Ex-boyfriend fueled by ‘obsession and anger’ spent a month plotting the murder of a Hollywood sex therapist: ‘She was terrified’

Amie Harwick’s A terrified roommate frantically called 911 late on Valentine’s Day 2020 to report she was being attacked in her Hollywood Hills home in Los Angeles.

‘I was downstairs. I heard screaming. I know she’s under attack. I heard her go to the ground,” Michael Herman told the 911 dispatcher.

When officers arrived at her home around 1 a.m. on February 15, they found her Harwicka popular Hollywood sex therapist, on the ground outside the house, beneath a third-floor balcony. She had defensive wounds on her hands and arms. The glass doors in the front yard were broken. Black beads from her crucifix necklace were scattered around her room. And a syringe filled with a mysterious liquid was found on her balcony. She died hours later in hospital.

“She was, you know, a bit of a celebrity,” former CBS reporter Leyna Nguyen continued A plan to killairs Sundays at 7/6c Oxygen True Crime. “At one point she was engaged to Drew Carey, who was the host of The price is right.”

When police spoke to the 38-year-old victim’s family and friends, it quickly became clear who the main suspect in the murder was.

“During our interviews with Amie’s friends, several of them told us that Amie suspected she was being stalked by Gareth,” said LAPD homicide detective Scott Masterson. A plan to kill.

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Gareth Pursehouse45, was Harwick’s ex-boyfriend. Although the two separated eight years before her death, police said he terrorized Harwick before her murder, even predicting her own death.

“She was really concerned at that point,” Harwick’s friend, Robert Coshland, continued A plan to kill. “She said, ‘If anything happens to me, it’s him.'”

Amie Harwick and Gareth Pursehouse’s romance turns into a nightmare

Amie Harwick and Gareth Pursehouse dated from 2009 to 2012. They met at a Hollywood party while she was working as a hostess to pay her tuition.

“He was very loud, funny and smiley,” Harwick’s girlfriend, Grace Stanley, continued A plan to kill. “He was one of the nightlife photographers. It was very clear that he was taken by her. Because he would always want to take a lot of pictures of her.”

But Harwick’s friends told police there were warning signs in the relationship from the start.

“Amie and Gareth lived together, and he was very possessive of her,” Harwick’s friend Marcy Mendoza said on A plan to kill. ‘He always wanted to know where she was. Who was she with? He was always checking her phone.”

The relationship was also violent. Harwick had filed a police report in May 2011 stating that Pursehouse had choked, choked, kicked, punched and pushed her, and slammed her head into the ground.

“This relationship between Amie Harwick and Gareth Pursehouse ended when she obtained a restraining order against him,” said Victor Avila, deputy district attorney of the LA County DAs Office. A plan to kill.

But that restraining order couldn’t stop Pursehouse from continuing to terrorize Harwick. Within a month, she thought he had broken into her new apartment.

“It was very specific. Picture frames were destroyed,” Stanley said. “And her laptop was wiped clean.”

But there was no evidence to prove Harwick’s theory.

“She tried to go to the police, and they said, ‘There’s no evidence it was him,’” Mendoza said. “She was terrified.”

A meeting between Harwick and Pursehouse prompts him to plot her murder

A month before she was murdered, Harwick came across Pursehouse when she attended the XBiz Awards in Los Angeles, and he was a red carpet photographer.

‘Amie hadn’t seen Gareth in eight years. And when she was on the red carpet, she saw him taking pictures,” Coshland said. “When he saw her, he came up to her and started shouting at the top of his lungs, ‘You ruined my life!'”

Although she changed her phone number, Pursehouse contacted Harwick again the next day.

“He kept texting her. He left voicemails. Like just crying,” Stanley said. “And in the end she just had to block him. And again she feared for her safety.”

Police believe Harwick, who was blocking Pursehouse, pushed him over the edge.

“The theory is that after Gareth Pursehouse was blocked, detectives believe he prepared himself and began planning her death,” Avila said. “All these actions show that he would, in some sense, punish her for rejecting him. And that he thought about how to do that.”

Police investigate how Gareth Pursehouse murdered Amie Harwick

Harwick’s roommate, Michael Harmon, told police she was going out with friends for Valentine’s Day. He remembered waking up around 9 p.m

“Michael told us he thought Amie came home and dropped a plate or a glass or a plate or something,” Masterson said. “He didn’t think much about it.”

But police believe that’s when Pursehouse broke down the front doors and entered the house to wait for Harwick. Blood was found near the broken glass doors. An FBI analysis found that the blood matched Pursehouse’s DNA.

A neighbor’s camera on the back patio at that time also showed a man wearing gloves and a cap passing by and moving the camera. It matched the general construction of Pursehouse.

“It shows his premeditation and his planning of the event,” Masterson said. ‘Has he been there before? Most likely. Because he knew exactly where to jump the fence.”

Police then put together a theory about what happened.

“He lay in her bed and waited for Amie to come home,” Masterson said.

Harmon told police he woke up a second time around 1 a.m. to the sound of Harwick screaming and ran to get help. The unidentified man was seen on camera climbing over Harwick’s fence and running away at about that time.

“So for me, this was the big moment,” Masterson said. “It is very likely that he planned and planned his entrance and exit.”

FBI analysis found that the syringe found in Harwick’s home was filled with liquid nicotine – a poison that is difficult to detect. A similar syringe was found during a search of Pursehouse’s home.

“Gareth’s overall plan would have been to inject her and let Amie die, and no one would have been the wiser,” Masterson said.

But her autopsy revealed that Harwick had never been injected with poison.

“So now it looks like he couldn’t inject her,” Nguyen said. “His plan failed. And he resorted to violence.”

“He grabs her and rips the chain off her neck,” Masterson added. ‘Gareth strangles her. She’s fighting for her life. I think he picked her up…he walked to the edge of the balcony and just dropped her to the bottom of the patio.”

Police gathered more evidence when Pursehouse was arrested just 14 hours after Harwick’s murder.

“He had scratches on his neck, chest and arms,” Masterson said. “He had a large bruise on the inside of his bicep. It looked like a bite wound to me.’

A jury agreed with the prosecution and found Gareth Pursehouse guilty of the first-degree murder of Amie Harwick. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

“I think Gareth decided this on Valentine’s Day on purpose,” said Deputy District Attorney Catherine Mariano. “I think Gareth decided to kill Amie Harwick on a day that symbolized love and couples. And I think in his opinion it was poetic justice.

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