Mother of Christy Giles urges location sharing after murder conviction

Christy Giles’ mother is urging people to turn on location sharing, saying the feature helped investigators follow the final movements of her daughter and build the case that ended with David Brian Pearce’s murder conviction. For Dusty Giles, the technology was not a convenience. It was a way to see where Christy had been when a night out in Los Angeles turned fatal.

The case began on Nov. 12, 2021, when Christy Giles, 24, and her friend Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, 26, went out in Los Angeles and visited a nightclub in Hollywood and a warehouse party in East Los Angeles. Police said the women were given drugs at a home in the 8600 block of Olympic Boulevard. Investigators later said they believed an overdose initially caused the deaths, but the case soon widened into a murder and sexual-assault prosecution.

Christy Giles was dropped off dead at Southern California Hospital in Culver City on Nov. 13, 2021. About two hours later, Cabrales-Arzola was left outside Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Hospital alive but in critical condition. Investigators said masked men in a black Prius with no plates dropped off both women. Those details, along with cellphone data, became central to how police pieced together what happened between the Hollywood and East Los Angeles stops and the hospitals where the women were abandoned.

Pearce, a Beverly Hills and Hollywood producer, was convicted on Feb. 4, 2025, of two counts of first-degree murder and of sexually assaulting seven other women. Prosecutors said he supplied fentanyl and dumped the women outside hospitals. On Oct. 29, 2025, he was sentenced to 146 years to life in prison and ordered to register as a lifetime sex offender. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said the sentence reflected both the deaths of Giles and Cabrales-Arzola and the seven sexual assaults.

Dusty Giles said Christy’s location-sharing helped her family and police track where she had been, and a friend saw Cabrales-Arzola’s phone ping at the same Olympic Boulevard address tied to the case. That kind of digital breadcrumb can be lifesaving when someone vanishes or is harmed, especially in a city where friends may be separated after a night out and families are left searching hospitals, rideshare records and text messages for answers.

The case now stands as a warning with two sides. Shared location data can help solve violent crimes and bring accountability when physical evidence is thin. It also raises harder questions about privacy and safety, and about how often families are left relying on consumer phone tools to close gaps that better street-level protections, nightlife oversight and emergency response systems should already cover.