A California man has been found guilty of killing an aspiring model and her architect friend, who were both found unconscious outside different Los Angeles-area hospitals back in 2021.
After just more than seven hours of deliberation, a jury on Tuesday convicted David Pearce of two counts of first-degree murder in the overdose deaths of 24-year-old Christy Giles and 26-year-old Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, NBC Los Angeles reported.
Both women were enjoying a night out in the L.A. area when they met 42-year-old Pearce and his actor pal Brandt Osborn at a warehouse rave on Nov. 12, 2021.
They partied and danced in the VIP section together, surveillance video obtained by investigators showed, and then returned as a group to Pearce’s townhouse in West Hollywood, where Giles and Cabrales-Arzola were drugged and sexually assaulted.
Prosecutors said the pair were given a fatal cocktail of drugs — made up of cocaine, fentanyl, ketamine, heroin, MDMA and the date rape drug GBH — before they were dumped outside two different hospitals some 12 hours later.
Giles’ body was found outside Southern California Hospital in the early hours of Nov. 13, after masked men shoved her out of their black Toyota Prius and then sped off. Police said the vehicle did not have any license plates at the time.
Giles, who’d been working to make it as a model in Los Angeles, was pronounced dead a short time later. Family said she’d also recently started studying interior design, which led to her friendship with Cabrales-Arzola, an architect from Mexico who’d recently moved to the area for interior design work, according CBS News.
Cabrales-Arzola was found unresponsive outside Kaiser Permanente Hospital in West Los Angeles, some two miles from where Giles was left.
Cabrales-Arzola was placed on life support but pronounced dead two weeks later — just one day shy of her 27th birthday.
Family members have said the last text messages the women shared were around 5:30 a.m., ABC 7 reported. Giles wrote “let’s go” with a surprised-face emoji, prompting Cabrales-Arzola to reply, “Yes. I’ll call an Uber” — but they never got in that car.
The coroner later ruled both deaths a homicide, with Giles’ cause of death listed as “multiple drug intoxication,” according to reports by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office. She had a fatal mix of cocaine, fentanyl, ketamine and GHB in her system when she died. Cabrales-Arzola, meanwhile, died from multiple organ failure and “multiple drug intoxication,” according to the report. She tested positive for cocaine and MDMA and other drugs that were undetermined.
In addition to the murders, Pearce on Tuesday was also found guilty of 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. The charges stem from seven separate attacks on seven different women between 2007 and 2020. Many of his victims said he lured them to his apartment by pretending be a well-connected Hollywood insider, KTLA reported.
The jury, however, was deadlocked on charges against Osborn, forcing a mistrial. He’d been facing two counts of being an accessory after the fact.
There will be a hearing on March 13 to determine whether Osborn, currently out on bond, will face a retrial. Pearce, who is facing life in prison, is slated to be sentenced the same day.