After years of romantic disappointments and failed relationships, Drew Carey finally found real love with Amy Harwick, a woman who completely changed his world. Friends said they had never seen him that happy. But by the end of 2018, the relationship had collapsed and the engagement was over. Most people assumed their story had ended there, but it hadn’t. His name is Mr. Bell. Mr.
Bell, I think you’re making a big mistake here. You know, you’re not being judged by anything but your application. Then, in the early hours of February 15th, 2020, Drew Carey woke to a phone call that would completely destroy him. His former fiance had died under horrifying circumstances inside her Hollywood Hills apartment.
Yet, the part that stunned even those closest to the case was what happened just hours before it all unfolded. After more than a year of no contact, Amy had suddenly reached out to Drew with a message that caught him offguard. And when Drew Carey finally revealed what happened before her death, the details left fans absolutely shaken.
Drew Carrey has been famous for decades. By 2017, he had hosted The Price Is Right for 10 years, and before that, he had starred in his own sitcom for nearly a decade more. He had money, fame, and the kind of life that most people only dream about. But he was also a man who had struggled with his weight, his habits, and his ability to trust another person with his heart.
He had been engaged once before decades earlier, and that relationship had ended badly. He had more or less given up on love, but then he met Amy Harwick at a mutual friends party in Los Angeles, and everything changed. The first thing Drew noticed about Amy was her laugh. It was loud and real and came from somewhere deep inside her.
She looked him directly in the eye when she spoke, which was not something that happened often for a man of his fame. Most people recognized him immediately and treated him like a celebrity, not a person. Amy had no idea who he was. She had never seen his sitcom. She thought he was just a funny older guy in a polo shirt.
And for Drew, that was refreshing. She liked him for his personality, not for his money or his fame. Amy, for her part, was initially unimpressed. She was 36 years old, a licensed marriage and family therapist with a thriving practice. She had written a book about femininity that had been translated into five languages. She appeared regularly as an expert guest on shows like The Doctors and Dr.
Oz. She was smart and accomplished and did not need a man to validate her existence. Drew Carerry seemed nice enough, but she did not think much of him at first. It took several conversations before she even learned his last name. They began dating casually in the late summer of 2017. Drew was 59 years old, more than two decades older than Amy, but the age difference did not seem to matter.
He was smitten. He told a magazine that he could not believe she liked him back. He sent her flowers every week for the first 3 months of their relationship, a gesture that never got old. Amy later said that Drew was the first man she had ever dated who did not try to control her.
She loved his childlike excitement about simple things like ice cream and arcades. He made her laugh and he made her feel safe. They went public as a couple in November of 2017 when paparazzi photographed them holding hands at a Lakers game. The pictures were sweet and unguarded, the kind of images that make people believe in love. They attended the daytime Emmy Awards together in April of 2018, and they appeared at a taping of The Price is Wright’s 45th anniversary special that summer.
Drew was proud to show her off, and she was proud to be seen with him. They never officially lived together, but Amy kept clothes and toiletries at Drew’s Hollywood Hills home. He stayed overnight at her West Hollywood apartment several nights a week. They were building a life together slowly and carefully, but the wedding that some fans had predicted never happened.
The reasons for that would only become clear after the devastating tragedy that occurred. On January 31st, 2018, Drew Carey and Amy Harwick publicly announced that they were engaged. Fans who had watched Drew struggle through decades of loneliness celebrated along with him. He had finally found someone who made him happy, someone who saw past the fame, the money, and the complicated history.
He fully envisioned spending the rest of his life with her. He even referred to her as his future wife and posted about their connection on social media with a joy that seemed genuine. The couple began planning their shared future, picking out dates, discussing venues, and imagining what their wedding day would look like.
Unfortunately, the engagement only lasted 10 months. And by November of 2018, the relationship was over. Representatives for both parties released a standard press statement confirming the split. The separation was officially characterized to the media as a mutual and amicable decision. The statement was polite and vague, the kind of language that celebrities use when they want to close a chapter without inviting questions.
But the polite language concealed a more complicated reality. The decision to end the engagement was not as simple as the press release made it seem. Drew later revealed that his high-profile celebrity status had placed an immense strain on their relationship. The couple found it difficult to maintain a normal life because of a constant public scrutiny.
Every dinner out was photographed. Every walk through the park was documented. Every argument, if there was one, threatened to become a headline. Amy had not asked for any of that when she fell in love with a funny older man. She had not signed up to have her face plastered across tabloids or her past dissected by strangers on the internet.
Drew Kerry has been remarkably candid about his severe lifelong struggles with chronic depression. He has openly discussed surviving two separate terrible episodes during his late teens and early 20s. His early years were marked by intense feelings of anger and self-doubt. Emotions that did not fade when he found success in comedy or when he became a household name.
The depression was always there, a shadow that followed him no matter how bright the lights of fame became. Following the painful split with Amy, Drew’s emotional pain was so severe that he reportedly cut off contact with her. He could not look at photos of her or be reminded of her because doing so threatened to undo whatever progress he had made toward healing.
The breakup sent him back into a familiar darkness, the kind that he had crawled out of before, but never fully escaped. He told interviewers later that the combination of their rough breakup and her sudden death had damaged his views on intimacy. He described the double loss as something that fundamentally altered his ability to be romantically vulnerable.
He had opened his heart to someone and the universe had punished him for it. It was hard to want to open it again. Amy Harwick, long before she ever met Drew, had also survived something terrible. She had been in a highly toxic relationship with a man named Gareth Purouse. The relationship was volatile and controlling and it lasted for roughly 18 months around 2011.
He isolated her from her friends. He told her that no one else would ever want her and he made her believe that she deserved the treatment she was receiving. Even after she ended the relationship and rebuilt her life, she carried lingering trauma and residual fear from that period. She occasionally referred to purse house in casual conversation with close friends as her stalker.
Her professional career as a therapist and intimacy coach was not an accident. She had deliberately dedicated herself to helping others. And part of that dedication came from her own history of domestic maltreatment. She wanted to heal herself by helping other women escape the kinds of situations that had once trapped her.
She wanted to find meaning in the pain. Her work was her salvation, but it was also a reminder that the past never fully disappears. She had taken legal action against Pur House during the worst of their relationship. She successfully filed two separate restraining orders against him. one in 2011 and another in 2012.
The legal filings were motivated by documented instances of physical and emotional trauma. The final permanent protective order expired in 2012 after its fixed term ended. Because it was a fixedterm order, no active restraining order was in place at the time of her death. The legal system that was supposed to protect her had done its job, but only for a limited time.
Once the clock ran out, she was on her own. Following the expiration of the 2012 restraining order, Amy and Purse House had no known direct communication for over 8 years. She had moved on, built a successful practice, written a book, and found love with Drew Carey. She thought the nightmare was over and that she was safe.
However, that piece was shattered in January of 2020 when Amy unexpectedly ran into her ex-boyfriend at a Hollywood event. The encounter was brief, but it was terrifying. The chance meeting reignited Purse House’s dangerous obsession. He began planning. He started searching her address on Google Maps. He looked up how to disable a Ring doorbell.
Amy had no idea that any of this was happening. She went about her life seeing patients, making plans, and looking forward to a future that did not include the man from her past. She had no way of knowing that on the night of February 14th, 2020, he would be waiting for her in the dark. The night of February 14th, 2020 was supposed to be about love.
Valentine’s Day had always been a complicated holiday for Amy Harwick. But that year, she spent the evening with a female friend in Santa Monica, having dinner and enjoying a rare night out. She came home alone in the early morning hours of February 15th, unaware that someone had been waiting for her inside her apartment. That someone was Gareth Pur House, the man she had dated nearly a decade earlier.
He had broken in through a rear sliding glass door and hidden inside her thirdfloor apartment for more than 3 hours before she arrived. The apartment was located on one of the blocks of Woodward Avenue in the Hollywood Hills, a multi-unit complex where Amy had lived for several years. Ring doorbell footage from the building showed Gareth Pur House arriving on the night of February 14th.
He was wearing dark clothing and a knit cap, the kind of outfit that a person wears when they do not want to be seen. He attempted to cover the ring camera with tape, but he missed the lens. The camera captured his movements and the footage would later become key evidence in his trial. Once inside, Gareth Pur House waited. Prosecutors later proved that he remained hidden in the apartment for around 3 hours and 12 minutes before Amy came home.
He knew her routine and he knew where she lived. He had searched her address on Google Maps 11 times in the two weeks leading up to the attack. He had also searched for information about how to disable a Ring doorbell and what constitutes a lethal dose of a certain illicit substance. The digital trail that he left behind was cold and calculating the work of a man who had been planning something terrible.
In an interview around April 2020, he spoke very openly about how difficult that period really was. He admitted he was barely sleeping, sometimes just about 3 hours a night. And even when he did manage to fall asleep, it was not peaceful. He said he would see Amy’s face every time he closed his eyes. That image just kept coming back over and over again, and it was not something he could simply push away.
The tragedy had a profound lasting impact on his personal life, prompting him to speak openly about how it reshaped his views on intimacy. In a February 2025 interview with US Weekly, he admitted that the sudden loss had destroyed him for a while and that he had stopped pursuing romantic dates. He clarified that while he still maintains and enjoys warm, close friendships with several women, he keeps those connections strictly platonic.
Rather than becoming cynical, however, he has focused on healing. He chooses to honor her memory by focusing on the deep love they once shared, keeping photos of her in his home and drawing comfort from feeling her presence with him always. When the trial began in September 2023, Drew Carrey was not a constant presence in the gallery as the defense team had subpoenaed him as a potential witness.
Under standard courtroom rules, this generally kept him from sitting in on the daily proceedings to watch the testimony. He did not issue public statements to reporters outside the courthouse during the trial, choosing instead to let the legal system run its course in private. Following the guilty verdict in September 2023, Drew Kerry expressed deep gratitude to the Los Angeles prosecutors and the jury for bringing Amy Harwick’s killer to justice.
In a March 2024 interview with People magazine, months after Gareth Paus was sentenced to life in prison without parole, Carrie reflected on the profound sense of relief the finality brought. He shared that ever since the sentencing. It felt as though everyone who loved Amy had finally let out a breath of relief, allowing them to remember her life without the looming shadow of the legal process.
He also revealed that he had intentionally pushed the killer completely out of his mind, noting that he could barely even remember the man’s name anymore, a piece of mind he considered the true gift of the final sentence. Rather than seeking out a public memorial, Carrie chose to process his grief and final closure privately.
He continues to keep Amy’s memory alive in his daily life, keeping photos of her displayed in his home and frequently speaking about the enduring love they shared. Drew Carrey had spent most of his life making other people laugh. He had built a career on joy, on silliness, on the kind of humor that brings people together.
But the woman who had made him believe in love again was gone. And he was left with the silence that she had once filled. The truth that he revealed after her death was simple and devastating. He still loved her. He always would. and he would spend the rest of his life wondering what might have been if only he had picked up the phone and called her one more time.
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