Man arrested in drug deaths of two L.A. women is charged with sexually assaulting four others
A Beverly Hills man who was arrested this week in connection with the suspicious deaths of two L.A. women left outside hospitals was charged Friday with sexually assaulting four women over the course of a decade.
David Pearce, 37, faces two counts of rape and one count each of rape of an unconscious or asleep person and sexual penetration by a foreign object, according to the L.A. County district attorney’s office.
Prosecutors said Pearce, a onetime club promoter, is accused of assaulting one woman in August 2010, one in February 2019 and two others in separate incidents last year.
“This case is evolving and we continue to work with law enforcement in developing evidence of other possible crimes,” said L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón. “If you have any information, please contact law enforcement immediately.”
Pearce and two other men have also been implicated in the deaths of two women who were allegedly given an overdose of drugs and left for dead outside hospitals after a night of partying last month.
On Wednesday, Pearce was arrested on suspicion of voluntary manslaughter, and Brandt Osborn, 42, and Michael Ansbach, 47, were arrested on suspicion of being an accessory to manslaughter.
Police have arrested three men in connection with the deaths of an L.A. model and architect, both in their 20s.
The three men were arrested by an L.A. police and FBI task force after an extensive investigation into the deaths of 24-year-old model Christy Giles and her friend, 26-year-old architect Hilda Marcela Cabrales Arzola. The women went to Pearce’s townhouse early Nov. 13 after a warehouse party on the Eastside, authorities said. Osborn was arrested while working on “NCIS: Los Angeles,” an LAPD source told The Times.
Prosecutors said they are asking detectives to gather further evidence about Pearce’s alleged role in Giles’ and Arzola’s deaths.
Neither Osborn nor Ansbach has been charged.
According to L.A. County Sheriff’s Department records, Pearce was being held in lieu of $1-million bail. Ansbach was released Thursday on $100,000 bail, and Osborn was released without charges Friday after being detained.
Based on the investigation, Los Angeles police homicide detectives say they are “concerned that there could be other victims in our community who could have been drugged by one or more of these men.”
The district attorney’s office has yet to file charges in connection with the two women’s deaths. None of the men could be reached for comment Thursday.
Before dawn on the day that Giles and Arzola were dumped outside the hospitals, the friends texted back and forth from inside Pearce’s townhouse on Olympic Boulevard.
It was time to go home, the two women agreed. The long night had started hours earlier at a party miles away. One of them called an Uber, but neither would make it to their destination.
Several hours later, a group of masked men in a plate-less Toyota Prius dumped Giles at Southern California Hospital in Culver City. She was unconscious at the time and was soon pronounced dead.
Shortly after, Arzola was dumped at another hospital, Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles. Her body was cold, her family said, and she spent several days in critical condition and on life support.
Arzola died Nov. 24 after being pronounced brain-dead, her family said. It was five days before her 27th birthday.
Some prosecutors are pursuing murder charges for dealers linked to fentanyl deaths. But a public defender said such moves are outside the scope of the law.
Giles’ husband, Jan Cilliers, said on the phone that he was “relieved” that arrests had been made after the sudden loss of his wife.
“But it’s not a big relief — I know that this is just the beginning of the fight,” he said.
Cilliers described Giles as loving, kind and “the biggest defender of everybody that she loved.”
“That’s part of the reason I’m staying so strong, because I know if the roles were reversed she would absolutely be doing this for me,” he said.
Her family said in a statement that they were hoping for justice for both women and were grateful that arrests had been made.
The two women had forged a friendship after Arzola moved to Los Angeles this year, Cilliers said.
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 was focused on interior design.
“She was a fighter and a giver until her very last breath,” Arzola’s family wrote on a GoFundMe page created for medical, funeral and travel expenses. “As per her family’s wishes, parts of her will be donated as precious gifts of life to those in need.”
Her family did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
An LAPD source said the investigation is heavily focused on Pearce and that the two other suspects were swept into the case for allegedly helping him dump the women at the hospitals.
Detectives have not confirmed who supplied the drugs involved. The LAPD source said the women did not know the suspects before the night of the party.
The arrests come amid a string of deadly overdoses of people connected to the entertainment and nightlife industry, including the September death of comedian Fuquan Johnson and two others at a home in Venice.
In July, 23-year-old actor Daniel Mickelson died of fentanyl and cocaine toxicity after an accidental overdose. In November, a second man pleaded guilty for his role in supplying counterfeit oxycodone pills with fentanyl to rapper Mac Miller, who died of an overdose in 2018 at 26.
According to IMDb, Osborn, an actor from Staten Island, played a New York stockbroker in the 2017 comedy “Obamaland Part 1: Rise of the Trumpublikans.”
His credits also include an acting role in a 2014 episode of the TV show “Nurse Jackie” and working in the sound department for a short called “Ruse” in 2012.
Ansbach, also a native New Yorker, has worked as a cinematographer and camera operator on dozens of Hollywood sets for TV series, according to IMDb. This year, he was credited as camera operator for two episodes of “Pet Stars,” and last year he was cinematographer for three episodes of “Sleeping with Friends,” a TV miniseries.
He has also worked as a cameraman on “Vanderpump Rules” and “Amazing Race.”
More to Read
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
