The Hollywood Hills Homicide of Amie Harwick

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan

CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts

True Crime

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2022

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. Amie Harwick, a sex therapist and former fiancé of actor Drew Carey, is found unresponsive under a balcony in her Hollywood Hills home on the morning of February 15th, 2020. She is rushed to the hospital, but unfortunately, passes away. The evidence at the crime scene and on Harwick’s body indicated signs of a struggle and her having been thrown from the balcony.

In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and Jackie Howard discuss blunt force trauma, the difference between falling/being thrown from a great height, how to tell in what order injuries occur, and why a nicotine syringe became a major factor in this case.

Show Notes:

0:00 - Intro

1:25 - Background and overview of the case

3:45 - Where do you start with a case like this?

5:10 - Amie Harwick being thrown from her balcony

7:30 - How do we know she was thrown off the balcony?

15:45 - Do the injuries differ depending on whether you are thrown from a great height or fall from one?

19:00 - Blunt force trauma

20:10 - How does the M.E. go about examining all the injuries?

25:50 - Is it possible that Amie was beaten and that caused the injuries to her liver, not the fall?

29:40 - How can you tell what order the injuries happened in?

32:00 - If Amie fell, and was not thrown, would her death still be considered blunt force trauma?

34:00 - Suspects in Amie’s case

34:55 - How investigators suspect the murder played out

36:40 - Finding a nicotine filled syringe and what that signifies

42:10 - Harwick’s ex-boyfriend, Gareth Pursehouse, becomes the prime suspect

44:45 - Pursehouse has been charged with murder, first degree residential burglary, and special circumstance allegation of lying in wait.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I've been out to L.A. a few times in my career and I've had to film different things out
0:24.8	there and interact with folks out in Hollywood and one of the odd little.
0:29.9	Besides about L.A. is this location there called the Hollywood Hills.
0:35.6	It's strange for somebody like me that lives down here in the deep south but you
0:41.5	go there and the roads just kind of snake around you never know where you're
0:47.0	going to wind up but I got to tell you you know when you begin to take it all
0:52.0	in and you look down and you can see the city kind of laying out there
0:55.6	before you it's quite breathtaking it's it almost looks as though it's not real
1:01.8	it almost does in fact seem like in that setting that the city is a movie set
1:11.2	the views are fantastic today we're gonna talk about a lady that lived there
1:17.7	that was part and parcel of that community that people knew people in very
1:23.2	high echelons out in Hollywood we're going to talk about the death of Amy
1:30.5	Horwick I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bikes
1:39.8	some of the toughest scenes that I've had to work have taken place as a result of
1:46.9	falls from great height because I don't know you you look at it and you try to
1:52.4	make heads or tails out of what actually happened because sometimes the
1:57.3	trauma is just so extensive it's very hard to kind of make your way through
2:02.5	everything that you have to analyze Jackie Howard executive producer of
2:08.1	crime stories with Nancy Grace Jackie I got to tell you this case is one of
2:12.5	those cases for me I can only imagine the trouble that the corner had kind of
2:16.4	deciphering what they were seeing before them I have so many questions for you
2:20.2	Joe about this case related to that fall but let's look a little bit at the
	...

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