For Drew Carey, Valentine’s Day a painful reminder of ex-fiancée’s suspicious death

▶ Watch Video: Sneak peek: The Final Hours of Amie Harwick

Two years after the death of his former fiancée Amie Harwick, Drew Carey, host of CBS’ “The Price is Right,” tells “48 Hours” that Valentine’s Day will never be the same for him.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever want to celebrate Valentine’s Day with a dinner. You know? I just don’t wanna do anything,” an emotional Carey tells correspondent Erin Moriarty. 

Carey’s interview and new information about the case will be featured in “The Final Hours of Amie Harwick,” airing Saturday, February 12 at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount +. The broadcast features revealing interviews with Harwick’s close friends Robert Coshland, Cleopatra Slough, Sharon Little, and Rudy Torres, as well as forensic psychologist Kris Mohandie.

Drew Carey and Amie Harwick Drew Carey and Amie Harwick

Robert Coshland

The report marks the second anniversary of Harwick’s death in the hours shortly after Valentine’s Day 2020. “I think about her every single day,” Carey tells Moriarty.

Valentine’s Day looms large for Drew Carey. In 2018, on a special Valentine’s episode of “The Price Is Right,” Carey introduced Harwick to the world as his fiancée. “I fell so hard for her,” Carey says. “She was really smart.”

He says the Ph.D. therapist made him feel good about himself. “You want an intimate relationship where you can open up to somebody completely and be yourself. And she was that for me,” Carey says.

But the couple eventually broke up. Carey says one of the reasons was the demands of his career. “It was so painful,” he tells Moriarty.  

In the early morning hours of February 15, 2020, Los Angeles police officers responding to a call for a “woman screaming” found Harwick, 38, lying on the ground battered and unresponsive beneath the third-floor balcony of her Hollywood Hills home. Harwick later died from blunt-force injuries. The medical examiner also found evidence of strangulation. A trail of evidence led investigators to Harwick’s ex-boyfriend, photographer Gareth Pursehouse. Pursehouse was arrested and charged with murder. He has pleaded not guilty.

The broadcast includes the latest evidence authorities have collected against Harwick’s suspected killer including a syringe that contained nicotine found on Harwick’s balcony. Prosecutors believe the syringe is evidence of Pursehouse’s intent to murder Harwick. Nicotine is a toxin that can cause death.

“She cared so much about helping people,” says Carey. “That was her life’s purpose. She just wanted to help people. Especially women.”

Harwick, he says, cared deeply about domestic violence issues and helped many of her patients who were victims of sexual abuse. Carey spoke with “48 Hours” in the hopes of bringing awareness to the commonality of intimate partner violence. 

“You can’t be a person in this country and not know a woman who hasn’t been a victim of domestic violence. You just can’t,” Carey says. “And it’s really a problem that not enough people acknowledge.”                       

As the anniversary of Harwick’s death approaches, her loss continues to be difficult to her friends. “Valentine’s Day sucks now,” Carey says. “That’s not a good day to remember.”  

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