David Pearce convicted of murdering Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela Cabrales

This story originally aired on March 29, 2025. It was updated on June 20, 2026.

In November 2021, detectives Jonathan Vander Lee and Calvin You investigated why a woman was left lifeless at a Los Angeles emergency room. Video from Southern California Hospital showed staff pulling a woman from a black Prius without license plates and helping her onto a stretcher while two masked men watched. The men told staff they found the woman passed out nearby and were acting as good Samaritans, then left without giving names or phone numbers.

The woman was Christy Giles, 24. Her mother, Dusty Giles, received the call that her daughter had died of a drug overdose. Two hours later and two miles away, the same two men left another woman at a second hospital. She was Hilda Marcela Cabrales, 26, an architect who remained alive but on life support.

Christy Giles had worked as a high-fashion model and lived in Los Angeles. She married Jan Cilliers seven months after they met. Hilda Marcela Cabrales had recently moved to the city for a job after graduating cum laude from a university in Monterrey, Mexico. The two women became friends.

On the night of November 12, 2021, Christy and Hilda went out while Cilliers was away. They started at Soho House and planned to attend a warehouse party. A friend said the women used ketamine. By the next day, Cilliers learned Christy was dead.

Cilliers used Christy's phone records to trace her movements. The last messages showed the women inside a residence at 8641 West Olympic Boulevard trying to leave. An Uber arrived but left without them. Detectives went to the address a few hours after the second hospital call.

The home belonged to 39-year-old David Pearce. Police found a black Prius registered to him parked behind the building. Pearce lived there with 42-year-old Brandt Osborn. When detectives knocked, the lights went out. After 15 minutes, the men came out. Pearce denied owning a Prius. Osborn first denied the women had been there, then changed his account multiple times. He eventually said the women were in distress when he woke and that he and Pearce took them to separate hospitals because they did not know how it would look. Pearce later admitted owning the Prius but claimed the plates had been stolen; detectives saw the plates on the ground.

Inside the apartment, detectives found stripped beds, a recently used washing machine, and a safe containing baggies that Pearce said were for arts and crafts. They did not have enough evidence to arrest the men that night.

Detective Calvin You had investigated Pearce in 2020 for the alleged sexual assault of a 19-year-old woman who said Pearce gave her drugs. That case was not prosecuted. Pearce also had a prior rape charge from 2014 that was dropped. Detectives said Pearce followed a pattern of meeting women through apps or events, bragging about himself, drugging them, and then assaulting them.

Police obtained video from outside the warehouse party showing Christy and Hilda leaving with Pearce, Osborn, and 47-year-old Michael Ansbach. Text messages showed the women asking Pearce for cocaine inside the party. Security footage later captured Pearce carrying Christy down stairs at 4:30 p.m. the next day and the men arriving at the first hospital. An hour and a half later, footage showed them carrying Hilda to the second hospital.

Hilda remained on life support for two weeks. Her family decided to donate her organs after doctors said she would not regain consciousness. Toxicology reports showed both women had cocaine and elevated fentanyl in their systems. Christy also had GHB. A downstairs neighbor reported hearing someone moaning in pain for six hours. Neither Pearce, Osborn, nor Ansbach called for help.

The district attorney asked other women who knew Pearce to come forward. Twenty women contacted police. Pearce was charged with seven sexual assaults in addition to the deaths of Christy and Hilda.

On December 15, 2021, Pearce, Osborn, and Ansbach were arrested. Ansbach later told police that Pearce offered the women a ride, insisted they stop at his apartment for a drink, and gave them what he called special cocaine. Ansbach said he became ill, passed out, and woke to find Christy not breathing. He said Pearce told him repeatedly that dead girls do not talk. Ansbach's charges were later dropped.

At trial, which began with opening statements on January 9, 2025, prosecutor Catherine Mariano presented toxicology results, Pearce's DNA on Christy's body and under Hilda's fingernails, and testimony from seven women who described being drugged and assaulted by Pearce. One woman, identified as Jackie or Jane Doe No. 2, testified that Pearce gave her a drink that made her disoriented and then assaulted her in 2010.

Defense attorney Jeff Voll argued that Christy and Hilda had used drugs on their own that night and that there was no proof Pearce killed them. David Pearce testified against his attorney's advice and denied giving the women drugs. Brandt Osborn testified that he was dumbfounded by Pearce's actions and played no role in a cover-up.

On February 4, 2025, after two days of deliberations, the jury found David Pearce guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela Cabrales. He was also convicted of seven counts of sexual assault. The jury deadlocked on the charges against Brandt Osborn, and a mistrial was declared on those counts.

In October 2025, David Pearce was sentenced to 146 years to life. In November 2025, Brandt Osborn pleaded no contest to two counts of accessory after the fact and received two years of formal probation and 480 hours of community service.