Hollywood Sex and Family Therapist Amie Harwick, Who Was Engaged to Drew Carey, Was Murdered By an Ex

With her porcelain skin and long, dark tresses, all eyes were on Amie Harwick when she walked into a room. The 38-year-old possessed a mesmerizing beauty, but it was her overt compassion and sincerity that won people over, those who knew and loved her say.

“Amie was very gregarious,” her best friend, Robert Coshland, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “She was the person that everyone was always excited to see, because when you talked to her, she gave you her undivided attention. She was just full of life.”

The former Playboy model was meticulous at balancing her personal and professional lives. In addition to her clinical work, she wrote a self-help book, The New Sex Bible for Women: The Complete Guide to Sexual Self-Awareness and Intimacy, and regularly made media and podcast appearances. Harwick’s career was blossoming, and she had several opportunities on the horizon when her life was cut short at the hands of an abusive ex-boyfriend.

“She was very excited about settling into her house, and she was working on a second book,” Coshland says. “She was talking to some producers who were going to pitch a show about her dating life.”

At one point, she was engaged to Drew Carey, host of The Price Is Right, until they amicably split in 2018.

“She was always full of crazy adventures,” Coshland adds. “I feel like she lived five lives worth of lives in her short stint.”

Coshland met Harwick at a party in Los Angeles in 2012, and the two were inseparable until her murder on February 15, 2020. Less than two hours after celebrating Valentine’s Day with a group of girlfriends, Harwick found herself face to face with her former boyfriend, Gareth Pursehouse, who broke into her Hollywood Hills home, strangled her and fatally threw her from the third-floor balcony, according to Los Angeles police. He was arrested that same day.

Before then, Harwick and Pursehouse, 41, had a tumultuous 18-month relationship from 2009 until 2011, during which she alleged the software engineer who moonlit as a nightlife photographer “suffocated me, punched me, slammed my head on the ground, kicked me,” CBS News reported, citing police records. He also threatened "things will get worse.”

Harwick filed two restraining orders against her ex in 2011 and 2012. However, neither were still in effect when he sent her plunging to her death eight years later, according to the outlet.

Coshland and Harwick met after her breakup with Pursehouse, and Coshland says she wasn’t one to dwell on her past, rarely speaking of her would-be killer.

“Until he murdered her, I didn't even know his last name,” he admits. “She was a person that lived in the present, so she never talked much about the past at all. She never really mentioned him until this incident where she had gone on a trip, and she suspected he had broken into her apartment.”

When she came home, Harwick found her computer wiped and picture frames smashed, she told Coshland. In another unsettling instance, she accused Pursehouse of sending nude photos of her to an employer, costing her the job, her mom, Penny Harwick, told 48 Hours.

“He would throw obstacles in her way, and then she would find a way to climb over that obstacle,” Coshland says. “It's how she ended up going into sex therapy, because she didn't like the fact that she was denied a job on this basis.”

On January 16, 2020, Harwick ran into Pursehouse by chance at the XBIZ Awards in Los Angeles, where he was photographing adult film celebrities on the red carpet. Pursehouse aggressively confronted her about their years-old breakup, alleging she ruined his life, according to the Los Angeles Times. Harwick leaned into her professional instincts to de-escalate the situation. Afterward, the incident left her shaken up.

“She was really unsettled by that, and I was concerned about her safety, because he seemed so insane,” Coshland recalls. “So, I suggested we share locations.”

One month later, Pursehouse carried out her brutal slaying. He broke into his ex-girlfriend's Hollywood Hills home and waited for her to return home, per the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office. He murdered her less than two hours after Valentine’s Day.

Harwick’s roommate overheard the struggle and ran to a neighbor’s to call 911. By the time police arrived, Pursehouse had fled, police said. Harwick was pronounced dead at the hospital. She died from blunt force injuries to the head and torso, according to Los Angeles County medical examiner records.

When police questioned Coshland about who would’ve wanted to harm Harwick, he had a gut feeling.

“The first thing I said was ‘Gareth,’” he says.

DNA evidence, surveillance footage and an email Harwick wrote to herself recounting the distressing confrontation a month earlier all pointed to Pursehouse’s sole involvement. He was taken into police custody the day of the murder but released shortly after posting $2 million bail. Authorities rearrested him February 19, 2020, on a felony no-bail warrant, per the criminal complaint obtained by A&E Crime + Investigation.

Pursehouse pleaded not guilty to murder and burglary, both in the first-degree. Still, he was convicted on the charges in September 2023 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, KABC-TV reported.

“Would I have liked to see him tormented to death and eaten alive by ants? Yes, but this is the best you can hope for in California,” Coshland says.

He says Harwick’s death serves as a grim reminder of the deadly side of dating.

“If it can happen to Amy—who's trained in this, who's got everything in life, and is beautiful, successful and well-connected to celebrities—it can happen to anybody, and it does,” Coshland says. “And I think that's why her story has connected with a lot of people, because it shows that even if you do all the right things, it can still go terribly wrong.”