
“This is really hard for me – not only as his sister, but as a woman,” she said. “I just can’t even believe that he would do something like this, that he would take it that far and that he would hurt and take advantage of these women.”
‘I’m sorry for my brother’s actions’
Allison said she knows that nothing can bring back Giles and Cabrales-Arzola, but she still wants to apologize.
“I want to tell them how sorry I am for my brother’s actions, for how many lives were uprooted and will be forever changed because of what he did. Just know that I want justice.”
In the months and years since Pearce’s arrest in 2021, more information has come to light about his sordid past. While in custody, he was hit with seven rape charges for sexual assaults in unrelated cases that allegedly happened between 2007 and 2021.
Prosecutors alleged that Pearce was well-connected in certain circles of Hollywood and the late night LA club scene, which placed him in the perfect position to approach women, pose as someone who could help with their acting or modeling careers.
But it was a ruse, his sister said.
“That’s what he does – he’s a liar, he lies about everything, about who he is, and what he does,” his sister said. “He’s a con artist who manipulates people into getting what he wants.”
Many of the women who came forward had a similar story about being lured to Pearce’s apartment and becoming sick or paralyzed after he served them a drink, according to prosecutors.
At the trial, Deputy District Attorney Catherine Mariano told jurors that in Giles’s and Cabrales-Arzola’s case, Pearce “knew the dangers of fentanyl,” but said he still gave the women the cocktail of drugs “because he wanted to sexually assault them.”
While Pearce’s 78-year-old mother has been in the courtroom to support him, his sister Allison has kept her distance. She said she believes that he deserves to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
“He needs to pay for what he did,” she said. “For the pain he inflicted on these women, their poor families … and us.”
She hopes his pattern of always getting “away with everything” has finally been broken.
“He was always scheming,” she said. “Always trying to get to the next place, to get out of something. I hope it ends now.”
Not only has the ordeal created a rift in their family, but it has also hit close to home for Allison as a single woman.
“I’m a single person, I’m on dating apps and out meeting people,” she said “I feel like I could’ve been one of my brother’s victims. This could have been anyone.”
A night of partying takes a tragic turn
The tragic saga began on the night of November 12, 2021. Giles and Cabrales-Arzola started their night with an art show at the Soho House in West Hollywood before making their way to see a DJ they liked play at a warehouse rave in East Los Angeles where they met Pearce and his friends.
The party continued at Pearce’s apartment but around 5:30 a.m. on November 13, Giles reportedly messaged Cabrales-Arzola to say: “Let’s get out of here,” with a wide-eyed emoji. She replied: “Yes. I’ll call an Uber. 10 min away.”
The Uber arrived at Pearce’s address but left five minutes later without the women.
About 12 hours later, Pearce was seen on video footage shown in court carrying Giles’s body to a Prius.
He dumped her body first at Southern California Hospital in Culver City and when he returned to his apartment, he saw that Cabrales-Arzola was “progressively getting worse” but that “she was breathing and making noise,” he told authorities in a recorded interview that was played in court.
He then drove Cabrales-Arzola’s limp body to Kaiser Permanente hospital in West LA, and later told detectives that she was still alive.
Pearce continued to deny the charges against him and — ignoring his attorney’s advice — took the stand in his own defense last week.
He told the court that he met the two women in a “drug room” at the rave and when they passed out at his apartment, he didn’t think anything about it, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“The lifestyle that I was living at the time was not very conducive to regular behavior, if that makes sense,” Pearce said on the stand.
“It was not uncommon for people to use my house as a crash pad, a party house. I know it’s horrible, but at least on a weekly basis friends were passing out at my house.”
He claimed that he tried to help the women by putting them in his bed and rolling them on their sides in case they needed to vomit.
When the women were still unconscious hours later, Pearce said that’s when he took Giles to the hospital. When he returned the other woman was still unconscious so began CPR but never called 911.
“She was responding to the chest compressions. She was responding to the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in a positive way,” he said. “I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know how much drugs they did.”
The women had consumed alcohol and drugs at the party, prosecutors said, but alleged that the drugs Pearce gave them at his apartment are what “ultimately killed them.”
Pearce’s friend, Brandt Osborn, 45, was also arrested and charged with being an accessory after the fact. His case was also heard this month, but the jury was unable to reach a decision and Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Eleanor J. Hunter declared a mistrial on those charges.
A third man, Michael Ansbach was initially arrested but has since become a key witness for the prosecution. Ansbach had told the court that during the process of transporting the women, Pearce had said: “Dead girls don’t talk.” Pearce denied saying this.
In closing arguments, the prosecutor said there was no reason for Pearce’s DNA to be found under Cabrales-Arzola’s fingernails, if the women weren’t drugged and then sexually assaulted.
“This is no accident, no mistake,” she said, calling the incident an attempt by Pearce to “get away” with what he had done for years.
Sentencing for Pearce, who has been in custody since his arrest, is scheduled for March 13.
