Lethal drug cocktails and two women left for dead bring LA cops back to old rape cases
LOS ANGELES — When men dropped the lifeless bodies of two women outside hospitals, police immediately suspected foul play.
Christy Giles, 24, died that Saturday in November. Her friend, Hilda Cabrales Arzola, was taken off life support a few weeks later, the day before her 27th birthday.
Los Angeles detectives soon figured out that the men, one a small-time actor and the other a hanger-on to Hollywood fringes, had been lying when they claimed to have found the women passed out on a curb. One was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, while the other and a third friend were arrested as accessories to the crime.
But since their arrests in December, the case has only grown more complicated. After reviewing the evidence against the men, prosecutors from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office concluded there wasn't enough to charge them and told police to keep investigating.
The two men arrested as accessories were released from jail. But the man at the center of the case, David Pearce, remains in custody, charged with raping or assaulting four women before he ever met Giles and Cabrales. He is accused of drugging, then assaulting each of the women while they were incapacitated, according to prosecutors' court filings.
That alleged pattern took on heightened
