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Dr. Amie Harwick Wiki – Dr. Amie Harwick Biography

The trial of the man accused of killing Hollywood sex therapist Dr. Amie Harwick begins this week. Gareth Pursehouse is facing various criminal charges in the 2020 murder, including murder and robbery. Keynote addresses could begin Tuesday afternoon. On her Instagram account of her, Dr. Amie Harwick described herself in her bio of her as “PhD, LMFT, author of The New Sex Bible for Women, educator and advocate. ”

This 38-year-old family, sex, and relationship therapist was a high-profile doctor in Hollywood (she was featured in magazines, news shows, and podcasts); she even had her own YouTube channel advising viewers on everything from coping with a fear of flying to surviving vacations. Dr. Harwick grew up in Pennsylvania but moved to Los Angeles in 2001. She studied at Polytechnic State University and Pepperdine University and received her Ph.D. from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.

Her website said she specialized in “various physical and psychological disorders, including trauma related to sexual exploitation and issues related to sexual identity and bipolar disorder.” Four years later, in January 2018, Dr. Harwick got engaged to comedian Drew Carey. The couple had dated for two years prior and ended up breaking off the engagement that same year.

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According to her memorial page for her, Dr. Harwick dedicated her career and her personal life to helping women succeed. She created and led a group called “Foxy Feminists” that helped local Los Angeles women connect with each other for job opportunities and support. Her family said that Dr. Harwick was a model, but she was also passionate about being behind the camera and aspired to be a professional photographer.

In February 2020, her dreams of creating a safe, deserving, and meaningful world for women were dashed. On Valentine’s Day 2020, Dr. Harwick woke up and went for a walk with one of her friends. The two met at her Hollywood Hills home, walked around the neighborhood, and stopped at a cafe for some local foods, according to “48 Hours.”

Later that night, around 7:30 p.m., Dr. Harwick joined friends at a burlesque performance, court documents explain. She was wearing a pink dress and a rosary necklace with a cross. After the show, she met up with Ella’s friends and finally returned home shortly after midnight.

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When she got home, she sent him the last text message from her, KTLA reported. She asked a friend for pictures of the burlesque show at 1:02 a.m. Moments later, Dr. Harwick was attacked inside her home. She was on the third floor; her roommate was asleep on the first floor and she woke up to her screaming. Her roommate, when she couldn’t find her phone number, first tried to yell at whoever had been hurting Dr. Harwick to stop, but to no avail.

The roommate then ran outside for help, “48 Hours” reported. He knocked on the door of two neighbors, but had no luck. Finally, he found someone walking down the street with a phone, and he called 911 at 1:14 a.m. Her officers rushed to Dr. Harwick’s home from her and found her struggling to breathe below the third-story balcony with severe neck injuries. She was rushed to the hospital, but she was pronounced dead shortly before 3:30 a.m.

Back at her house, detectives found evidence of a horrific struggle. Investigators found blood on her bedroom door and her rosary beads scattered in her bedroom, leading detectives to the balcony. When questioning her roommate, detectives said the roommate admitted to hearing some type of loud noise that same night that woke him up, but he went back to sleep. Investigators believed the noise was due to Dr. Harwick’s killer, De Ella, breaking into the house several hours before the attack, planning and waiting for her to get home.

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A medical examiner ruled her death a homicide and made notes in the autopsy report that Dr. Harwick died due to several factors: manual strangulation and blunt force trauma. Fifteen hours after the 911 call was made, detectives arrested Gareth Pursehouse—Dr. Harwick’s ex-boyfriend of 9 years earlier, charged with suspicion of murder. His bail was set at $2 million and he was released on bail three days after his arrest the following Tuesday night. He was arrested again the next day, Wednesday, when he was indicted for murder and robbery, according to the Hollywood Reporter. He has been in jail without bail ever since.

When detectives began digging deep into Dr. Harwick’s past, they quickly discovered that she had dated Gareth Pursehouse and filed two protection orders against him. The first order was filed in 2011 and the second in 2012.

Dr. Amie Harwick Age

The age of Dr. Amie Harwick is not clear.

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Dr. Amie Harwick trial

According to the 2012 protective order, Dr. Harwick claimed that Pursehouse had previously broken into her apartment and her apartment complex, sent her unwanted gifts, watched her inside her home from outside through the windows, and he had caused chaos with the kids in his neighborhood.

Pursehouse also allegedly sent her text messages saying “things will get worse” and sent threatening emails to her and her friends. She wrote in the protection order that once, during an argument, Pursehouse physically assaulted her, pulling her out of a car and leaving her with a bloody nose. “She choked me, beat me, smashed my head on the ground and kicked me,” Dr. Harwick wrote in the order. “She told me that she hit me ‘because I made him very angry’ and refused to receive any help while maintaining the relationship.”

The second protection order filed in 2012 expired in April 2015. According to her friends, Dr. Harwick had not seen Pursehouse in the years before the attack, but a month before she was killed she saw her ex-boyfriend at a professional event where she had been hired as a photographer. During a court hearing, the district attorney said Pursehouse allegedly called Dr. Harwick a “bitch” at the event and claimed that she had ruined her life.

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Friends, family, and researchers believe the encounter reawakened Pursehouse’s previous feelings for Dr. Harwick, leading to a spiral of obsession and ultimately violence. After Pursehouse’s arrest, her defense team filed a motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that insufficient evidence was provided in pretrial hearings to show that she had anything to do with the crime.

In March 2022, a judge dismissed the motion, ordering both the district attorney and the defense team to move toward trial. In an evidentiary hearing, the prosecution told the judge that DNA collected under Dr. Harwick’s fingernails and from one of the doors of her home matched Pursehouse’s DNA. Agents also found a fluid-filled syringe at the crime scene. While serving a search warrant at the Pursehouse home, detectives found an identical syringe with the same liquid inside. Laboratory technicians confirmed that the liquid in the syringe was a lethal dose of nicotine.

However, in January 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that California’s death row would be dismantled by the end of 2024. “The prospect of you ending up on death row has more to do with your wealth and race than your guilt or innocence,” Newsom said in his announcement. “We talk about justice, we preach justice, but as a nation, we don’t practice it on death row.” Anyone on death row in California will be transferred to a maximum security prison once all plans and systems are finalized. Opening statements in the trial are expected to begin on Tuesday. Read More….

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