A (3:29)

I find it even more disturbing. What you're saying is that it's cold, it's calculated. Some of that actually concerns me more. It's almost a void of emotion. Is the, what the way you're putting it, am I right?

B (3:46)

Yeah, a little bit. I, I, I think there's some emotion there, but not the emotion that we would anticipate there to be. Given the context of everything that we know with the dynamics that were happening between the victim and the alleged perpetrator in this. When we look at the autopsy report, what we really see are two kind of injuries. Right. Everything else seems to be postmortem. Right. All of this membering and everything like that seem, seem to have occurred post mortem and seem to have occurred in order to get the body to fit into the space of the front of the Tesla. But when we look at the, especially the markings, the autopsy report has a sketch and it shows two separate wounds on two separate sides of the body. When you think about just how could most likely this person is right handed and that's simply because there is a majority of right handed individuals that exist on this planet as opposed to left handed. So it's statistically more likely that the individual was right handed. When you look at those injuries, those don't seem super easy to do if you're facing the victim and just kind of thrusting forward. They seem easier to do if the perpetrator is standing behind the victim and then kind of using whatever instrument it is. Again, the autopsy doesn't really suggest that it was a knife. I know other, you know, death investigators have suggested that it potentially could be, but it really has a lot to do with, you know, forensic pathologists and other forensic tool markings that could be there that are on the rib. But what, what I mean is just that whatever this instrument was, it seems to be a lot easier to make those two markings if I'm the perpetrator standing behind the victim and then just kind of using it like that as opposed to jabbing it in, holding it from behind.

A (5:53)

Like being behind the victim.

B (5:55)

Yeah, so I'm, I would be standing behind the victim and the victim's facing away from me and I have my weapon that I'm using and just kind of stabbing in as opposed to kind of thrusting forward. I mean, it seems really hard to make left of the midline and then again a right of the midline seems a lot easier to do if you're standing behind and maybe you got the person in a chokehold and just kind of stabbed twice. It seems easier to make those wounds like that as opposed to standing right in front. You're standing right in front of the victim and the victim doesn't do anything, especially after the first, you know, penetration of whatever that instrument is. Again, could be shock, especially a knife, one that's really sharp, you won't actually know that it pierced your, your body. Right. It's certainly possible that a knife sharp enough, you would never know that, that your body had been pierced. It doesn't. The sensation of pain psychologically is about pressure. Right. So your skin and muscles and everything, they feel the pressure of whatever the object is.

A (7:06)

Okay.

B (7:07)

A, A sharp piercing has less pressure attached to it when it comes to how much surface area it would take to, to, to get you to, to feel the sensation of physical pain. Right. That's why a blunt option, a blunt instrument hurts more than a sharp one.

A (7:28)

Right.

B (7:29)

Because blunt option has more surface area that it's using. So that's why this, the, the, the dynamics of feeling something like that is different. But she doesn't fight there. There's nothing in there that, that suggests that there was emotionality on either end. She didn't really seem to be fighting for her life. And the person didn't really seem to be so hate filled that, that she's around. Like whoever did this didn't beat her up. I mean, there's not like a ton of. Again, and a lot of it has to do with potentially, you know, the, the decomposition. But the investigator didn't release the autopsy didn't really indicate that there was severe, like multiple bones broken in the face, you know.

A (8:17)

Right. Like strangulation in the neck.

B (8:20)

Right. Just, you know, more orbital bone fractures, jaw fractures, something.

A (8:25)

Well, we do know that there were two fingers missing. A mutilation. Did you see that? There was a pinky and a ring finger, which I thought was interesting, were both missing off of the victim. What does that tell you?

B (8:39)

That's really the, the, the unique element associated with it. Because everything else that whoever, you know, dismembered her, all of the rest of that stuff was, was found along with her. So right. To, to not have at least two digits, I mean, one digit in particular is significant. Right. Your right ring Finger, Right. Your ring finger is, Is. Is a significant digit to kind of lose the pinky. I, I mean, it could have just gone with it. It could have just gone with it. I mean, or, you know, it could have been related to whatever the attack was, that maybe she did have a hand up and it, whatever that weapon was, pierced through the two fingers and they just kind of fell off as a result of, you know, that kind of injury. I don't. I don't know that it really says anything other than whatever happened to her. There was a lot more that was going on than it was just simply, we need to get rid of, you know, Celeste. Right. There was more associated with why she's dead than just simply, we need to get rid of this kid who's going to blow up our spot.

A (9:56)

Well, and also, I'm curious about the timing of this because we're talking about a serious amount of. First of all, you have dismemberment, and then you have decompos, decomposition. You. There's. There's a body sitting around for a while. You're holding on to a body for a while before you decide to dismember it and then to get it into this. Into the front of this car of this Tesla. There appears to be a significant amount of time as far as just again, being, you know, talking about the mind of, of someone who would do this, what's going through their mind? Like, what kind of mental health state are we in at that point?

B (10:40)

You know, I would think that someone who was planning this, like, so when we think of someone who's willing to commit an act of murder, it's important to understand that for the most part, it's never something that just kind of happens on the snap. People just don't all of a sudden break. It's usually a long period of time in which they have been fantasizing about doing some kind of harm to someone, and then the fantasy isn't enough, so then it progresses into whatever that is. Now, there could be a sort of straw that breaks the camel's back, right? That there's some kind of catalyst that, that compels the person to engage in the behavior, but it's. It's usually fantasized. Nothing about this seems planned. Nothing about this really seems like, you know, there was consideration made of, of how to escape getting caught by law enforcement. I think the real key is going to be how long was she actually in the front of the Tesla? Because if she's been there the whole time, I think maybe that suggests that the person was frantic when they were trying to come up with a plan and then just got so overwhelmed with what to do that they ended up not doing anything right.

A (12:00)

So just like paralysis, you know, there's.

B (12:03)

There's an element of cognitive overload where you're thinking about all of the different scenarios in which something can unfold, that you ultimately end up not making a choice at all because it's just so overwhelming, the vast choices that you could make.

A (12:23)

We do know that there was a couple of things because we. We learned this through a private investigator who was hired by the owner of the property that she was last seen going into. Right into the Hollywood Hills home of. That David had. And it was April 23rd. But we are told by the private investigator who was allowed to go into that home through. Through sources that there was a burn cage found and a chainsaw, but it appeared that neither one of them were used.

B (12:59)

Well, yeah, I mean, I think. I think people think of, you know, burning a body or putting a body in lie or, you know, dismembering. People think that this is a lot easier to do than what it actually is. I. I think once you cross that, even though you've been fantasizing, once you cross the boundary, there's. It never goes the way that you had fantasized it going. It never. It's. It's never easy. It's. It's. And. And the more you do it, the more you recognize just how difficult it is to continue to do it. And so burn cages and chainsaws, you know, and all this other stuff, I mean, that's all there. And that maybe that was there because they had been planned, planning on using it, or maybe it was just there because there were other things that they were interested in using that material for.

A (13:54)

Do you think that these fingers that disappeared during. Does that. Does that feel suspicious to you? Because they did. There is a finger that was on Celeste, and that was the one that had a tattoo on it matching the suspect which says shh on it. That was left.

B (14:13)

That. That was left. But also, like, all of the rest of her was left as well. Like, I mean, if you really wanted to make it so that no one would know who this victim was there, that that individual or individuals completely and totally failed. Like, I mean, if that was the plan, it wasn't a very good plan, and they failed at it miserably. So I. While I think that there is importance to it, I think it's more important in the investigation process. I don't think it's important to whoever committed this crime. Could it have been David? Sure. I mean, the allegations are against him, but that doesn't necessarily mean he was the soul or he was even the person who did this. Though I don't think that the removal of those fingers was a necessity. I think it inadvertently happened. But because it inadvertently happened, that can tell us more about what. Where was she killed? Right. And I think that's where. That's where all this investigation needs to leave. Where was she killed? When did she actually. Just because that's the place that she walked into doesn't mean that. That. That that was the place that everything had happened. That's just the last place she was seen. She could easily have been moved from there and no one have seen. There's. So there's a lot more that needs to happen. And I think during the course of. If there is a trial, during the course of a trial, the prosecution is going to have to link how all of these things connect to David, because right now it just seems. And again, yes, it is. It is extremely inappropriate for those two to have been together. But it just seems as though, because we haven't been given a lot of information, that everything is just put on him because he was essentially the one abusing her from before.

A (16:11)

If we're not looking at some sort of. I mean, to be a murderer, to do something like this, you know, and you're looking at psychopathy versus what, as far as personalities go, that would be able to commit a murder like this? Or am I simplifying it too much?

B (16:31)

Well, I think the idea is that the psychopath doesn't need a reason to kill you. They just do it because they felt like doing it because it was a Tuesday. Right. Like that. That. That's what we're talking about. When we think of why a psychopath kills, they're the. The compulsion is just to do it. When we think of who else could commit an act of violence, any single one of us, given the right situation, with the right contextual factors, with the right. The right emotional factors, can kill someone. Now, whoever, whichever one of us that it is, needs a mix of motivation, context, situation and emotional factors. And all of those are unique to the individual. But the more we learn about who the victim was in any given situation, the more we can start narrowing down. Why would someone want her killed when she died? Why? Why then? Why not before, why not later? Whoever wanted her dead needed a reason to do it and selected the time that they did do it again for their own unique purposes. Psychopath doesn't have any of that. They'll just do it because they want to do it. Other people need a mix of different kinds of things to happen. The more we learn about her and what she was doing, the more we can find out who would want to do this to her.

A (17:58)

Well, we have been learning a lot about the person who was arrested for this. You know, David Anthony Burke. He is innocent until proven guilty, but the charges against him are massive. It's capital murder. You know, they're deciding whether or not this is a death penalty case. They said that he was lying in wait for her. And of course she was a young girl. She was. You know, these are charges that he had been sexually abusing a 14 year old. The experts we talked to again talked about it being a much more utilitarian killing. 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. Right. All this points to getting rid of a person. Not a killing of passion out of jealousy, not of a huge fight that turned bad and turned physical.

B (19:02)

When a prosecutor's office decides to charge you, they're charging you under a specific. They believe that the behaviors they can prove are associated with the elements of that crime. But when you think of the idea of lying in wait, and again, what the, what the LA County DA is talking about is killing someone for financial gain and stuff like that. But when you think of just when someone tells you lying in wait, the image that comes into your mind is the person hiding in the bush, right? The person hiding in the shadows. The person hiding in a place where you don't anticipate someone to be. And that's where you get. That's where I'm kind of getting this idea that she could have been compelled to go to a certain place, didn't know that someone was going to be there or anticipated someone else being there. And then whoever it was that committed this crime blindsided her. There was no room for her to respond. So could that be David? Sure. I mean, it absolutely could. I'm not saying that, that he absolutely can't be. But what I am saying is that when we think of why you would charge him with these crimes, the connotations of these crimes, of these charges, start building a picture of what I think the prosecutor is going to be painting when it comes to a jury having to listen to all of these facts.

A (20:34)

Well, and so here's the really hard thing for a lot of people to wrap their heads around. I think as we learn more about the kind of artist he saw himself as, David. And very young, by the way. Very young. You know, just turned 21 in March. He had been writing lyrics, dark lyrics, songs that sort of talked about. They. They explored homicide. They explored love and homicide and. And killing people that you love. You know, that sort of thing. Let me just pull this up. This is called Romantic Homicide. I killed you and I didn't even regret it. I can't believe I said it. I mean, dang, that's crazy. This is from 2022. It's a song that is released on the victim's birthday at the time she's 12. And then we see this sort of confluence of events three years later.

B (21:47)

I talked before about fantasy life, right? The fantasies of what people are thinking about in terms of engaging in some kind of misbehavior. It's hard to get past the ingrained social contract, obstacles that are built that prevent us as one human being, to harming another human being. But here I think we see elements of. On its face, an artist could say, this is just my art. And if you don't understand it, that's your problem, not mine. But when we see now what. What someone who is in his fear has gone through, we start wondering, are these the elements of the fantasy life being actually projected for the entire world to see? You know, I talked before. The fantasy life isn't enough. And then you kind of gotta act out.

A (22:42)

That's exactly what I'm curious about. Is this a. Is this a. An alleged attempt by an artist to act out his darkest fantasies?

B (22:54)

Yeah, and I think that's, you know, that those are the initial steps that get you to there because you fantasize it. And it's in your inner thoughts, Right? No one knows that they're there. They just are there. And then you allow yourself to kind of express those things and you justify it by saying it is art. Right. And so you're able to kind of explore what those fantasies could feel like, especially for him being a musician. And then, you know, creating a music video. He gets an opportunity to explore what it feels like to hold a knife, what it feels like to be covered in blood, what it feels like. I mean, I. I know he's blinded in the video, but what it feels like to actually see the end product of the fantasies that he had been having inside, the things that he wouldn't admit to, to having the music Video would give the artist an opportunity to explore those themes, those. That imagery and those sensations in a way that is, you know, most people would consider to be, you know, not as offensive as, you know, actually killing a child.

A (24:01)

Well, doctor, let me play this too, because this really speaks to the way he was projecting to. To the world. This was how David explained his own lyrics. I'm telling you, when you. When you watch this kid, you think of him as a smart, quiet poet. You think of an artist in the

B (24:25)

back of my mind. You died in the back of my mind. I killed you. So it's all in the mind, because that's the. The most secure place you can be is in your mind.

A (24:33)

What?

B (24:34)

Yeah, you know, he describes it as the. As the mind being the most secure area. The problem is it also betrays you relatively quickly. And I can understand an artist. And again, he's not the only artist to have this kind of imagery in their song, of course.

A (24:54)

Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. I mean, Shakespeare had this in his. In his writings. I mean, I have no problem with that. I guess what I'm. What I'm trying to understand is, I feel like. Is life imitating art? Is that. Is that this kind of fantasy that we're looking at?

B (25:11)

Sure, because the artist. The artist does a piece of art and expects the world to kind of embrace it and take it on. And then, you know, an artist understands that whoever is looking at the art will then have their own interpretation of what that piece means. But he portrays it because he calls it her. Right? He calls the person a hero. So it's not as secure as he makes it out to be. Because why couldn't have been a him? Why did it have to be gendered at all? It's important to him to have that individual gendered. When he describes why he. Correct why he crafted these lyrics. These lyrics didn't have to necessarily be about any specific person or anything like that, but he made it that way by gendering it. Now we understand that in his mind, he's doing this to another woman. Now, I say woman, but it could easily have been a female child. And so when he genders who. This person that he's talking about, and he genders it again when he says it's his mind, right. It's in the back of my mind. I'm doing this. So the fantasy life is being, you know, projected out and is, you know, either he's using it as a way to dispel the emotional weight of having these thoughts in his head and you know, saying it, you know, as a cathartic type of thing. I'm going to make this song. But then when he describes why he's making this song, it's no longer about art. Now it's about actual physical thoughts that he's having. These are actual people that he's thinking about him and the victim. Right. These are real people that he is describing now that it loses its sort of nebulous nature, it loses its artistic quality when he starts genderizing and starts clearly making it about. There's a specific individual that he's thinking about killing and then not regretting.

A (27:15)

And there's another part to this too, that I wanted to share with you is this sort of evil alter ego that he talks about called itami, which means pain in Japanese. He basically described it as a detective alter ego, but basically committing murders and then solving murders. But this is all within his own person.

B (27:39)

Yeah, he. He's in other areas. He's described this as a manga that. That he was writing, so a comic strip, a comic book. So I think it's more about expressing the, the.

A (27:56)

The.

B (27:56)

The dual kinds of elements that are associated with the fantasy. Because when you're fantasizing about committing harm against someone, whether it's sexual abuse or whether it's an act of physical violence, you start having to believe yourself to be more than the victim. In other words, you are objectifying the victim. The victim is no longer human in your mind. Now they are either just rotting corpse for a detective to figure out, or it is, you know, the desiccating relationship of a spurn lover or whatever it is that he's describing in that song. So by having a duality, he's describing then the choices that he gets to make as being a hero in one end, but also being the perpetrator of violence in the other. So that the detective is this person that we believe to be all good, you know, that they're out here for law and order and for justice. The detective sort of connotes those kinds of things, but he disrupts it and he degrades it by also making them the. The perpetrator of all these crimes, committing these crimes in order for the detective to maintain that level of justice, of. Of being a hero. So essentially it is. It is a way in which he can maintain a mask of being a pillar of society by being the person to solve the things that they did already.

A (29:31)

It's a lot. I mean, as far as like something like this playing out. And remember, I mean, he's barely out of his teen years, himself. These are very young, immature sort of people.

B (29:49)

And I think that shows. I think that shows in all of these thoughts. I mean, a more mature individual sees the. Sees those differences, see those dichotomies, sees those dualities and recognizes them as what it means to just be human. Right? Humans make mistakes, humans hurt people, humans regret it. Humans engage in all different kinds of things, but what they don't do is they don't hurt other people. That's what humans don't do. That. Some people do that, some persons do that. Those people have been wanting to harm and have been engaging in harm and have been looking at other ways to then engage in harm again, and at times either feel offended that other people aren't doing whatever it is that they want to do or are obstacles for that person to continue to engage in harmful activities.

A (30:39)

So that's certainly what the prosecutor is trying to show is that this was. This was an attempt to shut up the person who was going to, you know, ruin everything. And this was. But it was just extraordinary how the art of this singer, of this musician was playing out for hundreds of millions of people who were watching him. Hundreds of millions. I was seeing like 307 million views on one video, and he was enjoying

B (31:12)

every single minute of it.

A (31:14)

He was. So do you think when you see, like, this manga personality and this, or this, you know, ego, this ultra ego, do you see multiple personalities in a character like this? Do you expect to have that kind of issue with someone like this?

B (31:33)

Could, could the defense use something like that? I think they could. If they, you know, if they asked me to evaluate him, what I would anticipate is that my opinion would be that just these are just the naive understandings of the real world. These aren't. These aren't elements of a dissociative identity disorder, though I could see the defense using that, because I think a jury. A jury is constantly thinking about how things unfold rationally. Every once in a while, they'll bring emotion into it, but it's too hard to kind of empathize with a killer. So they're often using rational and logical ways of understanding how things happen. So I can see. I can see a jury being like, well, this person has to have been crazy, and the defense kind of using that element and saying that. But all I see is someone who is very young and very naive and very immature. And that plays out with the. The. The dynamics associated with individuals who would have a lot of child sexual abuse images and engage in child sexual abuse. Those are the kinds of. Of personality dynamics that that person has, those seem to be the same kind of qualities that we've been seeing, at least so far, not having evaluated him, but at least so far in what David is. Is. Is exhibiting.

A (32:58)

And, you know, the. The body, it kind of goes along with your idea that if she. She was in this. This car in pieces, you know, the body of Celeste Revis is in. In these body bags and. And trash bags, basically in a Tesla sitting there decomposing. There was a question I had of whether or not the person who committed this was having a hard time removing himself from the body, because. But I didn't know if I. I didn't know if you would see that as just immaturity and not really knowing what to do in paralysis, as we discussed, or if this was purposeful.

B (33:39)

I think if it was purposeful, we would have found the body in a much more significant place. We found her in a place, but that. That car was getting towed. Right? So I. I think if. I think there are multiple people associated with this, and I think the person who was designated to get rid of the body was the. Probably the one that was overwhelmed with what to do about getting rid of the body. I think if the person who committed the actual murder, if she was significant to that person, that body, it may have been. Still been dismembered, but we would have found her in a place that was. That had much more significance to that person. And there's nothing to suggest, again, that Tesla can be that thing, but it was found, you know, it had been on the street for months and then was towed. And so there isn't really anything about that, that. That about it that suggests it was a significant thing to that individual.

A (34:42)

This is where I kind of want to get your last thoughts. I don't know if you had seen this yet, but let me play it. The heavier the snow, the heavier the weight. After watching you go, I think it's just so hard to believe that there's literally this video out there of whatever however he was, you know, approaching it. He's still putting a body in the back of a car.

B (35:17)

You know, that's the other element associated with this, is that the back of a Tesla has way more space than the front. So I don't know why you. You could. You don't have to dismember the body to put it in the back of a Tesla. You do have to do it, obviously, to put it in the front. So I don't know why they did that. That is. That I don't know why you do that other than to escape the smell. But the imagery that we see, obviously I, I think he could say that what he's doing is, you know, obviously dragging his own regret around or his own pain and the demons of his own life are dragging him through whatever. The things that we put in the trunk are often, you know, just kind of discarded and forgotten about. There's a lot there. But it would require understanding him more as to why. If he was the director and he was the person who that is putting these images together, what is it about these images that we're supposed to be seeing that he thinks we're supposed to be taken from them? Because otherwise it just seems like it's a calling card for how you wanted to kill someone that didn't actually happen the way that you had wanted it to. To happen.

A (36:38)

Yeah, not exactly, but dang. Yeah. This, this has, has been extraordinary to look at. I mean, obviously there is what, 40 terabytes, Dr. That they're going to release. I mean at some point we're going to see. I know the defense is supposed to get it. They've got to, they've got to get it soon. They've got to. Supposedly they're trying to get as much as they can to them by this Friday. You know that that is a mind blowing amount of information. The prosecutors already mentioned that there's a significant amount of child pornography on there as well. Of csam. I've covered trials before that are. That went on forever and did not see 40 terabytes worth of evidence. When the defense goes in, do you think that there's any chance they're going to go for an insanity plea? Or are they? I mean, meditation.

B (37:30)

Honestly, I, as if I was defense attorneys, I try to plead this out. I don't want anything to do with this. I want this, I want this done as quickly as possible. Unless there are certain things that the autopsy had mentioned, particularly with the toxicology results that could be significant for. Because if, if she has those intoxicants, then more than likely he has those intoxicants too. And sometimes the consequences of those could have psychological ramifications. So unless they see something on the front end, meaning something competency to stand trial related, could there be a sanity plea? Sure. But I mean you got to be really rolling the dice on that one. And I think they're going with he didn't do this. So I think you try to take a plea and get to whoever, whoever did, you know, if David wants to have any kind of life, much less a career. If he wants to have anything, you got to give him something. You have to give the prosecutor something.

A (38:31)

Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I. I just. I haven't seen a case like this, like that, that literally. I mean, it was played out three years ago on for hundreds of millions of his fans, and then allegedly, he attempts or. Or is successful in this homicide.

B (38:53)

Well, I. I think, you know, the. The success of it, I think, is debatable, but I think what we see is, you know, the. The level of depravity disguised as art. I think he recognized that he was on this train, and it's unfortunate that it seems as though Celeste is the. The victim of what this train ended up being.

A (39:21)

Well said. Be sure to like and subscribe to Criminally Obsessed and turn on your notifications. I don't want you to miss any of the updates in this case. Dr. De la Torre gave us a lot to think about, particularly when it comes to fantasizing. And we still don't know what kind of weapon was used to kill Celeste. Was it a knife? All we know is prosecutors said it was a sharp instrument. We don't know if any other details in this case are going to be released to the public before trial. David Anthony Burke is due back in court again this Friday. I'll let you know what happens.