Detention-Illustration (Flash 90 / Roi Alima)
A Hollywood producer accused of murdering a model and her girlfriend who took an overdose of drugs has been slammed on additional charges of sexual assault for unrelated cases – and there may be more victims, said Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon.
During a news conference on Tuesday, Gaskon officially announced that David Pierce had been charged with the deaths of model Christy Giles and her girl friend Marcela Cabrels-Arzoula, whose bodies were dumped in two separate hospitals.
According to the New York Post, Pierce, 37, was initially arrested the following month and charged with raping and sexually assaulting four women. On Tuesday, Gascon said investigators had found enough additional evidence to link Pierce to the deaths of Giles and Cabrels-Arzoula, and to the rape and sexual assault of three other victims.
“We knew this was going to be a lengthy investigation, and we started with the accusations we knew we could prove,” Gascon said at the news conference. “Most of them were related to the use and administration of drugs. The LAPD police did a lot of work here, as did our prosecution team, because we knew it was murder and we wanted to prove it, which is why the existing charges were approved,” Gascon said.
In addition to the two counts of murder, Pierce faces a number of separate counts in connection with separate incidents involving seven women, which allegedly occurred from August 2010 to November 2021. These charges include three counts of forced rape, two counts of sexual intrusion by a foreign object, one count of The act of sodomy and one section of sexual penetration using force.
He is also facing two clauses of sale and a bid to sell controlled material to Giles and Cabrels-Arzola. Pierce could face up to a maximum of 120 years in prison if convicted of the charges, Gascon said.
Jacob Glucksman, Pierce’s defense attorney, told the Post on Tuesday that his client was being held for insufficient information. “All the allegations, including the new allegations, are based on extremely weak evidence,” Glucksman said. “The prosecution is prosecuting on the assumption of ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’. The problem is that they have not yet located any fire.”
Pierce’s friend, 42-year-old actor Brandt Osborne, was also charged with two counts of felony criminal mischief. Osborne, a native of Staten Island and a rioter in Hollywood, was first arrested Dec. 15 but was released two days later after the district attorney’s office denied his arrest information, according to LA District Sheriff records.
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LAPD investigators said Pierce and Osborne, along with the third man – cinematographer Michael Ansbach – met Giles and Cabrels-Arzola at a warehouse party after hours of operation in Los Angeles on Nov. 13 and continued their night at Pierce’s apartment on Olympic Avenue.
LAPD officials said two masked men driving a Toyota Prius without license plates dumped Giles’ lifeless body at Culver City Hospital. Shortly afterwards, the men dumped Cabrels-Arzola at Kaiser Permanente in west Los Angeles.
Cabrels-Arzoula died on November 24 – five days before her 27th birthday – after being pronounced brain dead, her family said. A photo of Cabrels-Arzoula sandwiched between Ansbach and Pierce taken at the warehouse party also surfaced shortly after the men were arrested.
Actors Alexandra Carto and David Morietta Jr., who worked with Osborne, told the Post that Osborne allegedly revealed information during a November photo shoot that he was celebrating with women and later helped dump their bodies.
“He told me how they celebrated, two girls went back to their place, and the girls had a bunch of drugs,” Morietta said. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office, the Giles died from a mixture of cocaine, fentanyl, gamma-hydroxy-butyric acid and ketamine, while Cabrels-Arzola died from multiple organ failure due to cocaine, ecstasy and other drugs in the system. its. .
The coroner classified the deaths of the two women as murders. Giles’ husband, Jan Silliers, told the Post on Tuesday that he was very relieved that the Los Angeles County Attorney General’s Office had filed an indictment against Pierce and Osborne.
“There can never be real justice to the deaths of Christie and Marcella,” Sillier said. “Nothing will ever bring them back, and their deaths will affect the rest of our lives. The best thing we can hope for now is that the full truth will come out and that they will be kept away for the maximum time so that they can no longer harm anyone else.”
Pierce remains in jail instead of $ 3.4 million bail. He is due to appear for a preliminary hearing on July 11. Ansbach, 47, was released Dec. 16 on $ 100,000 bail. Prosecutors have not yet filed an indictment against him.