Ex-boyfriend arrested in death of celebrity sex therapist Amie Harwick, LAPD says - NBC News
Ex-boyfriend arrested in death of celebrity sex therapist Amie Harwick, LAPD says - NBC News |
- Ex-boyfriend arrested in death of celebrity sex therapist Amie Harwick, LAPD says - NBC News
- Rapper Pop Smoke fatally shot in Hollywood Hills home invasion - NBC News
- Trump commutes sentence of former Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich, pardons ex-NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik - NBC News
| Ex-boyfriend arrested in death of celebrity sex therapist Amie Harwick, LAPD says - NBC News Posted: 17 Feb 2020 08:42 AM PST Amie Harwick, a celebrity therapist who counseled marriages and wrote about sex and relationships, was killed at her Hollywood Hills home Saturday, and an ex-boyfriend has been arrested in her death, Los Angeles police said. Officers were called to the home at 1:16 a.m. after a report of a "woman screaming," according to authorities. A roommate of Harwick, 38, met police on the street and said she was being assaulted inside the home. Officers entered the property and said they found Harwick beneath a third-story balcony with injuries consistent with a fall. The one-time Playboy model was rushed to the hospital and later died from her injuries, police said. Investigators noted evidence of a struggle in the upstairs of the home and a forced entry into the residence. "Detectives learned that [the] victim had recently expressed fear about a former boyfriend and had previously filed a restraining order against this person," the Los Angeles Police Department said in a news release. "The restraining order had expired and the victim had seen this former boyfriend two weeks ago." Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings. Police identified the ex-boyfriend as Gareth Pursehouse, 41, of Los Angeles' Playa Del Rey neighborhood. An FBI and LAPD joint fugitive task force arrested him later Saturday on a murder charge. It was not immediately clear if he has an attorney. Police said the case would be presented to prosecutors Wednesday. Those who knew Harwick remembered the therapist on social media as a caring professional who helped to empower women in their relationships. She authored the 2014 self-help book, "The New Sex Bible for Women," and also grabbed headlines in 2018 for getting engaged to "The Price is Right" host and comedian Drew Carey. In a 2018 interview with the podcast Holly Randall Unfiltered, Harwick described how Carey supported her in the face of negative comments on social media. "'I bet she's a gold digger. I bet she's wanting him for this,'" Harwick said in describing the comments. "Actually no, I have my own business and I have a degree." The pair was engaged for less than a year before calling off the relationship, according to reports. Carey on Monday tweeted a video of him and Harwick together, and a message to his followers: Australian model Emily Sears tweeted Sunday that Harwick was her therapist and "changed my life." She added that Harwick dedicated herself to "helping others heal from trauma."   |
| Rapper Pop Smoke fatally shot in Hollywood Hills home invasion - NBC News Posted: 19 Feb 2020 07:41 AM PST Rapper Pop Smoke was fatally shot Wednesday morning during a home invasion in Hollywood Hills, California, multiple sources told NBC News. The Brooklyn-born artist, whose real name was Bashar Jackson, was 20. Capt. Steven Lurie of the Los Angeles Police Department's Hollywood division would not confirm during a news conference Wednesday morning that the victim of a home invasion on Hercules Drive in Hollywood Hills was Jackson. The LAPD received a call at 4:55 a.m. from someone on the East Coast who said a friend inside the home had contacted them saying multiple suspects had broken into the home, and one had a handgun. Lurie said between two and six suspects entered the home, and one of them was wearing a mask. One person in the home was shot and brought to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead "hours later," Lurie said. Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings. Several people who were inside the home were detained by police and released, Lurie said. No one has been arrested. Witnesses were still being interviewed by homicide detectives early Wednesday. Lurie said it was unclear who owns the home and whether the invasion was targeted. Jackson release his breakout hit "Welcome to the Party" in April 2019. Nicky Minaj remixed the song, which was originally a part of Jackson's debut mixtape, "Meet the Woo." Minaj posted a tribute to Jackson on Instagram Wednesday morning. 50 Cent also mourned the rapper. In December of that year, Jackson collaborated with JackBoys and Travis Scott on "Gatti." He ran into a legal problem in January when he was accused of transporting a stolen Rolls-Royce across state lines. Jackson and the owner of the car had made a verbal agreement in Los Angeles that Jackson could use the car in an upcoming music video in exchange for the owner receiving special treatment at a Pop Smoke concert. Jackson was supposed to return the car after the video shoot, but the owner tracked the car by GPS to Arizona, and also said a photo of Jackson and the car in New York had been posted to social media. That's when the owner reported the luxury car stolen. Earlier this month, Jackson dropped his second mixtape, "Meet the Woo V.2." The debuted #7 on the Top 200 chart, Billboard tweeted Tuesday. The rapper had retweeted a fan less than an hour before his death. "I am so distraught right now. May he rest in power," that fan tweeted Wednesday morning. "I can't stop crying."   |
| Posted: 18 Feb 2020 10:32 AM PST President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he had commuted the prison sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was impeached and removed from office in 2009 on corruption charges, and pardoned former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik. A federal spokesman said Tuesday night that Blagojevich had been released and was no longer in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The news came hours after Trump signed an executive order granting a full pardon to former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr. related to a decades-old corruption charge, one of nearly a dozen pardons and commutations the White House announced Tuesday. Another big name on the list was that of Michael Milken, the former junk bond trader who pleaded guilty in 1990 to racketeering and securities fraud. The man who prosecuted Milken was one of the people who advocated for his pardon, according to the White House — Rudy Giuliani, one of the president's personal lawyers. Giuliani also advocated for a pardon for Kerik, who was Giuliani's hand-picked police commissioner when he was mayor of New York. Kerik was sentenced in 2010 to four years in prison after pleading guilty to eight felony charges, including tax fraud. Blagojevich, 63, was sentenced in 2011 to 14 years in federal prison on corruption charges related to his solicitation of bribes in an attempt to "sell" the Senate seat Barack Obama left open after he was elected president. Trump, who has repeatedly floated the idea of pardoning Blagojevich, told reporters that he had received "a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence."  Feb. 18, 202001:04 "He served eight years in jail, a long time," Trump told reporters at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. "I don't know him very well. I met him a couple of times. He was on for a short while on 'The Apprentice' some years ago. He seems like a very nice person. I don't know him." Trump said "many people" thought the sentence was unfair. "He'll be able to go back home to his family," he added. Blagojevich, a Democrat, had been at the low-security Federal Correctional Institute in Englewood, Colorado. He'd been a contestant on Trump's reality TV show "The Celebrity Apprentice" in 2010. The president said in August that he was "very strongly" considering giving Blagojevich a reprieve. "I'm thinking about commuting his sentence very strongly," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One then. "He's been in jail for seven years, over a phone call where nothing happens ... over a phone call where, you know, he shouldn't have said what he said, but it was braggadocio, you would say. I would think that there have been many politicians — I'm not one of them, by the way — that have said a lot worse over telephones," he added. In one wiretapped phone call, Blagojevich said of Obama's Senate seat: "I've got this thing and it's f------ golden. And I'm just not giving it up for f------ nothing." Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings. The current Democratic governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, took to Twitter to blast the pardon. "President Trump has abused his pardon power in inexplicable ways to reward his friends and condone corruption, and I deeply believe this pardon sends the wrong message at the wrong time," Pritzker tweeted. Prosecutors said Blagojevich and others working for him began "a pattern of racketeering activity" soon after he took office in 2002, using the powers of the governorship in "exchange for financial benefits for themselves and others." He was arrested in late 2008 on allegations that he had tried to profit from selling off Obama's open Senate seat, and he was impeached in January 2009 after he refused to resign. Blagojevich was convicted in federal court in Chicago later that year on one of 24 felony counts — lying to the FBI about the extent of his involvement in campaign fundraising. Jurors deadlocked on the other counts. At his 2011 retrial, he was convicted of three separate shakedown attempts — one involving a children's hospital, one involving a racetrack and one involving the Senate seat. In between his trials, he tried to rehabilitate his image and signed up as a contestant on "The Celebrity Apprentice" in 2010. He was "fired" after four episodes after bungling a Harry Potter presentation. Kerik, who was New York City's police commissioner during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was sentenced to four years in prison in 2010 for offenses including failure to pay taxes and lying to the White House during his scuttled nomination to be secretary of homeland security. Kerik tweeted a message of thanks after news of his pardon broke, writing that there "are no words to express my appreciation and gratitude to President Trump."  Nov. 26, 201914:09 Among those who advocated for Kerik's pardon was Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who was acquitted of murder in the death of a wounded ISIS prisoner but was convicted of posing for a picture with the dead prisoner's body. Kerik had worked as an adviser and advocate for Gallagher, whom Trump ordered restored to his previous rank after his conviction. In the years since his release, Kerik has become a frequent presence on Fox News, where he has been a strong defender of the president. Besides Giuliani, two other Fox News personalities, Andrew Napolitano and Geraldo Rivera, had advocated for Kerik's pardon, the White House said. The president's favorite TV channel also has a connection to Milken's pardon. Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo was one of Milken's advocates, as was Fox News and Fox Business owner Rupert Murdoch. Republican megadonors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson also supported the bid, as did Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. A statement from White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham cited Milken's philanthropic work since his release, saying he "has been particularly influential in the fight against prostate cancer and has been credited with saving many lives." Milken, who had been seeking a presidential pardon since Bill Clinton was in the White House, said he and his wife, Lori, "along with our children and grandchildren, are very grateful to the president. We look forward to many more years of pursuing our efforts in medical research, education and public health." Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics In 2018, in the weeks after he pardoned the conservative provocateur Dinesh D'Souza, Trump said he had been "thinking about" pardoning Blagojevich. Trump told reporters in May 2018 that Blagojevich had received a long sentence "for being stupid and saying things that every other politician, you know, that many other politicians say" and that "he was treated unfairly." The remarks were likely a reference to what Blagojevich was recorded saying on secret federal wiretaps about his authority to appoint someone to Obama's open Senate seat. Blagojevich has argued that he was a victim of federal prosecutors run amok — an allegation that Trump himself levied at former special counsel Robert Mueller's team, which investigated the president and Russian interference in the 2016 election. "Under the legal arguments that prosecutors used to convict me, all fundraising can be viewed as bribery," Blagojevich wrote in a 2018 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, which was widely viewed as a personal appeal to Trump for clemency. Democrats — including Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and former Attorney General Eric Holder — have said in the past that they'd support efforts by Trump to commute Blagojevich's sentence. Trump has issued numerous pardons and commutations. In addition to the pardons Tuesday and in 2018 for D'Souza, who pleaded guilty in 2014 to violating campaign finance laws, Trump has pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff who is a favorite of immigration hard-liners; I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the aide to former Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted of obstructing justice and lying to authorities during an investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity; Kristian Mark Saucier, a sailor who kept classified materials; and Jack Johnson, the African American boxing legend who was convicted under a law that was used as a deterrent to interracial dating. Trump also commuted the sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, who was serving life in prison on drug charges, after reality TV star Kim Kardashian West lobbied the president in an Oval Office meeting to intervene. Johnson, who was featured in Trump's Super Bowl campaign ad, paid it forward; she advocated for three of the commutations the White House announced Tuesday. The recipients, Tynice Nichole Hall, Crystal Munoz and Judith Negron, were all serving long prison sentences for nonviolent offenses. In addition, Trump has hinted at pardoning the lifestyle and home merchandise mogul Martha Stewart, who was convicted in 2004 on charges related to insider stock trading and was sentenced to five months in prison.  |
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