A new look at the death of the former fiancée of TV game show host Drew Carey reveals what prosecutors believe shows intent by the woman’s alleged killer to murder her.
In a “48 Hours” episode airing on CBS Saturday at 10 pm EST, it’s revealed that authorities collected a syringe of nicotine — a toxin that can cause death — from the crime scene.
Harwick, a celebrity sex therapist who was engaged to Carey in 2017 and 2018, was allegedly slaughtered by her ex-boyfriend, Gareth Pursehouse.
“When I heard that she got murdered, right away, I thought: ‘It’s gotta be that guy,’” Carey told Moriarty.
The brutal killing of Dr. Amie Harwick on Valentine’s Day 2020 has led Carey to dread the holiday.
“Valentine’s Day sucks now,” Carey told “48 Hours” corresponding Erin Moriarty of the upcoming anniversary of the murder. “That’s not a great day to remember.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever want to celebrate Valentine’s Day with a dinner,” the 63-year-old host of “The Price Is Right” said. “You know? I don’t want to do anything.
Prosecutors claim Pursehouse, a photographer, strangled his victim, 38, before throwing her body off the balcony of her third-floor apartment in the Hollywood Hills
Pursehouse has pleaded not guilty to the homicide and his first court hearing is likely to happen this year. If a jury decides that he has committed the crime, the charges — which include murder and residential burglary with the special circumstance allegation of “lying in wait” — make him eligible for the death penalty.
Carey was among a number of Harwick’s friends who knew she had taken out two restraining orders against Pursehouse. The second one expired two weeks before she died.
A week after the slaying and arrest of Pursehouse by detectives in Los Angeles, Carey told listeners of his weekly radio show on Sirius XM: “He finally got her and killed her.”
Carey broke down as he said: “She was murdered by an ex-boyfriend who had been stalking her for about 10 years and she was deathly afraid, even afraid of him when we were in [our] relationship.”
Court filings released after Harwick’s death confirmed Carey’s claims about the violence the woman had allegedly suffered at the hands of Pursehouse.
“He has suffocated me, punched me, slammed my head on the ground, kicked me,” the victim wrote in a report that led to one of the restraining orders. “This has resulted in bruises, inability to walk, bleeding, broken blood vessels around [my] face, whiplash, sore neck and back.”
In Saturday’s broadcast of “48 Hours: The Final Hours of Amie Harwick,” Carey told Moriarty that the plight of his former sweetheart should be a wake-up call.
“You can’t be a person in this country and not know a woman who hasn’t been a victim of domestic violence,” he said. “You just can’t.
“It’s really a problem that not enough people acknowledge.”
He also discussed his whirlwind romance with Harwick — who he described as “obviously really beautiful” and “smart.”
The couple met in 2017 at a party in Las Vegas. Carey posted an Instagram picture of them together with the caption, “The face of a lottery winner.”
Carey told Moriarty: “I fell so hard for her… You want an intimate relationship where you can open up to somebody completely and be yourself. And she was that for me.
“I would be getting ready, and I’d open, like, my sock drawer… she’d leave me a note and a card. Like, ‘I love you so much, and… you’re my dream.’ You know, with little hearts on ’em. And then she would hide them all over the house for me.”
Their engagement was officially announced in early February 2018, but they had an amicable break-up the same year.
Nevertheless, the comedian told “48 Hours” about his anguish over the split. “It was so painful,” he said, citing his demanding career as one of the reasons for it. “You know, we had some problems. We finally just had to call it a day.”
Harwick, a former model who earned her PhD from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco, regularly shared her expertise on podcasts, TV and her own YouTube channel.
The striking brunette wrote the intimate guide “The New Sex Bible for Women” in 2014 and appeared in the documentary “Addicted to Sexting” a year later.
“She cared so much about helping people,” Carey recalled in his CBS interview. “That was her life’s purpose. She just wanted to help people. Especially women.”
Harwick is believed to have dated her alleged killer in the mid to late 2000s and briefly lived with him before the relationship ended. After she died, friends including Hollywood photographer Glenn Francis claimed Pursehouse had been “obsessed” with Harwick “since 2006.”
Another pal, adult film actress Jasmin St Clair, told Page Six that Pursehouse, 43, “stalked” his ex at a Los Angeles awards show in January 2020 and caused an altercation.
“I have [Pursehouse] went batshit crazy,” St Clair said. “His behavior from him was abusive and threatening. He was yelling and screaming. Amie told me after the incident that she was scared he would show up at her home de ella. ”
A month later, in the early hours of Feb. 15, 2020, police arrived at Harwick’s address in response to calls about a woman screaming. They found the therapist lying on the ground under her balcony. She later died of her injuries in the hospital.
Pursehouse was arrested the next day.
Carey hadn’t been in touch with Harwick for a while when he heard from her a day before her murder.
“Valentine’s Day was a Friday,” Carey said on the show. “I got a text from her on Thursday. [She] said, ‘Hey, I know we haven’t talked in a while, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about, you know, forgiveness, and I would love to get together with you and talk.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I would love to do that. I love you.’”
The comedian, who was in another serious relationship when he got Harwick’s text, believes she was seeking to forge a new future as friends.”I was really happy, like, ‘Oh, it’d be great to see her again,’” I have told Moriarty.
But the former couple would never get the chance to talk again.
As the comic told “48 Hours”: “I think about her every day.”
nypost.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism