Families Suspect Drugging After Model, Friend Found Dead Outside LA Hospitals
Christy Giles was dead and her friend, Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, unresponsive when masked men wearing all black left them outside separate hospitals.
Instagram/Screenshot via ABC 7
(L-R) Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola
Two friends — an aspiring actress and an interior designer — are both dead after they went out in California and were possibly drugged and later dumped in front of separate hospitals hours apart.
On Nov. 12, Christy Giles, 24, and 26-year-old Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola spent the evening at a club together in Los Angeles. The women reportedly met several men and left with them for an after-party in the Hollywood Hills but never made it.
Around 5 p.m. the following night, “three men in all black, masked in bandanas” drove up to Southern California Hospital at Culver City in a car with the license plates removed and left Giles’ body around 5 p.m., according to a GoFundMe set up on behalf of Giles’ husband, Jan Cilliers. Roughly two hours later, Cabrales-Arzola was barely clinging to life when she was ditched outside Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles.
Cilliers, 40, told KABC-TV he was able to access his wife’s texts via iCloud and saw she had sent Cabrales-Arzola a message at 5:38 a.m. that morning with a wide-eyed emoji that read “let's get out of here.”
Cabrales-Arzola, he said, wrote back “yes” and indicated an Uber was on its way. No other messages were sent or read on Giles’ phone before she and her friend wound up outside the hospitals.
According to phone records, the pair’s last known location was in a Beverly Hills apartment.
Toxicology reports allegedly showed drugs were present in both victims’ systems, but their families are adamant neither girl would have voluntarily taken anything. “I believe they drugged them to keep them and I believe they probably raped them,” Giles’ mother, Dusty, told The Sun.
The GoFundMe noted that following the incident the women’s families had “received a number of messages” from other females “who have eerily similar stories, except the only difference between them [and] Christy and Hilda, is they survived.”
Cilliers claimed police recently spoke with two of the men allegedly involved in the incident “and they are claiming that it was an accidental overdose.”
“I’ve been told they admitted they were with the girls all night and were the ones who dropped Christy and Hilda off at the hospitals,” Cilliers said. “Obviously that story doesn’t add up — how do you drop off one girl for an accidental overdose while the other girl, one of her closest friends, stays back at the house and isn’t dropped off for another two hours? There is something weird going on. I’m fearful that these men took advantage of them.”
According to Cabrales-Arzola’s father, Luis Cabrales-Rivera, investigators allegedly said they were working on putting a case together involving persons of interest who “have done it before.”
“The detectives told us they’re indignant that these guys had the chance to save Hilda and Christy’s lives but preferred to abandon them to their luck,” Cabrales-Rivera told The Sun, adding, “We want justice to be done for Hilda and Christy and no one else to have to go through this again.”
Doctors declared Cabrales-Arzola brain dead on Nov. 26 and she passed away on Nov. 29, one day before her 27th birthday. “We were already expecting it to be bad news and we’re trying to take it with a lot of strength,” Rivera said about losing his daughter. “I asked God to return Hilda to me in 100% good health but if she was going to be left impaired it is better for her to leave and go by His side.”
