Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Prosecutors Detail Gruesome Evidence Against Pop Singer D4vd in Murder Case

Transcript

Prosecutors Detail Gruesome Evidence Against Pop Singer D4vd in Murder Case · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: In April of twenty twenty five, a musician who had
0:04
just built this massive, eleven and a half million dollar empire,
0:07
he used two incredibly mundane tools to allegedly cover up
0:12
a homicide. And the first one was this inflatable blue
0:16
wading pool that he just ordered off the internet.
0:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a regular pool, right.
0:20
Speaker 1: And the second was a text message sent from a
0:22
smartphone at exactly ten thirty pm.
0:24
Speaker 2: And I mean it really forces you to look at
0:26
the everyday items surrounding us right now. You know, like
0:30
the apps we used to order a ride, or the
0:32
platforms we used to buy household goods and messages we send,
0:35
and you have to realize they can double as this permanent,
0:39
unerasable ledger of our darkest actions.
0:41
Speaker 1: It's terrifying. Yeah, but today we are looking at the
0:44
brutal collision between a meticulously crafted digital persona and a
0:49
really gruesome forensic reality. Absolutely, we're pulling from a massive
0:53
stack of recent court filings, investigative reports, and live testimony
0:59
multidaytest money from the preliminary hearing of David Anthony Burke right,
1:02
which was extensive, very and if you followed the massive
1:05
wave of indie pop that took over the Internet over
1:08
the last few years. You know him as D four
1:11
VI D. He's currently facing trial for the murder of
1:15
fourteen year old Celeste revs. Hernandez.
1:18
Speaker 2: And we're going to look strictly at the mechanics of
1:21
this case today, right the mechanics. The prosecution has laid
1:24
out a staggering timeline and the defense is currently mapping
1:28
out their counter narrative. So we need to analyze how
1:31
digital footprints act like breadcrumb's drying in wet cement basically wow, yeah,
1:37
and how those footprints eventually lead investigators to physical, undeniable
1:41
trace evidence.
1:42
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because the contrast here is just
1:45
it's almost impossible to wrap your head around.
1:47
Speaker 2: It really is a split screen exactly.
1:49
Speaker 1: Think of this case as a split screen. On one side,
1:52
you have this curated, multimillion dollar public persona. You have
1:56
a twenty one year old rising star sitting in a
1:58
downtown Los Angeles court r wearing an orange jumpsuit, completely expressionless,
2:03
it's bleak, yeah, blank. And on the other side, projected
2:06
on the screens in that exact same room are forensic
2:09
photographs of a dismembered severely decomposed teenager. It's heavy, It's
2:14
incredibly heavy. Yeah. So to understand how we get to
2:17
that courtroom, we have to look at the engine that
2:20
built Burke's fame and how that exact same engine was
2:23
allegedly weaponized in private.
2:24
Speaker 2: Because the timeline of his public assent is crucial here.
2:27
It really establishes the motive the prosecution is our doing.
2:31
So Burke rises to prominence. In twenty twenty two, he
2:35
releases this track called Romantic Homicide.
2:38
Speaker 1: Right, I remember that being everywhere?
2:39
Speaker 2: Oh, it completely saturates TikTok like. He goes from being
2:43
a teenager making video game montages in his bedroom to
2:47
signing a massive deal with Innerscope Records. Crazy, and by
2:50
early twenty twenty five, the court documents estimate his touring
2:53
and catalog income generated up to eleven point five million dollars.
2:57
Speaker 1: But let's pause on the nature of that fame for
3:00
a second. Yeah, because he wasn't selling a polished, untouchable
3:03
rockstar image.
3:04
Speaker 2: No, not at all.
3:05
Speaker 1: The music was moody, it was vulnerable. He built an
3:08
audience by projecting this intense emotional.
3:11
Speaker 2: Introspection, and the algorithm specifically targets and rewards that kind
3:16
of vulnerability.
3:17
Speaker 1: Because it builds parasocial relationships exactly.
3:19
Speaker 2: Fans don't just feel like they're listening to an artist,
3:22
they feel like they genuinely know him, like they understand
3:25
him on an intimate level.
3:26
Speaker 1: Right, And that's basically the architecture of modern digital fame.
3:30
Speaker 2: It relies entirely on the illusion of access. But what's
3:33
fascinating here is, and you know, horrifying really is that
3:37
while millions of people were streaming those songs, prosecutors allege
3:41
a deeply predatory, parallel timeline was running in.
3:44
Speaker 1: The background, which is the hidden timeline, right.
3:46
Speaker 2: They state that Burke and Celeste first connected online around
3:50
January of twenty twenty two. Wow, he was a teenager
3:53
on the verge of massive fame and Celeste was eleven
3:56
years old.
3:56
Speaker 1: Eleven. I mean you hear that and you just have
3:58
to stop. She was born Tember seven, twenty ten. Yeah,
4:02
she's living in the Lake Elsonor area of Riverside County. Yeah,
4:05
And they connected via Discord and Instagram.
4:08
Speaker 2: Which are the same tools used to build his fan
4:10
community exactly.
4:11
Speaker 1: So the very tools designed to build his community were
4:15
allegedly used to isolate a minor.
4:17
Speaker 2: And the prosecution outlines how this digital connection just eventually
4:21
escalated over time. So by November twenty twenty three, Celestis thirteen,
4:26
Burke is eighteen, and investigators recovered text messages pointing to
4:31
an ongoing sexual relationship.
4:33
Speaker 1: The digital forensic recovery here is just extensive, isn't it.
4:37
Speaker 2: It's massive. The state isn't relying on rumors or hearsay.
4:41
They subpoenaed the actual text threads proceeds exactly. They found
4:45
discussions about pregnancy fears, conversations about abortion and the logistics
4:50
of getting Plan B emergency contraceptions. And beyond the text data,
4:54
investigators executed search warrants on Burke's physical devices, and they
4:58
stated they found images of the teenage engaged in sex X.
5:02
Speaker 1: But and this is what really gets me, this didn't
5:04
stay confined to an iCloud server somewhere.
5:06
Speaker 2: Now, it moved to the physical world right.
5:09
Speaker 1: The source material details extensive physical travel. They went to
5:12
Las Vegas together, they went to text, and then the
5:15
prosecution notes they traveled internationally to London where she actually
5:19
met members of his family. And this is where I
5:22
just have to stop and ask a logistical question. Sure,
5:24
money aside, How does an eighteen year old legally transport
5:28
a thirteen year old across international borders?
5:31
Speaker 2: It sounds impossible, right, I mean.
5:33
Speaker 1: You have to clear customs and border protection. You'd show
5:35
a passport, The red flag should be absolutely massive, every
5:39
alarm bell should be ringing.
5:40
Speaker 2: You would assume the system acts as a hard barrier, right,
5:43
But international travel with miners has these really specific exploitable
5:48
blind spots. Well. Typically, yes, a minor traveling without their
5:54
legal guardians requires a notarized letter of consent. Okay, But
5:57
the scrutiny applied to those documents various, wildly depending on
6:00
the agent and the environment you're in.
6:02
Speaker 1: I see.
6:03
Speaker 2: Furthermore, when you introduce immense wealth like an eleven million
6:07
dollar apparatus, you aren't standing in the standard security line
6:11
at LAX with everyone.
6:13
Speaker 1: Else, right. You're using private aviation terminals, the FBOs exactly.
6:18
Speaker 2: You are flying charted. The physical security screening still exists,
6:22
of course, but the environmental friction is entirely.
6:24
Speaker 1: Different, completely different vibe totally.
6:26
Speaker 2: You have a manager and assistant, maybe a PR representative,
6:30
and they're handing a stack of fifteen passports to an
6:32
agent while the entourage moves through a private lounge.
6:36
Speaker 1: Just bypassing the normal checks.
6:38
Speaker 2: The sheer momentum of an operation like that obfuscates the
6:41
details the border agencies a wealthy, recognized touring musician and
6:47
his massive crew. So the granular questioning of like who
6:51
is this specific thirteen year old and where are her
6:54
parents just gets swallowed by the machinery of the entourage.
6:58
Speaker 1: So the wealth basically acts as a low vocalized reality
7:01
distortion field.
7:02
Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.
7:03
Speaker 1: The rules that apply to a normal citizen get bent
7:06
by the logistical insulation of that much money. It basically
7:10
buys you the capability to operate a completely secret compartment
7:13
of your length in broad daylight.
7:15
Speaker 2: It provides structural reinforcement for the isolation. And this dynamic
7:19
is exactly what child protection advocates focus on so.
7:22
Speaker 1: Heavily, because the system fails completely.
7:24
Speaker 2: The traditional safety nets like teachers, border agents, neighbors. They
7:30
are designed to catch anomalies in everyday, normal life, right,
7:34
they are completely ill equipped to penetrate the bubble of
7:38
a multi million dollar touring apparatus.
7:41
Speaker 1: But eventually even that bubble hits a wall the parents
7:44
realize something was deeply wrong, they did. Our sources show
7:48
that beginning in early twenty twenty four, Celeste's family reported
7:52
her missing multiple times, they were actively desperately trying to
7:57
find her.
7:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're fighting back, and this.
7:59
Speaker 1: Leads to a real critical failure point in February of twenty.
8:02
Speaker 2: Twenty four, February seventeenth to be exact, Riverside County Sheriff's
8:06
deputies managed to trace her phone records, okay, and that
8:10
cell tower data leads them directly to Burke's residence in
8:13
West Hollywood, so they go there to conduct a welfare check.
8:16
Speaker 1: So the police are physically standing at his front door.
8:19
They have phone records linking a missing middle schooler to
8:22
this specific house, and the preliminary hearing actually featured the body.
8:26
Warren camera footage from this exact moment, and it is
8:30
incredibly revealing.
8:31
Speaker 2: It's chilling.
8:32
Speaker 1: Burke doesn't panic. He answered the door, speaks calmly with
8:35
the deputies and just tells them he met the girl
8:38
only once online. He says he believes she was eighteen, right,
8:43
He says he barely knows her. The deputies hand him
8:46
a missing person's flyer and he just calmly denies knowing
8:50
where she is.
8:50
Speaker 2: And if you want to understand the legal and psychological
8:53
limitations of a welfare check, this is the textbook example.
8:57
Speaker 1: Because their hands are tied exactly.
8:59
Speaker 2: Law enforce officers operating under a welfare check have a
9:02
very narrow legal mandate.
9:04
Speaker 1: Because of the Fourth Amendment right.
9:06
Speaker 2: The Fourth Amendment protects citizens against unreasonable searches. For an
9:10
officer to force entry or escalate an investigation on the spot,
9:14
they need either a warrant, which takes a lot of time,
9:17
or exigent.
9:18
Speaker 1: Circumstances meaning they hear someone screaming.
9:20
Speaker 2: Exactly meaning they need immediate, visible proof that someone's life
9:24
is in imminent danger right then and there. But wait,
9:27
don't the phone records constitute probable cause? I mean, they
9:30
know her phone pinged at his house.
9:32
Speaker 1: You'd think so. But cell site location data is rarely
9:35
precise enough to pinpoint a specific room or even a
9:39
specific house in a dense area like West Hollywood without
9:43
triangulation over a long period of time.
9:46
Speaker 2: Oh so it just gives a general area.
9:48
Speaker 1: It gives a radius, So the police have a radius.
9:50
They knock on the door, and the person who answers
9:52
is polite, cooperative, and offers a plausible, disarming narrative.
9:57
Speaker 2: I met her once, I thought she was an adult.
9:59
Speaker 1: Right now. If the suspect is erratic, sweating, or hostile,
10:03
the officer's suspicion is validated and they might push harder.
10:07
Speaker 2: But a calm demeanor completely shuts that down.
10:09
Speaker 1: It effectively neutralizes the immediate tension. The officers lacks the
10:13
legal authority to tear his house apart based on a
10:16
localized phone ping and a completely calm denial.
10:20
Speaker 2: The psychological discipline required to maintain that level of calm
10:23
while knowing a missing child is potentially inside your house.
10:28
It's chilling, it really is.
10:29
Speaker 1: He successfully deflected the system. But Celeste does eventually return
10:34
home shortly after this, and her parents do the right thing.
10:38
They confiscate her phone.
10:39
Speaker 2: Right they realize the device is the weapon being used
10:42
against them.
10:43
Speaker 1: So they cut the digital lifeline.
10:45
Speaker 2: Which forces the digital connection to manifest in the physical
10:48
world again.
10:48
Speaker 1: Okay, walk me through this because this part is wild.
10:52
Speaker 2: So, according to prosecutors, after her parents took the phone,
10:56
Burke drove to her middle school.
10:58
Speaker 1: He physically goes there, arrived at.
11:00
Speaker 2: The perimeter of the campus, and he paid another student
11:04
one thousand dollars in cash to hand Celeste a replacement smartphone.
11:08
Speaker 1: We really need to look at the mechanics of this.
11:11
An adult man drives to a middle school, identifies a
11:15
proxy student, and uses a massive stack of cash to
11:18
bypass the parents entirely.
11:20
Speaker 2: It's brazen.
11:21
Speaker 1: How does a nineteen year old famous musician even orchestrate
11:24
a drop like that without school security or administrators intervening?
11:27
Speaker 2: Well, middle school perimeters are incredibly porous, especially during arrival
11:31
or dismissal times. There's just too much.
11:33
Speaker 1: Chaos, right, hundreds of kids everywhere.
11:36
Speaker 2: But more importantly, look at the absolute overwhelming force of
11:40
the financial leverage here. One thousand bucks to a thirteen
11:43
or fourteen year old student. One thousand dollars in cash
11:47
is an astronomical sum.
11:49
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they do anything.
11:50
Speaker 2: It buys immediate compliance and absolute secrecy. The parent attempts
11:54
a standard appropriate intervention taking away.
11:57
Speaker 1: The phone, which is parenting one on one.
11:59
Speaker 2: Right, But that parental authority is suddenly competing against an
12:03
adult who can casually drop one thousand dollars to re
12:06
establish the link within hours.
12:08
Speaker 1: It is a war of attrition. The parents literally cannot win.
12:12
The wealth just tunnels right under the walls they are
12:15
trying to build exactly. You take the phone, he buys
12:17
a new one. You report her missing. He charms the police.
12:20
The imbalance of power is just suffocating, and.
12:22
Speaker 2: That suffocating dynamic continued for months. But you know, relationships
12:27
built on that kind of extreme imbalance and secrecy eventually
12:31
fracture under their own weight. So by late November of
12:34
twenty twenty four, the relationship reportedly cooled. They essentially groke up,
12:38
but the communication didn't completely cease.
12:41
Speaker 1: The tether was maintained, and that teather finally snaps. On
12:45
April twenty two to twenty twenty five, Yes, this is
12:48
the date the prosecution identifies as the absolute catalyst for
12:52
the homicide. The tipping point, Burke and Celeste, who's now fourteen,
12:56
get into a severe argument. The prosecution alleges the argument
13:01
centered around Burke's relationships with other women, right and during
13:05
this confrontation, Celeste issues a threat. She tells him she's
13:09
going to expose the sexual nature of their relationship.
13:12
Speaker 2: She's threatening to blow it all up.
13:13
Speaker 1: She threatens to take all the digital receipts, the texts,
13:16
the photos, the timeline we just talked about and broadcast
13:19
it to the world, destroying his career, and.
13:21
Speaker 2: This is the critical junction for the prosecution's theory of motive. Okay,
13:25
the state is arguing that Burke did not view this
13:28
as a simple argument. He viewed it as an existential threat.
13:31
Speaker 1: An existential threat to the empire exactly.
13:33
Speaker 2: She was threatening to take the hidden timeline and merge
13:36
it with the public eleven point five million dollar timeline.
13:40
Speaker 1: Which means it's over for him.
13:41
Speaker 2: If she speaks, the empire collapses and he likely faces
13:45
severe criminal charges for the statutory offenses.
13:48
Speaker 1: So the next day, April twenty three, twenty twenty five,
13:52
the logistical gear start turning. Burke orders an uber to
13:56
pick Celeste up from her home in Lake Elsinore and
14:00
transporter to his rental home in the Hollywood Hills.
14:02
Speaker 2: Right.
14:03
Speaker 1: She arrives that evening, and the prosecution lays out an
14:07
incredibly tight, brutal sequence of events.
14:10
Speaker 2: It's a very narrow window.
14:12
Speaker 1: They state that shortly after she arrives, around ten point
14:15
ten PM, Burke stabs her multiple times with a sharp weapon.
14:20
The autopsy confirms the cause of death is multiple penetrating injuries.
14:24
Speaker 2: And the timeline here is the foundation for the specific
14:27
charges the state is bringing. They aren't just pursuing a
14:29
standard murder charge, right, It's more severe. They are charging
14:32
them with first degree murder accompanied by three special circumstances
14:36
under California law.
14:37
Speaker 1: Break down those special circumstances for us, because that legal
14:39
distinction changes everything about the potential penalty, doesn't it.
14:42
Speaker 2: It changes everything. A special circumstance elevates a first degree
14:46
murder to a capital offense. So the first one they
14:49
attached is lying in wait. They are arguing, this wasn't
14:54
a crime of spontaneous passion that just escalated from an
14:57
argument in the living room. Because the uber right, by
15:01
utilizing the uber app to arrange her transportation from a
15:04
separate county specifically to his location under false pretenses, he
15:09
lured her into a vulnerable position.
15:12
Speaker 1: The digital receipt of the uber ride is the mechanism
15:15
that proves premeditation exactly.
15:17
Speaker 2: It proves lying in wait.
15:18
Speaker 1: He literally arranged the delivery of the victim precisely.
15:21
Speaker 2: Now, the second special circumstance is murder for financial gain, okay.
15:26
Speaker 1: Tying back to the eleven million.
15:28
Speaker 2: Right, the state argues the primary motive was to protect
15:31
the revenue stream of his music catalog and his touring
15:34
and the third. The third is murder of a witness
15:37
because she had threatened to expose the statutory crimes. She
15:41
was technically the sole witness to an uncharged felony, and
15:45
he eliminated her to prevent that testimony.
15:47
Speaker 1: And the state's argument for this extreme level of cold
15:50
calculation hinges on what happens exactly twenty.
15:53
Speaker 2: Minutes later, right the ten point thirty text.
15:55
Speaker 1: Right, Because at ten thirty pm, just twenty minutes after
15:59
prosecutors say he watched a fourteen year old bleed to
16:01
death from multiple stab wounds, Burke sends a text message
16:05
to her phone. He asks her where she is.
16:08
Speaker 2: And the prosecution characterizes this as the immediate initiation of
16:12
a digital.
16:13
Speaker 1: Cover up, because she's already gone.
16:15
Speaker 2: According to their forensic timeline, her phone activity had permanently ceased.
16:18
By that point, she was already dead.
16:20
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting to me. Does sending
16:23
a text message twenty minutes after a brutal homicide point
16:26
to a calculated mastermind or does it point to someone
16:30
who is utterly panicking and making irrational decisions. It's a
16:33
great question because shifting your cognitive load from physical violence
16:37
to typing out a fake alibi on a screen that
16:41
requires a massive psychological pivot.
16:43
Speaker 2: It does. It is a question of cognitive compartmentalization. When
16:46
a massive trauma or violent act occurs, the brain is
16:49
flooded with adrenaline. For someone to immediately pivot to staging
16:53
a digital alibi, it suggests an intrinsic understanding of the
16:57
surveillance state we live in.
16:59
Speaker 1: He knew they would look the phone records.
17:00
Speaker 2: He knew that eventually law enforcement would subpoena his cellular data,
17:05
so he was planting a flag in the server logs
17:07
that said, look, I was looking for her. I didn't
17:10
know where she was.
17:11
Speaker 1: It'snipulation tactic.
17:12
Speaker 2: It does an attempt to manipulate the digital reality, because
17:16
the digital reality is all that investigators usually have to
17:18
go on.
17:19
Speaker 1: Initially, you use an app to facilitate the victim's arrival.
17:23
You use a text to build the alibi. The modern
17:27
conveniences that allow us to order takeout or find a
17:30
ride are the exact same mechanisms being weaponized here exactly.
17:34
But as clever as a digital alibi might seem in
17:36
the moment, the physical reality of a crime scene doesn't
17:40
just disappear.
17:41
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't, and this brings us to the logistical
17:44
nightmare of the aftermath, the cover up, the shift from
17:46
committing the act to the desperate attempt to manage the
17:49
physical evidence.
17:50
Speaker 1: And the details from the preliminary hearing regarding this phase
17:53
are incredibly grim and I want to emphasize to you
17:56
the listener, that we are exploring this forensic reality is
18:00
the specific basis for the unlawful mutilation charge.
18:04
Speaker 2: Right, It's essential to the legal case.
18:06
Speaker 1: Within hours of the murder, prosecutors outline a massive online
18:10
purchasing spree. Burke allegedly used aliases Trevion Davis and Victoria
18:16
Mendez two order supplies.
18:18
Speaker 2: And the digital forensics of alias purchasing are fascinating. People
18:22
assume a fake name provides anonymity like it's a shield, right,
18:26
But investigators don't stop at the name. They subpoena the
18:29
e commerce platform for the IP address used to place
18:32
the order.
18:33
Speaker 1: They get the MAC address of the device.
18:35
Speaker 2: They get the financial routing numbers used to pay for it,
18:37
and the specific delivery tracking data that shows exactly what
18:40
time the courier dropped the packages at the Hollywood Hills address.
18:43
Speaker 1: So the alias is entirely useless against that level of
18:46
back end data. It's meaningless, and the items he was
18:48
ordering under these aliases paint a horrifying picture of intent.
18:52
Speaker 2: They really do.
18:53
Speaker 1: The shopping list included two chainsaws, an inflatable blue wading pool,
18:58
a cadaver or body bag, heavy duty laundry bags, a shovel,
19:02
which record show arrived on April twenty fourth, a mop in,
19:07
a metal burn cage designed for incinerating yard waste or trash.
19:11
Speaker 2: He was actively buying the tools to erase a human
19:13
being from existence.
19:14
Speaker 1: But the friction between a plan and the physical execution
19:18
of that plan is immense, isn't it?
19:20
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely? The source material notes that during the preliminary hearing,
19:23
testimony confirmed the burn cage was never actually used.
19:27
Speaker 1: Why the pivot. If you buy a burn cage, your
19:30
plan is incineration, Why abandon that and pivot to dismemberment
19:35
and containment?
19:36
Speaker 2: Because burning a human body is logistically incredibly difficult, right.
19:40
It requires sustained extreme temperatures, often exceeding fifteen hundred degrees
19:45
fahrenheit for several.
19:47
Speaker 1: Hours, and the yard cage can't do that.
19:48
Speaker 2: No, a standard yard burn cage cannot efficiently achieve or
19:52
maintain that thermal mass. Furthermore, the smoke, the smell of
19:57
accelerating agents, and the odor of biological and cineration in
20:00
a residential neighborhood like the Hollywood.
20:02
Speaker 1: Hills, well the neighbors with COL nine won one.
20:04
Speaker 2: Immediately exactly, would immediately trigger emergency calls. The physical environment
20:08
rejected his initial plan. He realized incineration was impossible without
20:12
drawing a massive.
20:13
Speaker 1: Response, so he pivots to the waiting pool and the chainsaws.
20:16
And the prosecution has to prove not just that he
20:18
bought these items, but how they were used.
20:21
Speaker 2: Right right, They have to link the online purchase to
20:24
the physical act of mutilation.
20:25
Speaker 1: And they do this through trace evidence analysis.
20:28
Speaker 2: Yes, when a body is dismembered using a high velocity
20:31
tool like a chainsaw, the mechanical force doesn't just cut
20:34
bone and tissue. It aggressively throws debris.
20:37
Speaker 1: It creates massive splatter.
20:38
Speaker 2: Which is why he allegedly set up the inflatable blue
20:41
waiting pool inside the garage to act as a containment
20:45
vessel for the biological evidence catches the splatter exactly, But
20:49
chainsaws also generate significant kickback and physical destruction of the
20:53
surrounding environment. So during the autopsy, forensic pathologists found microscopic
20:58
pieces of blue plastic embedded directly into the severed tissue
21:02
of the victim's knee.
21:03
Speaker 1: If we connect this to the bigger picture, how do
21:06
you match a generic piece of blue plastic from a
21:08
knee to one specific wading pool ordered under an alias.
21:12
Speaker 2: Through polymer analysis? OK, forensic labs use techniques like Fourier
21:16
transform infrared spectroscopy or FTIR. Wow, it doesn't just say
21:21
this is plastic. It identifies the exact chemical signature, the
21:25
specific dyes used, and the manufacturing inconsistencies of the polymer.
21:30
Speaker 1: So it's like a fingerprint for the plastic exactly.
21:33
Speaker 2: They can match the plastic in the wound track directly
21:36
to the batch of plastic used to manufacture that specific
21:39
brand of wading pool delivered to his house.
21:41
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
21:42
Speaker 2: The microscopic trace evidence forms an unbreakable chain connecting the
21:46
digital purchase to the physical mutilation in the garage.
21:49
Speaker 1: The reality of what happened in that garage is staggering.
21:52
The cord documents describe the remains being separated the head
21:56
and torso were placed into one bag. The arms and
21:59
light legs, which were sawed into multiple pieces at the
22:02
knee caps and arms severed at the elbow were placed
22:05
into another heavy duty bag. And there is a specific
22:09
targeted element to this mutilation that goes beyond simple disposal.
22:13
It goes to identification.
22:15
Speaker 2: Right. The prosecution highlighted a very specific detail regarding their tattoos.
22:19
Celeste had a tattoo that read sh on one of
22:22
her fingers. Burke had a matching tattoo along with the
22:25
name Celeste, inked and red on his own finger, and.
22:28
Speaker 1: When her remains were analyzed, the examiners noted that two
22:32
of her fingers were missing.
22:33
Speaker 2: Yes, the state is arguing this was a surgical attempt
22:36
to remove the physical identifier that inextricably linked her to him.
22:40
Speaker 1: It's the physical manifestation of the ten thirty PM text
22:44
message exactly. He is trying to sever the digital link,
22:47
and he is trying to literally hack away the physical link.
22:50
Speaker 2: But again, destroying physical evidence is chaotic. He abandoned the
22:53
burn cage. He realizes he cannot leave the remains in
22:57
the garage forever. Right, the containment strategy ultimately requires transportation
23:01
and a secondary disposal site.
23:03
Speaker 1: Which brings us to the mechanism that unravels the entire
23:06
cover up. The bag containing the remains are loaded into
23:09
fronk the front of Burke's Tesla Model X. Prosecutors presented
23:14
surveillance video that allegedly shows him as the last person
23:17
to drive the vehicle. But then, and this is wild,
23:21
the plan seemingly just stops. He just leaves the car.
23:24
Speaker 2: He walks away.
23:25
Speaker 1: The Tesla is abandoned, or at least parked, in a
23:27
location where it eventually gets towed to a municipal lot
23:30
in Hollywood.
23:31
Speaker 2: And this introduces the most agonizing timeline of the entire case.
23:35
The car sits in a tow yard in the southern
23:37
California heat for roughly four and a half months.
23:40
Speaker 1: I genuinely do not understand how this happens.
23:42
Speaker 2: It's a huge gap.
23:43
Speaker 1: A Tesla Model X is an incredibly expensive piece of technology.
23:48
It's essentially a rolling computer. It have an app, it
23:51
tracks its own GPS location constantly. How does a high
23:55
profile musician with a massive management team abandon a luxury
23:59
car tied to a missing person's case for over one
24:02
hundred days without someone pulling an alarm.
24:04
Speaker 2: It seems impossible.
24:06
Speaker 1: Why doesn't the management team track the car? Why don't
24:08
the police ping the VIN number?
24:10
Speaker 2: Well, it speaks to the massive blind spots and municipal bureaucracy.
24:13
Speaker 1: Okay, explain that.
24:14
Speaker 2: First, regarding the technology, a Tesla's GPS tracking relies on
24:19
the vehicle's high voltage battery and the twelve volt subsystem.
24:22
Speaker 1: Right, it needs power.
24:23
Speaker 2: If a car sits in a lot for weeks without
24:26
being charged, the systems enter a deep sleep mode to
24:29
preserve battery, and eventually it dies entirely. It stops pinging
24:33
the app. So this goes dark, completely dark. Second, regarding
24:37
his team, if you are managing an erratic, high net
24:39
worth young adult and he says he lost his car
24:42
or left it somewhere, you might just write it off
24:44
as reckless behavior.
24:46
Speaker 1: Oh, he's just being a rock star.
24:47
Speaker 2: Right, You don't immediately assume it's a crime scene. You
24:49
just think he's being irresponsible.
24:51
Speaker 1: But what about the police. She is missing. They know
24:55
he was associated with her from the welfare check. Don't
24:57
they run his plates?
24:58
Speaker 2: If the vehicle was toe mode for a standard parking violation,
25:02
say expired registration parking in a red zone or street sweeping.
25:07
It is impounded by a private or municipal tow company,
25:11
not the police evidence unit.
25:12
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
25:13
Speaker 2: The towdriver simply logs the VIN into a local database,
25:17
hooks it up, and drops it in a massive lot
25:20
with hundreds of other.
25:20
Speaker 1: Cars so they don't cross reference it.
25:22
Speaker 2: Unless a detective specifically enters that exact license plate or
25:26
VIN into a statewide hot list, flagging it for a felony.
25:29
Speaker 1: Hold.
25:31
Speaker 2: The towyard has absolutely no idea what they have.
25:33
Speaker 1: It's just a car taking up space.
25:35
Speaker 2: The car just enters a bureaucratic holding pattern, waiting for
25:38
the owner to pay the impound fees. The sheer incompetence
25:42
of the city's parking infrastructure inadvertently acted as the perfect concealment.
25:47
Speaker 1: It just sat there, baking in the sun, lost in
25:49
the paperwork, until September eighth, twenty twenty five. And I
25:53
want you listening right now to just pause and consider
25:57
the sheer cruelty of this discovery date. Celeste was born
26:00
on September seventh, twenty ten. Yeah, the day she was
26:04
finally discovered was the day after she would have turned
26:06
fifteen years old.
26:07
Speaker 2: It's heartbreaking.
26:08
Speaker 1: Workers at the till yard finally noticed a foul odor
26:11
and a massive swarm of flies congregating around the front
26:13
of the tesla.
26:14
Speaker 2: A LAPD robbery. Homicide detective Joshua Byers was the responding
26:18
officer right during the preliminary hearing. His testimony was described
26:22
as strictly clinical, which is often how season homicide detectives
26:25
process trauma.
26:26
Speaker 1: On the stand they have to detach they do.
26:28
Speaker 2: He detailed opening the front trunk and finding the partially
26:31
unzipped black body bag containing the torso and head and
26:35
the secondary plastic tash bag containing the severed limbs.
26:38
Speaker 1: Detective Buyers told the court there was quite a bit
26:41
of decomposition. He noted that the facial features were completely
26:45
unrecognizable due to the decay. He testified to the presence
26:49
of insects, maggots, and flies throughout remains.
26:52
Speaker 2: And while he is delivering this sterile scientific assessment, the
26:56
source material notes that Celeste's family is seated just feet
27:00
away in the courtroom gallery, crying.
27:01
Speaker 1: They're listening to this, they're watching the graphic photos being
27:04
entered into evidence.
27:05
Speaker 2: The translation of human tragedy into forensic data is incredibly harsh,
27:10
but that data is what establishes the timeline. How So,
27:13
forensic entomology, the study of the life cycles of the
27:16
insects present on the remains, allows medical examiners to work
27:20
backward ah the bugs right. By analyzing the maturation stages
27:24
of the blowflies and maggots found in the trunk, they
27:26
can corroborate the prosecution's timeline that the death occurred in
27:30
late April, months prior to the discovery, and.
27:33
Speaker 1: The physical evidence doesn't stop at the car. Once the
27:36
remains are identified, the warrants, Cascade investigators find DNA consistent
27:41
with Celeste in the blood stains on the floor of
27:43
the Hollywood.
27:44
Speaker 2: Hills garage, matching the location of the Blue wading pool exactly.
27:48
Speaker 1: They synthesize the cell phone location data.
27:50
Speaker 2: And they found one more piece of physical evidence that
27:53
demonstrates the sheer scale of the attempted erasure.
27:56
Speaker 1: The passport.
27:57
Speaker 2: Yes, a US passport card along to Celeste, was recovered
28:01
near Lake Kachuma in Santa Barbara County.
28:04
Speaker 1: Lake Kachuma is over one hundred miles away from the
28:07
Hollywood Hills. Yes.
28:08
Speaker 2: The prosecution used cellular location data to show that Burke
28:12
traveled to this isolated area multiple times in the days
28:15
or weeks falling.
28:16
Speaker 1: The homicide unbelievable.
28:17
Speaker 2: The recovery of the passport card suggests he was systematically
28:21
dismantling her identity, throwing pieces of physical evidence out the
28:25
window across different jurisdictions to confuse any potential investigation.
28:29
Speaker 1: He is literally scattering the evidence of her life across
28:33
southern California. And all of this overwhelming physical evidence backed
28:38
by the digital data, brings us to the current legal battle.
28:43
We are out of the garage and into the courtroom
28:45
of Judge charleyne Olmeadow. This is a preliminary hearing. It
28:50
is crucial to understand the legal mechanics at play here
28:53
because the rules of engagement in a preliminary hearing are
28:56
vastly different from a full jury trial.
28:58
Speaker 2: Vastly different. The bird of proof is entirely different.
29:01
Speaker 1: Break that down for us.
29:02
Speaker 2: In a criminal trial, the prosecution must convince twelve jurors
29:06
of the defendant's guilt beyond a.
29:08
Speaker 1: Reasonable doubt, the highest standard.
29:10
Speaker 2: It is the highest standard in the legal system. If
29:12
there's any logical alternative explanation, the jury must acquit. But
29:15
a preliminary hearing does not decide guilt. It is a
29:19
gatekeeping procedure.
29:20
Speaker 1: Okay.
29:20
Speaker 2: The judge alone sits on the bench and listens to
29:23
the evidence to determine one thing. Is there a probable cause?
29:27
Speaker 1: Meaning does the state have enough to simply justify having
29:30
a trial in the first place?
29:31
Speaker 2: Exactly? The judge only needs to answer two questions affirmatively,
29:36
one was a crime committed? And two is there a
29:40
strong suspicion a reasonable belief that the defendant sitting in
29:44
the room is the person who committed it?
29:47
Speaker 1: So they don't need a slam dunk yet.
29:48
Speaker 2: No, the prosecution doesn't have to show every single card
29:51
they hold. They don't have to preemptively destroy every possible
29:55
defense theory. They just have to clear a relatively low
29:58
evidentiary hurdle to have the def bound over for trial.
30:02
Speaker 1: Burke sits there and pleads not guilty to all charges.
30:05
But given the mountain of forensic evidence, the DNA, the
30:09
cell tower data, the ALIAS purchases, the trace plastics in
30:12
the wound, how does his defense team, led by high
30:15
profile attorney Blair Burke, even begin to respond.
30:18
Speaker 2: It feels like an insurmountable wall of facts, doesn't it Totally?
30:21
It is a massive challenge, But the defense's strategy during
30:24
cross examination reveals how they plan to attack the narrative.
30:27
They aren't currently trying to prove an alternate killer.
30:30
Speaker 1: Oh they aren't.
30:31
Speaker 2: No, they are looking for the structural weaknesses in the
30:34
state's timeline and intent. Attorney Blair Burke focused intently on
30:39
two specific areas during the hearing. First, she hammered on
30:43
the body camera footage from the February twenty twenty four
30:45
welfare check.
30:47
Speaker 1: Why focus on the moment the police were at his door.
30:49
Speaker 2: Because the prosecution is painting him as a cold, calculating
30:53
mastermind who lured a victim and meticulously covered his tracks.
30:58
By highlighting his calm, co co operative demeanor during the
31:01
welfare check, the defense is planting a seed. They are
31:04
suggesting his behavior doesn't align with the profile of a
31:08
panicked killer.
31:09
Speaker 1: I see.
31:09
Speaker 2: They want to introduce the idea that his confusion was genuine,
31:13
that he wasn't orchestrating a massive conspiracy, but perhaps caught
31:16
up in a situation he didn't understand.
31:18
Speaker 1: But the more baffling defense tactic was their focus on
31:20
the burn cage. The defense made sure to get witnesses
31:23
to confirm on the record that the burn cage ordered
31:25
under the alias was never used. Why would the defense
31:29
highlight and item their client bought to burn a.
31:31
Speaker 2: Body to fracture the prosecution's narrative of continuous calculated premeditation.
31:37
Speaker 1: Okay, how does that work?
31:38
Speaker 2: The state says he ordered all these items as part
31:41
of a master plan to mutilate and destroy the evidence.
31:44
The defense points out that he didn't use the primary
31:47
tool of destruction. By isolating the unused burn cage, they
31:52
introduce a sliver of reasonable doubt about his actual intentions.
31:56
The defense has publicly stated that when the full trial occurs,
32:00
the evidence will show he did not kill her and
32:03
was not the underlying cause of her death.
32:05
Speaker 1: Wait, how can they argue he wasn't the cause of
32:08
death when the victim has multiple stab wounds and was dismembered.
32:12
Are they going to argue someone else was in the house?
32:14
Speaker 2: That is the open question. They could argue a third
32:17
party was present, right, They could attempt to argue that
32:19
an altercation occurred that resulted in an accidental death and
32:23
the subsequent cover up was an act of extreme panic
32:26
rather than premeditated murder.
32:27
Speaker 1: Wow.
32:28
Speaker 2: By focusing on the unused burn cage. They are trying
32:31
to show that the prosecution's narrative of a perfectly executed,
32:34
premeditated plan is flawed. If the plan was flawed, perhaps
32:38
the assumption of murder is also flawed.
32:41
Speaker 1: It is a massive risk, and legally speaking, the decision
32:45
to even have this preliminary hearing was a calculated risk
32:48
by the defense.
32:49
Speaker 2: It really was.
32:50
Speaker 1: Often defense attorneys will advise their clients to waive the
32:54
preliminary hearing entirely. Why did they push for an accelerated
32:58
hearing here knowing it would all these horrific details to
33:01
the public.
33:02
Speaker 2: It is an aggressive tactical maneuver. By forcing the preliminary hearing,
33:06
the defense forces the prosecution's key witnesses like the lead
33:11
detective and the medical examiner, to testify under oath ah.
33:15
It locks them in exactly, This locks them into their statements.
33:18
If a detective says something on the stand at the
33:21
prelim and then changes their theory slightly at the actual
33:24
trial a year later, the defense can use the preliminary
33:27
transcript to impeach their credibility.
33:30
Speaker 1: So they're essentially paying the price of terrible public relations
33:34
right now to gather vital intelligence on the state's exact
33:37
arguments for the main trial.
33:39
Speaker 2: They are looking at the state's hand, but the stakes
33:41
of this trial are absolute.
33:43
Speaker 1: If Burke is convicted of first degree murder with those
33:46
special circumstances lying in weight, financial gain, and killing a witness,
33:51
he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without
33:54
the possibility of parole or the death penalty.
33:57
Speaker 2: It is worth noting the current political reality in California
34:00
regarding capital punishment.
34:02
Speaker 1: Though right the moratorium, Yes.
34:04
Speaker 2: The state currently operates under a gubernatorial moratorium on executions.
34:08
The death chamber at San Quentin has been dismantled and
34:11
no one is actively being executed.
34:13
Speaker 1: But the penalty still exists on paper exactly.
34:16
Speaker 2: The death penalty remains on the books as a legal sentence.
34:19
Prosecutors can still seek it and juries can still hand
34:22
it down. It simply means the defendant joins the hundreds
34:26
of others on death row in a state of suspended animation,
34:29
and the.
34:29
Speaker 1: Collateral damage of this case has already detonated. Across the
34:32
music industry, the eleven point five million dollar empire is frozen.
34:37
Interscope Records and their promotional partners immediately paused all activity
34:41
around d forty d's catalog once the scale of the
34:44
investigation became public.
34:45
Speaker 2: Which brings us to the broader systemic implications here, because
34:49
when you step back from the granular forensic details of
34:52
the preliminary hearing, you are looking at a massive failure
34:56
of structural oversight.
34:58
Speaker 1: That is the most haunting part of this entire deep dive.
35:01
It is you have a corporate apparatus, managers, agents, labels
35:06
profiting off an artist. At what point does the industry
35:09
have a fiduciary or moral responsibility to monitor the environment
35:14
they are funding.
35:14
Speaker 2: That's the million dollar question.
35:16
Speaker 1: When a label injects millions of dollars into a nineteen
35:19
year old's life, granting them the power to charter flights
35:22
and bypass security protocols, are they complicit when those exact
35:26
resources are used to isolate a minor.
35:29
Speaker 2: That is the reckoning the industry is facing right now.
35:31
But it is an even more devastating reality check for
35:35
child protection.
35:36
Speaker 1: Advocates because the timeline is just failure after failure exactly.
35:39
Speaker 2: They look at the timeline we just discussed, the initial
35:42
contact on discord at age eleven, the escalation to sexual
35:45
activity by age thirteen, the parents desperately filing missing persons reports.
35:50
Speaker 1: The police standing in his front door in West Hollywood.
35:53
Speaker 2: At every single intersection, the systems designed to act as
35:56
guardrails completely failed to interpret the digital warning stone or
36:00
penetrate the armor of his wealth.
36:02
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? The guardrails were useless
36:05
against the momentum of the algorithm, and the cash totally useless.
36:09
To synthesize what we've covered today, we started by looking
36:12
at a modern success story, a teenager who leveraged the
36:15
vulnerability of the Internet to become a global indie pop sensation,
36:20
but that public assent allegedly served as a smoke screen
36:23
for a dark, predatory timeline, a secret life cultivated through
36:28
the exact same social apps that built his fan base,
36:31
leading to an argument that threatened his empire, and.
36:34
Speaker 2: To protect that empire, the prosecution alleges he lured a
36:37
fourteen year old girl, committed a calculated homicide, and initiated
36:41
a chaotic, macabre cover up involving aliases, chainsaws, and the
36:46
trunk of an abandoned luxury car.
36:48
Speaker 1: While the defense has yet to mount their full case
36:50
of trial, the sheer density of the evidence presented by
36:53
the state confirms a terrifying modern reality.
36:56
Speaker 2: It does. The physical world and the digital world are
36:59
now comple completely intertwined. You cannot manipulate one without leaving permanent,
37:04
catastrophic fractures in the.
37:05
Speaker 1: Other, which leaves you with a thought that should change
37:08
how you look at your own phone. Absolutely, we use
37:11
these tools every day. We request a neuber, we order
37:14
supplies on Amazon, we sent a quick text to say
37:16
we are running late. We view these actions as frictionless
37:19
conveniences that evaporate the second we close the app.
37:23
Speaker 2: But they don't evaporate. No.
37:25
Speaker 1: In this courtroom, those exact same tools were exposed as permanent,
37:29
unblinking surveillance mechanisms. They were allegedly weaponized to groom, to lure,
37:34
to alibi, and to attempt to erase a human life.
37:37
Speaker 2: It's chilling.
37:38
Speaker 1: It forces you to wonder in an era where your location,
37:42
your purchases, and your private messages are instantly logged on
37:45
a server farm Somewhere's the very concept of a secret
37:48
life just a temporary illusion, waiting for the right subpoena
37:52
to shatter it completely.
37:54
Speaker 2: It is a profound realization. Privacy is a luxury that
37:57
no longer truly exists regardless of how much money you
38:00
used to try and buy it.
38:01
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on this deep dive. We
38:03
know the mechanics of this case were brutal to listen to,
38:06
but understanding how these systems fail and how digital footprints
38:09
lead to physical realities is vital. Keep questioning the narratives
38:13
behind the media you consume and we will catch you
38:15
next time.