Featured Image Credit: Ilene Pearce/Facebook/Gabe Ginsberg/WireImage via Getty
Topics: Court, Crime, Hollywood, Los Angeles
Joe Yates
Topics: Court, Crime, Hollywood, Los Angeles
Warning: This article contains discussion of rape which some readers may find distressing.
A Hollywood producer's mom is sticking with him despite her son being convicted of murdering two women in their 20s.
On Tuesday, 43-year-old David Pearce was found guilty of the deliberate killing of model and aspiring actor Christy Giles, who was just 24 when she died, as well as 26-year-old fellow model Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, having plied them with a concoction of drugs.
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Yet despite five women and seven men having unequivocally deemed Pearce culpable of their deaths, his 78-year-old mom Ilene Pearce is still standing by her privately-educated son.
But what exactly did he do?
Pearce, who was also convicted of rape and other sexual assaults against seven different women dating as far back as 2007, reportedly murdered the women in November 2021.
At around 3am at a warehouse party in East Los Angeles, Pearce, his friend Brandt Walter Osborn, who the court found was an accessory after the fact in the murders, and their acquaintance Michael Ansbach, met victims Giles and Cabrales-Arzola.
Two hours later, they all headed back to Pearce’s Beverly Hills apartment. While there, Pearce provided Giles, Cabrales-Arzola, and Ansbach with gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) and fentanyl - which caused Giles and Cabrales-Arzola to fatally overdose.
Just over half an hour after arriving at the after party, Cabrales-Arzola called a taxi to leave the location, but neither Cabrales-Arzola nor Giles left the residence until Pearce carried them out.
Giles was the first of the two victims to be carried out, only eleven hours after they arrived, while Cabrales-Arzola was taken out around 90 minutes later.
From there, Pearce dropped the victims off at two different local hospitals. Tragically, Giles was already dead while Cabrales-Arzola was resuscitated and died eleven days later - one day short of her 27th birthday.
Following further investigation, the court heard how Pearce committed numerous drug-facilitated sexual assaults against multiple women, with seven more victims having testified at the trial to Pearce’s sexual depravity and violent tendencies.
Now, his mom Ilene has defended her son, questioning why he was handed first-degree murder charges because 'I don’t ever think there was an intent'.
"He’s not a monster," she told DailyMail.com. "I still love him."
When asked if she thinks her son committed the crimes put against him, Ilene replied: "I don’t know. I’d like to always think in the positive - but it may not be the case. And it’s not for me to decide.
"I obviously wouldn’t have wanted him to do any of that. It was pretty brutal.
"I love him dearly. He’s my son. I may not like the things he does, but I love him. And that’s being a mother for me…that’s what it means."
Before going on to slamming the judicial process.
"David was never treated as innocent. They saw him as guilty from the start of the investigation. And what happened to a speedy trial? He was in jail for three years.
"He was entitled to a fair trial. Elenor Hunter [the judge] had it in for David. She didn’t like him from the get-go. She made no bones about that."
Adding: "Was it a fair trial? I really don’t know. It just didn’t feel right. Maybe it just didn’t feel fair because he lost."
Pearce faces 148 years behind bars after being convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola; three counts of forcible rape; one count of sexual penetration by use of force; one count of sodomy by use of force; one count of rape of an unconscious woman; and one count of sexual penetration by foreign object in the sexual assaults of seven different victims.
His sentencing is due to take place on March 13.
If you have been affected by any of the issues in this article and wish to speak to someone in confidence, contact The Survivor’s Trust for free on 08088 010 818, or through their website thesurvivorstrust.org