48 Hours - Post Mortem | Justice for Amie Harwick

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

Go behind the scenes with Correspondent Erin Moriarty and producers Lauren White and Richie Fetzer on a murder case they've been covering for the past four years. In 2020, Amie Harwick was killed by her ex-boyfriend and stalker, Gareth Pursehouse. Now that the case has gone to trial, the 48 Hours team digs into startling evidence from the crime scene, including a syringe filled with nicotine, and new interviews with friends and family who loved Amie.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial, and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. I'm Erin Moriarty of 48 Hours, and of all the cases I've covered, this is the one that troubles me most. A bizarre and maddening tale involving an eyewitness account that doesn't quite make sense. A sister testifying against a brother. A lack of physical evidence. Crosley Green has lived more than half his life behind bars for a crime he says he didn't commit. Listen to Murder in the Orange Grove, the troubled case against Crosley Green, ad-free on Amazon Music. Hello, I'm Anne-Marie Green, and this is Postmortem. This week's case about the murder of Amy Harwick might be familiar to you if you're a longtime 48 Hours fan.

This is actually the third hour 48 Hours has dedicated to Amy's story. So joining me today is the reporting team that covered this case from the beginning. Correspondent Erin Moriarty, producers Richie Fetzer and Lauren White. Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome, guys. Well, we've been living this for four years, so we want to talk about this. That's right. Absolutely. Thank you for having us. I feel like I remember, Erin, when you first covered the first hour. Thank you for having us. I feel like I remember, Erin, when you first covered the first hour.

And we did it right away, the week afterwards. So let me take you back to that time. So it was the early morning hours of February 15, 2020, just as Valentine's Day was coming to a close. It was Hollywood Hills, L.A. And Michael Herman calls 911 and he reports that his roommate, a woman by the name of Amy Harwick, had been attacked in their home. He's frantic. He has some blood on him. When the police get there, they find Amy Harwick. She's on the ground right below the balcony and she's barely clinging to life. Sadly, she dies then later at

the hospital. Now, when it got lighter, when the police started looking around, it was clear that Mike Herman was right. Somebody had broken into the house. There was this shattered French door, signs of a struggle in Amy's room, and then there was the really strange piece of evidence, a syringe. They could not figure out what it was. And it took them a while to figure out what it was. It's important to know that Amy was like this amazing woman. She had had so many different lives. She was at that time a marriage and family therapist, but she'd been an occasional photographer, a dancer, a model. In other words, she had a lot of friends, tons of friends. And most of them all

said, if somebody attacked this woman, it could only be one person, a man by the name of Gareth Purcells, who was an old boyfriend. Yeah. And not just an old boyfriend, an old problem. Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, Amy's death made national headlines. She had been engaged at one point to Drew Carey. Everyone knows and loves Drew Carey, comedian. He's the host of The Price is Right on CBS. And so that brought a little sort friends and family kept it alive, their advocacy work, their insistence on bringing the issue of domestic violence to the forefront of this case. Well, because she really became a symbol in a way. This story had a big impact in L.A. and nationally because this was a woman who I mentioned was a marriage and family therapist, and she focused on helping women in toxic relationships. So if she could be attacked by a former boyfriend, all of us covering it thought, oh my God, is there safety for anyone?

Correct. You know, I think looking at this case, you know, Amy was just such a wonderful person and really did have all the tools necessary to succeed. And it's just such a shame that she didn't feel as though she could go to the police because Gareth hadn't explicitly threatened her. And so therefore, she didn't feel like she could extend the restraining order, which had expired, which now that's a part of her friend's advocacy that restraining orders should expire. Oh, totally. And I just wanted to say, like, Lauren booked one of Amy's clients, which brings up a good point because this is a woman who went to Amy for help. She had experienced an abusive ex who had also stalked her.

He'd broken into her home and Amy helped her. So she talked to us in this hour about the fact that Amy had helped her and then she fell victim to this type of a crime completely took her safety away. Yes. Because the thing about it is Amy did everything right. Right. She saw it wasn't a good relationship. She got out when she felt like she was being threatened.

She went to the legal system. She got a restraining order. She was being threatened. She went to the legal system. She got a restraining order. She had the psychological tools to know how to diffuse a situation. I mean, this is a woman that should have been sort of the poster girl for how you remove yourself from this toxic, abusive relationship. Well, that's because the problem wasn't on Amy's part. It was the law.

Exactly. The frailty of the law part. It was the law. Exactly. The frailty of the law, the limitations of the law. Yeah, totally. So, Erin, you actually spoke to Drew Carey. I'm trying to go back in time because I feel like when we first talked about this, you didn't know if Drew he only has a very short time to talk to you. And so I was very nervous. I wanted to get all my questions out. But Drew Carey loved Amy Harwick. And he wanted to talk. And there was one point where one of his people tried to, you know, cut it off.

And he waved her away. He wanted to talk about her. He was proud of her. He loved the way that she helped women. He made such a point about that. And then, you know, it was sad because they had broken up. But something we learned that just breaks our heart to this day, and I think breaks his, right before Valentine's Day, they had not spoken for a while. And she had texted him him and they made plans

to meet and she never got that chance because she was killed. And so, number one, we hear those stories, but we also learn and he did not, you know, like brag about this. We learned from friends after her death, he helped her parents go back and forth for the trial. He was there. He took her friends and made sure they got to the funeral. He rented a bus for them so that they could go back and forth for the funeral. He's a lovely man. And it is a testament to Amy. It really is. And so I will say I love Drew Carey even more today because I just saw such a human side of him in an interview.

And I should let everyone know that interview was in 2022. That's when you were able to sit down and talk with him. So this hour also has a lot of new interviews and new evidence, like the police body cam footage from the crime scene that hadn't actually been included in the previous broadcast. How did you get all these new elements to update the hour? So, I mean, a big part of it, we had the benefit this time of the trial had happened. So we actually had access to a lot of these elements.

So in the past, when Aaron, you know, had covered the story and you're trying to make sense of a crime, now we actually, you can see it happening. So, or, you know, the aftermath of it happening. And, you know, it's great for us, you know, making TV. But there's also like an emotional burden that goes into it because there's all these things that you've tried not to imagine. And now you're actually seeing it. And it's really upsetting. And, you know, frankly, I think makes you angry that this happened to her. But it also helped in our reporting. We should make a very big point of that because when you see the body cam footage, now you understand that when the police got there and you understand why they didn't really know what had happened. So yes, her roommate, Michael Herman was outside, but he had blood on him and he said he's a roommate, but he doesn't have the

keys to the house. So they're thinking, was this guy involved or was he not involved? They see the syringe. The young cops say, oh my God, that's heroin. That's what they think. So they think it might be drug related. When the weathered lead detective Masterson shows up, he goes, that's not heroin, but they didn't know what it was. And so you really get a sense from looking at this evidence that we couldn't before of how difficult it was initially to get to the bottom of what happened to Amy Harwick. Definitely. That's a great point. And, you know, with the conclusion of the trial, what also happened is, you know, the floodgates opened as far as people wanting to speak with us who had never spoken before. So, you know, we have Detective Masterson, the lead homicide detective, the prosecutors, Michael Herman, who, you know, really shout out to our booking producer, Michelle Finucci. She has been in contact with Michael, you know, since the very beginning. And I would call

it, you know, the soft touch and the long touch where it was just, you know, checking in with him, not pressuring him, you know, letting him voice his his frustrations or his concerns and really being there for him. And so when the trial concluded, he was ready. The same goes with the parents. You know, we included a statement of theirs at the end of the first show in full, and they really appreciated that. And I think they remembered that they did. They told us that they told us that that they remembered that. And that's what was a part of their thinking about participating this time around. You know, these are two people, Penny and Tom, they adopted Amy and her brother. They

wanted these children. So to make sense of why Amy was taken away, it took time for them to be able to talk. But I think they finally, after they saw that we cared about this case too, they decided that it was the best place for them to talk about this daughter that they loved and lost. She was so much a part of their lives. You know, they joke, you know, she was into, you know, heavy metal music when she was growing up and they became metalheads because of her, you know. And so imagine having that huge personality suddenly gone. And I think that's why it took them a long time to talk about it. But then when they did and they they smiled a lot and because it kind of brought her back for that moment when they were allowed just to talk about her.

So let me ask you, you know, at the end of the trial, you get access to all this evidence, some of its video evidence. So it works really well for TV. But then you have to sift through it. That must have been tough. Very. Especially, I mean, we talked about this. You know, Amy, when the police get there, they call an ambulance, but the ambulance, they got lost. It took them a while to get to her. She's on the ground this whole time and they can't

they're not touching her because they don't want to, you know, cause more issues, cause more problems. She's just on this ground. But worse, what upset me when I looked at it and I was really disturbed by this. Michael Herman, who was a roommate, wants to go help her. He sees it for the first time on the ground and he runs there and they go, sir, sir. And they stop him. And in my head, I kept thinking he didn't get to hold her hand. I understand why the police, they didn't know whether he was a, was he the attacker? Was he involved? Was he not? They didn't know. But the idea that her roommate couldn't hold her hand still haunts me. It is haunting. And you see that in the video. We wouldn't have. You know, unfortunately, that's what you're feeling as you're looking at this evidence that is now available to us.

I really felt for him. One hundred percent. for him. 100%. You know, when you talked about the survivor skills in the hour, I thought I can totally understand it because I imagine he must be going over that night. Oh, you know, why didn't I get up when I thought it was the cat? Why didn't I, you know, react faster when I heard her yelling? Like it must have been so hard. And then to see the video and sort of relive that moment must have been tough. I think about this too, Anne-Marie, not only just racking your brain about all the things you could have done, but this happened right before the pandemic and the lockdowns. And so he's by himself now racked with this guilt and no way of being able to get help or to deal with it. So it just really compounded the issue for

him. I think in a lot of ways. In the grief. Yeah. I think he's his own worst critic. 100%. And the isolation. I mean, he talked to us about pacing where he was, and he was damaging his feet because he was going over the night over and over and over again in his head. And it's really upsetting.

I mean, Erin, when she interviewed him, had an experience because you're facing him. I was, you know, interviewing him. That was the most raw, the most honest, the most painful interview that I had sat through. Because even though Amy Harwick died in 2020 and we are interviewing him near the end of 2023. That time had not passed, and he was so raw. And sadly, even though he shouldn't, feels responsible that he couldn't save her. That was one of the toughest interviews I've had to do. We wanted to talk to him, but I didn't want to cause any more pain. I just wanted to kind of help him rather than cause pain. I can totally understand that.

A reminder that there are always so many victims. 100%. Right. You did speak to Amy's parents. They were ready to speak on camera. I love them. There was only one moment. We all do.

Oh, my goodness. But they caught us off guard because, you know, they're very proper. And Penny is a very proper woman. But when we asked her about the defense at the trial, she came out with a word that we were not expecting. An improper word? Oh, yes. We had to bleep the word. Had to bleep part of the word.

Bulls**t. I don't know if anyone else expected that reaction. We had to bleep the word. Had to bleep part of the word. Bullshit. I don't know if anyone else expected that reaction. No. Because I surely did not. But it was, it could not have told the viewers more how she really felt about the defense. So it was appropriate from that perspective. So another really interesting piece of evidence that you were able to show was a surveillance video of Gareth Purse House. And you see him walk up to the camera and then block it.

But did anyone, that was the first time I realized that you could put your hand over a camera to stop the action of the camera. But you know what else that shows? Foresight. Yes. The planning that went into it, that he planned to stop those cameras. So on one hand, I'm like, oh, I didn't know that. The other one was, oh my God, he did and he planned this. But you know what? He was smart enough to know to wear gloves and to cover the cameras, but not smart enough to cover his face with a mask. He didn't wear a mask. He didn't wear a

mask. That's very surprising. I don't think he thought he'd get caught. I don't think he knew that Michael Herman was in the house. And I think he thought, and we will get to the syringe, but I think he thought he was going to get in, he was going to commit his crime and get out and never be found. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

Yeah. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News,

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She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informants's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify and listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad free right now. Another chilling new element of this hour is that voicemail from Purse House. He leaves it on Amy's phone after he just kind of happens to bump into her one night.

I want to play a short clip. Gareth sent Amy a series of texts and later left her a tear-filled voicemail. I have so much I need to say. Please give me a chance to just say it. Please. That's when prosecutors say Amy decided to block his number. I mean, at first when I heard that, I thought, oh, that, you know, he sounds like a sad guy. You know, you hear him crying, but then you start thinking, oh, my God, he had not really talked to her. He hadn't dated her for nine years. And he's still so focused on her.

And then it seems creepy. You know, then it's scary. That's not normal. It shows his obsession and how this obsession was sustained. And also, it's not like he had her phone number still. He had to find her number online and then starts texting her and then leaves her

this strange voicemail. And she's texting back giving a boundary. Yes. And then he will not stop. She says, you know, I think the way

that we ended things, let's let that be. I don't want us to be enemies. Yeah. But I think this is a boundary I need to set and let's not continue being in contact.

Very calm way. That was not enough for him. The exact advice she would have given to any of her clients. Right. So another detail not included in the hour

was also later discovered that Purse House was texting another woman right before he killed Amy. You know, if online dating wasn't hard enough. So these two women who have been talking to Gareth Pursehouse, unbeknownst to them, you know, they're texting with him on Valentine's Day and they're all making jokes. And then right after Amy falls from the balcony, he's responding ha ha ha to a woman.

And then when he's arrested 13 hours after Amy's death, he's on a date with another woman. How calculating, manipulative and self-absorbed. Yeah. You know that he took care of one problem in his head and he's moving on. Of course, I feel for those women. Can you imagine responding to somebody online and you find out that he's accused of killing a past girlfriend you know that you might want to shut down your dating profile and reassess yeah and then they had to testify you took that out of my head yeah they had to testify

in his murder trial to say yes these are the texts he was sending me this is the date that we went on because the the woman that was on the date with him, she asked him about that black guy. That's a good point. He had a black eye. You know, prosecutors would argue from his fight with Amy. You know, he attacks her and she's fighting back, fighting for her life. And that's what they're assuming the black eye came from. And, you know, this woman is telling the police, you know, I asked him about it. You know, where'd you get that black eye? And I think he had said to her it was a shaving accident.

I was shaving. But didn't he say the police it was a home renovation? He gave a different excuse to them. Yeah. I was going to ask if he had been in any relationships in those 10 years. I think he had, you know, it's interesting, the change.org petition that the family created in Amy's memory. There's a woman that said, you know, this could have been me. I was one of Gareth's relationships. This could have been me. Unbelievable. Yeah. Gareth Pursehouse is charged with Amy's murder,

and you're able to listen to and see the testimony. Amy's parents were there? Every day. Every day. Every second. Every single day. They were there through, and we all know from sitting through so many, sadly, so many murder trials, the graphic nature. You know, this is about the defendant more than it is about the victim, sadly. And so you see the victim in ways that no parent should have to, but they felt they had to be there for her. He had family there as well. Oh, wow. His mother.

So tell about that story, Lauren, because that to me struck me. We didn't know. We found out from Amy's mother. Yeah. So she told Aaron during the interview that during court one day, she said it was one of the harder days. She believes it was right after they showed the autopsy photos of Amy. And so Penny was leaving the courtroom and Garris' mom stepped out and spoke to her. And we have a clip of that exchange that wasn't included in the hour. She put her hand on my arm and leaned close and said, I'm just so very sorry for what's happened to your daughter. And all I could say to her was, I know you would not have chosen this

for your family. She's a victim, just like we were. What a gracious woman. So empathetic. I'm sorry, that was another time, even hearing it, that I got all teary during the interview because I thought, here is Penny, Amy's mother, worried about another mother whose son took away her daughter. I get teary just talking about it, but that tells you so much about Penny and Tom. They were very gracious, good people.

Talking to Tom and Penny, you start to see where Amy came from, especially Penny. She's this very, you know, in charge person. And, you know, she speaks her mind and her daughter came from very impressive people. It's it's remarkable. The defense put out an argument that, I mean, it was kind of, to me, and I'm not a lawyer, it seemed a little far-fetched. Well, it's blame the victim defense. It's the classic blame the victim. Yeah. They were claiming that, you know, Amy fell off the balcony on her own and that Purr's house brought the syringe filled with nicotine to take his own life. They used sort of proof that she fell off the balcony, this one picture of her sitting on a balcony. Which they didn't even know. They haven't even been able to prove that that's

her balcony. That could be any balcony, you know? I don't know anyone else's reaction, but when I saw them use this picture of her and try to use this in the defense, I had a visceral reaction to that. And we didn't speak to the prosecutors, and in too bad a shape to have ever been able to get to the balcony by herself, let alone climb down. Yes. But yes, that's what they used. And then even in the closings for his defense attorney, Robin Bernstein-Lev, to say, we don't know who initiated the physical altercation. But let me just explain why they did that. They did that. I mean, it was a legal strategy. Yeah.

So, you know, he is charged with, you know, basically first degree murder, premeditated murder. And I think they were hoping the jury might wonder if he just wanted to talk to her. But in the heat of the moment, he ended up killing her. And then that might have been a little bit of a lesser charge manslaughter, voluntary manslaughter, which still carries a big term. But it's just so painful for the family and friends to hear that. Did anybody talk more about the nicotine syringe? Because I don't think I can recall a nicotine syringe coming up in any 48 hours I've ever watched. Oh, yeah. No. Are you serious? We're all looking at Aaron. Yeah. And

I should point out that the lead detective had seen our story years before. And that's how he realized that that syringe that the first responders thought might be heroin was not heroin. It was nicotine. You had another case like that? I did, where a man was accused and convicted of killing his wife with a syringe of nicotine. And the theory being that, number one, they don't usually look for nicotine when they're doing an autopsy or a talk screen. And it's very easily obtained, particularly now when you can vape,

you can get pure nicotine and it can kill you. And unless a medical examiner notices a, because it's injected, unless they notice this little spot on the body, they wouldn't have known what killed her. That was according to prosecutors. It took them months to figure out what that yellowish brown substance was. They had to send it to the FBI in the end to finally get to the bottom of it. They just don't test for it. Right. So fascinating.

His defense presented not one single witness. Which was a shock. They promised to. They promised. They did. They said they. They promised. They did. They said they were going to have an expert. And they showed an image from this reconstruction. But they never they never, you know, made good on that promise. I wonder what happened. So in opening statements in this case, the defense was presenting to the jury their theories. And

one of them was this expert that was going to use these images to show that Amy fell. They used screen grabs of this computer-generated image showing a body. It looks like it's hanging from the balcony, and it was supposed to, in their argument, illustrate how she fell, and that's how she got the injuries. But then we never really heard much more about it because they never presented that. I assume they couldn't back up this reconstruction because they would have if they could have. And of course, he did not take the stand in his own defense. And not even sentencing? No, he never spoke at sentencing. He never spoke throughout the whole trial process. Of course, the big moment of this episode is that Purse House is finally found guilty of murdering Amy Harwick and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Tell us about the victim impact statement from Amy's mother, Penny.

So Penny Harwick gave a very moving statement about how Purse House, you know, he broke into her home. His hands were filled with vitriol. And yes, he used his hands to harm Amy, but his were not the last hands to touch Amy. And so she talks about how the EMTs tried to help Amy, how the doctors tried to help Amy, the police. And then finally at the funeral, Penny and Tom tucked Amy in one last time into her casket and kissed her and touched her and said that how much they loved her. That's tough. Yeah. It's moving. Emotionally vulnerable. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine giving a public statement like that and having to do it. And also, I mean, facing the man who did it. It was so eloquent. I mean, it's very quintessential who she is, but and, you know, making about her daughter and the loss. I mean, it's very quintessential who she is. But and, you know, making about her daughter and the loss. I mean, it was very impactful. Once again, an exceptional hour. Thank you so much for joining us. Very happy to be here. But it's hard for me to give a goodbye to Amy.

Might be our last show. I'm saying goodbye to her, too. Yes. You know, it's such an honor when Richie and I first worked on this in 2020. We were associate producers. And now to be the producers of this and be able to tell her story and hopefully tell it well, it really is just an honor to tell this woman's story. I think honor is the word. And especially with the people that spoke to us, that they trusted us. And, you know, you just want to do right by them. Well, thank you. Thank you again.

Listen, everyone, join us next Tuesday for another Postmortem and watch 48 Hours. Well, thank you. Thank you again. 48 hours wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen ad-free on the Amazon Music and Wondery app or with a 48 hours plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. The scary cult classic was set in the Chicago housing project.

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