Amie Harwick Murder: Ex-Boyfriend Gets Life Without Parole For Her Slaying – Update
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UPDATE, 4:58 PM: Gareth Pursehouse, age 45, was hit today with a life sentence without the possibility of parole for his murder of 38-year-old Amie Harwick, the ex-fiance of Drew Carey.
The maximum sentence for the first-degree murder comes more than three years after Harwick’s death at her Hollywood Hills home.
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Pursehouse lay in wait for hours before strangling the former Playboy model and prominent sex therapist and throwing her body off the third-floor balcony. He had been accused of stalking her for ten years after a bad breakup.
PREVIOUSLY, SEPT 28 PM: The former boyfriend of Dr. Amie Harwick has been found guilty of killing the Hollywood therapist.
With the first-degree murder verdict from a jury moments ago, Gareth Pursehouse could be sentenced to life behind bars. Under California law, he will have no possibility of parole. Already in custody, Pursehouse is scheduled to be sentenced on December 6.
The jury reached their verdict Thursday against Pursehouse after just seven hours of deliberation in downtown LA over the past two days. The defense rested in the matter without ever presenting a case for their client
A well-known family and sex therapist and ex-fiancée of Drew Carey, Harwick was thrown from the third-floor balcony of her Hollywood Hills home in the early hours of February 15, 2020. Unresponsive but still alive when the LAPD arrived after being contacted by a roommate, Harwick died soon afterwards in a local hospital.
“On Saturday, February 15, 2020, around 1:16 a.m. Hollywood patrol officers responded to a radio call of a ‘woman screaming’ in the 2000 block of Mound Street in Hollywood Hills,” the LAPD reported in a February 16 statement.
While the autopsy report cited the main reason for Harwick’s death as blunt force injuries to the skull and body from a fall, “manual strangulation” was also noted by the LA County Medical Examiner-Coroner. Along with a burglary charge, Pursehouse was determined to behave been “lying in wait” for up to four hours to kill Harwick — with whom he was said to be obsessed for years
Author of 2014’s The Sex Bible for Women, Harwick had appeared in the 2015 documentary Addicted to Sexting, about the proliferation of the social phenomenon and its effects.
In 2012, after a relationship that lasted just over a year, Harwick had filed a restraining order against Pursehouse, the LAPD revealed after her death. That order had expired and the former couple were said to be in some contact in the weeks leading up to Harwick’s death after meeting by chance at an adult film industry event.
Arrested by the police soon after Harwick died, Pursehouse was released within a few days on a $2 million bond. He was re-arrested by the cops on February 19, 2020 on a no-bail warrant, and has been held in County jail ever since. Delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent court backlog, Pursehouse’s DTLA trial started on August 29.
There is no felony murder charge under the Golden State’s penal code, which meant prosecutors needed to prove intent and malice to get a first-degree murder conviction. As the jury’s decision today makes clear, Deputy District Attorney Victor Avila and other members of the prosecution clearly met that challenge.
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