← Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
D4VD Exposed: Disturbing Timeline & New Details From Discord Chats to a Dead Teen in His Car
00:29:17
Loading summary
Transcript19 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hi everybody, I'm Ashley Banfield and this is drop dead serious. It was two weeks ago today. The LAPD was called out to a tow yard because of the stench that was coming from the trunk of an impounded Tesla. And I know by now you know what it is they found there. The badly decomposed body of a 14 year old girl who likely, and this kills me, who likely spent her 15th birthday the day before she was found rotting in that trunk. The Tesla belonged to an up and coming young R B singer who was away on a world tour at the time that this young girl was found dead in his trunk. But he's not away anymore. David as he's known, D4VD is how he spells it. David is how he pronounces. Pronounces it. David has gone off the grid. He has gone radio silent as disturbing connections to that young teenage girl just keep piling up. And now LA police have confirmed to the Banfield show, my show on News Nation, that they are actively looking for, for more connections between David and that young girl, Celeste Rivas Hernandez, AKA they're looking for evidence, folks. A statement that they sent to my Banfield show on News Nation begins by confirming the search that we told you about last week. This is what they say, quote. On September 17, 2025, detectives from the Robbery Homicide Division served a search warrant on the 1300 block of Dohany Place in connection with, with the death of Celeste Rivas Hernandez. And it goes on to say several items of evidence were recovered and will be analyzed by detectives in the coming days. This is an ongoing investigation. Investigators are following up on several leads, end quote. Well, it doesn't get more cut and dry than that, right? They're not saying anything else. These robbery homicide detectives are so tight lipped, not just to me. They're tight lipped to tmz, they're tight lipped to investigators, they're tight lipped to anybody who covers true crime. They aren't saying boo about this one. For instance, let me give you an example. I was Talking to my NewsNation team today when we were producing my show for tonight and somebody said, you know, I'm confused about how Celeste was found in the front, the front trunk of the, of the Tesla. The way they reported it was that or the way they confirmed it was that a head and a torso was found. But somehow they've got the tattoo on her right index finger. Well, that's not on your torso. So was it a head and a torso with arms but no legs? Then they Also said black leggings, that she was found wearing black leggings, that she was £71. Well, to be five foot one, I think she is. And £71 is absolutely absurd. Let's just say maybe she was. Okay, but how do you get black leggings if there's only a torso in the trunk? So some of the speculation online has been, well, did she. Did she atrophy so much when she was decomposing that they didn't know that there were legs? I have a hard time believing that, but let me just say, they're not confirming anything more. I mean, I read you the statement they gave my show, right? It was pretty basic. I still want to know details. I want to know, how was she found? What could you assess from the decomposition? Was she so decomposed that it had been months and months, like maybe all summer in that trunk? I. I have a lot of questions about when she disappeared versus when David went on the world tour. All I can tell you, though, is that for several months, neighbors said that that aforementioned Tesla where Celeste remains were hidden in the frunk. That Tesla had been parked out in front of the home where David was living. Right. Same home that was raided by the police. TMZ reports the home had been rented by David's manager and that David indeed had been living there before he went out on tour. They also reported that detectives spent 12 hours looking for blood stains or blood evidence in that home. Obviously, anything else they could find, too. If you're going to get a search warrant, you're not just getting it for that. You're going to get it for electronics, laptops, cell phones, hard drives, anything else you can find. Right? You're going to. You're going to look for a lot of evidence. You're probably going to look for tools as well, and you're probably going to be looking in drains. If you're looking for blood evidence, probably going to look for drains. But again, if you. If that body had been in that trunk for months, ain't nothing gonna be in no drains no how. Not with water washing down those drains day after day after day after day for months. On the very day that the house was searched, wouldn't you know it, the rest of David's US Tour was cancelled. And then a few days after that, there went the rest of it. The whole global tour went away, too. Celeste Rivas Hernandez has been missing since April of 2024. That's a year and a half ago. She went missing when she was just 13. In April of that year, David had just turned 19. David is now 20. And in a moment, I'm going to get to why that matters so effing much in this mystery. But first, I should tell you that this vigil was held, that was on Sunday for Celeste. Let's see. The 19, 20, 21st of September. It was held in her hometown of Lake Elsinore. And if you know Los Angeles and Lake Elsinore, her Hometown is about 70 miles southeast of LA. It's a long way, right? 70 miles when you're 13 years old. Not easy to just go 70 miles away from home. You either have to get a ride or you have to have a lot of money for an Uber. I don't know if there's a lot of mass transit that go in between, like, Elsinore and LA, but at 13, that's not an easy trip to make unless someone's picking you up. Somebody who's got a driver's license and can make their way around. Celeste's brother Matthew told the press that on the day that his sister Celeste disappeared, she was on her way to see a movie with her boyfriend. And that boyfriend's name was. Say it with me. David. So mom has said it. Before she disappeared, she was seeing a guy named David. Brother said day she disappeared, she was on her way to a movie with a guy named David. And before I go on, you should know there is no definitive proof that the David that Celeste was dating is David, the r b singer, d4vd. I should also tell you, nor is there any concrete proof that a girl named Celeste that the singer appears to know is in fact the dead teenager named Celeste who was found in the trunk of his car. Lot of coincidences, though. I keep coming back to that. You're right. Proof beyond reasonable doubt. No coincidences. Holy. And I mentioned this a couple days ago. Police hate coincidences. And they don't believe in him either. How is it that nobody ever asked serious questions about David the singer and Celeste the young teen before Celeste was found dead in David's trunk? Again, David's not a suspect. He's not a person of interest, and he hasn't been arrested. But damn, what is going on? We know there are connections between these two. For instance, we now know that these coincidences were on full view as far back as October of 2022. And if you do the math careful, you might vomit. Celeste Rivas Hernandez was just 12 years old. 12. At that time, David the singer was 17. And taking part in a group chat with his fans on the social Media platform Discord. In the chat, he wrote Celeste in here. To which somebody named Celeste replied, hi, David Bark. Kkkkkkkkkkk. Sounds pretty familiar. Kind of seemed like the two might have known each other already. Which means if this really was Celeste Rivas Hernandez on the chat, whose birthday was September 7th, they might have actually connected when she was just 11. 11. In any case, even if they didn't connect before this chat, she was just 12. Just turned 12? What is that, like sixth grade? Maybe seventh? Fast forward to December of 2023. A demo of a love song by David leaks out online, right? And the name of the song is, you guessed it, Celeste. Days later, on January 11, 2024, David appears on a live stream with a girl who looks a lot like Celeste Rivas Hernandez. And the girl tells him, quote, we need to delete this, end quote. David tells the moderators, quote, mods, can we delete all videos? Then as soon as the stream ends, delete the stream too. End quote. The following month, February 2024, Celeste Rivas Hernandez goes missing for the first time, but she returns home. Unclear if the police brought her home because a teacher says so. Not sure if he just mentioned it without checking, but somehow she came home from that first episode of going missing. And then that same month. But February 26, 2024, David posts something on Tick Tock and another user writes this comment and I quote, waiting for LAPD to get your ass for messing with a 13 year old girl. One month later, that's March 28, 2024. David's fans are discussing rumors that he's dating somebody. And one of the fans writes this. Yeah, her name is Celeste. April 5, 2024, it's the next month, Celeste Rivas Hernandez is reported missing. Her brother says that she was going to the movies that day with a guy named David. Almost three months later, June 27, 2024, David decides to repost a Tick Tock. It's a video of somebody chopping up meat. And the caption reads me if I see her talk with other dudes. Now, I'm just gonna pause here for a hot second because ain't nothing illegal about posting or reposting something like that. Morally, it's disgusting. Really? You gonna chop someone up? The girl or the guy she's talking to? Really? You advocating that? You think that's funny? Okay, so I'm off my soapbox now. In retrospect, it's troubling as. Yeah, really, Me, if I see her talk with other dudes chopping up meat, can I Remind you that Celeste Rivas Hernandez was found dismembered in the trunk of a Tesla, rotting. I can't tell you at this early stage because the police won't tell us if they made a mistake when they said that she was dismembered and said head and torso, or if she was just so decomposed they didn't see there were more body parts in there. I don't know that. But I do know that that kind of a post, whether you wrote it or reposted it, that matters. It matters to your state of mind and the kind of guy you are. You want the benefit of the doubt. That's not the kind of thing that does it. It's like, does this stand up in a court of law? No. But when you have a school shooter who has a diary that goes on and on about how he likes to see kids blown apart and dead, that does come into court, Right? Some of your prior statements, if they match an actual crime, that does actually have merit. All right, so I've gone on and on long enough about this one, but let's Skip ahead to February, 2025. So that's June, July, August, September, October, November, December. It's like seven months later, okay, the music video for David's song One More Dance is released. And wouldn't you know it, Here we go again. It features a body being dragged and put into. Say it with me. The trunk of a car. It's art. David and his team will say it's art, but is it life imitating art? Later on, I can say this. David, in that video, plays both the killer and the victim. So, okay, he's also said he loves gore, so it's art. But one month Later, March of 2025, David releases his Withered album. And five months later, August 5, 2025, he starts his world tour. And one month after that, Sept. 3, 2025, neighbors in the Hollywood Hills area near where he lives and where he's been staying, notice the singer's Tesla abandoned on the street. And they don't think it smells good. They think it maybe could be animals, but it smells bad, and they call the cops. And three days later, September 6th, the cops arrive, and they towed that car to an impound lot, got it hooked up, sent it off to an impound lot the next day, September 7th, that is Celeste's 15th birthday. So, yeah, forgive me if I jump to the conclusion that that little girl didn't get to her 15th birthday because that car had been several days in that location in the Hollywood Hills and neighbors had said there was a smell. They thought it was dead animals, but it had been there long enough, right? Abandoned. Call the cops. Get it out of here. So, yeah, I don't think Celeste made it to her 15th birthday. I think she was rotting and decomposing and atrophying down to nothing on her 15th birthday. And one day after her 15th birthday, on September 8, workers at the impound lot. And they're used to a lot, right? They're used to a lot. The smell from that Tesla got so bad, they had to call the police. The stench was terrible. Ever since it had been towed there. It was bad, but it was getting worse. And they had a hunch. So police arrived, they opened the trunk, and they discovered the badly decomposed remains of Celeste Rivas Hernandez. She is wrapped in plastic. Why? Why was Celeste wrapped in plastic? Did whoever put her there think, well, let's not ruin the trunk. The frunk of this Tesla, this Tesla with the Texas plates in the Hollywood Hills, it's why it stood out. It's why people noticed it. It's why people were able to say, I've seen that car at the house where David stays. Right? And the police discovered that this Celeste in the trunk has the same tattoo on her right index finger as the singer David does. And it reads sh right along there. It's very clever. Yes. Other people have it. Yes, It's a popular tattoo. But, hey, David and Celeste both have these tattoos, and she's 13 or 14 most the time. She knows him. So what are the odds of her having that earlier than she meets David? Much of what we've known about this case for two weeks now, and many of the facts that I just gave you in that timeline were first reported by tmz, who have been digging in on this story and breaking news every single day. And breaking information to the Robbery Homicide unit, too. And earlier, I caught up with the executive producer of tmz, Charles ladibodier. Here's our conversation about the case. I'm always curious when it comes to a vigil for someone who is a victim of a violent end. And for all we know, I don't know how Celeste died, but she was certainly treated horrendously in death. I always wonder if the killers show up as. Did you see or do you know of any evidence of police who were at that vigil or maybe even undercover officers just watching to see who showed up?
- [17:26]
B
There were police officers there, but as far as a presence that made you think they were watching, there wasn't anything obvious that I saw in the video, but they could have been there. And we know that that is an MO that that's not just something you see in movies and stuff. Like, it really does happen. So.
- [17:45]
A
Scott Peterson.
- [17:46]
B
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, the police, detectives, I'm sure I would think, are aware of that and that maybe they did have people there. I mean, that's a good, really good point, Ashley. And maybe they did. But again, there's been not only no arrest, there's no named person of interest and no named suspect, which doesn't mean the police don't have a suspect. This means they're not the best. Yeah, they're just not willing to share it with us yet.
- [18:12]
A
I'm looking at other things and so are people online, and I know TMZ is as well. His posts are really starting to stand out. Like, he reposted someone who was cutting up meat and said, quote me if I see her talk with other dudes. Now, he didn't write that, but he reposted it from someone else and it clearly shows. He would either cut up the person the girl was talking to or he'd cut up the girl that was sent before. Obviously, Celeste was found murdered. But then there's another one of him washing his sneakers that she'd been photographed in. These are all, again, by themselves, not much together. They're forming a picture.
- [18:53]
B
Yeah, you know, we're talking today about the lyrics and, you know, we've talked about romantic homicide. And those images that you're just talking about all sort of paint an image of an artist. Right. Like, clearly the best case scenario, you could look at that and say, this is just an image, a very macabre image he wanted to have out there for himself as an artist. But in light of what has happened now, it's impossible to not look at those things through a different lens. Now, that may be unfair to him as far as legally speaking, because again, he's not a suspect. But when his car. At the very least, we can say his car is connected to this crime. And now you start looking at all these things, it's. It's hard not to look at it and go, hmm, what's. What's going on there?
- [19:43]
A
You know, comfortable. It's. I mean, not only that, Charles, you know, he is apparently, you know, he'd been selling these blood spattered T shirts.
- [19:52]
B
Blood splattered shirts. Yeah.
- [19:53]
A
Yeah. A casket on the stage, part of the act. Then there's music video with a body being put into a trunk. Again, none of it would stand up in a court of law.
- [20:04]
B
But.
- [20:05]
A
But looking at all of these things together, it does give you a picture of somebody whose mind works a little differently.
- [20:10]
B
It definitely works a little differently. But on the other hand, you would say. I'm sure his attorney would say to you, that's his art. Right. And you can't prosecute someone or arrest someone based on their art.
- [20:24]
A
It's true. He hasn't been accused of anything. He hasn't been named as a person of interest in this particular case. It just happens to be that it's his car where the body was found, and it's his home that they raided. And that tells us a lot. Like, even when Diddy was in limbo, we talked about the fact that they'd raided two of Diddy's homes. I think an arrest might be imminent. And what do you know? I do want to ask you, though, about the sales of his records and the streams. None of this has affected him in a bad way.
- [20:53]
B
No. I mean, as far as his music career goes, it sounds really weird and macabre to say, but it's helped. It has helped make. Put David on the radar screen of listeners around the country. His. His album just re. Entered the Billboard 200, which is the album charts. And that would not have happened without all of this attention and people, you know, listening to like, oh, who is David? You know, and actually, we do a lot of talkbacks with our affiliates around the country here. And I've had the question asked several times. People going like, huh, I didn't know about this. Didn't know about his music. And I've been listening to it now, and that's exactly what's happening. His streams. His song Romantic Homicide had its biggest week ever streaming on Spotify last week. So people are listening, they're checking out his music.
- [21:53]
A
To that end. Can I just ask you about all. All of the chatter online about. And I think this is important about the age of Celeste, who I say did not make her 15th birthday. No way. You don't. You're not that decomposed one day after your birthday. So she was 14 when she was, well, either died or was killed. And as we go back in time, we have the possibility of them having chatted or met online at age 12. Why is there not more attention being paid to that?
- [22:24]
B
Or maybe legally speaking, is there legally speaking, that may. Depending on what they're finding, it could end up being something that is one of the charges if he were to be arrested. But people are paying attention to that. And I know there's not, I think there's not as much talk in the media about it because we just don't know if he's even the suspect. Right? We don't know. Yes, his car is connected, but that's really all we know for certain at this point. So maybe people aren't getting to that point. But you're right, online people are taking notice of that. We saw a TikTok that David had posted last year and one of the comments on the TikTok and this comment was from February this year, earlier this year. So before anybody, before this happened to Celeste, before anybody was connecting his car to this, before that even happened, the comment said waiting for LAPD to come grab your ass for talking to a 13 year old.
- [23:30]
A
Or something about waiting for LAPD to get your ass for messing with a 13 year old girl.
- [23:37]
B
Right? So somebody there was already putting those pieces together long before the world knew about Celeste. Clearly people knew about David at that point and I think his fans were aware that he was spending time, whatever their relationship was with this young girl.
- [23:57]
A
Charles ladibodier from tmz. I always love having a conversation with him because they really do dig and they really do break news. And I'll guarantee you I'll be talking to him again because I know they're going to break more news on this story as well. Also, just remember that there's that video that surfaced of a student who was videotaping his teacher at the front of the classroom as that teacher was giving the class a cautionary tale about social media. And what was the subject of his cautionary tale? A former student of his named Celeste. He showed pictures of Celeste standing in that very classroom in front of the map that was behind him and said that, that Celeste had run away with a singer named David. So yet another contemporaneous connection made between this Celeste, the victim of some kind of some kind of crime. I can't say murder, I don't know. It is entirely possible it was a, it was an overdose and then everybody freaked out. What do we do? She's underage, let's get rid of her. I mean that's not murder, but there's a lot of crime that's connected to let's get rid of her. And there's a hell of a lot of crime connected to why is a 13 year old overdosing with you, whoever you are? And what were you doing with this 13, 14 and never made it to 15 year old. So maybe this is why the police are so Tight lipped. Yes. They are dealing with a suspicious death, right? Again, I can't say murder, I don't know. But it is very, very hard to deal with a crime scene where two people ostensibly knew each other. Celeste is in the front trunk of David's Tesla. So, yes, of course, his DNA, her DNA will all be mixed. Does it mean that he did anything? No. When it comes to the house, if Celeste's DNA is in that house, what does that tell you? It could tell you that a runaway was hanging out in that house. Is that illegal? No. How do you get hardcore evidence that something awful happened to her in that house or somewhere where David or someone who David knows was with her? How do you get to that? Maybe with witnesses. Maybe there'll be a witness somewhere who's being squeezed by the Robbery Homicide Unit and being so terrified about going down for crimes when they think, no way, I'm not going down for David. I'll tell you everything you want to know. And if that can be corroborated by hard evidence or other witnesses, then maybe you're getting somewhere. But right now, I can see what they're up against. Who knows what the digital trail will tell them? That could be a trove. If David or anybody else around him is texting back and forth saying, what the hell are we going to do with this body? What do I do now? Oh, shit. Celeste died. What do we do? Or, hey, you. I need you to get rid of that. Now you're talking hard evidence. Right? And they did walk out with a computer. Apparently. The reporting says that when they raided the house, they left with a laptop and some other evidence. If they find Celeste's blood. Well, now you're talking. But how many people are in that house if you just start doing parlor games? My feeling is that David probably had a lot of people around him. Musicians often do. We'd heard there was a lot of noise coming from that house on a regular basis. So maybe it was a party house. Well, how many people were attending those parties? And might someone among those partygoers have done something terrible to this girl? OD'd her, raped her, killed her, who knows? Fought with her, punched her, killed her. Anything could have happened. Could have been David, could have been any of his entourage, could have been his party guests. Could have been someone entirely different? What I'm saying is this is not an easy case, especially with a body that is so decomposed. Because the body's not going to tell you the forensic story that so many other bodies do. Beatings, bruisings, that kind of thing, that's going to be hard. Tool marks, not so hard. Shot in the head, not so hard to find that. Beaten to the point where a skull fracture happens. Bones are broken, they'll find that. That you can see even with a decomposing body. But the flesh, the story that the flesh tells, that's going to be hard. So, yeah, they've got their work cut out for them. And maybe I shouldn't be so surprised that we're not getting a lot of information because nobody wants anybody to go underground on this one. No, not until they're finished finding what they want to find. So that means I'm not done with the story yet either. I'm going to continue to update you every single time I get something new on this case. I am so thankful that you stick it out with me every single time. Super appreciative of our little community here. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, folks, the truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead serious.