“Dead Girls Don’t Talk,” Fake Producer Abandoned Women’s Bodies Like Garbage
A jury convicted David Brian Pearce of two counts of first-degree murder in the fentanyl overdose deaths of Christy Giles, a 24-year-old aspiring actress and model, and Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, Giles’s friend and an immigrant who was an interior designer and architect, in November 2021, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman announced.
Pearce was also found guilty of multiple sexual assault charges involving seven women over a 14-year period. The jury convicted him of three counts of forcible rape, one count of sexual penetration by use of force, one count of sodomy by use of force, one count of rape of an unconscious woman, and one count of sexual penetration with a foreign object.
“Today, a serial rapist was held accountable for the deaths of Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, both of whom tragically died as a result of fentanyl poisoning and the victimization of seven other women across Los Angeles,” Hochman said. “I thank the trial team, Deputy District Attorneys Catherine Mariano and Seth Carmack, for their tireless pursuit of justice and determination to give a voice to the women who bravely came forward to report the crimes committed against them.”
Pearce, 42, is scheduled to be sentenced on March 13 at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center. He faces 148 years to life in prison and will be required to register as a sex offender for life.
The jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on two counts of accessory after the fact against co-defendant Brandt Walter Osborn, 44. Osborn is set to return to court for a pretrial hearing on March 13.
Prosecutors said that on Nov. 13, 2021, Pearce, Osborn, and an acquaintance, Michael Ansbach, met Giles and Cabrales-Arzola at a warehouse party in East Los Angeles. The women later accompanied the men to Pearce’s Pico Robertson apartment. While there, Pearce provided them with gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) and fentanyl, leading to fatal overdoses.
Around 35 minutes after arriving at the apartment, Cabrales-Arzola called a rideshare car to leave, but neither woman left until hours later. Surveillance footage showed Pearce carrying Giles out of the apartment about 11 hours later and Cabrales-Arzola about an hour and a half after that. Pearce dropped Giles’s dead body off outside of Southern California Hospital in Culver City and abandoned the still-living but critically ill Cabralales-Arzola outside of the Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles’s hospital.
Dusty Giles, Christy’s mother, was told that her daughter was “dropped off at our hospital on the outside, kind of like a bag of garbage.”
Giles was pronounced dead upon arrival, while Cabrales-Arzola was resuscitated but died 11 days later, the day before her 27th birthday after being pronounced brain dead. Pearce’s DNA was found on both women, including under Cabralas-Arzola’s fingernails.
In an LAPD press release, three masked men were identified as the suspects who left the unconscious women’s bodies outside of the hospitals: David Pearce, 37; Michael Ansbach, 47; and Brandt Osborn, 42, using a Black Toyota Prius with no license plates. Ansbach was not charged and testified that Pearce had told him, “ “Dead girls don’t talk.”, as quoted by NBC Los Angeles.
During the investigation, authorities uncovered evidence linking Pearce to multiple drug-facilitated sexual assaults. Seven victims testified during the trial, describing his pattern of predatory behavior after they stepped forward with their stories.
The case was prosecuted by the District Attorney’s Office’s Sex Crimes Division and investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department.
