Transcript
Ashley Banfield (0:00)
neighbor game oo and doug there's nowhere i wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with liberty mutual even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show hey everyone
Matt Murphy (0:12)
check out this guy and his bird
Ashley Banfield (0:14)
what is this your first date oh no we help people customize and save on car insurance with liberty mutual together we're married me to a human him to a bird yeah the bird looks
Matt Murphy (0:23)
out of your league anyways get a
Ashley Banfield (0:24)
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Matt Murphy (1:05)
hey everyone i'm ashley banfield and this is drop dead serious and i wanted to do an episode to bring you up to speed if you're not already on what the prosecutors in california believe david the singer who spells his name d four v d what they allege he did to his underage girlfriend celeste rivas hernandez because if you get your hands on this people's briefing and i have to call it a people's briefing it's not an affidavit it's not a charging document it's none of those things it is a briefing paper that the da in california has put together for the judge in advance of a preliminary hearing for david and you know you already know he's david anthony burke but he goes by david d four vd so for purposes of this podcast that's what i'm calling him anyway finally finally we know the narrative finally we know what the police have and what they allege this guy did to this poor young girl this child who was only fourteen when she met her death and had her fifteenth birthday rotting in the front trunk of his tesla we've known all along that the body of a girlfriend of his an underage girlfriend was rotting in his tesla and he's running off and doing a sort of a tour or at least starting and then canceling it real quick but we couldn't quite figure out back in september of twenty twenty five why they weren't arresting him it seemed kind of obvious to us tesla's four hundred feet away from your front door of your house and there's a dead girlfriend cut up inside that tesla how is this a hard case well in some ways it isn't it's just unbelievably obvious and in some ways it might be so what i wanted to do for you today is actually go through this specifics what do they have and then talk to somebody who knows a lot more about the business of prosecuting criminals than i do especially in california and that's matt murphy he's been a regular guest of mine and he's one of my favorites as well so matt former homicide prosecutor and he was in orange county and he's literally written the book on murder it's called the book of murder so yeah matt knows a thing or two about why there may have been this long seven month delay between finding celeste's body in that tow yard right where the car had been towed to putting david anthony burke in handcuffs and he's got some really good information on that and i wanted to share that with you he's got a couple of new podcasts too he's doing a podcast with my friend mark garagos and guess what i'm going to talk to mark garagos about this case as well to see the other side of where david anthony burke david the singer may actually be able to fight this and why this big long pause in between finding celeste's body and putting david in cuffs might actually mean trouble for the prosecution i know it's hard to believe once i tell you what i'm about to tell you but anyway so stay tuned because when you hear what matt murphy has to say i mean he's thrilled about this he is he's loving every minute of all the legal machinations all the behind the scenes the strategy the spider web weaving it's really really cool some of it's kind of dry and sort of you know legal procedure but it makes sense when he explained explains it as to what their process really was in trying to snare david into their web and get an indictment that might actually stick get a charge get a conviction that might actually stick so let me start here it's laid out kind of as a storybook i mean i hate to say it that way but it really is they effectively say that celeste was fourteen because we know that when she was found it was the day after her fifteenth birthday and so yeah she'd been in that trunk much longer than one day so she spent her birthday rotting in that trunk it's very very sad and they basically basically say it was towed three days before they discovered her body because it had been towed from a location four hundred feet from david's home in the hollywood hills and surveillance video this memo says and other evidence which i can't wait to find out about confirmed that the defendant david was the last person to drive that vehicle on july twenty ninth twenty twenty five that's pretty impressive that they have that much information leading to david actually being the person behind the wheel okay so we all know that the tesla had been impounded that there was a lot of smell coming from the vehicle but when they opened it a few more details about what they actually found in the impound lot they found a black cadaver bag covered in insects that breaks my heart inside the bag was a severely decomposed head and torso right first of all my god a cadaver bag who has cadaver bags other than the medical examiner as it turns out the alleged is as it turns out the allegation is david you're going to find out why he actually would be in possession allegedly of a body bag so they find this body bag and it's got a head and a torso in it but then a plastic garbage bag is beneath it right it's beneath the black body bag and inside the garbage bags right plastic garbage bag is the dismembered arms and legs belonging to that torso and head that was in the cadaver bag don't ask me why i don't know why there's a body bag and plastic garbage bag but that's how the allegation is that he did it but there's more listed in this this description is that the victim's ring and pinky fingers left hand so your wedding finger and your pinky finger next to it they're amputated they're gone these two fingers okay i get it remember we were told that celeste had david tattooed on her ring finger and so i guess you're just going to take both of them off because maybe it's easier than just getting one of those fingers off so that's pretty compelling evidence you wanted to get rid of the word david who are you then might you be david that's the allegation okay so then the positive identification is made on september sixteenth so eight days later they id this poor young girl as celeste rivas hernandez so the allegations that they lay out are that and this is fascinating david and celeste met when celeste was eleven eleven january twenty twenty two if you do the math david at that time would have been about sixteen and already starting his you know internet music career so sixteen and he's meeting a girl who's eleven nonetheless this goes on to say the sexual relationship began in november of twenty twenty three so at this point she's a year and a half older she's actually just turned thirteen because she had her birthday in september so yeah she's a freshly turned thirteen year old middle schooler the defendant at this point is eighteen so now we're getting into the territory that's breaking the law so the sexual relationship they say she's thirteen he's eighteen she just just turned and three months later her family reports her missing because apparently they say she's spending so much time up in the hollywood hills with this guy they're pissed off about it right understandably then not long after that this is all actually in the same timeline right so february twenty fourth she runs away and it's three months after the sexual relationship allegedly begins february twenty fourth as well parents are angry they get her back home and they take away her telephone they confiscate her phone february twenty fourth same month uh law enforcement says that david surreptitiously got a burner phone for her and paid somebody a thousand dollars to give her that phone wow that's a lot that's pretty indicting paid somebody in her hometown where she lives with her parents or should be living with her parents to give her that burner phone so that they could continue to communicate all throughout twenty twenty four also in feb of twenty twenty four the parents obviously are getting pissed and they say we i'm assuming it's the parents we need you to do a welfare check we need you to find our daughter we think she's up there in the hollywood hills with that singer named david and he's an adult she's a child apparently according to the document the police actually find david's phone number in celeste's phone so they call him and they don't just call him because when they call him he says i haven't spoken to her since february thirteenth or fourteen in twenty twenty four right so that's days ago i haven't spoken to her in days so they go to his house they've made the phone call but now they decide i think we need to go they're going to do an actual welfare check and when they get to his home in the hollywood hills he says to them you know i didn't know she was thirteen did not know that and not only that i have not seen her much because i only met her one time in person i've only met that girl one time in person in november of twenty twenty three this is what this allegation says against david when they're at the welfare check at his home in the hollywood hills because you know they're looking for a runaway he says yeah i didn't know she was thirteen and frankly i didn't know she was a minor i i had only met her once in person november of twenty twenty three coincidentally i think you remember me saying twenty twenty three was when the allegations are that they began their sexual relationship so that may not be true and if that is the case if these allegations are true maybe there'll be more charges of lying to the police and obstructing justice because that's what that is when you tell the police a lie so weirdly even though david is telling this welfare check police officer i don't know what you're talking about really don't know much about her only met her once in person you know back in november twenty twenty three two days later celeste is home who told her to go home two days after that coincidence maybe then it's after that that the allegations here say he drove to lake elsinore david drove to lake elsinore and paid a junior high school student in celeste's class one thousand dollars to give her a cell phone that he himself had purchased so that they could stay in contact and apparently that happens all throughout the year twenty twenty four and they say that celeste spent significant a significant amount of time visiting with the defendant including summer weekends at his home in the hollywood hills and travel to las vegas and london and even texas to meet his family she's thirteen bro it's it is hard to believe there are text messages in this memorandum that allege there are references between david and celeste of sex and pregnancy and abortion and the use of plan b emergency contraceptive as well as explicit photographs documenting and corroborating what's alleged to be a sexual relationship between the two of them so that's important right because if you're trying to allege sex if you weren't there to witness it how else do you prove it well with text messages and pregnancy abortion plan b all these things that doesn't that discussion doesn't come up if you're not actually doing it right if you're not actually having sex it doesn't come up necessarily then in november of twenty twenty four the defendant and the victim broke up celeste and david broke up according to this but continued to communicate and the text messages suggest the sexual relationship continued as well then we get to april twenty third which we've wondered when it was celeste actually died and the investigators say they pinned it to april twenty third and there's a good reason for that all of her cellular activity ceased on that day that's a good indication i don't think she was going to a monastery to contemplate life at age thirteen fourteen right fourteen years old everything stops no more communications from her phone but the night before something very telling happened and let me just get you up to speed the prior night april twenty second twenty twenty five the defendant and the victim engaged in a lengthy argument described in detail in their text messages the messages revealed the victim's jealousy over defendant david's relationship with other women as defendant led her to believe that they had a future together this memorandum continues she became extremely upset and threatened to disclose damaging information about her relationship with the defendant to end his career and destroy his his life coincidentally defendants first studio album was due to be released april twenty fifth in just three days he had an emerging multi million dollar career already in progress he had multiple product endorsements which were highly profitable so you can see where this you know where this briefing is going basically she's angry he's apparently having relationships with other girls they've broken up but they still continue on all their business and communications and she's now saying i'm mad i don't like that so i'm going to tell on you because i'm underage you're not it could ruin you completely so that again is on april twenty second