The Deaths of Christy Giles and Hilda Cabrales-Arzola
In Pearce’s apartment at around 5:30 a.m., the women texted each other about wanting to leave. Cabrales-Arzola called a rideshare, but neither made it outside to the waiting vehicle.
That afternoon, around 4:20 p.m., surveillance footage obtained by authorities showed Pearce carrying Giles from his apartment. Wearing masks and driving his Toyota Prius with the license plates removed, Pearce and his roommate Brandt Osborn left Giles at a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Then Pearce and Osborn returned to their apartment, loaded Cabrales-Arzola into the car and took her to a different hospital. She remained in critical condition until her death on November 24.
David Brian Pearce's History of Sexual Assault
During the investigation into Giles and Cabrales-Arzola’s deaths, Los Angeles police quickly realized this wasn’t the first time Pearce had been a criminal suspect. Between 2007 and 2020, they'd investigated him for drugging and sexually assaulting three different women. Records from the district attorney's office showed prosecutors had decided not to pursue these charges either due to insufficient evidence or an uncooperative witness, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Jane Manning, a former sex crimes prosecutor and director of Women's Equal Justice, tells A&E Crime + Investigation, “Most sexual assault cases go unprosecuted, and that's especially true when it comes to drug-facilitated sexual assault.”
According to RAINN, only one in three victims report their sexual assaults to police. Survivors of drug-facilitated sexual assaults (DFSA) can face additional hurdles. Sometimes “the victim blames themselves, because they often consume the substances, or they feel confused as to what happened," Elizabeth Jeglic, a psychology professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. "In addition, they might not be aware that they were drugged.”
Dr. Robert Powers, a forensic toxicologist and associate professor at the University of New Haven, explains to A&E Crime + Investigation that many common drugs used to facilitate sexual assault have “effects on the ability to store memories.” This means DFSA victims may not remember the attack, or even going out to a bar or attending a party prior to being drugged.
“They are challenging cases," Manning agrees. "But the truth is that many of them are very provable if we were doing better investigations and more skillful prosecutions.”
Manning notes that search warrants for residences and devices of suspected assailants have allowed police to find drugs used in assaults or images of victims. In Pearce’s case, she suggests that reaching out to women who knew or had met with him could have helped police locate other victims sooner.
“By the time you get to a third report, this ought to have been a front burner, red flag, hair on fire, top priority investigation where no resources were spared to find out what this guy was doing,” Manning says.
Convicted on All Charges
On December 16, 2021, LAPD detectives announced that Pearce had been arrested on charges of manslaughter for the deaths of Giles and Cabrales-Arzola. During the investigation, additional women told police Pearce had sexually assaulted them. Many described losing consciousness before the attacks and said Pearce lured them in by pretending to be a high-powered Hollywood exec, the Los Angeles Times reported, though The Hollywood Reporter uncovered no production credits for Pearce. A David Pearce IMDb page lists his last producing credit in 2007.
Pearce was ultimately charged with sexually assaulting seven other victims between 2007 and 2021.
Forensics found that Giles had ingested gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB, a drug often used in DFSA) and other drugs prior to her death. Cabrales-Arzola died of multiple organ failure and had a mix of drugs in her system, including cocaine and ecstasy. In July 2022, Pearce was charged with murder for the women’s drug overdose deaths.
He went to trial in January 2025, at which point he denied all wrongdoing. Pearce’s friend, Michael Ansbach, testified that using cocaine Pearce offered him, from the same batch Giles and Cabrales-Arzola used, made him extremely ill. He also said he asked Pearce to get the two women medical assistance, but Pearce responded: “Dead girls don’t talk.”
“That’s as close as you're going to get to a real-time confession of intent as a prosecutor could want,” Manning says.
Could David Brian Pearce Have Been Stopped Sooner?
Shari Karney, a victims’ rights attorney, advocate and sexual abuse survivor, tells A&E Crime + Investigation she’s gratified survivors were able to get some justice in this case. Still, “it should not take more than one victim coming forward to prosecute and go after a perpetrator or accused predator,” she says. “It should not take two deaths, seven rapes and the media's involvement to get justice.”
Manning says that Pearce’s seven sexual assault convictions demonstrate “that the evidence was there to convict him of sexual assault, and that he could have been convicted of sexual assault sooner, without these two young women having to die.”
She adds, “We should have prosecuted this man for drug-facilitated sexual assault five or 10 or 18 years ago, instead of for homicide now.”
