[SPEAKER_05]: Can we talk 7-ounce?
[SPEAKER_05]: Can we talk about 7-ounce?
[SPEAKER_05]: Hellooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
[SPEAKER_00]: Every single one of us wants to be better.
[SPEAKER_00]: We spend a lot of time thinking about it, planning ways to attack the issue of our issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes we start on it rarely, do we finish?
[SPEAKER_00]: But being back to the drawing board isn't the worst place to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually maybe the best, because at the drawing board, anything is possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's hope there.
[SPEAKER_00]: endless possibilities.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could think of nothing worse than going back to the drawing board and finding myself to be at a chalk, and of ideas, excuses, really.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, for some that's rock bottom end, the point where all plans go at the window, doing becomes an esoteric thing, not a choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: For others all plans go at the window, along with themselves, and sometimes,
[SPEAKER_00]: Their axe, welcome to Dark Topic on your host, Jack Luda.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a true crime happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kill Amy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy Nicole Harwick was born May 20th, 1981, in Seller'sville, Pennsylvania.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy was adopted by Tom and Penny Harwick, and raised 20 miles outside of Philadelphia, in Lansdale, PA. She seemed to enjoy a stable upbringing from what I could tell, though any child who eventually learns of being given up at birth will, no dead experience some disturbance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy, self admittedly, would later experience some difficulty in attaching herself from relationships, even those that were toxic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, this is not an unusual trait, just something that an Amy's case would bite and hold her back from time to time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy managed to always break free and flourish regardless.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was described as a creative, intelligent, and beautiful child who would become even
[SPEAKER_00]: She was driven and ambitious from the start.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody doubted Amy when her dream of one day moving to LA began floating around her.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seemed she could, and would achieve anything she set her mind to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy wanted a big life, and knew that sticking around a hometown too long was a trap.
[SPEAKER_00]: When she finished high school in 1999, it almost got her.
[SPEAKER_00]: When she decided to marry her boyfriend, a guy who was in a mental band and introduced her to a subculture she fell in love with, more than him, and even Amy was soon divorced a quickly-made or way to California before it was too late.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her escape to LA was something out of the movies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Small-town, pretty girl next door type goes rogue.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy's creative and personal interests now swung to the darker side.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was suddenly obsessed with the subject of serial killers.
[SPEAKER_00]: True crime, the psychology behind all of the horror.
[SPEAKER_00]: She developed a taste for art and music more on the disturbing side.
[SPEAKER_00]: And let me quickly get this all clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy was the type of girl to eventually purchase the bra that Sharon Tate was wearing when the manson family murdered her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of manson, she briefly dated Marilyn Manson.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of my exes did the same actually, though I don't know if you'd call that dated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyways, anyway, all of this is none of my business.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy,
[SPEAKER_00]: was a magnetic, studying hard for doctorates by day, breathing fire and burlesse shows at the playboy mansion by night, but back quickly to that murderbillion fascination of hers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy, she was just like all of us who find true crime so fascinating, though Amy, I believe, was in the top 1% of true crime-efficient arrows, and yes, she would come to be a true crime-podcasting fan,
[SPEAKER_01]: before she became the subject of one to really interested in the circular stuff and all the club things.
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't add a less time like I would walk around with like true crime because I was always interested in human behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy's a doctor of parents supported her the whole way.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was easy to get behind the girl who now seemed unstoppable, picking up modeling work, becoming a go-go dancer, and even appearing in playboy related shoots.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her aesthetic was
[SPEAKER_00]: Jet black hair, porcelain skin, red lips, a wicked smile in sense of humor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy initially thrived under the alias of Nicolette Novak, building a network of contacts in the Hollywood scene that would come in handy once.
[SPEAKER_00]: She finished what she was truly working towards.
[SPEAKER_00]: A bachelor's degree in psychology from California State, Polytechnic University, a master's degree in clinical psychology,
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy secured all of these academic achievements while working nights doing bartending and dancing, managing to keep up with her modeling and even some work as a fitness trainer, making videos.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of this would culminate in her master plan for eventually becoming a well-known Hollywood sex therapist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy would focus her therapy work on relationships, trauma, and sexuality.
[SPEAKER_00]: She also became an advocate for sex positive therapy and destigmatizing discussions around sexual health.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dr. Amy Harwick, opener, own family and relationship clinic in West Hollywood, wrote and published a book, The New Sex Bible for Women in 2014.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of note, she eventually became engaged to Drew Carey for a while and 2018.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their first date was at Disney.
[SPEAKER_00]: The two eventually decided to emacably part ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy appeared on the prices right, not as a contestant, but as the apple of Drew's eye, this on Valentine's Day of 2018, eventually they broke up because the different communication style she said.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the whole way another eye was watching.
[SPEAKER_00]: Furiously, Amy began receiving strange phone calls around the time of her engagement to Drew Kerry.
[SPEAKER_00]: She began seeing weird statements about her on public message boards, dragging her down as a reputable doctor of sex.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's thought that she and part shrunk from Drew Kerry and the public eye because of her harassment from a stalker.
[SPEAKER_00]: and her concerns for both Drew, her self, her reputation, and career were reasons for her splitting with Drew Carey.
[SPEAKER_00]: Staying in a positive note, struggling to hold it I am, the song of Amy Harwick is long, bright and bold, but on the positive,
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm unfortunately running out of breath.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was involved with the non-profit organization, Pineapple Support, which provides mental health services for women, men too, passed and presently involved in the adult film industry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy was truly something else, everybody thought so, especially this ex-boyfriend, this stalker who had been following her career closely after their breakup in 2011.
[SPEAKER_00]: that progressed to a restraining order, that by this time of the story, 2020 had long ago expired.
[SPEAKER_00]: As had Amy's concerns, though recently they'd ramped up with Gareth Perseus started popping back into her life, seemingly by chance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, Amy knew better, unfortunately, despite an extensive knowledge of true crime and being armed with education that should have given her an extreme advantage over characters like Perseus, her kind forgiving nature, got the best of her.
[SPEAKER_00]: The best of her, got the best of her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: But of course, what really got her was her obsessive, ex-boyfriend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Garth Perseus, a tall dark handsome man who could have easily been cast as a sexy vampire in a low budget porno, and in fact was employed as a photographer on porn sets from time to time, was probably more Amy's physical type than say, the Drew Carey.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not to be mean about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Drew Carey was smart, funny, kind, and deeply connected in Hollywood.
[SPEAKER_00]: All traits Garth Perseus seemed to lack.
[SPEAKER_00]: Together Amy May have had the perfect man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Apart, she just had Drew Carey, and a stalker, not to be mean or anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: The stalker, Garth Perseus, wasn't just an ex-boyfriend who could've quite moved on.
[SPEAKER_00]: According to court filings, the statements later given by friends, Garth had been controlling demeaning and violent towards Amy when they were together, living together for a time, back around 2010.
[SPEAKER_00]: The relationship ended after Amy, who struggled at times with abandonment issues, finally decided she'd had enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: Breaking up is hard to do, but it gets easier when the other person is literally breaking you in the process.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Purcellus had beaten her, at one point he tried to silence her screams by clamping a hand over her mouth until she nearly suffocated.
[SPEAKER_00]: During another incident, he allegedly threw her from a moving vehicle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy eventually obtained a restraining order against Purcellus, after his behavior became increasingly erratic and frightening, allegations that included harassment, intimidation, and the kind of obsessive persistence that makes a woman start looking over her shoulder.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were many disturbing incidents.
[SPEAKER_00]: One involved Amy returning home to find her laptop, completely wiped.
[SPEAKER_00]: Friends will later say that throughout the 2010s, Gary has seemed to hover around the edges of her life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heavy breathing, hangup calls, slow drives, past her home later tonight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anonymous derogatory comments left on social media.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even suspected break-ins at residences, she lived in, after their breakup in 2011.
[SPEAKER_00]: By 2020, Perth's house was still lamenting to friends and family about the relationship that had supposedly ruined his life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gareth, a software developer for talking for a model and aspiring comedian, was a joke to many, but he would be sure to get the last laugh, even if, as always, he was the only one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Laughing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The restraining orders eventually expired, but people who knew the situation say the tension never really did.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like a lot of these stories, the warning signs were there long before the night, everything truly broke up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy attended a Hollywood event in early 2020, one of the countless industry gatherings that happened every night in Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of place where people mingle, drink shitty wine, exchange, business cards, and pretend the whole city isn't built almost entirely on rejection.
[SPEAKER_00]: Smiling plastic people shaking hands, delicately hugging one another as if they might break the fragile facade that everything is just fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And speaking of pretending everything was just fine, Gareth Perseus happened to be at this event.
[SPEAKER_00]: He gained entry as a photographer, whether the encounter that followed was coincidence or something a little more deliberate is still a matter of debate, but I'll go ahead and eliminate and suggest that maybe Gareth was there because Amy was there.
[SPEAKER_00]: The two inevitably crossed paths, and Amy being the sweetheart she could not be, stopped to talk with Gareth.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's when Gareth began openly sobbing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy led him away from the crowd, trying to console him while also sparing both of them the embarrassment of the situation, and that's when Gareth dropped to his knees, begging her to take him back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy tried to navigate the moment she was trained in these kinds of emotional crises after all, but this wasn't a client.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gareth hit the floor like a toddler, mid-tantrum, then began shouting that she had ruined his life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nearly a decade after the relationship ended, here she was 37 years old trying to console a six foot four, 40-year-old man in an event where she should have been networking and enjoying the fruits of her hard work.
[SPEAKER_00]: But for Garth Perseus, the relationship had never really ended at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, while Amy had spent the 2010s building a career, becoming a respected therapist, author, and advocate for sexual wellness, Garth had spent much of that same decade circling the past.
[SPEAKER_00]: Still talking about the breakout and how it destroyed his life and, playing into a version of Amy that existed only inside his own mind, a mind that's somewhere along the way, much like Amy.
[SPEAKER_00]: have begun the arduous process of breaking away from Garth, as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Valentine's Day, 2020.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy wakes up on the last day of her life and goes for a morning stroll with her friend Cleopatra.
[SPEAKER_00]: They go up for breakfast and chat about a burlesque show.
[SPEAKER_00]: They will perform in that evening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy is happy.
[SPEAKER_00]: She has come a long way from small-town Pennsylvania to living in the famed Hollywood Hills.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not in a sprawling mansion yet, but in a quiet canyon neighborhood populated by other young professionals.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her home, a multi-level hillside house, has a balcony off of her top floor bedroom, where she can look at over the city at night, like Juliette.
[SPEAKER_00]: If Romeo were hiding in the bushes, plotting to kill her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy as a housemate who occupies a room on the lower floor, his name is Michael Hermann.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hermann and Amy were not romantically involved, though soon many would come to believe he harbored, unrequited feelings for his stunning housemate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Garth Perseus has spent the weeks leading up to Valentine's Day of 2020, planning something special.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knows exactly Amy's itinerary for that day, she will go for breakfast, she will go to work, she will come home to get slotted up for their burlesque show, his thoughts not mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: She'll likely attend and after party, maybe bring home yet another man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if she does, it'll just be one more patchy to put in play.
[SPEAKER_00]: Garth breaks into Amy's Hollywood Hills home at around 9.30pm.
[SPEAKER_00]: He breaks into the back door, smashes in a window, unlocks a door.
[SPEAKER_00]: The roommate downstairs, the cuck room mate, no doubt he thinks of him as, Michael.
[SPEAKER_00]: He hears something upstairs, figures that the cat knocked over a dish.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then he hears some walking around and figures that that's Amy come home and is cleaning up something that broke there.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't go to check.
[SPEAKER_00]: many believe that he's just scared.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm one of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Michael doesn't need to be killed as was no debt the plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Should he have intervened at any point because he doesn't intervene.
[SPEAKER_00]: Garth wearing all black with a black cap, but was his face uncovered, heads upstairs to lay in white framing.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has been captured on neighborhood surveillance cameras.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, he's already kind of caught because his face is clear in at least one camera that he approached and tampered
[SPEAKER_00]: All this goes to show that the forthcoming crime wasn't as meticulously planned as it's been reported.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was planned, but it seems the cameras kind of snuck up on him.
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks like he thought he could return the favor of these cameras sticking up on him by walking up on them sideways before it clumsily unplugging them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But of course, unplugging a surveillance camera doesn't erase your face looming in front of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Garth, you fucking idiot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I plan on this being a scary episode because it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really should be.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the idea of Garth then waiting for the next four hours in Amy's third floor bedroom is so Garth, so clumsy, so pathetic.
[SPEAKER_00]: What was he doing in that time?
[SPEAKER_00]: He couldn't have been thinking because if he had been Gareth Perseus, might have taken the syringe of liquid nicotine he had in his pocket, slammed it in his neck, then sat on the lip of the balcony waiting to topple over, other to his death on the pavement three stories below, or to his eventual overdose on the balcony proper, where he could have been discovered by Amy, and have a proper end to his obsessive desire for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of a man, but no, Gareth isn't a man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gareth is in love.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's actually not in love.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's enraged.
[SPEAKER_00]: How dare she leave me?
[SPEAKER_00]: How dare she move on?
[SPEAKER_00]: How dare she succeed while I fail over and over?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is payback that Perth's house has been pursuing for nearly a decade.
[SPEAKER_00]: The cost doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: He'll put anything down.
[SPEAKER_00]: His life, Amy's to make the hurting stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when Amy finally enters the house and puts her own purse down, Garth turns at the lights in the bedroom upstairs, then like a child,
[SPEAKER_00]: Even shoots off a few text to friends before heading upstairs to shower and undress.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just after 1 a.m. She has plans for a vacation, plans for work, plans for play, she is in her prime, which will keep her alive a lot longer than many would have lasted in the situation she walks into next.
[SPEAKER_00]: A situation she has read about, learned of through crime documentaries and podcasts, study really.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like all of us, she was never really ready to face a situation like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Head on and have nowhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: She has dressed in a tight black skirt, around her neck hangs a crucifix and a rosary.
[SPEAKER_00]: When she turns on a light to her bedroom, the form in her bed rises like a ghost, Amy screams, then fights the sheet off.
[SPEAKER_00]: She fights like hell, after rushes her.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's not ready yet to become a ghost herself.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems.
[SPEAKER_00]: The rosary around her throat is ripped and beads fly everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: The commotion wakes up Michael downstairs.
[SPEAKER_00]: He gets up in his underwear and is a little t-shirt and tentatively calls out up the stairs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy?
[SPEAKER_00]: When the violence becomes evident, her being smashed around the room and screaming for help, Michael maybe runs on the spot a moment, as if he has to pee, or his hairs on fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, then he decides to go running for help.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, after nearly 10 minutes of struggling, Garroth gives up on the nicotine needle.
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd hoped to stick her with it and pose this as a suicide or something, concentrate a nicotine can be very fatal, but so confiding with a hell cat like Amy it turns out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Garath finally beats Amy to the ground, strangles her half to death, then drags her to the balcony and tosses her off of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He then escapes the house, being caught one more time as surveillance, for a good measure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Looks like he's putting on his shoes when he goes running from the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: The room mate Michael, manages to get help after climbing a few fences, he cuts himself up quite a bit in the process, he bangs on doors, no one wants to answer, no one wants to answer a door being banged on the Hollywood Hills at one AM it seems, a lot of actors out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna play you a clip, a 911 called clip from Michael.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to help Michael out here a bit, the guy gets ridiculed for not helping Amy, but he's just a little guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Garth is huge.
[SPEAKER_00]: He no doubt would have killed them both.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's 6-4.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's built.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, uh, Garth fucking would destroy him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy had a better shot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's Michael giving a 911 call dispatcher shit for the police not showing up quick enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: He made multiple, this is the one where he shows a bit of balls.
[SPEAKER_05]: What are you doing?
[UNKNOWN]: What are you doing?
[SPEAKER_05]: What are you doing?
[UNKNOWN]: What are you doing?
[SPEAKER_05]: What are you doing?
[UNKNOWN]: What are you doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a tough call to hear, but basically he's like, where the fuck are you guys?
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been outside of her window, screaming for her, seeing if she's in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the dispatchers are you still at the same scene where you called the first time.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, yeah, I'm fucking here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, where are you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody just toss my roommate at a window and I'm out here trying in my underwear trying to figure this shit out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where the fuck are you guys?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they're on their way, sir.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the real question a lot of people ask, where were the fuck were you, Mike?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and again, and his defense hit.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was running for help, so I mean, I'm going to go on the side of defending Michael here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to make fun of him, but I can't because I've never been in that spot.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have, actually, I have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but I also ran for up so I mean what I'm I was also a very little cat of five years old I wasn't this guy's like almost 40 years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you hear your roommate getting killed upstairs and you're the guy and she's the girl and she's got this obsessive ex-boyfriend maybe go grab a knife
[SPEAKER_00]: and go upstairs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said he couldn't find his phone.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a call from the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was thinking that as well, but I mean he's an a panic.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean earlier the cat knocked over a dish.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, don't even start.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, it's, I want to stick up for Michael here.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I see him, he's in court and all that later, and he's shaking, he's a sweet guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's probably why she was with him too, like as roommates.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't a threat or anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it makes sense he would go
[SPEAKER_00]: How about that?
[SPEAKER_00]: He could have just hit under his bed in the basement, but he went upstairs, he called out, was like, oh shit, that doesn't sound good, and ran, he cut himself a bunch of times climb defenses, and now he's smoking a cigarette, given a 911 call operator, shit, for the cops not showing up, quick enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what, Mike, I think you're all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when police arrive, finally, that unfairly disgraced roommate and Michael has found Amy lying in a pool of blood at back of the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has his own blood on him for climate fences.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some sources say that he has her blood on him from like grabbing her and trying to pick her up and stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy's laying there still breathing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But dying, his prints are all over her body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some sources say.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't believe so.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw some footage where he's kind of running back and forth in front of her and be like, oh my god, Amy, are you okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: If he had been hugging on her and trying to help her, he would know that she's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I tend to believe that the blood that's on him is his own from jumping fences and when the police come around the back of the house and find Amy laying there, broken from being thrown from the fucking third floor balcony after being strangled and beaten up, that's the first time that Michael has seen her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just to fucking kind of clear some of that up.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he doesn't sound like a coward to me, does Michael, you know who else doesn't?
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy, Amy fought to the last fucking moment of her life, and now she's laying here shaking towards death.
[SPEAKER_00]: She will die at hospital from her injuries a couple of hours later.
[SPEAKER_00]: But at least she had Michael, uh, out front, calling them on one four.
[SPEAKER_00]: I originally had that she had Michael there with her, but I don't believe so now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I tried Mike, I fucking tried, uh, I tried harder than you did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Michael is, of course, the main suspect initially, but once the story of Pursos and his obsession with Amy comes to light, not to mention the security footage, Michael is cleared and Pursos soon arrested after a chase over a fence at the back of his play at Del Ray, home comes to an end with the killer being tased a bunch of times and then being handcuffed.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2023, Garth Perseus was found guilty of murder and burglary.
[SPEAKER_00]: The jury determined the killing was pre-meditated.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sentence was life in prison without the possibility of parole.
[SPEAKER_00]: Garth Perseus first came to my attention when he appeared on Kill Tony in late January of 2020.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember Garth Perseus because he was a truly terrible comedian, not even a funny guy when
[SPEAKER_00]: And I should explain Kill Tony about Kill Tony is a long running open mic style comedy show on YouTube and these days Netflix where pure entertainment in the podcasting grassroots comedy goes to die or at the very least to get polished off.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Kill Toney, my favorite show is still, uh, becoming less so in my favorite show these days, but I've never missed an episode, and I'm talking back, I'm talking, uh, there was a 750 episodes or something I've seen them all, added the hundreds of episodes I've watched, giving a once in a lifetime shot to thousands of people, want to be comedians, I do remember process.
[SPEAKER_00]: or Gareth, as he prefers when he comes on stage, because he lacked the major component of any good comedian or person for that matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Self-awareness.
[SPEAKER_00]: When things got bad for Perseus, he never adjusted.
[SPEAKER_00]: When he got boot on stage and the audience rolled their eyes on him, he couldn't fathom that it was him.
[SPEAKER_00]: It had to be the audience.
[SPEAKER_00]: It must be that they don't get him.
[SPEAKER_00]: No Gareth,
[SPEAKER_00]: You want to hear a joke?
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's Garath telling one on his social media on Facebook, I believe, while trying to get into comedy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, Game of Thrones, first season, the brother and sister are up in the castle, and then the kid sees him through the window, and the brother has to go and throw the kid off into the kill him.
[SPEAKER_03]: And even though it's evil, I feel kind of bad for the brother, because even though he doesn't want to do it,
[SPEAKER_00]: evil laugh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're a bad boy, Garth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's tasty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't get canceled, Garth.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, he ends up being on Kill Tony, and I'm going to play a clip from that appearance on Kill Tony.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was a self-imposed public humiliation on Kill Tony.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number 431 recorded January 20th of 2020 at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, California, and released on YouTube a week later.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not even three weeks after this episode aired Valentine's Day of 2020, that X, Amy Harbick, would be dead after being thrown off a balcony.
[SPEAKER_00]: A little callback there, too, is a initial joke that I played for me from his Facebook account.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a lot going on here.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's levels to this comedy shit, you know, call a backs, fucking set ups, and he's got it all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Check him out.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's dream, dream, dream, dream.
[SPEAKER_06]: Here he is, one more time for Garrett, everybody.
[SPEAKER_06]: Come on.
[SPEAKER_06]: Hello, everybody.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, let me spin around this, there we go.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's great to be here in all the best parts of entertainment.
[SPEAKER_04]: We've got most of a band.
[SPEAKER_04]: We've got morning radio sound effects.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes a full band, when a toy gets you comes from the ground, raises from the grave, takes over to an in-start singing.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's wonderful, it's a wonderful time.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think he froze.
[SPEAKER_04]: So back to popular.
[SPEAKER_04]: So over the summer Trump took all yanked all the troops out of Syria, right, and then ISIS got loose.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're knock it on doors running away or something like that, and it really hell works.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I thought he should've asked Tony that as a bad idea, because he has broke the bank relying on the pullout method, quick as coming comedian and comedy.
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, so I've that news for the people for the entertainers over there.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've had news for the entertainers over there.
[SPEAKER_04]: The best day of your career is going to be the days after you die.
[SPEAKER_04]: When, like, pennies skyrocket in price, can I continue today?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's close.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Go ahead.
[SPEAKER_04]: Painting skyrocket can spray your ass skyrocket in price.
[SPEAKER_04]: Red box starts putting some moody from 1962.
[SPEAKER_04]: But what about the porn talent?
[SPEAKER_04]: What happens with them?
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it just red band and home singing?
[SPEAKER_06]: She was still under appreciated at her time.
[SPEAKER_06]: All right.
[SPEAKER_06]: There you go, Garrett.
[SPEAKER_06]: You did it.
[SPEAKER_06]: Doing the age-old broken method of trying to roast the people that the audience is here to see.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's good.
[SPEAKER_06]: How do you feel, Garrett?
[SPEAKER_06]: Shake?
[SPEAKER_06]: Is this your first time on a stage?
[SPEAKER_06]: On a real stage, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: What other kind of stage have you been?
[SPEAKER_04]: There's like five comedians that I wish it was stage four.
[SPEAKER_06]: Garrett, Garrett, Garrett, Garrett, so you tried to do jokes about us and that it wasn't like a original plan.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was just writing normal jokes and they kept twisting easily into just stupid roast and I figured guys are roast people so I thought I'd try it out.
[SPEAKER_06]: How did it go?
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_06]: Does this sound like good?
[SPEAKER_06]: No.
[SPEAKER_06]: No it doesn't.
[SPEAKER_06]: Garrett.
[SPEAKER_06]: know it doesn't so uh... you just started stand-up comedy uh... i've been writing a lot for about two or three years but i barely ever try to get on actually when you say barely ever what do you mean you've done a couple open mics or this is like the first like a couple comedians that try themselves like a like a year ago better than that nothing how come
[SPEAKER_04]: Because it went like that?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, no.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'd say the mix of a good and bad on the other ones, but what do you do for work?
[SPEAKER_04]: Software engineer.
[SPEAKER_06]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_06]: And how old are you?
[SPEAKER_06]: They're 41.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: What are your hobbies?
[SPEAKER_06]: What are things about you and your real life?
[SPEAKER_04]: I like to build stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm working my hands kind of guy or projects.
[SPEAKER_04]: I always try to think of like a cool invention that kind of thing or traveling.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, well, what have you come up with?
[SPEAKER_06]: What are some of your inventions?
[SPEAKER_04]: Nothing successful.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right now, I'm trying to figure out how to have the worst kill Tony said ever.
[SPEAKER_06]: If you build it, I'm a force of truth as a rye.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like right now, I'm trying to figure out a water conservation project.
[SPEAKER_06]: Let me tell you something.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's no way you're going to be that guy.
[SPEAKER_06]: No, you're not going to... Yeah, just give up on that.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: You're right.
[SPEAKER_06]: Get a filter for your washer or your shower head so you don't use as much water.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's about it.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a great day, but it solved it every day.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a great day.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a great day, but it solved it every day.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a great day, but it solved it every day.
[SPEAKER_04]: It solved it every day.
[SPEAKER_05]: It solved it every day.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a drag, first house.
[SPEAKER_06]: So that's interesting.
[SPEAKER_06]: You have a girlfriend?
[SPEAKER_06]: No, but I'm here with a way too hot date.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't tell me.
[SPEAKER_06]: Not a day more!
[SPEAKER_06]: She's gone.
[SPEAKER_06]: Uh, that's fun.
[SPEAKER_06]: Garret.
[SPEAKER_06]: So how do you get a chick that's way too hot for you?
[SPEAKER_06]: How does that work out?
[SPEAKER_06]: Look, lock it.
[SPEAKER_06]: Do you just have it?
[SPEAKER_06]: You only have your height on your dating profile?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that's it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Just...
[SPEAKER_05]: Say anything else, it starts to drop off.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, you're handsome.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Good looking guy.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's helpful.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and a retarded team leader in Target kind of way.
[SPEAKER_06]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_06]: And looks like a Clark can win into a phone booth just to call his grandmother.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have superman for how many, a couple of times.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, that's exactly what I get every time.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, no show.
[SPEAKER_04]: Shut up.
[SPEAKER_06]: There it is.
[SPEAKER_06]: The whole unit gets defensive when people take shots with their 60 seconds.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I know.
[SPEAKER_04]: I like what you guys do.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just thought it would be fine.
[SPEAKER_06]: You're a fan of the show.
[SPEAKER_06]: You ever watch it or was it?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, come here a couple of times.
[SPEAKER_04]: But of course, I can't help you hear the date.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, give us an example of a joke you were going to say before we all lost respect for you.
[SPEAKER_06]: I have to do one normal I don't have everything your best joke my best.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm on you have a one fucking joke It doesn't have to do with me or red van or whatever I had I had one today where I've been told by I was talking to an extra a long time ago And she told me that before talking to me what I was talking to an X
[SPEAKER_04]: And she told me that when we first met, she thought I had a personality, meant I had a small dick.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I talked to another accent, she told me the same exact thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just want to make it perfectly clear right now that Mike Dick's size is private.
[SPEAKER_05]: What a wild swing you took on, don't boo him.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't have any memory, yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: What a wild swing you took bringing up hot date for the first time to this.
[SPEAKER_05]: Just like I hope I'm any good at stand-up comedy.
[SPEAKER_06]: She's a real hot date now, because she just lit herself on fire in the corner there, I just see the hottest state dude.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm really glad you came up here, because I didn't think it was possible for me to hate a man as much as I hate my husband.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, Gareth, you know, you gave it a shot.
[SPEAKER_06]: I would love to see you come back sometime if this is something that you actually think that you might enjoy doing when it goes well.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I write literally constantly.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just don't memorize it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: I pretty sure the first kid to use the phrase, I'm way to go Einstein was a bully on the playground.
[SPEAKER_04]: Way to go Einstein.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it's a bully on the playground.
[SPEAKER_06]: But why?
[SPEAKER_06]: Why?
[SPEAKER_06]: Why with that?
[SPEAKER_04]: Why would a why would that pull?
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, yeah, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh
[SPEAKER_05]: This is not a joke, I want to see his date, so let's hope he hangs himself so he can say, wait, go Epstein, where's he going, dude, you leave in your hot date?
[SPEAKER_06]: He just shit his pants up here, he's going to the restroom.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's a fucking talent agent from CAA who just signed him.
[SPEAKER_05]: Congratulations, Garrett, wow, incredible.
[SPEAKER_05]: Dreams do come true, here, he'll donate.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's that easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a bit as rough as it gets.
[SPEAKER_00]: A stone cold assassin is what host Tony Hinchcliff, sometimes calls an excellent comic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Garth didn't earn that distinction that night, but he chased it down, grab it anyways.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a one to be denied.
[SPEAKER_00]: That being said, it probably goes without saying that perhaps what he couldn't kill Tony, Garth Perseus did the next best thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Worst thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kill Amy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: For more dark topic, check out dark topic plus available on Patreon, Apple and Spotify.
[SPEAKER_00]: Links in the show notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I'm trying to come out every Thursday for you all.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of those will be dark topic plus.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, dark topic Thursdays, that's the plan's been the plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm getting my life together here when it comes to, uh, everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm getting older.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to end up, uh, on a stage getting fucking eviscerated.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want this stage and I want it to be consistent and I want you all to be, uh, expecting me to show up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thursdays, D.T.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thursdays, I'll see you next Thursday, how about that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Until then, keep those eyes cut, those doors locked and stay paranoid.
[SPEAKER_00]: Big love.