Amie Harwick’s killer “wanted to make a statement by killing her on Valentine’s Day,” says

It’s been almost four years since Hollywood therapist Amie Harwick was murdered on Feb. 15, 2020. For the first time, the man who tried to save her opens up about what happened.

Harwick’s roommate, Michael Herman, can never erase the memories of what happened to his friend in the early morning hours after Valentine’s Day 2020.

“I remember thinking like this is so much worse than any horror movie I’ve ever seen,” Herman tells “48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty. “I just was, uh, woken up by screaming … like bloodcurdling scream … And I yelled up, you know, ‘Amie!’ And I heard choking right after that.”

Herman was in a downstairs bedroom when the attack happened. He was unable to find his phone and ran to their next-door neighbor’s house to get help, but there was no answer. He was finally able to use the phone of a stranger on the street. 

When LAPD officers arrived, they discovered Harwick gravely injured under her third-story balcony. On her balcony, there was a strange clue: a syringe filled with a mysterious yellowish-brown substance. There was no sign of Harwick’s attacker, but investigators later discovered evidence of an intruder – a shattered window of a French door. Harwick died at the hospital.

“She’s gone and I’m still here,” says Herman.

“Michael Herman has a lot of survivor’s guilt,” Moriarty tells Harwick’s parents.

“Oh, my goodness,” Penny Harwick says, “He did the exact right thing.”

Tom Harwick adds, “He made all the right decisions.”

A VIOLENT DEATH IN THE HOLLYWOOD HILLS

POLICE OFFICER (bodycam video to Michael Herman): Take a seat. Take a seat.

POLICE OFFICER (to Amie Harwick): Ma’am.

MICHAEL HERMAN: Oh, my God.

POLICE OFFICER: We — we need — we need an ambulance. … Ma’am, what happened to you?

In the early morning darkness of Feb. 15, 2020, police body cameras were recording as Amie Harwick – barely clinging to life outside of her Hollywood Hills home – was taken to a hospital.

POLICE OFFICER (bodycam video): If she says anything in the hospital, we need to know that.

As EMTs tried to save Amie, officers from the Los Angeles Police Department tried to make sense of the scene. Amie’s roommate, Michael Herman, appeared to be the only witness. He told the officers an intruder had attacked Amie.

MICHAEL HERMAN (bodycam video): I swear to you that was a struggle I heard.

Erin Moriarty: But is there any sign of the intruder?

Det. Scott Masterson: There wasn’t. There wasn’t.

Scott Masterson was the lead detective.

Det. Scott Masterson: All we knew when we showed up was that a female was found on the ground in the back of the house. … We’re wide open to … what really went on.

Even open to the possibility that this wasn’t foul play at all. When officers searched the three-story house, they found Amie’s purse, jacket and broken necklace on the floor — not exactly tell-tale signs of a crime — and a discovery on Amie’s balcony made them wonder if this could have been an accident or even suicide.

Det. Scott Masterson: On the deck of the balcony, we found … a medium-size syringe and it was loaded with a yellowish-brown substance.

POLICE OFFICER (bodycam video): Yeah, it’s heroin.

Erin Moriarty When the officers first saw that they thought, what? Was this some kind of drug deal?

Det. Scott Masterson: Yeah, exactly … or maybe she was using drugs and fell over. …They didn’t know.

POLICE OFFICER (bodycam video): Sir, do you know her history of drug use?

MICHAEL HERMAN: No, she’s sober. She doesn’t drink. She didn’t even drink.

POLICE OFFICER: She doesn’t drink?

MICHAEL HERMAN: She doesn’t even drink. She’s sober.

Det. Scott Masterson: And when I first saw it, I said, “That’s not heroin.”

Not heroin. But Masterson didn’t know what it was.

Erin Moriarty: But what did you think? Wasn’t that odd?

Det. Scott Masterson: Very odd. Very strange.

And very strange to investigators, says Masterson, was that Herman had blood on his shirt. Although he said he was a roommate, he didn’t have his keys to the house when first responders arrived.

Det. Scott Masterson: They don’t know if he’s part of the problem, part of the solution.

POLICE OFFICER (bodycam video): He might be a suspect, dude, because he’s got blood on him.

Det. Scott Masterson: So, you know, they’re … thinking, “Was he in a fight with her?”

That was not true. Herman is telling his story publicly for the first time about the events on the night of Valentine’s Day 2020 and into the early hours of the next day.

Erin Moriarty: The word nightmare isn’t even a big enough word, is it?

Michael Herman: (shakes his head) No, no …

Amie had gone out with friends and Herman was in his downstairs bedroom.

Michael Herman: I’d been mostly nodding on and off, I remember what sounded like a plate dropping, being woken up by it.

Thinking it was Amie’s cat, he says he fell back asleep. He later woke up to Amie returning home and that bloodcurdling scream. He then heard what sounded like Amie being thrown to the floor, and later, choked.

Erin Moriarty: The sound made you feel that there was someone up with her.

Michael Herman: I knew — I knew for a fact there was somebody up there after that. … I’m trying to listen … you don’t know for sure what’s going on … Was he acting alone? Was there more than one person? … I start rushing to look for my phone.

But Herman says he couldn’t find his phone. He then started yelling to scare the intruder.

Michael Herman: I remember thinking like this is so much worse than any horror movie I’ve ever seen … you’re realizing that to save her like … you’ve gotta …make the decision to leave her … it was such a hard decision.

Herman fled the house to get help, but when he got to the front gate, it was locked. He climbed over a fence, cutting himself on spiked rods. Frantically, he ran to the next-door neighbor’s house. That neighbor’s surveillance camera shows Herman knocking on the door, but no one answers.

Michael Herman: I just … kind of panicked, you know, feeling like a lot of time had already passed.

He then ran into someone on the street and used their phone to call 911.

MICHAEL HERMAN (to 911): You guys need to get a cop here quick.

911 DISPATCHER: Sir, the officers are on the way.

After spending hours at the scene, investigators found something in the light of day that they had missed before: a broken window from a French door on the ground floor with blood nearby.

Det. Scott Masterson: So, as soon as we saw that, OK … This is our point of entry. … We have a crime here. … Somebody broke into this house and did this.

Erin Moriarty: So, this was the first piece of evidence that said to you Mike Herman might be telling you the truth?

Det. Scott Masterson: Correct. Correct.

Later, at the Hollywood police station, Herman told Masterson about the person he believed was responsible.

Michael Herman: I told them she had an ex-boyfriend that she had had a restraining order against, that had expired. … I don’t know his name, but Robert would know his name.

Robert is Robert Coshland, one of Amie’s closest friends. “48 Hours” first spoke to Coshland in 2020. He told us what he told police.

Robert Coshland (2020): And they were like, you know, “Do you know who might have, you know, could have done this?” And I was like, “Yeah, Gareth.”

Gareth Pursehouse — an old boyfriend whom Amie had a troubled relationship with when they dated almost 10 years earlier.

Robert Coshland: I was like … “You need to go find this guy right away.”

Masterson then broke the news to Coshland and Herman: Amie had died at the hospital. She was 38 years old.

Erin Moriarty: How difficult was it to hear that Amie didn’t make it?

Michael Herman: It’s still difficult to hear …

As investigators worked to find Amie’s ex-boyfriend, they also tried to find Amie’s parents Penny and Tom Harwick in Pennsylvania. The Harwicks remember getting ready for bed when there was a knock at the door. It was the local police.

Penny Harwick: And he said … “Amie’s been murdered” (cries).

Tom Harwick: It — it’s — it’s a blur right now.

Penny Harwick: I don’t know how to describe it, I —

Tom Harwick: Just devastated.

Penny and Tom’s life with Amie began when they adopted her as an 11-month-old baby. 

Erin Moriarty: Do you remember the first time you saw your little girl?

Penny Harwick: Oh, I absolutely remember … kind of like a fairy tale. … here’s this beautiful little girl sitting there and she’s going to come home with us and — and be our daughter. It was wonderful.

Tom Harwick: And believe it or not, she had a head full of curls.

Penny Harwick: And her hair was honey colored. … By the time she was 4, it was so dark.

Around that same time, the Harwicks adopted their son, Chris.

Penny Harwick: She was OK with it for a couple of weeks. And then she said, “Well, when is he going back?” (laughs) … And I said, “Well, he’s not. He’s your brother. He’s gonna be here forever.”

Erin Moriarty: How would you describe your sister?

Chris Harwick: Amie was a very interesting, uh, character. … She was into heavy metal and rock music, going to concerts.

And Amie got her parents in on the action, too.

Tom Harwick: She turned Penny and I into metalheads or headbangers.

Penny Harwick: She did.

Erin Moriarty: Seriously?

Penny Harwick: Seriously.

Tom Harwick: She would always manage to get either backstage or to meet the performers. That’s just who she was.

After high school, Amie met Tommy Decker, a drummer from L.A. at a local concert. The two began dating long distance.

Penny Harwick: And then she said, “I wanna move out there. I wanna move out to L.A.”

In 2001, she headed west. She was 20 years old.

Penny Harwick: She needed to find out who she was. She needed to do that for herself.

Soon, the couple tied the knot. But after a three-year marriage, Decker and Amie divorced. It wasn’t until 2009, that Amie would go on to meet Gareth Pursehouse — the man police suspected had killed her, and whom they were now searching for.

GARETH PURSEHOUSE’S TROUBLED PAST

Det. Scott Masterson: I was very confident that, you know, Gareth Pursehouse was our guy.

Within 13 hours of Amie Harwick’s death on Feb. 15, 2020, police descended on Pursehouse’s beachside neighborhood to arrest him.

Det. Scott Masterson: You could tell he was playing the old, what’s this about, why do you wanna talk, who, uh — oh yeah, I know Amie, sure, yeah. …He, basically, was saying I’ve been at home.

Detectives weren’t buying that story or the explanation Pursehouse gave for what appeared to be a fresh black eye: he blamed a home renovation.

Det. Scott Masterson: I said, “I think you better get a contractor. … if you get a hold of a power tool, you’re gonna be in real trouble.”

Pursehouse was charged with Amie’s murder on Feb. 19, 2020, and detectives were learning about his troubled past — beginning not long after he and Amie began dating in 2009.

Rudy Torres (2020): They seemed like a pretty fun couple, and kinda nice to see, you know, friends get together.

When “48 Hours” first spoke to Rudy Torres in 2020, he talked about how the couple met:  Amie, then working as a model and dancer, would often run into Pursehouse, an events photographer, at flashy L.A. parties.

Rudy Torres (2020): If you would meet him you would think he’s charming. A little goofy. Kinda dorky.

Erin Moriarty: He wasn’t a musician like she normally dated?

Penny Harwick: No, no, no. And she was trying to break that habit (laughs).

Pursehouse was also a computer expert and an aspiring comedian, but oddly, says Amie’s mother Penny, her daughter didn’t share much else about him.

Erin Moriarty: And why do you think that is?

Penny Harwick: Well, maybe she was already feeling like he wasn’t who she thought he was.

And Penny says her daughter never shared how volatile the two-year relationship had become.

Det. Scott Masterson: She had gone through … quite a bit … with Gareth. There was … a number of police reports that were made.

Detectives learned that Amie had called police to report several violent incidents over the years. She said that on multiple occasions Pursehouse had “choked,” “suffocated” and “punched” her “with a closed fist,” and…