Amie Nicole Harwick, 36

Amie Nicole Harwick, a 36-year-old white woman, died Feb. 15, a Saturday, after she was beaten in the 2000 block of Mound Street in the Hollywood Hills, according to Los Angeles County medical examiner-coroner’s records.

Officers from the Los Angeles Police Department went to Harwick’s home at 1:16 a.m. in response to a report of a woman screaming. When police arrived, Harwick’s roommate told them Harwick was being assaulted inside the home. 

Police found Harwick on the ground, beneath a third-story balcony, with grave injuries consistent with a fall, police said. She was taken to a hospital, where she later died.

Coroner’s officials determined that Harwick died of blunt force trauma. Officers found possible evidence of a struggle in the home, according to a police statement. 

Harwick’s ex-boyfriend, Gareth Pursehouse, a 41-year-old white man, has been charged with special circumstances murder with the allegation of lying in wait, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. 

According to his LinkedIn account, he has worked as a software developer and a photographer.

Harwick, a well-known marriage and family therapist, ran into Pursehouse in January at a professional event she was attending and he was assigned to photograph. A close friend who was with Hawrick at the event said the encounter seemed to “reignite his obsessive preoccupation with her.” 

Harwick and Pursehouse had lived together for a couple of years nearly a decade ago, friends said, but their relationship deteriorated. Harwick detailed several instances of alleged abuse and stalking in court documents requesting restraining orders against her ex-boyfriend.

In one instance, on June 18, 2011, she wrote that Pursehouse picked her up late at night and they got into a fight while he was driving. The fight escalated to the point that Pursehouse pushed her out of the car onto the side of the freeway, she wrote in court documents.

Harwick alleged that, two months earlier, he had forced her to the ground, covered her mouth to keep her from yelling and kicked her.

“He has suffocated me, punched me, slammed my head on the ground, kicked me,” she wrote in court documents detailing the alleged abuse. “This has resulted in bruises, inability to walk, bleeding, broken blood vessels around face, whiplash, sore neck and back.”

Harwick obtained a temporary restraining order against Pursehouse in 2011, but she apparently did not attend a follow-up hearing and the order was dismissed, court records show.

Less than a year later, Harwick was granted another temporary restraining order, and after an April 2012 hearing, a judge granted an extension of the order. The restraining order, which expired in April 2015, required Pursehouse to stay at least 100 yards away from Harwick and refrain from contacting her.

Harwick, who had a master’s degree in clinical psychology and a doctorate in human sexuality, appeared in the 2015 documentary “Addicted to Sexting.” In 2014, she wrote a book titled “The New Sex Bible for Women.”

She was previously engaged to TV star Drew Carey. The pair dated for two years before breaking up in 2018. Carey said in a statement that he was “overcome with grief” over her death.

“Amie and I had a love that people are lucky to have once in a lifetime,” he said. “She was a positive force in the world, a tireless and unapologetic champion for women, and passionate about her work as a therapist.”