Murder of Amie Harwick

Amie Nicole Harwick (May 20, 1981 – February 15, 2020) was an American marriage and family therapist and writer who specialized in family and sex counseling in West Hollywood. Before her career in therapy, she worked as a personal trainer, go-go dancer, bartender, and model, including modeling for Playboy under the name Nicolette Novak. She earned a psychology degree from California State Polytechnic University, a Master of Arts in clinical psychology from Pepperdine University, and a PhD from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. In 2014 she published *The New Sex Bible for Women: The Complete Guide to Sexual Self-Awareness and Intimacy* and frequently discussed her work on podcasts, television, and her YouTube channel. In her final years she worked with Pineapple Support, a nonprofit providing mental health support to adult entertainment industry members, and served on the board of Rock to Recovery, a music-therapy nonprofit for addiction and mental health treatment. In 2018 she was briefly engaged to comedian Drew Carey.

On the evening of February 14, 2020, Harwick attended a burlesque performance and returned to her Hollywood Hills apartment shortly after 1:00 a.m. on February 15. At 1:16 a.m., her roommate called the Los Angeles Police Department reporting screaming inside the apartment. Responding officers found Harwick badly injured and unresponsive on the patio beneath her third-floor balcony; she was later pronounced dead at a hospital. Investigators determined she had been strangled and thrown from the balcony following a home invasion.

The same day, police arrested Gareth Pursehouse, a 41-year-old software engineer, photographer, and aspiring comedian, on suspicion of her murder. Pursehouse had dated Harwick for about 18 months in the early 2010s; after she ended the relationship, he reportedly stalked and harassed her, prompting her to file multiple applications for restraining orders. About a month before her death, Harwick encountered Pursehouse at the XBIZ Awards, an adult entertainment ceremony she attended on behalf of Pineapple Support, where he was working as a photographer. She spoke with him for about an hour, later telling her mother she had entered "therapist mode" to calm him after he accused her of ruining his life. She documented the encounter in an email to herself, describing him as sobbing, hyperventilating, and shaking, and wrote that it terrified her that he had been obsessed with her for nine years. Afterward, a close friend said Harwick felt unsafe and began exploring protective measures such as surveillance cameras and pepper spray, and began sharing her phone location with the friend.

Pursehouse was charged with Harwick's murder, with special circumstances of lying in wait, breaking and entering, and home burglary. At trial, beginning August 29, 2023, prosecutors argued the awards-ceremony encounter reignited his obsession, and that he broke into her apartment, waited hours for her return, then punched her, strangled her, and threw her from the balcony, causing death by blunt force trauma. He had also brought a syringe containing a lethal dose of nicotine, which was not used. On September 29, 2023, after two days of deliberation, a jury convicted Pursehouse of first-degree murder. On December 6, 2023, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and ordered to pay $7,500 in restitution.