Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Police Reveal 11 Visits to Celeste Rivas’ Home Before Her Body Turned Up in Pop Star’s Car

Transcript

Police Reveal 11 Visits to Celeste Rivas’ Home Before Her Body Turned Up in Pop Star’s Car · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the deep Dive today. Well, we have
• 0:02
  a story that's incredibly tough to talk about, but it's
• 0:05
  when we absolutely need to unpack. It really forces us
• 0:08
  to look hard at the dark side of online fame,
• 0:11
  the vulnerability young people, and frankly, the catastrophic failure of
• 0:15
  systems meant to protect them.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: That's right. Our goal today isn't just to rehash the
• 0:19
  headlines which have been everywhere. We need to go deeper.
• 0:22
  We're going to dissect the truly bizarre and gruesome discovery
• 0:27
  of fifteen year old Celeste revest Hernandez and trace that
• 0:30
  deeply unsettling connection to well, one of the biggest names
• 0:34
  in music right now, David Anthony Burke or D four VD.
• 0:37
  But maybe the most crucial part for you listening is
• 0:39
  analyzing Celeste's life, her timeline, because it was tragically marked
• 0:43
  by eleven separate police welfare visits to her home. Eleven
• 0:47
  these were looking back, eleven missed warnings. It represents a
• 0:50
  failure that honestly demands our closest look.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: And the scene where this all begins, it's just immediate
• 0:56
  and visceral. We're not talking about some remote location. We're
• 0:58
  talking about a decomposing body found stuffed inside the front
• 1:02
  trunk of this sleek, black, expensive tesla, and the car
• 1:06
  belonged to a twenty year old pop star who right
• 1:09
  then was on a huge, sold out world tour. That
• 1:12
  contrast the glamour of fame and the sheer horror in
• 1:16
  that small space. That's the tension we have to explore today.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: It creates this almost unbearable disconnect, doesn't it, Because this
• 1:24
  isn't just a crime story, not really. It's a hard
• 1:26
  look at the bubble fame can create, how easily vulnerable
• 1:29
  kids looking for validation online can get pulled into really
• 1:32
  dangerous situations, and crucially, the massive gaps and youth protection
• 1:37
  that open up when someone's life starts unraveling, you know,
• 1:39
  seventy miles away from all that supposed glamour in La.
• 1:42
  I have to understand not just what happened to Celeste,
• 1:44
  but why why did the safety net fail her so
• 1:46
  completely when she was clearly desperately signaling for help.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's start at the very beginning. It's Tember eighth,
• 1:53
  twenty twenty five. The scene is this kind of ordinary
• 1:57
  tow yard up in the Hollywood Hills. The whole investigation
• 2:01
  didn't kick off with a tip or anything like that.
• 2:03
  It started almost mundanely with a complaint about a smell,
• 2:06
  a really bad smell exactly.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: The workers there, they'd been noticing this stunch getting worse
• 2:12
  for days. They described it as well overwhelming, like death itself,
• 2:16
  something that just cut through everything else in the lot.
• 2:19
  And they tracked it down to a specific car, a
• 2:21
  black Tesla model S significantly, it had Texas plates and
• 2:25
  it was registered directly to David Anthony Burke D four VD.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: That detail right there, it just screams, I don't know,
• 2:32
  negligence or maybe detachment, because this car wasn't just dumped there.
• 2:36
  It had been sitting out in a wealthy Hollywood Hills
• 2:38
  neighborhood for weeks, apparently, just racking up parking tickets before
• 2:41
  it even got towed. There was one ticket issue just
• 2:44
  eleven days before they found her. So this symbol of
• 2:47
  modern luxury was basically just sitting there on the street.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: A ticking time bomb of evidence. Essentially, Yes, that period
• 2:53
  it was abandoned is so important. It shows this complete
• 2:56
  lack of concern for a really expensive vehicle. It suggests
• 2:59
  either the owner couldn't be reached and he was on tour,
• 3:02
  or maybe he was deliberately avoiding it. So when the
• 3:05
  officers finally managed to open the front, that small storage
• 3:08
  space at the front, that's when they found the remains,
• 3:10
  tragically stuffed inside a black Duffel bag.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: And just like that, with the identification, this goes from
• 3:17
  a strange abandoned car case to a full blown homicide investigation.
• 3:22
  The victim confirmed through dental X rays, fifteen year old
• 3:25
  Celestri aff And Hernandez. And the geography here is just heartbreaking.
• 3:29
  She was from Lake Elsinore, that's like a quiet suburb
• 3:32
  seventy miles southeast of LA How she got from that
• 3:35
  small town to the front of a celebrities car in
• 3:37
  the Hollywood Hills. That journey tells you everything about her
• 3:40
  final desperate search for something else.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: The pathos is just immense. Celeste was born September seventh,
• 3:48
  twenty ten, and the timing adds this incredibly cruel detail.
• 3:52
  Her body was found the day after her fifteenth birth day,
• 3:54
  she turned fifteen, and then she was discovered friend's family.
• 3:57
  They paint this picture of a really vibrant kid, free spirited, infectious, laugh,
• 4:02
  lots of energy, but like so many teens now, her
• 4:05
  whole world was deeply tied up in the digital space. Right.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: She loved TikTok, that was her thing, making dances, sharing
• 4:11
  sketches she drew. But her big dream, the thing driving her,
• 4:14
  was escaping Lake Elsinor. She wanted the bright lights, the
• 4:17
  opportunity she thought La represented. For her. La wasn't just
• 4:21
  a city, It was like the promise of being seen,
• 4:23
  a validation.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: And her home life, well, it seems to have feeled
• 4:27
  that need to escape. It was a blended family. Her mother,
• 4:30
  Marie Hernandez, worked incredibly long hours as a cashier. Her stepfather,
• 4:35
  a mechanic, provided stability, sure, but sources say there wasn't
• 4:38
  a lot of deep emotional connection there. And you see
• 4:40
  this pattern sometimes, right, financial stability, but maybe an emotional vacuum,
• 4:44
  and the internet celebrity culture it rushes in to fill
• 4:47
  that space. It feels like connection.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: And there's that one small permanent detail. It's become this
• 4:52
  haunting symbol for the whole case. The tattoo on her
• 4:57
  right index finger, she had sh tattooed and curse his script.
• 5:01
  She apparently got it on impulse when she was just
• 5:03
  thirteen totally inspired by stuff she saw online. It's tiny,
• 5:07
  this message of secrecy, but given everything, it takes on
• 5:11
  this awful significance.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it really does. And the school records they back
• 5:15
  up the picture of a kid under strain. At Elsin
• 5:18
  R High, her attendance was poor, she was often late,
• 5:21
  kind of a middling student academically. Teachers noted she was
• 5:24
  constantly distracted, always looking at music videos, social media. There's
• 5:27
  this specific anecdote from a classmate. Celeste apparently told them
• 5:31
  she idolized those TikTok stars and that she was obsessed
• 5:34
  with being like them one day. This wasn't just casual daydreaming.
• 5:37
  This was her core drive. It was pulling her towards
• 5:39
  those bright lights, which, as doctor Elena Vasquaz later pointed out,
• 5:43
  became a really dangerous path for her.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: It's so clear, isn't it? For Celeste? The online world
• 5:48
  wasn't just fun. It felt like the answer, the solution
• 5:51
  to feeling stuck, unseen, and that desire for that specific
• 5:55
  kind of fame the world D four VD represented. It
• 5:59
  pulled her out of her own life.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: And the descent, you know, looking back through the records,
• 6:03
  it was gradual at first, but then it really started accelerating.
• 6:06
  The major warning signs, the really loud alarms, they started
• 6:09
  going off in the spring of twenty twenty four.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: April fifth, twenty twenty four, that's the date that marks
• 6:14
  the official start. Really the first missing person's report. Celeste
• 6:18
  just vanished. She was gone for forty eight hours. Then
• 6:20
  she turned up at a bus station in Riverside, disheveled,
• 6:23
  wouldn't say much. Her mother, Maria later said Celeste wasn't
• 6:26
  the same after that. Something happened in those forty hours
• 6:29
  that clearly changed.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: Her, and that's at the pattern, didn't it. It happened
• 6:32
  again twice more in twenty twenty four, once in June
• 6:35
  after a big fight about her curfew, then again in
• 6:38
  August after she got suspended from school for vaping. And
• 6:40
  each time she came back she was quieter, more withdrawn,
• 6:44
  more secretive. This kind of escalating pattern, I mean that
• 6:47
  should have triggered some kind of sustained mandatory intervention, but
• 6:51
  it just didn't.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Which brings us right to the absolute heart of the
• 6:55
  system's failure. Those eleven police visits. These weren't just random checks.
• 7:00
  These were specific welfare calls spanning from May to August
• 7:04
  twenty twenty four, every single one initiated by her mother, Maria,
• 7:08
  who was clearly getting more and more desperate, feeling helpless.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's walk through a couple of these, because the
• 7:13
  actual logs show exactly where the system broke down. The
• 7:16
  first check after that initial disappearance was May twelfth, twenty
• 7:19
  twenty four. Officers found her physically okay, but they noted
• 7:22
  she was agitated and obsessed with apps showing La nightlife.
• 7:25
  The recommendation a counseling referral, but because of backlogs how
• 7:29
  the incident was classified, that referral basically went nowhere. It
• 7:33
  wasn't acted on.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Then June third, she comes back after running away again,
• 7:37
  but this time she's a brand new phone, something her
• 7:39
  mom definitely couldn't afford, and so let's claims she got
• 7:42
  help from a friend from online. That phrase a friend
• 7:45
  from online, I mean that's textbook grooming languages, and at
• 7:48
  early stages maybe yet the case status didn't change.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: It's chilling. And then you get to July fifteenth. The
• 7:54
  sources call it the triple visit Day, and that name
• 7:57
  says it all. This wasn't just a bad day, it
• 7:59
  was a full blown crisis unfolding in real time. Maria
• 8:03
  called the police three times in just twelve hours. Two am,
• 8:07
  Celeste is missing again. Noon, someone spots her wandering in
• 8:10
  a park nearby, confused, mumbling about stars and secrets. And
• 8:14
  then that evening Maria finds empty pill bottles in Celeste's room.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, wait, three incidents running away, a parent paranoia or delusion,
• 8:22
  and a potential overdose risk, all documented on the same day.
• 8:26
  What happened next, Well, that's.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: The devastating part. Not enough social services were notified, yes,
• 8:31
  but bureaucratic inertia it just kicked in. There was no
• 8:34
  immediate hands on intervention. Fast forward two weeks July twenty eighth.
• 8:39
  Officers are out again, this time because she skipped school.
• 8:42
  They noted signs of emotional distress, but and this is critical,
• 8:46
  they still classified the case as low risk, non criminal.
• 8:49
  They were just responding to calls, not seeing the whole picture.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: And then in August the threads start connecting, however, faintly
• 8:54
  to df vd's world. August tenth, Celeste is found at
• 8:59
  a shopping mall as a backpack inside makeup and some
• 9:02
  consonant steps, and later those stubs were confirmed they were
• 9:05
  either merchandise or tickets related to Dfavid's tour. She's physically
• 9:08
  carrying evidence of this obsession now.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and the very last documented police contact was August
• 9:14
  twenty second. Rio was frantic by this point, said Celeste
• 9:17
  was sneaking out every single night. The police report mentions
• 9:20
  possible substance influence, but again no removal, no forced intervention.
• 9:24
  They loved her there. So you add it all up.
• 9:26
  Eleven incidents over twenty hours of officer time, and every
• 9:29
  single one logged as a non criminal welfare incident. That
• 9:33
  classification basically treated a chronic mental health crisis and a
• 9:36
  pattern of high risk runaway behavior as well. Paperwork and
• 9:40
  that classification it's now quite rightly under intense internal review.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Let's dig into that analysis a bit more. Eleven visits
• 9:47
  from an outside perspective, that sounds like a lot of attention.
• 9:50
  Why didn't it lead anywhere? What's stop them?
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: It really boils down to the legal threshold for forcing intervention,
• 9:55
  especially with a minor. Doctor Elena Vasquez, the child psychologist
• 10:00
  who weighe In, suggested Celeste was likely dealing with severe
• 10:03
  undiagnosed depression or anxiety for a kid in that state,
• 10:07
  the online world, the promise of fame, it's like a
• 10:09
  siren song, as doctor Vosquiz put it, pulling her towards danger.
• 10:14
  But the police, well as Sheriff Chad Bianco admitted later,
• 10:18
  they face real resource constraints and legal limits. Unless they
• 10:22
  had concrete proof of immediate physical danger like abuse, or
• 10:26
  evidence of a specific crime being committed by her or
• 10:29
  to her right, then legally their hands were kind of
• 10:32
  tied from just removing her from the home or mandating
• 10:34
  treatment against her will.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, So if the police can't cross that high bar
• 10:38
  to actually remove a child, the system then relies on
• 10:42
  social services mental health support to follow up on those
• 10:44
  referrals they made.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Right precisely, And that's where the other part of the
• 10:48
  failure comes crashing down. The budget cuts advocates like Carla
• 10:53
  Ruiz from voices for victims. They argue those eleven visits
• 10:56
  felt like paperwork because the support system behind the police
• 10:59
  was baseasically gutted. You have to look at the fifteen
• 11:02
  percent cut to California's child welfare budget that happened in
• 11:05
  twenty twenty four. That wasn't just a number on piper.
• 11:08
  It directly translated to fewer social workers available for proactive
• 11:12
  follow ups. It's severely limited access to emergency crisis bed
• 11:16
  for runaways, and it delayed or even eliminated the funding
• 11:19
  for the very counseling referrals that were recommended for Celeste
• 11:22
  back on May twelfth.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Wow. So the police did make the referrals sometimes, but
• 11:26
  the actual infrastructure, the people in the funding needed to
• 11:29
  act on them to provide that deeper intervention, it just
• 11:32
  wasn't there. So Celeste was caught stuck in a system
• 11:35
  that could document her decline eleven times, but ultimately lack
• 11:37
  the resources or maybe the legal teeth to actually pull
• 11:40
  her out of danger.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: It's a truly devastating combination of failures, isn't it. An
• 11:44
  underfunded mental health system, an overburdened police force constrained by
• 11:48
  legal thresholds, and a vulnerable teenager just slips through every
• 11:51
  single crack until that final fatal escape.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: So if that timeline of Celeste's desperation and the system's
• 11:58
  failure is one side of the tragedy, the other side
• 12:01
  is the well the celebrity machine that seemed to draw
• 12:05
  her in. We need to talk about David Anthony Burke
• 12:07
  D four VD. His rise was just meteoric, the definition
• 12:12
  of a modern music success story.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Absolutely Burke, only twenty years old at the time of
• 12:16
  the discovery, comes out of Houston's self talk guitarist. His
• 12:19
  career just exploded in twenty twenty two. That track Romantic Homicide,
• 12:23
  it was huge, moody low fie, vulnerable. It hit a
• 12:26
  nerve with gen Z. We're talking over a billion Spotify streams.
• 12:29
  By twenty twenty five, he was a global name, thirty
• 12:31
  three million monthly listeners, selling out his massive withered world tour,
• 12:35
  and his whole appeal.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: His brand was built on that persona right, this sensitive,
• 12:40
  maybe slightly melancholic artist is lyrics tapped right into those
• 12:44
  young adult anxieties you know, last love, alienation, just feeling
• 12:48
  a drift. For a teenager like Celest who was clearly struggling,
• 12:51
  looking for escape, looking for someone who got it, that
• 12:53
  curated vulnerability is incredibly powerful. It can feel safe, accessible,
• 12:59
  like he.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: Understand exactly, and that carefully crafted image makes his reaction
• 13:03
  or lack thereof, when the news broke even more jarring,
• 13:07
  more chilling. Remember when Celeste's body was found in his
• 13:10
  car D four VD was thousands of miles away. He
• 13:13
  was on stage in Chicago, and.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: His first public reaction was basically silence, an unsettling silence,
• 13:20
  as some reports called it, broken only by this one
• 13:22
  alleged TikTok comment that was quickly deleted but screen grabbed
• 13:25
  by fans. It supposedly read something like this isn't what
• 13:27
  it looks like. He just disappeared online, went completely quiet.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: The fallout for his career was immediate and catastrophic. He
• 13:35
  abruptly canceled everything, all the remaining US dates, the entire
• 13:39
  European leg of a Withered World tour. The official reason
• 13:43
  was vague, just personal reasons, but promoters were furious, fans
• 13:47
  were stunned, and that sudden total shutdown it just amplified
• 13:51
  the suspicion, why cancel everything if there's no innection, And of.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Course the online rumor mill went into overdrive. These whispers
• 13:58
  started spreading about a supposedly leaked song, a track called Celeste,
• 14:02
  with lyrics that were incredibly dark, apparently mentioning something like
• 14:06
  hiding shadows in the glove box. Now, his team fiercely
• 14:10
  denied it, called it a total fabrication, fake news, but
• 14:13
  the fact that people were willing to believe it existed
• 14:15
  shows how quickly his image was tarnished.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: But maybe the most tangible physical link between the star
• 14:20
  and the victim is that tattoo. The she tattoo. We
• 14:23
  know Celeste had that exact cursive script on her index
• 14:26
  finger got it inspired by online trends, and.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: D four VD has the identical tattoo, same word, same script,
• 14:33
  same finger. He apparently got his during some impulse tattoo
• 14:36
  session in La back in twenty twenty three. It was
• 14:39
  even documented briefly on an Instagram story, which, surprise prize,
• 14:42
  has since been deleted. That shared symbol, this identical secretive
• 14:47
  mark on both the victim and the owner of the
• 14:49
  car she was found it. I mean, it feels like
• 14:51
  more than just a coincidence, doesn't it. It feels like
• 14:54
  a twisted clue pointing towards some kind of connection.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: It's deeply compelling, no question. The police, yes, understandably, have
• 15:01
  been very cautious. They haven't confirmed or denied any prior relationship.
• 15:04
  They keep warning against speculation. But you know online salutes
• 15:07
  these internet investigation communities. They've been digging. They claim to
• 15:11
  have found old DM's direct messages from what they say
• 15:14
  was celes deleted account, where she's praising Defervidi's music. And
• 15:17
  maybe even more significantly, there's this blurry photo circulating. It
• 15:21
  allegedly shows Celesti at one of de Fervidi's pop up
• 15:23
  shows in Riverside sometime in twenty twenty four. Riverside, the
• 15:27
  same area where she kept being picked up by police
• 15:29
  after running away.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Right, that potential photo, if it's real, it puts her
• 15:33
  physically in his orbit. It adds weight to the idea
• 15:36
  that the friend from online who maybe helped her could
• 15:38
  have been someone connected directly or indirectly to him or
• 15:41
  his team. So you've got the share tattoo, the car
• 15:44
  registered in his name, left abandoned with her body inside,
• 15:47
  the alleged digital messages. It creates this incredibly suspicious cloud
• 15:52
  around the pop star, regardless of his denials.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's shift focus now to the official investigation and
• 15:58
  the grim forensic details. What the remains themselves tell us.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: The forensic teams estimated that Celeste had likely been deceased
• 16:06
  for several weeks. That puts her time of death somewhere
• 16:09
  possibly in late July or early August, which tragically overlaps
• 16:14
  with those final police visits, those last times she went missing,
• 16:17
  and the safety composition was advanced. The lead detective city,
• 16:20
  clearly we know someone placed her there post mortem, so
• 16:24
  the investigation isn't just about who caused her death. It's
• 16:27
  equally focused on who concealed the body in that car.
• 16:29
  That's a separate, deliberate act.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: And the clothes she was found in a tube top,
• 16:33
  black leggings, a yellow bracelet, study rings. They matched the
• 16:37
  description her mother, Maria gave of her last known outfit
• 16:41
  back in August. That detail helps investigators narrow down the
• 16:44
  timeframe when she went from being a missing person too
• 16:48
  tragically a victim of suspected homicide.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: And because of the nature of the crime, the concealment,
• 16:53
  the celebrity connection in the case was immediately taken over
• 16:56
  by LAPD's lead unit, the Robbery Homicide Division RhD. Their
• 16:59
  biggest pub move came on September seventeenth, about ten days
• 17:02
  after the discovery. They executed a search warrant not on
• 17:05
  the car, but on D forty d's main residence.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a significant step. It was this huge
• 17:09
  rental property in the Hollywood Hills, costing something like twenty
• 17:12
  thousand dollars a month, least from some overseas investor. Officers
• 17:16
  were there for hours. They went through everything, meticulously, seized
• 17:19
  all his electronics, laptops, hard drives, multiple phones. All of
• 17:23
  that is now undergoing deep digital forensic analysis. They're looking
• 17:27
  for anything location data showing where he was, deleted messages,
• 17:31
  hidden files, anything that could link him or rule him
• 17:34
  out from being involved with Celeste around the time she
• 17:37
  disappeared her dot.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: And what was D four vd's response to having his
• 17:41
  home searched by RhD Well.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Quite tellingly, he moved out just days later, apparently packed
• 17:46
  up quickly, quietly tried to stand to the radar. Now,
• 17:49
  his manager released a very firm statement said De four
• 17:52
  a d is cooperating fully, that he's devastated by this
• 17:55
  loss and flatly stated he had no involvement. But you know,
• 17:58
  abandoning the car for weeks, then immediately leaving his expensive
• 18:01
  rental right after the police search, it certainly paints a
• 18:04
  picture of someone wanting distance physical distance from the situation.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: I have to push back on that no involvement claim, though,
• 18:11
  even setting aside the question of who caused her death,
• 18:14
  his car was used to hide her body. How can
• 18:17
  you claim no involvement when your property is the crime
• 18:20
  scene for the concealment. Doesn't that level of detachment just
• 18:23
  leaving a car like that for weeks while that was
• 18:26
  happening inside, Doesn't that itself suggest some level of criminal
• 18:30
  negligence at the very least.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: That's absolutely the legal territory therein Now, You're right, the
• 18:35
  manager's statement tries to create distance from the homicide itself,
• 18:38
  perhaps that they can't easily distance him from the concealment
• 18:41
  that occurred using his property. And this is all further
• 18:44
  complicated by a key legal point.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Right now, the.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Official cause of death is still listed as deferred. It's
• 18:51
  pending the full toxicology results.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Right What exactly does deferred mean? In practice? For the investigation, It.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Means the investigators are working under several poss disabilities at once.
• 19:01
  They can't definitively say if Celesia died from, say an
• 19:04
  accidental overdose, or if she was deliberately killed until they
• 19:08
  know what substances, if any, were in her system. If
• 19:11
  toxicology shows, for example, a fatal overdose, then the legal
• 19:15
  charges might focus more heavily on the concealment of the body,
• 19:17
  maybe endangerment, maybe furnishing substances. If that can be proven,
• 19:22
  If toxicology or other evidence points to trauma or poisoning
• 19:26
  clear foul play, then the charges escalate towards murder. So
• 19:29
  keeping the cause deferred buys them time. It allows them
• 19:33
  to build the strongest possible case, covering all angles before
• 19:36
  they officially name a prime suspect or file specific charges.
• 19:40
  It slows things down, yes, but it's about being legally thorough, okay.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: So while the police and forensics work through that slow,
• 19:47
  painstaking process, the community response, especially back in Lake Elsinor,
• 19:51
  has been anything but slow. It's been immediate and powerful.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, the grief there has really galvanized people into action.
• 19:57
  That visual On September seventeenth, hundreds came out. They released
• 20:01
  sky lanterns, messages written on them like justice for Celeste
• 20:05
  and that really potent phrase sh no more her cousin
• 20:09
  guiseil Vera organized it made sure Celeste was remembered as
• 20:13
  a person, not just you know, a headline in a
• 20:15
  celebrity scandal.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: And that grief it also turned into focused anger, didn't it.
• 20:19
  Protests started happening outside the riverside Sheriff's office, people holding
• 20:23
  signs saying eleven visits equals zero saves, directly calling out
• 20:26
  the systemic failures we talked about earlier, demanding accountability from
• 20:30
  the agency that interacted with her so many times but
• 20:32
  couldn't prevent this.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: And her mother, Maria Hernandez. She channeled her unimaginable pain
• 20:38
  into something constructive. She started to GoFundMe help lace celestri
• 20:42
  Vas Hernandez to rest. It raised over thirty thousand dollars
• 20:46
  very quickly and significantly. While yes, it covered funeral costs,
• 20:49
  she stated, the bulk of it would go towards youth
• 20:51
  mental health initiatives. It's this direct, heartbreaking acknowledgment of the
• 20:55
  support her own daughter desperately needed but never got. And
• 21:00
  the donors included anonymous people from the music industry, other
• 21:03
  TikTok creators. It showed this story really struck a cord
• 21:06
  across that whole digital landscape. Celeste was so drawn to let's.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Pull back for a moment and think about the bigger
• 21:11
  picture here this tragedy, it feels like it exposes so
• 21:14
  much more than just one case. It feels like a
• 21:16
  symptom of deeper problems, systemic issues.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Oh absolutely. It's a brutal commentary on modern celebrity culture
• 21:23
  and the dangers of what experts called digital predation. Platforms
• 21:27
  like TikTok, the one Celeste loved and lived on. They're
• 21:31
  designed for engagement, right, but for vulnerable teens seeking validation,
• 21:35
  that same design can lead them straight into contact with predators,
• 21:38
  people lurking in the dms, offering attention maybe support. The
• 21:41
  statistics are alarming, something like sixty percent of teenagers report
• 21:45
  getting unwanted advances online. For Celeste, it seems TikTok was
• 21:49
  both her escape route and the pathway that led her
• 21:51
  into immense danger.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: And we have to come back to that idea of
• 21:54
  bureaucratic inertia to this case is being held up nationally. Now,
• 21:57
  is this devastating example of the youth mental health crisis
• 22:00
  in America? You look at the stats, teen suicide rates
• 22:03
  up something like fifty seven percent since two thousand and seven.
• 22:06
  Celeste repeated running away her clear emotional distress. It should
• 22:10
  have been treated as an urgent mental health emergency, not
• 22:13
  just a series of police check ins.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: And that ties directly back to the systemic erosion. We
• 22:17
  discussed that fifteen percent budget cut to California's child welfare
• 22:22
  services in twenty twenty four. It's not just a number.
• 22:25
  Advocates are pointing to it as a direct causal factor,
• 22:28
  arguing those cuts stripped away the preventative safety nets that
• 22:31
  might have saved Celeste. The agencies became purely reactive, putting
• 22:35
  out fires instead of preventing them. So now you hear
• 22:37
  calls for real change mandatory mental health screenings whenever a
• 22:41
  teen repeatedly runs away using AI tools, maybe to help
• 22:44
  flag vulnerable online profiles before they get pulled into dangerous situations,
• 22:48
  things that require investment.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: And finally, what about D four BD. What's the lasting
• 22:52
  impact on his career? Even with the denials, his image
• 22:54
  has taken a massive hit.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: The impact has been huge and very measurable. His streaming
• 22:59
  numbers drop signals eificantly, reportedly around twenty percent, almost immediately
• 23:02
  after the news broke. For an artist whose entire brand
• 23:06
  was built on vulnerability and emotional honesty, The silence, the
• 23:10
  questions surrounding a body found in his car, it's just
• 23:13
  devastating to that core image. And beyond the PR disaster,
• 23:16
  the financial hit is enormous You've got lawsuits looming from
• 23:20
  canceling that massive international tour. We're talking major venues in Europe,
• 23:24
  promoter contracts, merchandise deals, all scrapped, millions in lost revenue,
• 23:28
  potential breach of contract claims. Public opinion is just fiercely divided.
• 23:32
  You've got diehard fans screaming innocent until proven guilty, defending
• 23:35
  him online. And then you have this growing movement actively
• 23:38
  boycotting his music, demanding answers using the hashtag hashtag justice
• 23:41
  forceless that meteoric rise he had, it's now completely overshadowed
• 23:45
  by this incredibly dark situation.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Celestrievus hernandez Is death. It really feels like a requiem
• 23:52
  for the overlook a young life caught between this desperate
• 23:55
  desire for the spotlight of fame and just being swallowed
• 23:58
  by the shadows of celebrity cult and the sheer indifference
• 24:01
  of bureaucratic failure.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when you step back and look at everything we've
• 24:05
  discussed today, certain facts just stick with you, don't they.
• 24:08
  That stark seventy mile gap between her quiet suburban home
• 24:12
  and where that car was finally found, The chillingly specific
• 24:15
  detail of that shared sh tattoo identical, and just the
• 24:20
  crushing weight of knowing there were eleven official visits, eleven
• 24:23
  documented points of contact, and somehow it still wasn't enough
• 24:27
  to save her.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Her mother Maria's words at the vigil, they really should
• 24:31
  resonate as the ultimate call for accountability, not just for
• 24:34
  whoever is responsible for her death, but for the system
• 24:37
  that failed her. She told reporters, her voice breaking. Eleven
• 24:40
  times they came, but she was already gone inside. Bring
• 24:43
  it back to us injustice.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: And that leaves us and you listening with a profoundly
• 24:47
  difficult question. I think, in a world where seeking validation
• 24:50
  online can literally become a life or death issue for
• 24:53
  vulnerable kids, how do we build a better safety net?
• 24:56
  How can society, police, schools, mental health services, all of
• 24:59
  us build something strong enough, flexible enough to actually catch
• 25:03
  these young people before their dreams pull them into the
• 25:04
  darkest shadows of celebrity cultures. A question we desperately need
• 25:07
  to answer before the silence claims another child