10 March 2024 , 07:00
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After finding the strength to put an abusive relationship behind her, Dr Amie Harwick was determined to use her negative experience
to help other women. Amie, 38, was a successful Hollywood sex therapist. As well as working with private clients, she specialised in supporting sex workers. She knew what it was like to feel vulnerable.
Amie graduated in Philadelphia, then moved to LA in 2001 to follow her dreams of being a therapist. She worked as a model, a dancer and even a party planner, but it was all to pay her way through college. She studied psychology and would eventually secure her license to be a family and sex therapist.
While Amie was attending parties with work in 2009, she kept running into Gareth Pursehouse, who was a photographer and aspiring comic. They dated for two years, but Amie didn’t share much of their relationship with her family. They suspect it was because she wasn't happy and knew it wasn’t going to work.
And they were right. Amie filed police reports alleging that Pursehouse had choked her and took photos as evidence. When they split in 2012, Pursehouse wouldn’t leave Amie alone. She even believed her ex had broken into her home, taken photos and tampered with her computer.
The house where Amie was murderedAmie took out two restraining orders – the last one ended in 2015 – and believed her troubles were behind her. She then used this difficult period in her life to help others. She spoke out about women’s abuse and wrote a book about sexual self-awareness. She had found her true calling and became a passionate advocate for women.
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Having worked hard, Amie got a three-storey house in the Hollywood hills, which she shared with a male housemate. For a while, she found love again and it brought her brief fame. She met actor and comedian Drew Carey at a party in Las Vegas and they quickly got engaged. She even appeared on a Valentine’s Day special episode of The Price Is Right , which Drew famously presented. It didn’t last, but after they broke up, they remained friends – but Amie would soon be troubled by another break-up from her past.
In January 2020, she attended an awards show in LA, and while she was smiling on the red carpet, she stopped in her tracks when she saw Pursehouse, who was there taking photos. They hadn’t seen each other in years and the restraining order had expired five years earlier. Pursehouse was angry and started yelling at her. He accused Amie of ruining his life and shouted at her for an hour.
Amie told her family she’d gone into “therapist mode” and tried to calm him down. But the chance encounter frightened her, and Pursehouse started calling and messaging her again. Amie told friends and family she was getting pepper spray and upping the security at her house. She even said that if anything happened to her, it would be down to Pursehouse.
On 14 February, 2020, Amie went out with her friends to a burlesque show and returned home late. At around 1am, her housemate in a lower floor bedroom heard screaming from Amie’s third floor bedroom and feared there was an intruder. He yelled out to try and distract them but couldn’t find his phone to dial 911 so he had to run outside to stop a stranger for their mobile.
Shockingly, Amie then plummeted from the wrought iron balcony outside her bedroom, down three storeys to land on the patio below. When first responders arrived, she’d suffered terrible injuries from the 20ft drop, but was still breathing. But she died in hospital two hours later.
Police at the scene found a syringe on the balcony that was filled with a yellow-brown substance. They wondered if Amie had been taking drugs and had fallen, but Amie didn’t even drink. Then they discovered someone had broken in through the French doors downstairs. An intruder had been hiding in the house waiting for Amie to get home.
An autopsy revealed Amie died from blunt force trauma to the head and torso, due to the fall, but there was also evidence of manual strangulation. Someone had been fighting with Amie, then thrown her over the balcony. Investigators looked into anyone who might want to harm Amie and quickly focused on Pursehouse. They believed Pursehouse broke into Amie’s home and waited in her bedroom for her to return from her night out.
Gareth Pursehouse on trial after being charged with Amie's murderPursehouse then attacked Amie, before he was disturbed by her housemate’s shouting – and he threw her over the balcony. Later that day, Pursehouse was arrested and charged with Amie’s murder.
When the lab results on the contents of the syringe came back, it was identified as liquid nicotine. If injected into someone, it’s a lethal toxic poison, but it’s not a substance that is often tested for in autopsy. Is that why Pursehouse had chosen to bring it?
In August 2023, Pursehouse’s trial began and the prosecution said he’d deliberately picked Valentine’s Day to attack Amie, to make a statement about his anger over their failed romance. Two hours after Amie had gone out at 7pm, surveillance cameras at the next door property went off and a figure that looked like Pursehouse in gloves could be seen trying to put his hand up to block the recording. He can then be seen jumping into Amie’s backyard where he broke the French doors, leaving his blood on the glass.
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The prosecution described how he lay in wait, possibly even in Amie’s bed. The young woman would have been terrified when she walked into the ambush. Obsessed Pursehouse had intended on injecting Amie after overpowering her, but the interruption from her housemate caught him by surprise. He dropped the syringe and threw Amie off the balcony. Cameras caught him leaving over a back fence.
The defence admitted Pursehouse did go to Amie’s home. They said seeing Amie at the awards party weeks earlier had sent Pursehouse into a “deep debilitating depression” and that he had gone to the house to talk to her. They said he had taken the syringe to kill himself. So why was he wearing gloves and trying to cover his tracks? The defence even suggested Amie had accidentally fallen and showed the court a picture of her posing on the balcony rails. But the prosecution said there was no way she could have walked or climbed after being so violently strangled.
During the trial, the prosecution read an email that Amie had sent herself on the night she bumped into Pursehouse at the awards. “Tonight, I felt very scared,” she wrote. “It terrifies me that he’s been obsessed with me for nine years, thinks about me every day. I’m pretty nervous that I’m more on his radar now… He’s focused on harming me.”
It was a chilling testimony by Amie from beyond the grave. She knew Pursehouse was obsessed with her and she had every need
to be frightened for her safety. The jury found Pursehouse, 45, guilty of first-degree murder and burglary. He was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole. Amie had devoted her life to protecting women but tragically, she couldn’t save herself.