Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Judge Rules Singer D4vd Must Stand Trial in Killing of 14-Year-Old Celeste Rivas Hernandez

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Judge Rules Singer D4vd Must Stand Trial in Killing of 14-Year-Old Celeste Rivas Hernandez · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: I want you to start be doing a little thought
0:01
experiment with me today. Picture the modern American dream, but
0:06
like the very specific algorithmic version of.
0:09
Speaker 2: It, right, the digital age Cinderella story exactly.
0:12
Speaker 1: So. Picture a teenager sitting in a makeshift recording studio,
0:16
and by studio I mean literally his sister's closet.
0:19
Speaker 2: Oh wow, Yeah, just total bar bones.
0:21
Speaker 1: Total bear bones. He's just a kid with basic equipment,
0:24
a microphone and an Internet connection, and through the sheer,
0:28
unpredictable alchemy of social media algorithms, he just rockets to
0:32
viral fame, like overnight success totally. We are talking Billboard charts,
0:37
multi platinum certifications, arena tours with these massive global artists,
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and you know, a multimillion dollar record label contract.
0:45
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate fantasy for like millions of kids right now.
0:48
Speaker 1: It is. But now take that exact same digital machinery,
0:52
the smartphones, the ride share apps, the cloud storage, the geolocations,
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all those endless, invisible streams of data we all generate
1:00
every single second of.
1:01
Speaker 2: The day, the stuff we don't even think about.
1:03
Speaker 1: Right, Imagine that same machinery methodically coldly dismantling that life,
1:09
erasing the arena tours and replacing them with well the
1:12
wood paneled walls of a downtown Los Angeles court room.
1:15
Speaker 2: It's a stark contrast.
1:16
Speaker 1: It really is a chilling murder trial and a young
1:18
man facing the possibility of the death penalty.
1:21
Speaker 2: Because you are looking at the absolute pinnacle of digital
1:24
success colliding at high speed with the absolute darkest depths
1:28
of digital surveillance and forensic reality. I mean, the contrast
1:33
is staggering.
1:34
Speaker 1: Welcome to our deep dive. Today we are looking at
1:36
the preliminary hearing of David Anthony Burke. Globally, he is
1:40
known as the singer D four VD R D four
1:42
VD Yeah, and today he is accused of murdering a
1:45
fourteen year old girl named Celeste Revas Hernandez. On Monday
1:49
July twenty seventh, twenty twenty six, Los Angeles Superior Court
1:52
Judge Charlene old Meadow ruled after this really grueling five
1:55
day preliminary hearing that there is sufficient evidence for the
1:58
twenty one year old rising star to stay.
2:00
Speaker 2: It was a massive week in court.
2:02
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because to truly understand how a
2:05
global pop sensation ends up sitting in the Clara Shortridge
2:09
Folks Criminal Justice Center without bail. We have to trace
2:13
this massive, intricate web of digital and physical evidence.
2:17
Speaker 2: And it is a staggering amount of evidence.
2:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, evidence that prosecutors say tells a horrific, highly premeditated story.
2:25
But to ground ourselves, we have to look at the
2:27
charges Burke is actually facing, because they dictate the entire
2:31
legal strategy going forward.
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Speaker 2: Right, So, specific charges are everything here.
2:34
Speaker 1: He is charged with first degree murder with special circumstances,
2:38
continuous sexual abuse of a child under fourteen, and unlawful
2:41
mutilation of human remains. He's pleaded not guilty and is
2:45
being held without bail.
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Speaker 2: The phrase special circumstances is the massive legal lever here.
2:50
How So Well, in California, a standard first degree murder
2:54
charge typically carries a sentence of twenty five years to
2:57
life in prison. Okay, But when the prosecation attached a
2:59
special circumstances, which in this specific case includes murder for
3:03
financial gain, murder of a witness, and lying in wait,
3:07
it elevates the crime to a capital offense.
3:09
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so it completely changes the sentencing parameter entirely.
3:13
Speaker 2: If he's convicted with those special circumstances the judge's hands
3:16
are basically tied regarding sentencing. The only two options on
3:20
the table become life in prison without the possibility of parole,
3:23
or the death penalty.
3:24
Speaker 1: Which means the stakes in Judge all Meadows courtroom over
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those five days were quite literally life and death.
3:31
Speaker 2: Literally.
3:32
Speaker 1: But a preliminary hearing is a very specific, often misunderstood
3:36
legal mechanism. Like when people hear court hearing, they immediately
3:41
picture a jury box, dramatic surprise witnesses, and you know,
3:45
the phrase beyond a reasonable.
3:47
Speaker 2: Doubt, right, like something out of a movie.
3:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that was not what this was.
3:51
Speaker 2: No, not at all. In the California justice system, a
3:54
preliminary hearing acts exclusively as a screening mechanism.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so just filtering cases exactly.
4:00
Speaker 2: The standard of proof is not beyond a reasonable doubt,
4:02
which is the highest standard in our legal system that
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requires a jury to be essentially ninety nine percent certain
4:09
of guilt, right at a preliminary hearing. The standard is
4:12
simply probable cause.
4:13
Speaker 1: You know, the best way to visualize probable cause for
4:17
you listening is to think of the judge like a
4:19
bouncer at a very exclusive club.
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Speaker 2: That's a great way to look at it.
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Speaker 1: The bouncer is not deciding if you are guilty of
4:26
a crime, or even if you are a good person.
4:29
The bouncer is just checking your ID to see if
4:32
you meet the bare minimum legal requirement to.
4:35
Speaker 2: Enter the building, right, just checking the date of birth. Yeah.
4:38
Speaker 1: In the scenario, the building is the trial. The prosecution
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slides their evidence across the table and the judge just
4:45
has to decide if a crime was committed and if
4:48
it is a quote unquote more likely than not that
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the defendant.
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Speaker 2: Committed it, which is a really low bar.
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Speaker 1: It's a threshold of just over fifty percent certainty.
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Speaker 2: This raises an important question though, like, how does the
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defense strategy when the bar is set so incredibly low?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, what do they even do?
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Speaker 2: Well? During a preliminary hearing? The defense team rarely pulls
5:07
out their heavy artillery. They know the judges required by
5:11
law to view the evidence in the light most favorable
5:14
to the prosecution at this stage. All interesting, So, following
5:17
your bouncer analogy, the defense's job right now isn't to
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prove the idea is entirely fake and get the person
5:22
arrested on the spot. Their job is just to point
5:26
out to the bouncer that, hey, the birthday looks a
5:28
little smudged, or maybe the hologram is missing, just hoping
5:32
the bouncer denies entry. Okay, that makes sense.
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Speaker 1: And Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman actually told the court
5:39
that the prosecution's evidence went way beyond the standard required
5:42
to get past that bouncer.
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Speaker 2: She was very confident.
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Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Burke's defense team, and this is led by extremely
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prominent attorneys Blair Burke and Marilyn bid Narsky. They sat
5:53
with Burke, who reportedly showed zero visible reaction over.
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Speaker 2: The five days, total stoicism.
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Speaker 1: Yeah blank, and they assert his absolute innocence. They characterize
6:04
the state's case as heavily, if not entirely, reliant on circumstantial.
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Speaker 2: Evidence, which is a classic defense strategy at this stage.
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Speaker 1: Right, they are essentially telling the judge like, the prosecution
6:13
has shown you a massive pile of implications, but they
6:16
don't actually have direct footage or a confession.
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Speaker 2: They are saving their full counter offensive for the actual trial,
6:24
because that's where that standard rockets back up to beyond
6:28
a reasonable doubt exactly.
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Speaker 1: But to grasp the sheer gravity of what the prosecution
6:33
presented to meet that probable cause threshold. We really have
6:37
to look at the two people at the center of
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this tragedy. You really do, because the prosecution's entire narrative
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hinges on the intersection of two vastly different trajectories originating
6:48
in two completely different worlds.
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Speaker 2: It's the core of the whole case.
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Speaker 1: Let's look at the victim first, Celeste Revus Hernandez. She
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was a fourteen year old girl living in Lake Elsinore.
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Speaker 2: And for anyone unfamiliar with southern California geography, Lake Elsinore
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is in Riverside County, right. It's this suburban, somewhat rural
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community nestled in a valley. It's a little over an
7:10
hour's drive east.
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Speaker 1: Of Los Angeles, so worlds away from the Hollywood.
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Speaker 2: Hills, completely different universe.
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Speaker 1: She was the daughter of Jesus Revas and Mercedes Martinez,
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parents who immigrated to the United States from El Salvador.
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And you know, when you read the accounts from her
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family and her neighbors, the picture that emerges is universally consistent.
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Speaker 2: You really is.
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Speaker 1: They describe a grounded, vibrant teenager. She had long, curly hair,
7:35
she was always seen walking around her neighborhood with a
7:37
backpack heading to the local corner store. Norma just a
7:40
normal kid. She loved singing, she loved dancing. Her family
7:43
emphasized how much she cherished their Friday movie nights.
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Speaker 2: The family actually released a heartbreaking statement after the charges
7:51
were filed.
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Speaker 1: What did they say?
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Speaker 2: They said, Celeste was a beautiful, strong girl who loved
7:56
to sing and dance. Every Friday night was movie night,
8:00
and we spent wonderful times together. We love her very much,
8:02
and she always told us that she loved us. We
8:05
miss her deeply. All we want is justice for Celeste.
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Speaker 1: Wow, that is just so heavy it.
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Speaker 2: Is, and that desire for justice is the driving force
8:13
behind the District Attorney's massive allocation of resources to this
8:17
specific case.
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Speaker 1: And on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, we
8:21
have the accused David Anthony Burke, who operated under the
8:24
Moniker D four VD Right. His rise is essentially the
8:28
quintessential gen Z pathway to stardom. It was built entirely
8:33
on algorithmic optimization. He was born in Queens, New York
8:36
in two thousand and five, but was raised in the Houston,
8:39
Texas area.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, he grew up in Houston, and long before.
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Speaker 1: He was a musician, he was immersed in the highly
8:45
competitive subculture of fortnite gaming.
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Speaker 2: The gaming background is so crucial here.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he was recording his gameplay, editing montages, and uploading
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them to YouTube and Twitch.
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Speaker 2: The pivot from gamer to global pop star actually happened
8:57
because of a very mundane technical issue. Really like what
9:01
well In the digital content creation world, creators constantly faced
9:05
DMCA takedowns copyright strikes if they use license music in
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the background of their videos.
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Speaker 1: Oh right, because the platform's flag copyrighted audio.
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Speaker 2: Exactly. Burke was getting hit with these strikes, so to
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bypass the copyright algorithm, he decided to simply manufacture his
9:20
own background music.
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Speaker 1: Wait, he just decided to make his own music so
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he wouldn't get flagged on YouTube.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. He set up a rudimentary recording space in his
9:28
sister's closet using an iPhone and basic mixing software that
9:32
is wild, and he started uploading tracks to SoundCloud. He
9:36
stylized his name with a four instead of an AD
9:40
four D, which by the way, is a classic search
9:43
engine optimization tactic.
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Speaker 1: To ensure his name was unique and easily searchable across
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platforms rightcisely. He understood the machinery of the Internet implicitly,
9:53
and in July twenty twenty two, he fed that machinery
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a track called Romantic Homicide.
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Speaker 2: And that track exploded.
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Speaker 1: It hit the TikTok for you page, and the algorithm
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poured gasoline on it. It became a viral, inescapable cultural phenomenon.
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Speaker 2: You couldn't open the app without hearing it.
10:09
Speaker 1: The song charted on the Billboard Hot one hundred, earning
10:12
multi platinum certifications, and then he followed it up with
10:15
another massive hit, Here with Me.
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Speaker 2: The speed of his ascent is truly difficult to overstate.
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I mean, he was immediately signed to a massive recording
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deal with Darkroom and Interscope Record Huge Labels Massive. By
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twenty twenty three, he is touring arenas as the opening
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act for Sea Wow. He's collaborating with established industry giants
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like twenty one Savage, and by twenty twenty five, he
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releases his debut full length album, Withered, which hits the
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Billboard Top twenty.
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Speaker 1: Just astronomical success.
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Speaker 2: And when this murder investigation breaks open, he is in
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the middle of a highly lucrative international World Tour.
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Speaker 1: I just want you to think about the psychological whiplash
10:55
of that trajectory. You have a teenager who goes from
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the intense, isolated environment of bedroom gaming and producing in
11:02
the closet in Houston straight into the blinding glare of
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international fame, arena stages and multimillion dollar corporate pressures in
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roughly three years.
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Speaker 2: That's an insane amount of pressure, very.
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Speaker 1: Quickly, and according to prosecutors, while he was navigating that
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astronomical rise, he was simultaneously using that exact same digital
11:20
landscape to cultivate a dark, hidden relationship with a middle
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schooler living an hour outside of his Hollywood bubble.
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Speaker 2: And the digital trail documenting that alleged relationship is the
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entire foundation of the prosecution's case.
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Speaker 1: Because they have receipts.
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Speaker 2: They argue this was not a brief, random encounter. They
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presented evidence of a year's long relationship meticulously chronicled in
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the cloud. According to the timeline established by the state,
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this relationship allegedly began in twenty twenty two.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's do the math on that. If it began
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in twenty twenty two, Celesterevas Hernandez would have been just
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eleven or twelve years old. Yes, Burke would have been
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around seventeen by the time of her alleged murder. In
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twenty twenty five, she is fourteen and he is twenty
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or twenty one, a legal adult.
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Speaker 2: A massive problematic age.
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Speaker 1: Gap, and the scale of the digital evidence the prosecution
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brought to this preliminary hearing is almost incomprehensible. They stated
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they recovered tens of terabytes of data from Burke's electronic
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devices and his iCloud accounts.
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Speaker 2: To understand what tens of terabytes actually means in a
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forensic context, we really have to look at how modern
12:24
devices store data.
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Speaker 1: It's not just a few text messages, right.
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Speaker 2: Not at all. When law enforcement uses extraction software like
12:31
Celebrate on a smartphone, they aren't just downloading the photos
12:34
you see in your camera roll. They're pulling massive squidlite databases,
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background location logs, and crucially unallocated space where deleted data
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fragments still reside.
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Speaker 1: So even the stuff you think you erased.
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Speaker 2: Exactly when an iPhone sinks to iCloud, it mirrors a
12:50
staggering amount of metadata. Tens of terabytes represent millions of
12:55
text messages, audio files, application usage logs, and GPS.
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Speaker 1: Cores ordinance that is overwhelming.
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Speaker 2: It means practically every digital interaction Burke had over several
13:05
years was preserved on a server.
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Speaker 1: And what the prosecutors say they pulled from those servers
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is deeply, deeply disturbing. The court heard descriptions of nearly
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fifty sexually explicit images.
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Speaker 2: And these weren't just standard images.
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Speaker 1: No, the prosecution explicitly identified them as child sexual abuse
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material or see SAM. The text blogs presented to the
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judge outlined a dynamic that the state argues continued seamlessly
13:28
as Burke crossed the threshold into legal adulthood while Celeste
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remained in middle school.
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Speaker 2: The specific text messages read into the court record paint
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a harrowing picture. They referenced sexual activity. They referenced an
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abortion occurring when Celeste was just thirteen years old.
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Speaker 1: Got thirteen.
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Speaker 2: They discussed plans to run away together and get married,
13:45
giving their plans coded names like Operation Awesome.
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Speaker 1: Operation Awesome. It sounds so childish.
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Speaker 2: It does. But the most jarring message highlighted by the
13:56
state was a text sent by Celeste to Burke, reading quote,
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I killed my first kid for you.
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Speaker 1: I mean. As overwhelming as that digital paper trail sounds,
14:05
the defense attorneys did not just sit back. They attacked
14:08
the prosecution's interpretation of the relationship aggressively.
14:11
Speaker 2: They had to.
14:12
Speaker 1: They argued that it was Celeste who initiated contact, that
14:14
she demanded to see him, and that Burke initially resisted.
14:18
And they didn't just rely on rhetoric. They introduced specific,
14:21
highly complicating evidence into the record.
14:23
Speaker 2: They did. A critical piece of that counter narrative was
14:27
body camera footage from February twenty twenty four.
14:30
Speaker 1: Okay, what was on it?
14:32
Speaker 2: Riverside County deputies were actually conducting a missing person welfare
14:35
check and they located Celeste with Burke together. Yes, And
14:39
in the footage played for the judge, Burke tells the
14:42
officers quote, she told me she was eighteen. Everyone is
14:45
saying she's thirteen. Wow. The defense utilizes this to establish
14:49
a documented record of Burke claiming he was deceived about
14:52
her true age, long before any murder charges were even
14:55
on the table.
14:56
Speaker 1: But the defense also introduced a physical document that throws
15:00
a massive wrench into the psychological profile of this case.
15:03
Speaker 2: The travel form.
15:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, they presented a notarized form from twenty twenty four.
15:08
This form showed that Celeste's parents, Jesus Reeves and Mercedes Martinez,
15:13
had given legal, notarized permission for their daughter to travel
15:16
internationally to London with Burke.
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Speaker 2: Just a stunning piece of evidence.
15:21
Speaker 1: The defense's strategic implication here is massive, right. They are
15:25
arguing the family was fully aware of the connection and
15:27
legally sanctioned her traveling across the globe with him.
15:30
Speaker 2: This creates a severe paradox in the timeline that the
15:34
legal teams have to navigate. How so, because public records
15:37
and police logs confirmed that in that same year, twenty
15:40
twenty four, Celeste was reported missing by her family multiple times.
15:44
Speaker 1: So they reported her missing but also a signed this
15:46
form exactly.
15:48
Speaker 2: There were reports around Valentine's Day again in March, and
15:51
a formal missing person report in early April.
15:54
Speaker 1: I just have to jump in here. If we look
15:56
at the mechanics of this contradiction, it raises intense questions.
16:00
I mean, how can a family file frantic missing person's
16:04
reports with the police in February, March and April but
16:07
also sign a legally binding notarized document allowing that exact
16:13
same child to fly to London with a pop star.
16:15
Speaker 2: It's very difficult to reconcile.
16:17
Speaker 1: Because in California, a notary public requires physical presence, valid
16:22
state issued identification, and a thumb print to verify a signature.
16:26
A notary doesn't investigate the ethics of a document. They
16:29
just verify the identity of the signer, right, They.
16:31
Speaker 2: Just make sure you are who you say you are.
16:33
Speaker 1: Furthermore, getting a minor a passport for international travel requires
16:36
the consent of both parents.
16:38
Speaker 2: The legal and psychological mechanisms that allow those two realities
16:41
to coexist are incredibly complex.
16:44
Speaker 1: They must be.
16:45
Speaker 2: The defense points to the notarized form as proof of
16:47
parental consent. Right, they're using it to undermine the idea
16:51
of a purely predatory hidden abduction scenario.
16:54
Speaker 1: Okay, but how does the prosecution counter that.
16:56
Speaker 2: Conversely, the prosecution could argue that the notarized form was
17:00
the result of severe coercion, manipulation, or deception. I see
17:05
we see cases where wealthy, influential individuals manipulate a family's
17:09
trust promising a save career opportunity or travel experience to
17:13
completely mask the true nature of the relationship.
17:17
Speaker 1: That happens quite a bit.
17:18
Speaker 2: It is also entirely possible the document was signed under
17:21
false pretenses regarding who else would be on the trip.
17:24
Maybe they thought chaperones would be there. This contradictory web
17:28
of missing reports and official travel documents is exactly the
17:31
kind of factual dispute a jury will eventually have to untangle.
17:35
Speaker 1: Regardless of the family's level of awareness or deception. In
17:38
twenty twenty four, the prosecution's timeline zeros in on a
17:41
very specific fatal window. One year later, by April twenty
17:45
twenty five, they argue, this turbulent, highly documented relationship reached
17:49
its breaking point.
17:50
Speaker 2: The prosecution alleges that catalyst was a dispute over infidelity
17:54
on whose part Berks. On the night of April thirty second,
17:57
stretching into the early hours of April twenty third, twenty
18:00
twenty five, Burke and Celeste were arguing via text message.
18:04
The subject was Burke's alleged involvement with another woman.
18:07
Speaker 1: And the state presented a specific text message that they
18:10
claim provides the explicit motive for murder. During this heated exchange,
18:15
Celeste sends a message threatening to expose him. She says
18:18
she will tell her father lies about book, and she
18:21
explicitly types that she will quote end or career end
18:24
or life.
18:25
Speaker 2: In the context of the prosecution's theory that single text
18:29
message transforms Celeste from a secret partner into a direct
18:33
existential threat.
18:35
Speaker 1: A huge threat.
18:36
Speaker 2: They argue Burke perceived this not as idle teenage entering,
18:39
but as a legitimate threat to his nineteen million dollar
18:41
recording contract, his global reputation, and his freedom. Given the
18:45
illegal nature of their.
18:46
Speaker 1: Age gap, the logistics of what allegedly happens next are
18:49
chilling in their mundanity. Burke doesn't drive down to Lake Elsinore.
18:53
According to the state, he just opens a rideshare app
18:56
and orders an Uber.
18:57
Speaker 2: Just casually booking a ride.
18:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, he arranges for a car to pick up this
19:02
fourteen year old girl from her family's neighborhood and drive
19:06
her the hour plus route into Los Angeles, dropping her
19:09
off at his rented property in the Hollywood Hills.
19:12
Speaker 2: And this journey is tracked with excruciating precision. Because of
19:16
how rideshare platforms operate to keep everything everything, companies like
19:20
Uber maintain law enforcement portals. When they are served with
19:24
a warrant, they provide GPS coordinates of the vehicle's exact route,
19:28
the device ideas that book the ride, the payment methods,
19:31
and timestance down to the millisecond.
19:33
Speaker 1: So as she is physically approaching the house in the uber,
19:36
she is still texting him. The court saw messages where
19:39
she wrote variations of quote girly pop, I'm almost there.
19:43
Opener door if her home.
19:45
Speaker 2: It's just such a teenage text.
19:47
Speaker 1: It is such a casual, distinctly teenage phrase. It implies
19:51
zero anticipation of danger. And Burke replies to that text,
19:55
confirming that the front door is unlocked.
19:57
Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how digital forensics relies just as
20:01
heavily on the sudden absence of data as it does
20:03
on the presence of it. What do you mean the
20:05
moment after that exchange, her confirming arrival, him confirming the
20:10
open door, every single digital interaction between their two devices
20:14
ceases complete digital silence.
20:17
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, if they are now in the same room,
20:19
they obviously stop texting each other, right.
20:21
Speaker 2: Yes, but the digital silence extends beyond just communication.
20:24
Speaker 1: Okay, explain that the prosecution.
20:26
Speaker 2: Utilizes cell tower triangulation to track their subsequent movements. Mobile
20:31
phones do not just transmit data when you send a text.
20:34
They constantly ping nearby cellular towers to maintain a network connection.
20:39
Speaker 1: Just sitting in your pocket, it's pinging exactly.
20:41
Speaker 2: By analyzing the time of arrival and angle of arrival
20:44
of these pings across multiple towers, forensic analysts can pinpoint
20:48
a device's location.
20:49
Speaker 1: Very accurately and what did the data show?
20:51
Speaker 2: The data presented indicates that later that same evening, Burke's phone,
20:55
along with the internal GPS of this Tesla Model X,
20:58
left the Hollywood Hills area. Celestophone did not. The prosecution's
21:03
horrifying conclusion is that she never left that house alive.
21:07
They contend the murder occurred in a very narrow, terrifying
21:11
window immediately after she walked through that open door.
21:15
Speaker 1: But the defense team vehemently attacks the inferential leap the
21:18
state is making here. They argue that angry text messages
21:22
about ending a career show a heated emotional provocation, not
21:27
cold blooded, premeditated murder.
21:29
Speaker 2: Right, it's a fight, not a murder plot.
21:31
Speaker 1: Furthermore, they pointed out a glaring hole in the physical
21:34
evidence regarding the timeline of the murder itself.
21:36
Speaker 2: The defense highlighted the complete lack of direct surveillance.
21:40
Speaker 1: Which is crazy for that area.
21:41
Speaker 2: It is the Hollywood Hills is a neighborhood heavily saturated
21:44
with ring doorbill cameras, private security systems, and street facing surveillance.
21:49
Yet the defense noted there is zero video footage capturing
21:52
Celeste actually entering Burke's residence and obviously no footage of
21:56
a murder occurring, so.
21:57
Speaker 1: They have nothing on tape.
21:59
Speaker 2: Nothing. The state is asking the judge to look at
22:02
a timeline of text messages that suddenly stop and infer
22:05
a murder based on the silence.
22:07
Speaker 1: But the prosecution argues that the proof of the murder
22:10
is written in the horrifying physical evidence left behind by
22:13
the alleged cover up. They claim that Burke didn't just
22:16
commit a homicide, he engaged in a highly calculated, gruesome,
22:19
and ultimately sloppy effort to erase the physical reality of
22:22
Celestrevus Hernandez.
22:24
Speaker 2: The state presented a deeply disturbing inventory of items Burke
22:28
allegedly purchased in the weeks following the digital silence of
22:31
April twenty third. What did he buy utilizing aliases to
22:34
mask his identity? He allegedly acquired chainsaws, an inflatable pool,
22:39
a fireproof matt, a heavy duty shovel, body bags, and
22:43
a device described in court as a burn box, which
22:46
is essentially a portable miniature crematorium.
22:49
Speaker 1: The implication is clear and devastating. The prosecution alleges that
22:53
in the garage of his rented Hollywood Hills home, Burke
22:56
utilized these tools to systematically dismember the victims body.
23:00
Speaker 2: That's their theory, and to.
23:01
Speaker 1: Back us up, they brought in forensic criminalists to testify
23:04
about the biological evidence recovered from that specific garage.
23:07
Speaker 2: Finding biological evidence after a suspects actively tried to clean
23:11
a crime scene involves specific chemical processes.
23:14
Speaker 1: Like using black lights and stuff.
23:16
Speaker 2: Criminalists typically use reagents like luminol or blue star. These
23:20
chemicals react with the iron present and hemoglobin, which is
23:23
the protein in red blood cells.
23:25
Speaker 1: Even if he cleaned it, yes, even.
23:27
Speaker 2: If a surface is scrubbed with bleach, the latent blood
23:30
will emit a blue chemoluminescence when viewed under specialized lighting.
23:34
Speaker 1: Oh Wow.
23:35
Speaker 2: Using these methods, investigators discovered blood stains on a map
23:39
on the garage floor, on the handles of a rowing
23:41
machine stored in the garage, on the plug of Burke's
23:44
Tesla vehicle charger and inside the interior of the Tesla itself.
23:48
Speaker 1: And when they swabbed that blood and ran it through
23:50
DNA analysis, examining the short tandem repeats the STRs to
23:55
determine a random match probability. The statistics confirmed that the
23:58
blood matched the DNA profile of Celestibus Hernandez.
24:02
Speaker 2: Which brings us to September eighth, twenty to five.
24:05
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting and frankly incredibly grim.
24:09
Fast forward to this date.
24:10
Speaker 2: A date that shatters this case wide open. It is
24:13
just days after what would have been Celest's fifteenth birthday, right.
24:18
Speaker 1: And we moved from the Hollywood Hills to a completely
24:20
mundane setting, a vehicle tow yard in Hollywood. Workers at
24:25
this yard are conducting a standard inventory inspection on a.
24:28
Speaker 2: Tesla Model X which had been sitting there.
24:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, this specific vehicle had been towed three days prior
24:33
from a residential street located roughly four hundred feet from Burke's.
24:37
Speaker 2: Rental property because of parking complaints.
24:40
Speaker 1: Exactly neighbors in the area had called parking enforcement to
24:44
complain about an abandoned car left on the street. The
24:47
vehicle was registered to David Anthony Burke. So the tow
24:51
yard workers opened the vehicle and they opened the front
24:54
front of the fronk, as it's known in electric vehicles
24:56
that lack a forward engine block. Right inside that enclosed space,
25:00
they find a black cadaver bag. Inside that bag is
25:03
the severely decomposed head and torso of a young female.
25:07
Directly beneath the cadaver bag, inside a standard plastic garbage bag,
25:11
they find severed arms and legs.
25:13
Speaker 2: The sheer horror of the scene is difficult to process.
25:15
It's unfathomable, and from a forensic standpoint, conducting an autopsy
25:20
on remains that have been decomposing inside a sealed vehicle
25:24
trunk in the southern California heat for potentially months is
25:28
incredibly complex.
25:29
Speaker 1: Because of the heat.
25:30
Speaker 2: Yes, the soft tissue degradation makes identifying the exact cause
25:34
of death extremely difficult, but.
25:36
Speaker 1: The Los Angeles County Medical examiners were able to find
25:39
the forensic signatures of the murder on the bones themselves.
25:42
Speaker 2: They did. Medical examiners utilize forensic osteology to identify trauma.
25:48
When soft tissue.
25:49
Speaker 1: Is compromised, what does that entail?
25:51
Speaker 2: Well, A knife or blade leaves distinct microscopic curf marks
25:55
and V shaped incisions on bone and cartilage.
25:58
Speaker 1: And they found those marks.
26:00
Speaker 2: The medical examiner testified that they located penetrating wounds consistent
26:03
with sharp forced trauma to the chest and abdomen. They
26:07
specified that the blade had pierced the area of the
26:09
victim's liver and left visible damage on her ribs.
26:12
Speaker 1: Based on the nature of those incisions, the medical examiner
26:15
testified that the victim could have taken minutes or potentially
26:18
even longer, to bleed to death. It was a prolonged
26:21
violent end, absolutely horrifical, and weaving the autopsy back into
26:25
the prosecution's theory of the cover up, the medical examiner
26:28
noted finding small blue plastic fragments physically embedded in the
26:32
dismembered remains. These fragments were forensically consistent with the material
26:36
of the inflatable pool Burke allegedly purchased.
26:39
Speaker 2: The state meticulously layered this physical evidence with more digital.
26:43
Speaker 1: Forensics, going back to the data.
26:45
Speaker 2: Always back to the data. A detective testified about cellular
26:48
data showing Burke's phone making trips into rural Santa Barbara
26:51
County in the days after the alleged killing.
26:54
Speaker 1: And why is that significant?
26:55
Speaker 2: Because crucially, Celeste passport, her physical agia identification, was later
27:01
found discarded along a highway in that exact geographic region.
27:05
Speaker 1: Wow Okay.
27:06
Speaker 2: Furthermore, digital logs from the Tesla indicate that Burke was
27:10
the last person to operate the vehicle before he departed
27:13
Los Angeles to resume his international concert tour in late
27:16
July twenty.
27:17
Speaker 1: Twenty five, leaving the car behind.
27:19
Speaker 2: The prosecution's narrative is that he parked the car on
27:21
the street packed with this horrific secret and then boarded
27:25
a plane to perform an arenas.
27:27
Speaker 1: But the defense team mounted a fierce, highly technical attack
27:31
on this physical evidence. I mean, while the list of
27:34
purchased items sounds incredibly damning, the defense forced the court
27:38
to look at the actual forensic reality of those items.
27:41
Speaker 2: During cross examination, the defense systematically dismantled the assumptions surrounding
27:47
the physical tools.
27:48
Speaker 1: What did they point out?
27:49
Speaker 2: Well, yes, chainsaws were recovered from Burke's property, but the
27:53
defense highlighted the forensic fact that those specific chainsaws showed
27:58
absolutely zero trace of blood, tissue or biological material. They
28:02
were clean, completely clean, and yes, a burn box was purchased,
28:06
but the defense pointed out that the box remained entirely
28:09
unopened in its original packaging.
28:11
Speaker 1: Wait really yeah.
28:12
Speaker 2: Furthermore, law enforcement hadn't even bothered to test the unopened
28:15
box for touch DNA.
28:17
Speaker 1: Which, just for context, touch DNA is the microscopic transfer
28:21
of epithelial skin cells left behind by friction when someone
28:25
handles an object. So the defense is essentially pointing out
28:28
investigative tunnel vision here. They are telling the judge, you know,
28:31
you were painting a picture of a suspect using a
28:34
chainsaw and a crematorium to destroy a body. But the
28:37
state's own crime lab confirms the chainsaws completely clean, and
28:41
the box was never even opened, let alone swab to
28:44
see if he even touched it.
28:45
Speaker 2: The defense also attacked the cellular data linking Burke to
28:49
the discarded passport in Santa Barbara.
28:51
Speaker 1: How did they argue that.
28:52
Speaker 2: They brought up the inherent imprecision of cell tower geolocation,
28:57
particularly in rural areas, right.
28:59
Speaker 1: Because towers are farther apart.
29:00
Speaker 2: Exactly, While the fill tower in a dense urban environment
29:04
might have a radius of a few blocks, a rural
29:07
tower in Santa Barbara County can have a radius covering
29:10
ten to twenty miles.
29:11
Speaker 1: That's a huge area.
29:12
Speaker 2: It is. The defense argues that proving Burke's phone pinged
29:15
to tower in that broad area does not prove he
29:18
was standing at the exact mile marker where the passport
29:20
was found, nor does it prove the purpose of his trip.
29:23
Speaker 1: It is a masterclass in attacking circumstantial evidence. But even
29:28
with the defense punching holes in the physical mechanics of
29:31
the cover up, the prosecution still presented a compelling motive
29:34
for why a twenty one year old multi millionaire would
29:37
allegedly risk everything to commit such a gruesome act.
29:41
Speaker 2: The motive is central.
29:42
Speaker 1: And that motive brings us back to the special circumstances
29:45
attached to the murder charge.
29:47
Speaker 2: District Attorney Nathan Hoffman was explicit that the financial gained
29:51
special circumstance is inextricably linked to Burke's recording.
29:54
Speaker 1: Empire because of the money on the line.
29:57
Speaker 2: The financial stakes presented in court were astron omical. Burke's
30:01
contract with his record label positioned him to earn up
30:04
to nineteen million dollars, and he had already received massive
30:07
advanced payments.
30:08
Speaker 1: So the prosecution's theory of the motive is brutally transactional.
30:12
They argue that Celesrivus Hernandez transitioned from a secret partner
30:16
into a massive financial and legal liability.
30:19
Speaker 2: She became a threat to the empire.
30:21
Speaker 1: She was a living witness to an illegal relationship. If
30:24
she followed through on her text message threat to expose
30:27
the true nature of their dynamic and her actual age,
30:31
the fallout would be catastrophic for him. Career ending industry
30:34
contracts contained strict morals clauses. An exposure of this magnitude
30:39
wouldn't just be a tabloid scandal, it would trigger an
30:41
immediate breach of contract, vaporizing his nineteen million dollar payout,
30:46
destroying his global reputation, and likely landing him in prison
30:50
for statutory offenses.
30:52
Speaker 2: So the state claims he murdered her to protect the
30:55
empire he built. Right, but the tragic paradox of this
30:58
case is that the cover up failed to protect the
31:02
very asset it was allegedly designed.
31:04
Speaker 1: To save, because he lost the deal anyway.
31:06
Speaker 2: After the discovery of the remains in the tesla, the
31:09
record label immediately dropped him, opting out of the multi
31:12
million dollar deal. The music industry halted his career instantaneously,
31:17
canceling the remainder of his world tour and scrubbing promotional materials.
31:21
Speaker 1: And the cultural shockwave of this fall from grace is massive.
31:26
You have a huge demographic of young fans who connected
31:29
deeply with his introspective, emotional music. Now they are navigating
31:34
a bizarre parasocial grief online.
31:36
Speaker 2: It's a very strange dynamic to watch unfold.
31:38
Speaker 1: You see everything from absolute shock and mourning for Celuste
31:42
to fans desperately clinging to the defense's arguments, you know,
31:46
demanding the legal system allow for due process before they
31:49
accept that the artists they idolized is capable of this
31:52
level of violence.
31:53
Speaker 2: But the true permanent devastation is located far away from
31:56
the global.
31:57
Speaker 1: Music industry in Lake Elsinore.
31:59
Speaker 2: The community of Lake elsin Or spent months organizing search parties,
32:02
printing missing person posters, and holding out hope for a
32:05
teenager's safe return. Now they have transitioned to holding makeshift
32:09
memorials outside the family's home. The local corner store clerks
32:13
and neighbors who watched her grow up are now forced
32:15
to follow a Hollywood homicide and dismemberment trial.
32:19
Speaker 1: So judgle Meadow has ruled the state met the probable
32:22
cause threshold, the bouncer has checked the ID, and Burke
32:25
is heading into the club. The next major procedural step
32:29
is the arraignment, which is scheduled for August thirty first,
32:32
twenty twenty six.
32:33
Speaker 2: That's the next big date.
32:34
Speaker 1: At that hearing, Burke will formally re enter his plea
32:37
of not guilty and the court will begin the long,
32:40
arduous process of scheduling the actual trial, which honestly could
32:45
be a year or more away.
32:46
Speaker 2: And the other massive looming variable rests entirely with the
32:49
District Attorney's.
32:50
Speaker 1: Office whether they seek the death penalty exactly.
32:53
Speaker 2: They are currently conducting a rigorous review of the aggravating
32:56
and mitigating factors in this case to make a final
32:59
determination on whether they will formally seek the death penalty.
33:02
Is a decision that will shape the entire trajectory of
33:05
the trial.
33:05
Speaker 1: To look back at the sheer scale of what we've
33:08
covered today, we trace the algorithmic rise of a kid
33:10
making beats in a closet who scored a viral TikTok
33:13
hit and secured a nineteen million dollar contract.
33:16
Speaker 2: A literal overnight sensation.
33:18
Speaker 1: We examined a hidden, highly documented relationship with a middle
33:21
school girl, resulting in tens of terabytes of extracted digital
33:25
evidence years of data, a relationship that the state alledge
33:28
is culminated in an argument over text, a final uber
33:31
ride traced by GPS, a gruesome dismemberment in a Hollywood
33:35
Hills garage illuminated by chemical regions, and the devastating discovery
33:40
of a fourteen year old girl in the front of
33:42
an abandoned tesla.
33:43
Speaker 2: It is a definitive modern true crime case. It relies
33:46
heavily on the invisible digital infrastructure we interact with every
33:50
single day to reconstruct a timeline of immense physical.
33:54
Speaker 1: Violence, and that brings me to you, the listener. We
33:57
all navigate this digital age. We string the music, we
34:00
follow the influencers, and our brains are just wired to
34:03
feel like we actually know these people based on the
34:05
perfectly curated, algorithm driven montages they feed us.
34:08
Speaker 2: But we don't.
34:09
Speaker 1: No, we don't. A case like this completely shatters that
34:12
parasocial illusion. It serves as a terrifying reminder of the
34:15
profound gap that can exist between a carefully constructed public
34:18
persona and the hidden private reality occurring behind closed doors.
34:23
Speaker 2: We live in an era where it is nearly impossible
34:26
to exist without leaving a permanent digital shadow.
34:29
Speaker 1: Very true.
34:29
Speaker 2: Every uber you book logs your coordinates. Every text you
34:33
send is stored in unallocated space. Every time your phone
34:37
merely searches for a cell tower, your physical location is
34:40
recorded on a server you will never see.
34:42
Speaker 1: It's always tracking, always.
34:44
Speaker 2: If the prosecution's theory holds true, David Anthony Burke utilized
34:48
modern technology to build a global empire out of thin air,
34:52
and that exact same technology, the ride share data, the
34:55
cell tower pings, the terabytes of cloud extraction, may be
34:59
the very thing that meticulously guarantees his downfall.
35:02
Speaker 1: That's a profound thought.
35:03
Speaker 2: It makes you wonder does true anonymity even exist anymore?
35:07
Or are we all just passively compiling the endless forensic
35:10
evidence of our own lives, waiting for the day it's
35:12
finally read into the record.