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Criminally Obsessed
Celeste's Missing Fingers & Blue Bits: Death Investigator Dissects Autopsy Report
00:44:09
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everyone, I'm Ann Emerson and this is Criminally Obsessed. Celeste Rivas Hernandez was only 14 years old when she was murdered. 14. Her braces were still on her teeth when her body was found in a Tesla registered to the singer David. That was back in September. Now the medical examiner's report is out and it tells part of the story of what happened to her. It's horrific to read.
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B
It bespeaks a certain coldness, callousness and a psychopathy.
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A
Looking at it from an investigative standpoint, there are some things that people might miss. But not Barbara Butcher. She's a forensic scientist and a death investigator. And yes, her name is really Butcher. Be sure to like and subscribe to Criminally Obsessed so you don't miss any of the updates to this story. I've got one question that's literally woke me up in the middle of the night last night. Why were there blue plastic bits around the dismemberment sites?
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B
I know, that's very interesting, isn't it?
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A
From the blue bits of plastic to the cuts in her leggings, to her missing fingers.
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B
That bothers me that she was possibly cut before she was dead.
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A
Barbara and I put it all together to find out what it means as David Burke remains behind bars charged with Celeste's murder.
- [01:24]
B
It's just so disturbing to me and it speaks to the character of this suspect. It chills me to think about what kind of person this is.
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A
Let's get into it. Barbara Butcher, it is so good to see you again. How are you?
- [01:46]
B
I'm great, Ann. It's very good to see you. It's been so since crimecon last year that we last met.
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A
How many cases have you worked? It's something extraordinary, I think.
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B
In a 10 year period, I worked 5,500 cases, including 680 homicides.
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A
You were on top of my mind as I was going through this extraordinary medical examiner's report. It had been under seal, seal since I think, November.
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B
Yeah, that was at the request of the police. The medical examiner, of course, wants to release that autopsy report as quickly as possible. But the police requested and indeed ordered that it be held until they had been able to glean from all the evidence found on the autopsy how that related to the case. It gives them a certain amount of investigative power to. To not have a potential suspect know what they've seen.
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A
One of the things that just hit me right off the bat too, Barbara, was how young our victim is. I mean, she was so young, Barbara, she still had braces.
- [02:55]
B
Yeah. You know that I was reading the autopsy report again today and the first thing that struck me was that their relationship, their, the sexual abuse that occurred, let's call it what it is, started when she was 13 years old. She was 5 foot 2, 71 pounds. She's a little girl. Little girl and she wore braces. I mean she was, she was literally a baby. And this makes it so much more awful. And you know, you'll see in the, in the autopsy report they say that she's 15 years old. Now that's based on the fact that she was found the day after her birthday. Right. She was 15 then. But when this horrific murder took place, she was 14 years old. Just God awful.
- [03:50]
A
At 14 there is absolutely no life skills. You are literally just learning to put one foot in front of the other at that point.
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B
You know, particularly, I guess I would call it just disturbing is the fact of anyone having sex with a 13 year old girl, a grown man. It's just so disturbing to me and it speaks to the character of this suspect. And we still have to call him a suspect, he's been indicted. But yeah, it just, it chills me to think about what, what kind of person this is now. You know, I noticed something interesting today and that is that she first, she was gone as of April 23rd when she went to the house of this David Burke. The DA stated that the homicide occurred on May 5th. That means he has some kind of information that she was either heard from by someone or someone. She got a text, she texted somebody, they have some kind of information that tells US this was May 5th. And I also note that this car, this Tesla, was on the city streets of LA and noticed by a passerby who smelled something awful and that was called in. The passerby noticed this, called it into the traffic department or the police, police department. And a traffic agent came by and cited the car. You know, put a ticket on it, it was away two days later. I believe this was in September. And then she's found later. So it was a long time for a body to be out in the Los Angeles heat and it was record heat during that time. So it particularly hurts me that her poor little body was so decomposed in such a gruesome and awful way. So disrespectful, so cruel. So these are the things that hit
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A
me when you see someone that's found not only decomposing but dismembered like she was. What does this tell you about the person who did this to her?
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B
Psychopath, you know, to dismember a human body. I suppose in this instance it was for convenience when the medical examiner's investigator showed up on scene. You know, the car was in a police impound lot looking in the trunk. The medical legal investigator, Karen Tapia, I believe is her name, she noted that it was a black body bag, double zippered with handles. So this is a heavy duty kind of body bag used often to take away multiple bodies from disasters. It's not an ordinary body bag, it's a transport bag, but you can buy on online. And beneath that was a black plastic trash bag sealed up and containing her limbs. In the body bag was her torso and her head. In the trash bag were her arms and legs dismembered with some kind of cutting edge. And that's an interesting thing I don't see here. I want to see what the forensic anthropologist says about the tool marks on the bone.
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A
Right.
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B
They tell you so much. And that is, we look at the bone where the cut occurred and we can see was it saw toothed like a, like an ordinary saw? Was it a machete which leave very marked, you know, some splintering and a heavy break, or was it a chainsaw which leaves its own particular marks? We don't see that in the report yet. And I know it takes some time for forensic anthropology to come to their conclusions, but it, it bespeaks a certain coldness, callousness, and a psychopathy to chop up a little grown pieces. The other thing I noted in the, in the report of the medical examiner's investigator was that the, on the left hand, the ring finger and pinky were mutilated and missing.
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A
So they were missing, Barbara. They're not even there. They're not, they're not even in the bag with all of the body parts like the, the limbs.
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B
And I noticed the choice of the word mutilated. So we have a dismemberment which is very technical, very clinical in a way, and then mutilated. Okay. Fact that those fingers are not there tells me something horrible. I was surmised that those were removed from her for some reason during her killing. Was it that she had rings on that he couldn't get off? Was it?
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A
And it was the ring finger. It was the left ring finger.
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B
Yeah. And the pinky.
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A
And the pinky, yeah. That bothered me tremendously because to me it meant had he given her something that, that promised something, you know, some, some kind of friendship or engagement ring or something that she was wearing that had to be removed?
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B
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
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A
But you think it might have happened before? Before the actual. Possibly. Like we've been kind of, I've been kind of talking about this and trying to use sort of your terms like the anti mortem, the perimortem, the postmortem. Do you think this was sort of that time during the killing or before the killing?
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B
Well, just the fact that the investigator used the term mutilated makes me think, Perry, mortem in the, in the time of her death?
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A
As a part of the killing, yeah.
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B
There's something else. Now, she has two fatal stab wounds. One is to the liver and it's sharp. So I'm going to say it's likely a knife, probably a single edged, based on the description here. And yeah, you can see this now on this lower stab wound, it would be to my left, to the decedent's right. There's a defect there that goes into the liver. Now that's going to cause a lot of bleeding. Right. So that, that's a potentially fatal wound.
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A
What Barbara's showing us right now is the actual autopsy reports. Right. So these are the illustrations that were at the time of autopsy. This is fascinating.
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B
So on her left side, high up on the chest, just below the nipple, we see another stab wound. And this one is interesting. It goes between the ribs into the pleural space. In other words, your lungs are held in a sealed container, in a sense. And once that container is pierced, air rushes in and the lung collapses. So that would cause a terrible kind of suffocation, asphyxia. And interestingly, the cortical surfaces of the ribs are both, we call it disrupted. In other words, there's, there's marks on them. And the cortical surface is the outer surface of your bone. It's very hard and that's where your weight is supported. So those are very strong, dense areas of the bone, meaning that whatever she was stabbed with was heavy enough and sharp enough to cut into those ribs, into that bone. So, and the knife was not, let me put it this way, it was not just slipped in, it had to be stabbed in with enough force to cut that bone. Now something else I noted, this shows that there are other shallow cuts. Notice on the back view, that would be her. Right. There are multiple defects. One inch to, I think one and three quarter inches. In other words, small stab wounds, I think is what they're saying here. So not fatal wounds, but stab wounds here. And there is an abrasion, there's multiple abrasions on her hand on the right dorsal surface. You know, up here, multiple linear abrasions. Does that mean she was dragged? Does that mean something else happened to her? Some other kind of wound? I don't really know, but there are small defects in the skin, sharp defects. So was she stabbed multiple times? That sounds torturous to me, the fact that it just.
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A
Yeah, no, it is. I mean, really, it tells a story, doesn't it? It tells you story of, like when you're looking at this, you're. You're going back into what happened, right?
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B
Like. Yeah, yeah.
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A
You're, you're, you're taking us on that day.
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B
Yeah. And, you know, let's look for a moment here. You'll see the lines on the legs of how she was dismembered and on the arms, too. Now, there are many different kinds of dismemberment. The most professional kind, if you'll allow me to use that term, is when the joint is disarticulated. In other words, like a surgeon, a sharp knife is placed in the joint and they cut through the tendons and through the skin and the flesh, and that limb comes off fairly easily. This the location of the cut. You know, partway down the arm, partway down the leg. You cut at the hips and then cut below the knees. This is what I call hacking. Just hacking the pieces. Could be anything from a saw, chainsaw, an axe, machete. And I'm very interested to see what the forensic anthropologist says about the two marks. Now, we know that a chainsaw was found at the home of Burke. That's correct. But it appeared to be unused in whatever way. So we don't know what was used to dismember this girl. We're not certain what caused her wounds, but I'm betting on a shark knife because they were smooth edges.
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A
The wounds, they were smooth edges. The wounds to her body or to the dismemberment? The dismemberment was more like a hacking job. Is that what you're saying? Would that be something different?
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B
That's. Yeah, that's correct. And then the. The stab wounds to her body appear to be from a sharp knife because they have smooth edges. There are other ways to stab a body. And I notice on the autopsy report they said multiple cause of death was multiple penetrating injuries. Manner of death is a homicide. And how injury occurred was with objects. That's an interesting term. Now, part of this is because she was so very, very decomposed. It was really terrible. She was partially liquefied, partially skeletonized. There were. It was extensive maggot activity.
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A
And that would have happened if she was left out. I mean, she couldn't be sealed up in something for, for there to be insects, could she?
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B
That's a very interesting question. Usually if someone is instantly put in, you know, if they're murdered and then they're instantly put into a body bag and their dismembered limbs are instantly put into a trash bag, that would likely prevent this insect activity. So what we can do is look at the development stages we have. First we get eggs laid by flies, then they become maggots, then they become poopa, where they crawl off the body into another area and hatch again into flies. And based on the number of these areas where we find poopa or maggots, we can tell that the body was outside somewhere. And it even gives us an estimation of how long the person was dead. I'm not talking hours or even days, I'm talking about weeks. So if we see hoopa at a scene, we know that the flood, the body was there for at least two way weeks, possibly more. So that helps us with time of death. But that tells me that the body was out, that it didn't, it wasn't initially put into these body packs because they are sealed now. Flies. The smell of this is of course, absolutely unbearable. It's awful. Flies can smell decomposition and decay from hundreds of yards, maybe even a mile. I don't know exactly. But when this car was out on the street in Los Angeles, the smell had to be horrible. And you would see flies buzzing around this front trunk of the car. Sure. So any passerby would notice this pretty instantly, especially in that heat. So I believe she was left out for some time before she was put into those body bags.
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A
I've got one, one question that's literally woke me up in the middle of night last night. Why were there blue plastic bags, bits around the dismemberment sites?
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B
I know that's very interesting, isn't it? I'd love to see what the, the crime lab, when they analyze those blue plastic bits, what they come up with. My first thought, first thought is that she was in a tarp. You know, the standard blue heavy tarps that you. To wrap up a body. I don't know. It's very hard to dismember a person with whom you have had a relationship. I can actually imagine that the perpetrator wrapped her in this blue tarp and then cut through when doing the dismemberment. A possibility. But we will only know when the criminologists, when the scientists analyze this material, only Then will we know. But it could have been something that was on the instrument used to dismember her. I don't know, but that's a very, very interesting observation. That blue plastic. There are some other things in the autopsy report that I thought were interesting. You know, they talked about toxicology. Mr. Burke or Burke, I want to give him that honorarium. His defense attorney said something about overdose or intoxication. She had a very low level of ethanol, which does not necessarily mean that she ingested alcohol. When the body decomposes poses, it creates alcohols in the tissues. There was something about a methamphetamine and Adderall and Ritalin. Those are, you know, types of. So it could be a perfectly, you know, normal prescribed drug that she had on board. Again, I note she was only 52 and 71 pounds. The traumatic injuries, they show us the orientation. You can see that here, the way that the knife was angled. They perforate the skin, the soft tissue and the liver about 1 1/2 inches deep into the liver. And then, you know, as I said, it was probably a collapsed lung because of that. The nature of how deep that knife went. So it says multiple skin defects are present off over the torso, with many perforating the skin and soft tissue without hemorrhage. Interesting linear abrasions on the hand. I think we've got more cuts and wounds than. Than just those two stab wounds that killed her. That bothers me a lot.
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A
And that bothers you because that shows that there was possibly a struggle. There was. There was attempts made to stab multiple times with possibly different objects.
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B
Yeah, that's possible. I'm thinking, you know, there's a difference between a stab and a cut. A stab goes deep. A cut is somewhat linear, cuts the skin and the flesh doesn't penetrate deeply. And again, I don't know if they were perimortem, postmortem or antemortem. They didn't see extensive hemorrhage. But small cuts to the skin, although very, very painful, don't necessarily bleed a lot. And if they do bleed, it's is superficial. It could be wiped off. That bothers me that she was possibly cut before she was dead.
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A
Well, and I think we went over like, the, the depth of the penetrating wounds. The way you've described it,
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B
they were
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A
deep enough to puncture the lung, cause some level of asphyxiation, and she would. That would be enough for her to perish.
- [23:03]
B
That's right. The liver wound would be enough for her to bleed out. And the, The Stab wound. Although it didn't penetrate the lung, it did penetrate the chest cavity. So we could get a collapsed lung there. And that's a nasty way to die. Very painful, and it's a slow suffocation. I'm going to note also that there was no evidence of strangulation, which is interesting when we have a crime that's very personal, when a woman is killed by a man with whom there were some physical abuse or relations, very often this strangling, and we don't see any evidence of that here. There's no hemorrhages to the strap muscles. The hyoid bone is intact, and there's no injury to the neck itself. So that's, you know, in ruling out certain things, it gives us a better focus on what's important here, on the toxicology. Benzodiazepam, possibly a tranquilizer. And we don't know how much of tranquilizer was in the body. When. When someone's decomposed, we can't get a clear toxicology where we can see that it's there and how much is there. So we don't have blood that we can test. We can test.
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A
We just know that it's there.
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B
Yeah, we know that it's there. Now, I noticed that the scene investigator, Tapia, collected the maggots at the scene. We can spin those down and get a toxicology from the maggots since they are eating the flesh. So, you know, we. We learn so much from these autopsy reports, and it gives me a sense of how this killing happened.
- [24:48]
A
And the. The clothes, the underwear. Her shirt had several cup marks. The leggings were in three pieces from this dismemberment. What does this tell you when the clothes are still on the victim?
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B
Like that she was stabbed through her. I think it was a tube top. And there were at least three defects in that tube top. So. And if I. If I'm correct, those are sort of short, so we can have the abdomen exposed. I don't know if all tub tops look like that, but that's what she was wearing. Along with leggings and socks. That means she was stabbed through the fabric. And I noticed at least three defects in that fabric, meaning it wasn't just the two fail wounds, but there was another stab wound or cut to her body.
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A
And they kept the clothes on.
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B
Yeah.
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A
As they dismembered her body, they kept those clothes on.
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B
Yep. Yeah. Makes it harder, doesn't it? And again, it tells me something about the instrument that was used. Okay, so it wouldn't be a scalpel, because cutting through clothes and then through the. The flesh causes dulling. And you'd note that on the, on the nature of the wounds. Yeah, this is very upsetting to me. Thirteen years old, just a baby. Yeah, a baby. Killed. Related to. I died. It's just.
- [26:16]
A
Yeah, I mean, Barbara, it is. Oh, it's. It's an incredibly disturbing case. And I think that that's why I feel like the investigators have spent so much time putting together the totality of this evidence as well. You know, one of the things that I did notice was that, yes, this ring finger and the pinky finger seem to have been gone. Would that be some kind of souvenir? Would that be something that they would keep for purpose? Or I mean, is that just pure speculation?
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B
Pure speculation. When a person is killed and something's missing, like jewelry or fingers. And when I think about souvenir, I think about serial killers.
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A
Right.
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B
Because they often take souvenirs. This killing seems to be much more utilitarian to me. It was done with a knife, which is personal. So that means the person did not have. The perpetrator, didn't have access to a gun, which would be so much easier. The fact that she was dismembered is utilitarian.
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A
Right.
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B
All this points to getting rid of a person. Not a killing of passion, not of jealousy, not of a huge fight that turned bad and turned physical. It's utilitarian. It's business. They needed to get rid of her.
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A
And here's the thing. Like there's a tattoo on her other finger that says on it.
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B
Yeah.
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A
In if you are looking to hide a body and dismember a body, why would you leave a tattooed finger on that body?
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B
Amateur. Amateur. You know, a professional would never leave the hands in dismembering someone. Never. You don't want fingerprints. Would never leave a tattooed finger. But what does that little tattoo say to me? She has a secret. Is the secret that her. She's. She's seeing or having some relationship with this so called celebrity singer. I never even heard of this person. But she has a secret. And that's why we say shh. And that's just my interpretation of it. There were other things here. Yeah. Mutilation of that. And, and the eye.
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A
Did you see the eye? Was. Does that tell you anything? That that left eye was not present? Is that unusual or is that something that just happens over a period of decomposition?
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B
Good question. Terrible to think about. But the other eye was present. Although liquefied, decomposed. Is There some way that that eye, that missing orbit could have been so decomposed that it liquefied and drained away? I don't know. It's possible it came out before.
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A
Well, depending on which way our head was facing too. For so long in that car.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You have laid it out as this is very amateurish for sure, like the way this was done. But for a body to be, to spend all this time to try and remove the body and put the body in a body bag and, and dismember and put the trash bag with the, with the, with the limbs and then to leave it into the trunk of a car that gets impounded. It just. What one question we were thinking amongst ourselves, thinking about this with my team was was the suspect possibly unable to, to release this body, couldn't be separated from this body for some reason, like I'm getting into the psychological psychology of it, but it almost feels like they didn't want to let go because it didn't go very far.
- [30:21]
B
Interesting. It's certainly a stupid way to get rid of a body. I mean it's, it's obvious that there's a smell coming out of a car on a public street. Yeah, it's a stupid way to get rid of the body. So maybe there is some. I, I'm not a psychologist, but some reluctance to let go that may be evidenced by the fact that she was kept somewhere before she was placed into the body bag. And we were surmising that based on the insect activity that occurred, no doubt, before she was placed into these body bags. Yeah, there's a circular defect, defect on her left flank. There's multiple cuts into the tube top. What do these things mean? Yeah, it can almost develop a picture in your mind of somebody being cut multiple times or scraped and then stabbed fatally. It's not an efficient killing, let's put it that way.
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A
No.
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B
Yeah. So as we sometimes say, amateur.
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A
I saw this here that we're trying to understand her body weight because when she was missing, when she went missing, which was an entire year before. So April 2024 is the last time they see Celeste, the family. April 23, 2025, she's spotted going into the home, the Hollywood Hills home of the singer David, according to the documents. Then on in May, we're now being told the police believe that's when she died. September, she's found her missing. Poster showed her weighing 120 pounds. Her remains weighed in at 71 pounds.
- [32:12]
B
That's right, yeah.
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A
How much is this normal for decomposition and how Much is this. It tells us what her physical state was before she died.
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B
We, that's an interesting question. We don't know if in the time between she was last spotted and the time she was found, how long was she alive? Was she starving or did the decomposition effectively dehydrate her? To a certain extent. So we're about 60% water our bodies and in a hot sun that will evaporate. Certainly like bodies out in the desert, they desiccate, they dry out very quickly and become mummies. In the case of this young girl, we do see some liquefaction in the liquid at the bottom of the body bag. So who knows, was it strictly the result of evaporation before she was put in the bag or was she losing weight over some period of weeks? Weeks? I, I don't really know. It's hard to figure out.
- [33:24]
A
Is there anything else that you see in this, Barbara, that we're going to have to watch for?
- [33:31]
B
I'd like to see the weapon. That's to me is the most compelling thing right now. If we can find what she was dismembered with and what she was stabbed with and what she was cut with, then no doubt we can get DNA off a bloody knife or even a fingerprint at the perpetrator. So finding those instruments, finding that, that knife, that hacksaw, whatever it's going to be, that's critical, I think, to proving this case.
- [34:06]
A
I know you've seen a lot, Barbara. I cannot even imagine what you've seen, but to me this is one of the most brutal, as you said, sort of psychotic killings. Whoever did this, if they have the right guy, if they do have the right suspect, this feels incredibly evil. Yeah.
- [34:33]
B
Yeah, it is evil. The first evil act was in having sexual relations with a 13 year old girl. Girl. There's a theory out there that, that she, this young girl, threatened to tell the police that he had sexually abused her. And in desire to protect his career, whatever that career is, he didn't want that information to get out. And so that's why she was disposed of, thrown away, murdered. So yeah, that's a very good motive, isn't it? I. But you know, there are so many other ways to avoid those kind of charges. One, don't do it, right? Don't abuse a child, don't be a pedophile.
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A
It's unbelievable.
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B
That's one way.
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A
So do you think they'll come out with much more before they get this to trial or to some kind of plea hearing? Do you feel like there's more information that needs to come to light publicly or, you know, that we'll. That we'll hear about before this actually goes.
- [35:44]
B
Yeah. What I'd like to find out, and I think the police are working on this hard, is where was she killed? Did it occur in his home? If so, we're going to find out. You know, no doubt they have a warrant to search the home. Crime scene will use luminol and other chemical sprays to detect blood. So even if you clean up a scene really well, we can still see that blood on certain surfaces when we use the appropriate alternate light sources and. And chemicals like luminol or Blue Star. So I want to see the scene. Was she killed somewhere else? You know, in a warehouse, for instance? I don't have any idea. Now, don't forget digital forensics. The car tracks where you go. A Tesla tracks wherever you are. And cell phone data, we can link it to towers to see where a person was. So I'm very interested in the car data. I want to see every place that car went in that period.
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A
They did make a point of telling us that they swabbed the bags, took the handles and zippers. Hopefully there's going to be DNA there, right?
- [36:54]
B
Yeah. Yep.
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A
That's what they're looking for.
- [36:58]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I'm hoping that they've. They found a profile. And even when a. When a killer, you know, wipes something down with alcohol or bleach to avoid DNA, there's always some little thing somewhere, some partial fingerprint, some. Some skin cells. Hair. Hair is a great way to get DNA. Don't need. Necessarily need, you know, the roots now, like we used to. So stray hairs are a good way to track down someone.
- [37:29]
A
It's been nailing some people lately. I mean, Rex Hurman just took it, didn't he, with that as well. The Gilgo beach serial killer. That's exactly what got him. It wasn't even his hair.
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B
That's right.
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A
It was his family's hair.
- [37:43]
B
So that shows you how much we track around with us, how much evidence we shed every day. Even from our homes, from our loved ones. Ones we're tracking evidence everywhere we go. And if the evidence isn't being tracked, there are cctv, there are cameras everywhere. Now, increasingly, it's harder and harder to get away with murder. Thank God. Yeah, it.
- [38:08]
A
It really is the. The last thing I wanted to ask you about. I don't know if you saw this report, but it was along with the chainsaw that a private investigator who was hired by the. The owner this is through media reports that we learned this information that this PI had discovered not only a unused chainsaw, but an unused burn cage.
- [38:31]
B
But it was unused.
- [38:33]
A
I mean, what does that tell you? What do you. I mean, I know you. I know you are having an entire. Like this whole scenario is playing out in your. In your mind, through your investigation, but what does that tell you that he didn't use it?
- [38:48]
B
Preparation. Okay. Preparation. I noticed something that they said he's being charged with laying in wake for her. She was called to come to the house. He lay in wait for her. So the fact of having a chainsaw present and a burn. A burn. Burn barrels, burn cage. That's a good way to get to disposable body, isn't it? Those burn cages suck up enough oxygen that they burn very, very hot, well over a thousand degrees, and you can cremate a body in them. And it would be easiest if the parts were dismembered with a chainsaw. That's the fastest way to do a dismemberment. And then put into this burn cage. Probably what you'd have left is ash and probably bone fragments as well. Cremation is never really complete. There's always something left behind. Why didn't he use number one is to set up fire anywhere in the Los Angeles area is probably a crime. You know, just.
- [39:57]
A
You go to prison for that. That's right.
- [39:59]
B
Look at Malibu. Look what happened. Burned down half a damn city. It's horrible. So if anyone noticed a burn cage in someone's yard, they would call the police immediately in the fire department. Those burn cages do contain the burning matter, but there's always embers that fly out, and it only takes one ember to set the grass on fire. And then next thing you know, you have a. A huge brush fire which will spread rapidly in the winged heat.
- [40:31]
A
Well, and this was in the wake of the Hollywood Hills and the Palisades fires. I mean, this was literally in the wake of all of that.
- [40:38]
B
Yeah.
- [40:39]
A
As far as the time period goes. So I agree. I completely agree that. That. That would have probably scared him off from using the burn cage, but, boy, it was like they had their stuff lined up and then they just didn't go with the plan at all. They just went. They took a right turn or a left turn and decided use the Tesla. It's extraordinary, Barbara. I've taken more time than I promised I would.
- [41:04]
B
Okay.
- [41:04]
A
But I always find my conversations with you absolutely remarkable. So thank you for your time today. Is there anything else that. That I Missed that. You're like, oh, and you. You gotta talk about this. Anything else that I might have missed?
- [41:17]
B
Just one thing. I know you just used the term they. Yeah. If you have an entourage, if you have friends around, people who would say to you, yeah, let's see. Don't use the burn cage. Yeah. Because I know we're gonna get caught. Or I know don't use the chainsaw because it's hard to clean. Or, let's get a body bag. We can order it online. I hear advisors in the background. I do. I can't picture one person, a singer, sitting around planning how to dispose of a body without someone else knowing his thoughts. Just an idea, but there you go.
- [41:59]
A
Yeah, I know. They've got. They've got some very serious witnesses that they're looking at, so. Yeah.
- [42:03]
B
Yeah. Thank you so much, Anne, for covering this case. It's tragic. And, yes, I'm glad we're getting. We're having progress with. With finally solving this case.
- [42:15]
A
Yeah, me too. Thank you so much. Barbara, I want to know why you think Celeste was missing her ring finger and her pinky finger on her left hand. Do you think it had something to do with a relationship or nothing at all? Barbara mentioned crime con at the beginning of our interview. That's where we met last year. Crimecon is in Vegas this year, if you'd like to go. I've got a code for 10 off. Just type in Crimly of the obsessed at checkout on the Crimecon website. I'll be there. And I'm hosting two sessions and I can't wait to meet you.