Hollywood therapist Amie Harwick became a key “witness” in her own murder trial after she wrote an email to herself following a chilling encounter with her stalker and killer.
Harwick, 38, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend Gareth Pursehouse in February 2020, when he strangled her and threw her off a third-story balcony in Los Angeles.
Harwick and Pursehouse, 45, had dated in 2011, but met again at a red carpet event in January 2020.
The therapist had received a restraining order against Pursehouse when they broke up a decade earlier, but it had long since expired.
Harwick, once engaged to Drew Carey, recorded the chilling encounter with the man who would brutally murder her in an email that was eventually read to the jury in the prosecution’s closing arguments at Pursehouse’s trial in August 2023.
Hollywood therapist Amie Harwick became a key ‘witness’ in her own murder trial
Harwick, 38, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend Gareth Pursehouse (pictured) in February 2020, when he strangled her and threw her off a third-story balcony in Los Angeles.
“Gareth came up behind me and started yelling, ‘Why are you here? Why are you here?'” Harwick wrote to herself in an email a few hours after the interaction.
“He was sobbing, had his head in his hands, hyperventilating, distorting his face and shaking violently.”
‘Tonight I felt very scared. … It terrifies me that he has been obsessed with me for nine years, thinks about me every day.
‘He couldn’t stop obsessing about me. She recited text messages I had sent her…about nine years ago. She recited the date, who they were going to, and exactly what they said word for word. I couldn’t believe it,’ she wrote.
‘I was very scared… I’m quite nervous because I’m more on his radar now… He’s focused on hurting me. I hope that this interaction, listening to him and giving him time can cause a neutralization of his anger towards me.’
“It’s the closest we’ve ever had to a victim testifying about her murder… I thought it was extremely devastating,” Scott Masterson, the lead homicide detective on the Harwick case, told CBS News.
Harwick was engaged to comedian Drew Carey in 2018, the couple were back in touch days before her murder.
Harwick was found unconscious after being thrown from the third-floor balcony of her home, pictured.
Harwick dated Pursehouse until 2011, when they separated and she obtained a protective order against him.
The Price is Right host Drew Carey, 65, has been subpoenaed to testify in his ex-fiancee Harwick’s murder trial.
“It was very clear to me that … (Pursehouse’s) obsession drove … his intention to kill her,” says Deputy District Attorney Catherine Mariano, who read Harwick’s email aloud to the jury.
Harwick’s mother, Penny Harwick, later told CBS News that her daughter told her about her fear after the chance encounter with Pursehouse.
“He called her a bitch and…told her that she ruined his life,” the heartbroken mother told the station.
“And she just told me how scared she was… And she said, ‘Mom, I went into therapist mode. “I just tried to calm him down.”
Prosecutors stated that after speaking with Pursehouse for nearly an hour at the event, Harwick left and began seeking increased security measures, such as surveillance cameras, pepper spray and sharing his location with his close friend, Robert Coshland.
“That’s when she said, ‘Look, if something happens to me, he did it,'” Coshland told the outlet.
Pursehouse was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in December of last year.