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In killing of Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela, Beverly Hills man convicted of first-degree murder

LA man convicted of first-degree murder of Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela
LA man convicted of first-degree murder of Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela 01:09

Jurors found a Los Angeles man guilty Tuesday of first-degree murder in the deaths of Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, who were left unconscious outside Los Angeles-area hospitals in 2021 after being drugged with fentanyl.

David Brian Pearce, 42, was also convicted of several counts of rape and sexual assault, crimes which he committed against seven other women over a span of 14 years — between 2007 and 2021. Those charges had already been filed against him before he was charged in July 2022 with the murder of Giles and Cabrales-Arzola. On Wednesday, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said Pearce had poisoned them with fentanyl, describing the Hollywood producer as a "serial rapist" in a statement from his office. He has also used drugs in the sexual assaults of the other victims, prosecutors said.

"Seven victims testified at trial to Pearce's sexual depravity and violent tendencies," reads the statement from the DA's office.

Pearce faces 148 years to life in state prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced March 13 in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.

Jurors were unable to reach verdicts on charges against Pearce's co-defendant, 45-year-old Brandt Walter Osborn, who was charged with two counts of accessory after the fact. With the jury deadlocked, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Eleanor J. Hunter declared a mistrial in the case against Osborn. He will return to court on March 13 for a pre-trial hearing.

On Nov. 13, 2021, Giles, a model, and Cabrales-Arzola, an architect, had spent a night out together at a warehouse party in East Los Angeles, where prosecutors say they met Pearce, Osborn, and Michael Ansbach, an acquaintance. Several hours later, police say masked men dropped off the two women outside separate hospitals. Giles was pronounced dead after being found outside Southern California Hospital at Culver City while Cabrales-Arzola was found unconscious and in critical condition two miles away, outside Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Medical Center, according to police

Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela Cabrales
Christy Giles, left, and Hilda Marcela Cabrales photographed in the VIP section at the warehouse party. Jan Cilliers

Eleven days later, Cabrales-Arzola was declared dead.

While Pearce had initially been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, he faced murder charges after the LA County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner classified the victims' deaths as homicides. 

Before meeting Pearce, the women had started off their Friday night at an art exhibit at Soho House in West Hollywood. Earlier that day, Giles had spent the afternoon on the beach with her cat, telling her husband, Jan Cilliers, she had planned to go out with friends. He said she texted him, "I wish you were here." 

"I will forever wish that I was there, too," Cilliers told CBS' 48 Hours.

The two women were seen dancing at the warehouse party in a video posted to social media. Cilliers, who was visiting his father in San Francisco that weekend, started to piece together their night after he texted his wife, "Good morning," and received no response. He still hadn't heard from her hours later, and since the couple shared their locations, he checked her phone's location.

As he later told 48 Hours, Cilliers noticed her location had changed to a hospital in Culver City. He contacted her parents in Alabama to let them know he couldn't reach her. Her parents, Leslie and Dusty Giles, were eventually contacted by hospital staff.

"I was just told, 'I'm very sorry to inform you, Ms. Giles. … But she was dropped off at our hospital on the outside, kind of like a bag of garbage,'" her mother, Dusty Giles, told 48 Hours. "And, um… 'she didn't make it.'… And I said, 'What do you mean she didn't make it?'"  

"And they said… 'it is now a police matter.'… I hung up and I fell apart," she said.

Meanwhile, Cabrales-Arzola was in the ICU at another hospital fighting for her life. 

"I received the phone call in the middle of the night saying that she was so ill, she was very bad, she was intubated," her mother, Dr. Hilda Marcela Arzola-Plascencia, said. Questions ran through her mind as she tried to figure out what happened, she told 48 Hours.

Prosecutors say the two women went back to Pearce's Beverly Hills apartment about two hours after meeting him, Osborn and Ansbach at the warehouse party in East Los Angeles around 3 a.m. At his apartment, Pearce provided the two women and Ansbach with gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) and fentanyl, which led to Giles and Cabrales-Arzola fatally overdosing.

GHB is described by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as partly being known as a "date rape drug." 

David Pearce
David Pearce in a Los Angeles Superior Courtroom in July 2022  AP Images

The women had tried to leave Pearce's apartment within just 35 minutes of arriving there as Cabrales-Arzola called a rideshare service, prosecutors said. Loved ones told 48 Hours they tracked their locations to a West Los Angeles address, where texts messages showed a final exchange between them.

"Let's go," Giles texted Cabrales-Arzola at 5:30 a.m., with the message including a wide-eyed emoji. Cabrales-Arzola replied, "I'll call an Uber, 10 min away". Cilliers said that was the last message his wife ever sent.

"The Uber waited outside and left shortly… after they didn't show up," Cilliers said. 

Toxicology reports later found GHB, fentanyl and other drugs in both their systems.

They never ended up leaving the apartment on their own. About eleven hours later, Pearce carried Giles out, and then about an hour and a half later, he carried out Cabrales-Arzola. They were both then dropped off at two different hospitals. Giles was pronounced dead outside a hospital in Culver City while Cabrales-Arzola was resuscitated and died several days later — one day short of her 27th birthday.  

As a model in Los Angeles, Giles had started studying interior design, which led to her friendship with Hilda Marcela, an architect who had recently moved to LA from Mexico to start a job in interior design. 

Giles, who traveled the world as a high fashion model for Wilhelmina, has been described by loved ones as an adventurous spirit with a vivacious personality, doing things like skydiving during her travels. She married Cilliers, a South African-born artist, after they met through friends at an art gallery in LA.

Cabrales-Arzola was a summa cum laude graduate of a prestigious university in Monterrey, Mexico, who family and friends say had a love for dancing and dressing up. Like Giles, she also had a love for traveling, visiting 22 countries before making her move to LA.

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