One Drew Carey From Murder

One drew carey from murder No, I’m not saying Drew had anything to do with the death of anyone! He is a part of this story, though. This is the story of Amie Harwick. Amie grew up in Landsdale, Pennsylvania, a place too small for her big personality. She’s firey, passionate and motivated. She was weird in all the best ways. She loved heavy metal, wore dark clothing and makeup but she’s not a moody recluse. She’s vibrant and ridiculously gorgeous. She’s looking to make a big splash on the world, so when her friend in LA told her to come to California, she jumped at the chance. Immediately Amie became a frequent face in the Hollywood scene, at parties, at events and with her outgoing and friendly nature, she was welcomed in. Amie was a go-getter and she wasn’t afraid to work hard to get what she wanted in life. Most people in LA move there hoping to become a famous actor. That wasn’t Amie’s goal. Amie’s dream was to become a family and marriage therapist. To put herself through school, she hustled at jobs like go-go dancing, modeling and more. She was often hired to work at the Playboy mansion with her fire eating performances. Amie quickly earned her masters degree in clinical psychology and was working towards her doctorate, paying for it entirely in cash from her many side gigs. Soon, Amie is a full-fledged doctor of psychology and life just keeps getting better. She becomes a marriage therapist, though her own relationship history wasn’t the rosiest of love stories. She dated around the Hollywood scene. She dated Crispin Glover for a bit, Marilyn Manson and Dave Navarro. These were sometimes contentious relationships as many in the spotlight are. One guy she dated, though, seemed to be more toxic than those. His name was Gareth Pursehouse. Gareth is a photographer and he meets Amie photographing her for a modeling job. Gareth was one of those guys who thinks he’s the funniest dude around, but he’s the only one that thinks that. His dream is to become a stand-up comedian, but he’s terrible at it. Not only was he not very funny, he’s also a terribly jealous boyfriend to Amie. If the pair were at a party together and he thought guys were looking too closely at Amie, he’s step in front of them and start making out with her. The couple dated for a couple of years and even lived together for a short time. Eventually, Amie decided she was done with the strained relationship, and she broke things off. Gareth wasn’t going to go quietly, though. He’d ask friends to send her messages or links to sappy songs. He was so obsessed with getting her back, he couldn’t think of anything else. His friends continue to try to convince him to move on. He’s a young guy, he’s good looking, he’s got so much going for him, just let her go. After continuous harassment and constantly showing up where he wasn’t wanted, Amie files a restraining order against him. She thinks that if she takes legal measures, surely Gareth will get the message and leave her alone for good. But, this only made his obsession for her worse. Gareth happened to also be very good with computers to the point that he knew how to hack or infiltrate information on the internet. In 2012, Amie applied to work in a prison as a therapist, but during her background check, nude photos of Amie were sent to the prison. She had modeled for Playboy some years prior and it came back to haunt her now. She lost the job and she felt that her career as a marriage and family therapist was now over. She’s sure Gareth will sabotage any job she tries for using her past to sully her reputation. She’s devastated after the years of working so hard and going to school only to have her life goal shattered. One of her friends jokingly suggested she become a sex therapist. It’s like a lightbulb is switched on and Amie snaps up the suggestion. She goes back to school and gets another degree. This time in human sexuality. This move ends up building an even greater career path for her. Being in LA as a sex therapist was phenomenal. She authored the book, “The Sex Bible for Women,” and she was featured on tv shows and in magazines, her star was rising quickly. Since Amie isn’t even close to average looking, she does run into some problems with clients who are more interested in her than in her therapy she could provide. After Gareth, while Amie was dating Marilyn Manson, her birthday rolled around and Marilyn was supposed to take her to dinner. He was notorious for his reversed sleeping schedule, he wasn’t one to be up earlier than around 10 pm so friends were telling Amie it wasn’t likely he’d be following through on that promise. She had warned him that if he didn’t meet her for dinner on her birthday, she was going to go on and party without him. To no one’s surprise, Marilyn didn’t show up and Amie went to party anyway. At that party, she met Drew Carey. Amie told Drew that her boyfriend stood her up. Drew replied that maybe she should hang out with people that aren’t going to stand you up on your birthday, so let me take you out next week. She agreed and the next week, Drew took her to DisneyLand. She told friends she had never laughed so hard or had so much fun with a man. The two quickly became a couple and soon moved in together. Drew whisked Amie off to Paris and proposed to her and she happily agreed. After their engagement, the two tried to keep it quiet for a while but during this time, Amie was being cyber stalked by a former girl friend. This person was posting lies all over the internet about Amie, talking mad shit about her. Soon, the National Enquirer catches wind of all these things this former friend is saying. They tell Amie that they were going to run an article about all the lies unless she and Drew came forward about their engagement and give them an exclusive scoop. So they gave the National Enquirer the scoop. Then, on Valentine’s day, they announced their engagement on the Price is Right. Now that their relationship is truly public, Amie is even more in the public eye. The lack of privacy put Amie on guard especially with her stalkerish admirers. We all know the miserable judgements the public make against anyone in the spotlight and Amie and Drew’s relationship is no exception. At the time, Drew was 59 and Amie 36, so the public tagged Amie as a gold digger even though she had a thriving career of her own without need for a sugar daddy. Amie’s accomplishments were often ignored in the public realm while people preferred to focus on her relationship with the mega-famous Drew Carey. Drew was annoyed by this too and would sing her praises any chance he got. But even with how in love the pair was, the relationship became strained with the public pressure. Amie was just too uncomfortable with the negative attention and feeling like no one saw her for anything other’s than Drew’s woman of the moment. BREAK In November of 2018, Amie called police to the couple’s shared home. She saw someone creeping around the property. Amie was by herself and she panicked when she caught sight of the lurking figure. With the continuous threats she had gotten online as well as from her creepy ex, she decided to split with Drew. It had just become too much and she hoped it would stop the harassment if she left the limelight. But, on Valentine’s day of 2020, 16 months later, Amie still isn’t over Drew. He had been such a huge source of love and happiness in her life that she decided to reach out to him again. She texts him and asks if she can see him soon. Drew is absolutely thrilled and admits to her that he still loves her and looks forward to reconnecting. That night, Amie and her friends go out to celebrate Galentine’s as their valentine’s night. They go to a show and have a blast. The next morning, a friend gets a text from Amie’s roommate saying that Amie had been assaulted, please come down to the police station. Amie’s friend’s gather at the police station and are told some devastating news. Amie was dead. She had been found on the ground 20 feet below the balcony at her residence. She had fallen from the balcony, but her injuries showed she had suffered much worse than the long fall. She had brutal head wounds and her hands showed severe self-defense trauma. Investigators search the home and find beads scattered across the room and led all the way out onto the balcony. It seemed she had been wearing a necklace that had been ripped off her neck in a struggle. The most ominous thing they came across was a syringe filled a fluid. When they tested the fluid in the syringe, it was identified as nicotine. Dr. Neal Benowitz, an expert on nicotine says If you take it orally by mouth or by skin, then it takes much longer because absorption takes a while ... But if you have it intravenously, then you can die within minutes. Amie hadn’t been injected with it, but it would have been a fatal dose, had she gotten a jab of it. It was likely the killer planned to use that as the murder weapon. The room showed obvious signs of a struggle and Amie likely fought hard enough that her assailant couldn’t inject her. There was broken glass, the balcony door shutters were ripped off and blood was on the door. There was no question that Amie’s death was intentional, not at all an accident. The autopsy showed bones in her neck had been broken and that she had died from strangulation and injuries consistent with a fall from a considerable height. Investigators felt that because of the strangulation and planning, that the assailant was very angry with Amie and obviously knew her. Amie’s roommate lived on the floor beneath her. He told authorities he thought he heard a plate smashing on the floor above him while he was sleeping, but investigators now think that’s when the intruder broke through the glass of the French door to Amie’s home. But then, the roommate was jolted awake by Amie screaming. He heard sounds of bodies falling to the floor and more muffled screams. In his frenzy to help Amie, he couldn’t find his phone, so he tries yelling to scare away the assailant. He runs for help but gets trapped inside the courtyard of their place and has to scale a tall metal fence where he cuts himself but does make it over to his neighbors where he knocks repeatedly but gets no response. He then runs across the street to another neighbor’s house who again wouldn’t answer. He sees someone walking up the street and gets them to call 911 on their phone. Police and an ambulance make it there quickly but Amie is by then lying unresponsive in the courtyard under her balcony. Of course, the first people police look at are the men in her life. Since Drew and Amie had just exchanged texts the day before and because of their prior breakup, he was questioned. But, Drew was quickly cleared with alibis and no violent criminal past. Friends put Amie’s ex, Gareth Pursehouse on police’s radar as the person they think would be capable of murdering her. Police dig up the restraining orders that Amie had taken out on Gareth many years before. In the reports, Amie wrote: "Gareth Pursehouse forced me to the ground, covered my mouth to prevent my yelling, kicked me. There were multiple arguments in which Gareth Pursehouse ... choked me, suffocated me, pushed me against walls, kicked me, dropped me to the ground with forced force, restrained me, slammed my head into the ground, and punched me with a closed fist." A friend shared with police that once when Gareth and Amie were arguing in his car, Amie asked him to stop and let her out but he refused and bashed her head against the headrest. It happened a lot and he would push her out of the car and leave her stranded. It was bad enough that Amie’s friends were scared to speak out against Gareth. He’s a very vindictive person who’s great at all things computer and possibly even hacking. Once, when Amie was teaching a sex class in China, she returned to her home and realized someone had broken into it. She was sure it was Gareth because instead of electronics and valuables being stolen, all of her photo albums were gone and her computer was completely wiped. The next day, Gareth had shown up and tried to play the romantic music serenade outside of her house bit. For a long time after they broke up, Gareth would show up randomly wherever she was. She couldn’t figure out how he constantly be finding her, so she was sure Gareth was monitoring her phones and computer. Not only was he following her around, she was also being harassed constantly online and though she couldn’t prove it, she was sure it was him as well. Remember how Gareth wanted to be a stand-up comedian, well friends think that he’s even more angry that Amie was dating Drew Carey, basically the top tier of comedians. The month before Amie’s murder, Amie was on the red carpet for the xbiz awards getting her photo taken and who happened to be one of the photographers at the event? Gareth. He immediately jumps onto the red carpet and begins screaming at her, yelling about how she had ruined his life. At this point, the two had been broken up for 10 years. He was so over the top emotional that he fell to the ground bawling and goes into the fetal position. Amie is horrified and embarrassed, she tries to reason with him and calm him down. When she leaves the event, she’s supposed to go to the after party, but was so fearful, she decides to skip it. She was scared enough that she told friends that she was afraid for her life and that if anything happened to her, it would be Gareth’s fault. In an email, she wrote, "It terrifies me that he's been obsessed with me for nine years ... He's malicious, highly intelligent, and focused on harming me." When questioned, Gareth said he was home the whole night of Amie’s murder. But, when they see injuries on him, they get a search warrant on his home. There, they find bloody clothes and syringes filled with the same substance as the one found at Amie’s house, so they immediately take him into custody. When tissue found under Amie’s nails are tested, it is found to be Gareth’s. So Gareth is held on a 2 million bail while the investigation continues and he awaits trial. He posts bail which, I didn’t know this, but it only needs to be 10% of the total cost. Now Amie’s friends know he’s around and remember, this guy is a vindictive dick, so they’re afraid he’s coming after them. Of course, one of the terms of his bond is that he wasn’t to cross borders or try to leave, but he’s seen near LAX, so he’s taken back into custody and his bond is revoked. Police believe Gareth Pursehouse broke into Amie’s home on Valentine’s night, and waited for her. They think his intention was to inject her with the nicotine while she was sleeping and make it look like an overdose, but that Amie fought back hard and he wasn’t able to carry out the plans he had. On August 30, of 2022, 2 years after Amie’s death at the preliminary hearing, Gareth pleads not guilty. Because of Covid, there was a delay in him going to trial, but his trial date is set for February 28 of this year, so just a short time from now and the jury will have to decide between 1st or 2nd degree murder. Amie’s friend flew to Pennsylvania to do her hair and makeup for the funeral. She said she wasn’t prepared for how badly beaten-up Amie was. She said she could even see finger marks in her neck. Since her death, Drew Carey has revealed that he can’t celebrate Valentine’s Day and there’s not a day he doesn’t think about her. On his Sirius XM show called Drew Carey’s Friday Night Freak-Out, Drew talked about their relationship. He said, "Back in September 2018, I was in a beautiful, great, best relationship of my life with a woman named Amie Harwick, She was a sex therapist and mental health advocate. She had a PhD and a master's degree, and she was beautiful and fun, and cared deeply about people and improving their lives and was just a joy to be around. I was so in love with her." He continued, "Even after we broke up, we still loved each other very much. Even though we broke up the engagement, I was still so in love with her. And she loved me back." A couple of things that was profound to me was a quote from a guy friend of hers named Rudy Torres when speaking of domestic violence he said, “A lot of this is a problem because men need to hold other men accountable. Drew Carey says he hopes Amie's death and the attention it has received will help bring more awareness to intimate partner violence and the very real dangers of stalking. He said, “You can't be a person in this country and not know a woman who hasn't been a victim of domestic violence. You just can't. ... And it's really a problem that not enough people acknowledge.” Sources: republicworld.com, people.com, cnn.com, cbsnews.com, death by fame season 1, episode 1