Photo: Instagram
Have they done this before?
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Dec 17, 2021
Three men have been arrested in connection with the death of Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola after their families claimed the women were drugged during a night out in November.
24-year-old Instagram model Christy Giles was found dead outside Southern California Hospital in Culver City, Los Angeles, on November 13 while her friend was abandoned two hours later at a different hospital in West LA.
Cabrales-Arzola later died in hospital after being declared braindead.
Police arrested 37-year-old David Pearce, 47-year-old Michael Ansbach and 42-year-old Brandt Osborn in connection with the deaths and fear that Giles and Cabrales-Arzola may not be their only victims.
The arrests were made after one of the men, Osborn, reportedly shared details of the night Giles was killed days later.
Who are Christy Giles's alleged killers, Brandt Osborn, David Pearce and Michael Ansbach?
Pearce , 39, a self-professed movie producer and club promoter, has been charged with manslaughter in connection to the deaths.
Osborn, an actor originally from Staten Island, has been charged with accessory to manslaughter, as has Ansbach who is also a New York native.
On November 13, Giles was seen on CCTV footage being dropped off by two men wearing all black, bandanas over their faces and driving a car without license plates.
Cellphone records placed Giles and Cabrales-Arzola at an apartment on West Olympic Blvd in Beverly Hills where Pearce allegedly lived.
According to a toxicology report, doctors found heroin in Giles's system, which is something that her husband, Jan Cilliers swears “is nothing that either of those girls would ever do, not voluntarily.”
Brandt Osborn allegedly talked about meeting Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola days after Giles's death.
Two fellow actors who worked with Osborn days after Giles was found dead say he confessed about the night to them.
"He said, 'I had the craziest weekend of my life,'" the witness claims. He says Osborn then detailed finding Giles without a pulse and recounted other concerning aspects of the night in question.
David Pearce's former roomate claims Pearce once raped a woman at a party.
"Scarface" actor Steven Bauer says he lived with Pearce for a couple of weeks in 2010 — at the apartment where Giles and Cabrales-Arzola were reportedly taken.
Bauer says that, while at a house party in 2008, he witnessed a woman emerging from a room crying, shortly followed by Pearce.
"She said 'he cornered me and he locked the door. And I told him I didn't want to do anything. I didn't like him. And he said yes you like me. And he forced himself on me,'” Bauer recalled.
"I said, “Did he hurt you?” And she said, 'He raped me.'”
Bauer says Pearce denied the claims when he confronted him. However, the allegations add to concerns that Pearce and his alleged accomplices may have attacked other women in the past.
David Pearce's neighbors heard noises on the night Christy Giles died.
A resident in the building told The Sun that they’d been hearing noises coming from the apartment all day, but that “he’s a weird guy and I don’t want to get on his bad side so I never confront him.”
The anonymous resident said, “I heard someone moaning in pain for five, six or seven hours, all day on Saturday from David Pearce’s apartment,” and that police visited on Sunday evening, after Giles had been found.
“On Sunday police came and spoke with him (David Pearce), I’m not sure if they went up to his apartment,” they said. “Then the police came and spoke with me and they said there had been an incident but they didn’t give any more detail.”
When they told the police that they heard painful moaning all day, the police wrote it down.
Police also spoke to two men who admitted that they dropped off the ladies at the hospital and claimed that they accidentally overdosed, which Cilliers quickly refuted.
“Obviously that story doesn’t add up,” he said, “how do you drop off one girl for an accidental overdose while the other girl, one of her closest friends, stays back at the house and isn’t dropped off for another two hours?”
Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola allegedly tried to leave the apartment.
According to the phone records that Cilliers was able to get ahold of, Giles texted Cabrales-Arzola at 5:30 a.m. that night, saying “Let's get out of here," to which she responded “Yes. I'll call an Uber. 10 min away."
"The Uber waited additionally five more minutes," said the mother from her home in Alabama during a Zoom interview with ABC7 on Thursday.
"The girls nor any of the boys in the apartment ever came out to wave off the Uber, to address it, to ask him to wait. Nothing."
She believes, that the men held the girls against their will for 10 to 12 hours before they ultimately died.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.