September 23, 2025 • 50 mins
On Sept. 8, the Los Angeles Police Department was called to a tow yard in Hollywood over reports of a foul odor coming from a vehicle. The LAPD found decomposing, dismembered, human remains, wrapped in a bag hidden in the front trunk area of a tesla registered in Hempstead, Texas, to 20-year-old, David Anthony Burke. He is known by another name as one of the hottest singer/songwriters on the planet, D4vd. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the victim and how she ended up in the Tesla owned by D4vd. The car was towed from the street in front of the house where D4vd was staying in the Hollywood Hills. When the human remains found in his car were identified, she turned out to be a girl who went missing when she was just 13-years-old. Her name was Celeste Rivas Hernandez, from Lake Elsinore, 70 miles away from where her body was found.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.00 Introduction, early memories
03:03.83 Somebody caught a whiff of somethin
05:03.85 Tesla Tech might solve the crime
10:11.21 D4vd builds music career from YouTube gaming
14:12.36 Neighbors had car towed
18:34.04 Tesla registered to D4vd
23:18.07 Car will provide a lot of info
28:37.64 Impact of dealing with dismembered body
34:10.66 Victim went "missing" at 13
39:49.69 Post-mortem manipulation of body
43:13.34 Breaking a saw dismembering a person
48:49.73 What did victim leave behind
50:01.20 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body dots. But Joseph's gotten more. I have early memories
as a child of my mother going through the house
with lemon fresh pledge wiping down all of the surfaces everything.
(00:22):
We always had a piano in the house, by the way,
so you know that is going to be at the
top list for her. My mother taught piano for years,
but that smell is always stuck with me. And now
when I see something that's dust covered, I often think, Wow,
you know, wish I had a can of pledge could
(00:46):
wipe it down, remove the dust. Many times, though the
deposition of dust tells us a lot about a place
or an object, it's an indication that time has in
fact passed. Today we're going to talk about the deposition
(01:12):
of dust, dirt, and grime. Things you might see, for instance,
on the side of the street where car has been abandoned,
or maybe in an impound lot. But the thing about
it is the dust outside never quite reveals sometimes the
(01:37):
horror that is found within. Coming to you from the
beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University, I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is body bags. Well, it's all the rage
(01:58):
right Nowaday. We can't I can't turn on my computer
or look at my phone without what we're about to
discuss being the top line in the news. You know,
We've had a lot of busy news the last couple
of weeks, and but this thing keeps popping up, this case,
(02:21):
and the more it pops up, the I don't know
which which character was it that it said, Oh, it
is Alice in Wonderland. It just gets curiouser and curiouser,
you know, because you know, you begin to think about
this pop star David who has has got this car
(02:44):
that has been found abandoned and subsequently put into a
a lot, and all of a sudden, somebody caught a
whiff of something.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Well, I want to go to the timeline. Now we're
talking about a fifteen year old girl. It's a Leste
Revs Hernandez who is identified as the body. And I
want to get into the idea of being dismembered. But
a fifteen year old missing girl reported missing over a
(03:18):
year ago, year and a half ago. And that's why
it's all the rage, because you've got a fifteen year
old girl dismembered found in the trunk of a tesla
that was abandoned on the side of the road by
a fairly new musical artist who goes by We say David,
but it's spelled D four VD And it is a shocking.
(03:47):
I don't know any other word that actually really fits
Joe shocking. A an artist, a twenty year old new
artist who is out on his first world tour promoting
his first album. When a very expensive car that is
registered to him in Texas under his real name, David
(04:10):
Anthony Burke is just abandoned on the street. That's bad enough,
you know, think about it at twenty years old. How
much does a Tesla cost? Over one hundred thousand dollars?
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Right, yep?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, and you know, depending upon bells and whistles and
you know the model.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
I think, do you think some of those bells and
whistles are going to come into play in this?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah? I think they will. I look, I have to
I have to think because I got to tell you
we were just having a discussion before we started, brother Dave,
and I was thinking about the technology that's at our disposal.
And I'm talking in real broad terms right now, So
(04:53):
give me a little rope here.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
It's like.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I'm an old death the investigator of a forensics guy,
and now even the things that I've seen over the
course of my life as working in forensics and being
around really bright people, I don't necessarily count myself as
a really bright person compared to some of the folks
I know. I've just kind of hung around, like you say,
(05:22):
as a hair and a biscuit that can't get rid
of me. But we're in a whole different world.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Brother.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
When you think about technology, how many cases have you
and I covered on body bags just in the year
twenty twenty five so far in our catalog since January
where some kind of technology, new technology has come into play.
And you know, I think about Tesla. Tesla is one
(05:51):
of those things where the vehicles, whether you like evs
or not, it is it is getting to the point
where it's iconic in a sense that it's a marker
in time for the state of our technology. It's representative
of a lot of stuff, you know, everything from a
(06:11):
smart car to something that runs doesn't run on a
gas combustible engine. You think about musk, you know, going
to moon and when you ride in one of the
things which I've had an opportunity to ride and several
of them that have been ubers. It can't hear the thing,
and it's you know, there's all these screens and all
(06:34):
these sorts of things that are contained therein you know,
a guy like me. I don't want to speak out
of turn for you, but you know, it's I would
imagine you the same. We sit in here and you know,
and I have to think, you know now, I kind
of feel like, you know, one of those people that
back in the early nineteen hundreds that have been riding
(06:57):
buck boards their entire life suddenly got into an automobile
and they were like, wow, how is this even possible?
And we were kind of like in that, And so
this is a marking time. It's a marking crime science too,
because I don't know if you recall this. I don't
want to give anything away too far, but I'll put
it to you this way. And you and I had
had a planning meeting over the phone and I mentioned
(07:20):
this and you said you remembered it at the time.
Do you remember when the Idaho murders took place? One
of the questions they were asking were there any teslas around?
And I didn't understand it. I didn't, you know, because
it's so out of my depth. I didn't understand, you know,
because they're like these little centuries. You know, they're out there,
(07:44):
not in the numerical sense, I mean like century s E. N. T. R. Y.
You know you're sitting there and there watching. You know,
they have these sensors. So I don't know. For me,
it's a braving world. And the fact that this automobile
actually plays in to this story that involves this individual.
(08:06):
And you got to tell a story for all of
our friends. But a kid that has risen up through technology.
You know, you've been in radio forever and you understand
the guts of the music industry. Guys, listen, let me
tell you something about my friend here. He can tell
(08:26):
you more. He's forgotten more stuff about the famous rock
stars and pop stars and country stars and Christian stars,
all these people that have walked through the studio with
him there, and how the music industry works. I said, hey,
I could have listened to him for hours. And this
is a new world, Dave, this is a new world
that we've entered into. It is Please, if you don't mind,
(08:49):
please impart your knowledge about this because again I'm out
of touch with it.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
It is so weird that my grandson, Braylan. Yeah, is
the reason I know, or actually it's the reason I
started learning what was taking place within the music industry.
Because gaming has been a big part of entertainment since
you know, the early eighties really you know when you
(09:16):
got the first home game consoles, but the computer generation
of games that has grown to where it is interactive
online now, using games such as Fortnite as the example. Here,
you have people that record themselves playing Fortnite and they
(09:36):
post it on YouTube and they show they're actually talented
at being entertaining talking about what they're doing in the
game and how they're doing it and what they're trying
to accomplish. And those like my grandson, he's watching, you know,
and learning how to get these things, and it's a
fascinating thing. The game is and it happens with right now.
(10:00):
We have so many of these so called YouTube celebrities
who built their careers on gaming channels, you know, which
is them playing a game and showing you tricks and
things like that. Well, this guy, David Anthony Burke, he
became a Fortnite officionado online. He starts playing the game.
He's really he still is a gamer at heart. But
(10:22):
he actually built his entire music career because he was
making Please remember he's only twenty now, only twenty now.
A couple of years ago, he was releasing these videos
of him playing Fortnite on YouTube and he was making money.
But he got demonetized because he was using music that
(10:45):
he didn't own. You know, that was popular music he
was using in his videos and his tutorials and in
his entertainment, and you can't do that without paying rights
fees for it. So if Joseph Scott Morgan and I
record a song that you really like and you included
in your videos, you're gonna lose. You're gonna get demonetized
because you don't have the rights to use that song.
(11:05):
That's the way it is now. That happened to David
Anthony Burke. So he's fussing with his mother now. He's
living in Houston. He was born in the Bronx. This
is important because a lot of people are saying he's
from New York. He is not from New York. He
was born and raised in New York. He is from Houston, Texas, which,
by the way, is where this tesla was registered. David
(11:27):
Anthony Burke, but David Anthony Burg's mom. She gets tired
of hearing him fussing about not making any money with
his YouTube videos anymore, and she says, why don't you
just make your own music to put on your videos,
And he actually says okay. He downloads an app to
his iPhone and boom, he's creating his own music and
(11:49):
lyrics and everything and putting it on his Fortnite videos
and people liked it. He found and this is a
guy without any musical training, so we've been told it's
a great it's an incredible story. So out of being demonetized,
his mom tells him make your own music. He does,
it becomes successful, it goes viral on YouTube, and then
he goes to TikTok where it explodes. And that is
(12:13):
what led to where in terms of his career, where
he recorded and released his first album in April of
this year, and he's now out on a world tour
that just started with that album. That began as a
way of making money on his Fortnite YouTube videos. So
that's where it began. That's where he came into the money.
(12:35):
And that's why I told you earlier think about the money.
This young guy was making on these platforms, YouTube, TikTok,
what have you, that he could buy a Tesla, and
by the way, not just buy a Tesla, but rent
a twenty thousand dollars a month home in the Hollywood Hills.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
I can't even fan.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Then leave this tesla abandoned is how it was reported,
abandoned on the road right in front of the house,
you know, on the street. He just leaves it parked
there and goes out.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
It's like, well, I got to tell you if I'm
living in a neighborhood, If I'm living in a neighborhood
and it is populated with structures that at least for
his I'm sure you didn't have the biggest, biggest house
there and you're asking twenty grand a month for rental.
(13:29):
I got questions when there's an abandoned car in the
middle of the road or on the side of the road,
because aesthetically, when I'm coming home and I'm paying out
all that, Jack, I got to tell you, man, I
ain't pulling up to see julopies abandoned on the side
of the road.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
I want to be on.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yeah, even if it is a Tesla, I don't care,
you know, if I'm paying that kind of money to
live in the neighborhood, I want to know, you know,
why is this dirty car, you know, sitting out here on.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
The road, And that's what happened. That's actually no fan.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
I'm no fan of what do they call these things?
Hoa's I live out the countryside. I don't know. I
hear these horror stories. I'm no fan of that kind
of thing. But I got to tell you, if you know,
if you're if you're in that atmosphere, you know, people
are going to start to ask questions. Even in big city,
you know, where people ignore one another. They don't know
who your neighbor are.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
They did, and they actually did get tired of it.
And after a couple of weeks we're getting anywhere from
three to five weeks of that car sitting there, neighbors
had enough and they called and had it towed away.
The car was taken to the impound lot on September
the third, and after a couple of days in the
impound lot, they're going, man, something really stanks out here.
(14:45):
And they they being the employees, start looking, where's the
smell coming from from that tesla? Now the trunk is
in the front and a quick look inside they didn't
see anything. But when they popped the trunk they saw everything.
I get in a bag.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
And that's the horror of this because as talented as
this young man is, as gifted as he appears to
be with ringing in the dough, it really makes you
wonder were there any twelve or thirteen year old girls
(15:27):
listening to his music that may have developed an affection
for him. Celessne reeves she would be fifteen chronologically, she'd
(15:54):
be fifteen right now. Okay, if she were alive. A
big reveal here, she ain't. That's been scientifically verified by
the medical examiner out in Los Angeles County. We know
who the body is the or who the body belongs to.
(16:17):
Who this person is.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
I got to ask you about this, Joe, because when again,
just going to the meat and potatoes. Here, a car
is a labeled abandoned on a street on a residential area.
The neighbors call it in. It is towed to an
impound lot. After a couple of days, the stench attracts
flies or whatever, and they go look and inside the
(16:40):
trunk of the car they find a bag containing a person.
So they call police.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Joe.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Now, when police arrive on the scene at the impound lot,
what is the process going to be when they arrive
to this rancid smell? Because you know what, Joe, it
could be a dog in the car or in the
bag and a management you know, it could.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Be any Let me tell you something. It could be
somebody that forgot their groceries. That happens, you know, you
go through the frozen food all.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
I've walked into houses with decomposing bodies of people that
died immediately after getting back from the grocery store and
they left, they left the groceries out on the table
in the kitchen. They just brought them in. I remember
one case in particular where a person obviously had an
m I you know, a heart attack and they died
in the hallway after having brought the groceries into the house,
(17:37):
and the groceries were rotting there along with the body
which is decomposing down the hallway. So yeah, you you
never know, you know what's going to be there.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
But I got to.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Tell you you're walking around in that, you get a whiff
of that, and like I've said before, you know previously,
you're you're gonna questions relative to you know, what's the
source of the right, what is this happening?
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Man?
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Was it happening any of?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
The first news that came out was okay, police have
found the body of a of a female, Yeah, in
this Tesla And it did not take long before again
it is an expensive car at Tesla and it's found
in the Hollywood Hills. So TMZ the website, they're all
(18:27):
over it, you know, and they are right on the
cusp of finding out who owns.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
This car, who's it registered to.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
So before we knew who this individual was in the car,
we knew that it was. Oh, the Tesla was registered
in Texas to David Anthony Burke, who goes by the
name d Well David spelled d the number four VD.
So this artist, David, the car is registered to him
(18:56):
and police are investigating the body. Now what do they do, Joe,
Because we know the odor has overtaken the lot. I've
seen the red or the yellow tape, you know, around
the cars, and the vehicle is being searched. What method
are they going to use? What takes place? I'm guessing
(19:18):
they don't just grab the bag and throw it in
a car.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
No, no, no, no, no, you would never do that.
You have to be very purposed and planned when you're
entering into this process. The car itself is a crime scene.
It's certainly a death scene, all right. Now. I can't
say the crime has been committed that you know, an
(19:43):
actual homicide has been committed in the car. You don't
know that, but you have to.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
I've never actually heard you say that before.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
A crime scene and a death scene, but they are
two different things.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
They are they are because you know, first off, let's
just say that you had an intact body that was
found in the car, all right, it doesn't make it
a homicide scene. There are people that die in cars
that every single day, you know it just you know,
they die motor vehicle accidents or they die of some
kind of natural disease. And people need to remember, just
(20:15):
on a little side here, people need to remember the
number one killer in America's heart disease. It's not all
these traumatic things that you hear about. So think about it.
How just reflect my friends out there, about your loved
ones or somebody that suddenly succumb and they weren't traumatized,
(20:36):
you know, they weren't shot or stabbed or beaten. They
may have been at the grocery store. They may have
been outwalking the dog. They may have been over at
their child's house, you know, holding the grand babies, and
suddenly they clutch their chest. People die in all kinds
of places. So yeah, there's a difference between a death
scene and a crime scene. Crime scene implies that I
(20:59):
ve goes without stating I guess, but obviously that you know,
there has in fact been a violation of a law
here in this particular case, I can guarantee you when
they opened up that trunk and they verified that you
had we'll go and say a dismembered human remain in there. Well,
(21:21):
this scene actually becomes the primary scene, because in our world,
if you have a dead body wherever the corpus delecti is,
that is the primary scene, okay, and then everything else
radiates out from that. Now you've got a lot of
(21:44):
locations involved here, Dave, I mean you really do. There's
all kinds of secondary scenes, and you've got a ton
of what referred to as tertiary scenes too. So you
think about a secondary crime scene, Well, the first thing
I'm thinking about is a domicile. You know, the owner
of this car. Where does he lived? Well, we know
he lives in the Hollywood Hills. Where was the car found?
(22:06):
Well it was out on the curb. Well, he's got
a garage. Why wouldn't this car parked in the garage?
Because when they opened the garage at his house, well,
I'll be dog gone, there's another Tesla in the garage.
So you know, when you think about this, why in
the world would you take a car that has a
(22:29):
dismembered human remain in it and parking on the street.
You know, who has knowledge? I think the big question
is who has actual knowledge of this. I'm not saying
there's a perpetrator. I'm just saying, Okay, you're the first
person I'm going to is David. All right, I'm going
(22:49):
to have a question for you. Sure, when's the last
time you operated this vehicle? Is a vehicle operational? Is
there a problem with it? Do you commonly park your
car on the street? Is this something that you normally do?
And that car, in and of itself, you know, is
going to provide a lot of information relative to when
(23:16):
it was placed on the street, perhaps through biometrics, because
you have to operate the vehicle. So it's going to
give you an idea as to who logged into this
thing and put it there. Who's the last person to
get out of that vehicle? Is Is it sophisticated enough
to give you that specific identifying information. This is a
(23:36):
question we've never had before, Dave, relative to teslas. You know,
I don't recall a case like this. You know, I've
seen teslas burning up on the side of the road
as a result of rioting and all that stuff. But
I've never seen a Tesla. And I know I can
be proved wrong here, but I personally have yet to
cover a case where a Tesla is involved in a
(23:59):
homicide something, yeah, like this, I just I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
There's a couple of things in this show that where
the Tesla is parked on the street, as we mentioned
a few minutes ago, from three to five weeks, it's
it's there and long enough.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
As you mentioned that you'd get.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Irritated driving home in your neighborhood in this car is
sitting in the same spot and not being old right,
And we've got, you know, building the timeline. We have
neighbors saying it was you know, let's just go with
four weeks, and then they tow it to the impound lot,
where after a couple of days the odor is so
(24:42):
strong they call police. You know, they look in and
then call police. But the wording of dismembered body, Yes,
if this, and we will get into the victim here
because we want you to know who she is.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
But just.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Hang in there for just a minute. The mechanics of this.
The body is in that vehicle for an extended period
of time.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Is it possible for the body, through normal decomposition to
appear as if the body was dismembered while it was
in the back from conditions being I mean talking about
summertime in La here, is that possible that the body
was not dismembered but only appeared dismembered because of decomposition.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
No, this information is coming from the corner. So when
when in my world, if you use a term dismembered,
that means that's a that's an action word. We're going
to dismember something, Okay, and in order to dismember something,
(25:50):
tools have to be involved. This is not you know,
you're not just merely pulling a body apart. Okay, You're
talking about you know, you're talking about getting some type
or types of instruments in order to perform this act
(26:11):
and parse this body out. I'm going to be very
blunt with you, and Lord knows you and I have
done our time relative to dismemberments, you know, over these
years talking, you know, talking about these cases. But you know,
one of the most essential essential things I've I've come
to understand it was reinforced me yesterday. As a matter
(26:33):
of fact. My you know, at jack State, I'm surrounded
by you know, kids that are well, they're in their
early twenties. They know the singer and this came up
in conversation yesterday and you know, in class, I think
it was. It was my intro to forensics class that
(26:54):
I teach here to like sophomore it's like a sophomore
layer level class. And we got in we just had
this this dismemberment conversation, you know, saying, look, what do
what's required? Do you need power? If you're going to
use power tools, you're going to have access to hand tools.
If it's something that's kind of you know, personally driven
(27:16):
by you know, a hacksaw or something like that. If
you're using a saws awe, you have to have a
c current or you have to have a charge, a
charging station for the battery. You have to have privacy,
You have to have time where you can take your
time to do this, because if you're going to particulate
(27:37):
a body, most people that have never engaged in any
kind of butchering at all don't know where the weak
spots of the body are. They always and you know,
they always stop and start. You know, they get frustrated
in one area. They don't know if they're going to
go to the joints, most of them. You know, I've
(28:00):
seen tons of these cases where people will try to,
you know, use a saw and go directly through midshaft
of the femur, through tissue, you know, to the bone,
and that's it's impractical. I mean, you can do it,
but you have to have a steadiness of mind. This
is the other thing. A person that's never done this
before and it's not used to this kind of gore
(28:23):
and this kind of horror. They have to press that
down within them as they're you know, taking a part
of body. I've always imagined, you know, somebody that's doing
a dismemberment that's never done it before. They stand up,
get frustrated, They walk around for a little bit. Some
of them probably weep while they're doing it, and they
(28:46):
realize they're in way over their head, you know, because
they've chosen this course of action, try to get rid
of a body. But if I can go back to
something real quick, what does this tell us about a
car that contains a body, a dismembered body, and this timeline.
(29:09):
I'm really wondering, Dave, if if this victim had not
been dismembered for some time, maybe there was a foul
odor associated with it, if the if the body was
being stored somewhere else, when you know, trying to decide
(29:30):
what to do. Oh, I got it. I'll take the body,
you know. I'll take the body and place it into
a bag or bags, and I'll put it in the
in the tesla, and then I'll park it on the street.
That way, when I'm somewhere where the body is being stored,
(29:51):
I no longer have to smell it. You know, you're
trying to get separation, but you you don't. You still
want to be able to look out the window and
see the car, are passed by the car, and see
the car that it's still there, because that gives you
an idea, you know, of what's going on? What status
is this in his inboy founder yet wow? And then no,
(30:14):
So I don't know. I got to thinking about this
last night. I'm thinking, you know, all of various you know,
you know, things that could have happened. How does this
go down?
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Dave?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Because this is it's not the fact that there is
like a pop star, that's weird enough, but it's that
the circumstances are so bizarre. I mean they really are.
Even by the day standards where there's so much bizarre
stuff everywhere, this is really really odd.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Man, it is.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
And the part that I'm so glad you mentioned that
the pop star thing is not central to this, it's
I mean, it is central to the story because that's
why the story is getting the type of play. That
it is a twenty year old singer on his first
world tour and all of a sudden, this body is found.
But here's the key. The body is not The body
(31:11):
is that of a girl who is only fifteen years old,
who would yeah, would be fifteen, right, And she was
reported missing in April of twenty twenty four from Lake Elsinore,
which is about sixty eight miles from the Hollywood Hills.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
South south and east.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Okay, so he's you're in La Goes south and a
little bit east and that's Lake Elsinore and that's where
the community she's from. And she was reported missing April
fifth of twenty twenty four. Now there's going to be
a lot said about every aspect of this young girl's
life and her family.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
I know that.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
And we're not going there today because she's dead and
we need to know who killed her and when. The
why and the how are two different things that are
not really you know, but we need to know when,
why she killed and how because finding a dismembered body
in the trunk of a Tesla on the side of
(32:12):
the road does not tell us how she was killed
or when we go to get that out.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Joe. Yeah, and that's that's the most important thing, because
clues rest in. I think that some of the clues dave,
at least for me, rest in her age, because, as
you have said more eloquently than anybody I have ever
(32:39):
come in contact with in the media. You told me
this several years ago, and I have never forgotten it.
You told me that if you are not an adult
and you have sex with someone that is an adult
(33:03):
that ain't sex, that's rape and sexual assault. Anytime we
have a very young person, Dave that we cover on here,
(33:25):
the big question I always have to ask is what
did a child, because she's thirteen when she went missing? Okay,
what did a child do to somebody that would have
(33:46):
them react with such a level of rage towards this
child as to bring about her death and then desecrate
her remains in death? Who out there would have this
(34:07):
kind of level of anger? That's that's the big question
in that, Dave. Now you think about that, you know
who I mean. I don't know when you were thirteen fourteen.
When I was thirteen or fourteen, Yeah, I had problems
with people I was growing up with. You know, it
(34:27):
might wind up in a scuffle whoever. You know, who knows.
But there's not a whole lot of people out there
that are looking to murder a child.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Of this age.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
I just I don't understand it. So I think our
field gets narrowed down here pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
I want to share something with you because I went
back and looked at the missing person liar that was
put up last seeing Lake Elson, Or California, aged thirteen,
Her date of birth September seventh, twenty ten. All right,
when they put this missing person flyer out, she was
(35:08):
described as five foot three, one hundred and twenty pounds
right here right last scene, wearing gray pants and a
black sweater, a hat and hello, Kitty Sandals, that's the
little girl. Okay, yeah, go, five three, one hundred and
twenty pounds. I got the description of what they found
(35:29):
in the car, five foot two.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Seventy one pounds.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Well, let me, okay, before we go down this road,
just like me.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
That's why I wanted you to break down. Oh, that's possible,
because there's got to be an explanation for.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Losing There is, there is, And let me kind of
explain this to you and just brace yourself for what
I'm about to say. All right, let's go to height.
The height there they are measuring this body. And the
way we make as bodies in the morgue is from
heel to crown. So from the heel to the top
of the head. All right, that's how bodies are measured. Now,
(36:11):
what do we know about her or what do we
know about these remains? Well, it's pretty obvious they have
they've been dismembered. Is it possible to lose an inch
of height during that Yes, it is, because we don't
know that you have all of the components. Let's just say,
let's just say that a quarter of an inch of
(36:34):
bone drops out when you're sawing through the bone. It
becomes bone dust, and you're having to do this multiple times.
It's not beyond it's not beyond understanding that you know
you would lose overall length or height of a body.
(36:55):
That's pretty reasonable. But how do you get from one
hundred plus pain owns down to double digits. Well, here's
how it happens. They've she's been deceased for a while.
She has literally been cooking in that car or wherever
other locations she may have been prior to being placed
in the car. Part of her remains at this After
(37:24):
this amount of time, with this much heat exposed to her,
the body will take on a liquid quality, all right,
and you're going to lose some of that weight. So
if it's contained in a bag, you'll lose a lot
of the body that has been reduced down. You've also
(37:45):
got dehydration of the tissues. Remember, a lot of the
weight that we carry in life is in fact water.
Weight and in death too. And just think about the
ultimate dehydrator. Can you imagine being in a trunk in
LA during the summertime, just even if you were in
(38:08):
that in that location, living inside of a trunk, you're
a living person placed inside the trunk in the direct sunlight.
You're you're gonna lose maybe a couple of pounds just
in waterweight because you're gonna sweat it out. It's gonna
be like being in asauna. How much more so where
you've got constant exposure and decompositional breakdown. The cells are
(38:31):
all collapsing now and they become liquefied to a certain extent,
You'll still have some tissue that remains behind. And this
is one of the huge things here that I think
is very important. With who is now positively identified as
Celeste Revas, they have ruled her death, her manner of
(38:59):
death as a high homicide, but they still have yet
to come up with a cause. Well, one of the
reasons they don't have a cause, I think at this
point is that there's been so many tissue changes within
her that let's just say she's choked out, all right.
That it's a very personal thing where somebody's wrapped their
(39:21):
hands around her throat, and then you give you give
credence to this post mortem manipulation of the body those
dependent upon And I have no knowledge of this. I'm
just throwing this scenario out there. Let's just say you
go to dismember the body and one of the things
(39:43):
that I have yet to have a dismemberment case that
I've even either covered or worked where they didn't go
for the head first. That's generally how it works, all right.
So if you're removing a head, that means that somewhere
along the neck you're going to have to go into
that area with an instrument to separate it from the body. Well,
(40:06):
because you're doing that, any kind of artifact that's in
the neck, particularly when it's a long term decomposition, can
compromise the presentation. You can't really in or rule out anything.
The reason they're coming up with homicide as a manner, Dave,
is that the question I think that you have to
(40:28):
ask philosophically is who in the world dismembers the thirteen
or well, we don't know she would be fifteen. Who
in the world would dismember her? And you said they're
going to rule this as a homicide, you know, but
do we actually have evidence of specific homicidal trauma right now?
(40:52):
The LA County Corner has not released any of that.
I'm hoping that they will. I can tell you this
when they finally removed those remains from that trunk, Dave,
and I'm imagining the body. I'm imagining that they would
(41:15):
have taken out each individual this member remain, like whether
it's a foot, a lower leg, upper leg, head, and
they're going to X ray each one of those. And
this is a messy, messy affair, by the way, this
is not a standard kind of event, because you're dealing
with tissue that's so degraded that it's got a real
(41:38):
kind of oily, greasy feel to it. It's no longer
in this kind of firm state that you have with
with fresh remains, And so they would x ray every
single thing. Why would they x ray every single thing? Because, dude,
you cannot just simply look at the tissue and say, aha,
(41:58):
this is what brought about death. You've got to look
internally in this horrible mass that's left behind with an
X ray to sea, is there a bullet track? Do
I have a lead storm, you know, which we'll see
many times if somebody's shot, you'll see this kind of
lead storm where the round particulates inside the body and
(42:19):
you can follow a trail. Are there any broken bones
in here that are not associated with the act of dismemberment?
You know, I want to know if she's had her
ribs broken or and we can delineate that. And the
more you say, well, how do you know that that
wasn't as a result of of dismemberment, Well, there are
(42:43):
ways that you can actually examine the bone and tell
if at a microscopic level, you can actually tell if
this is if this is something that was in the
anti mortem or perry mortem state while she's dying, as
opposed to ya, he broke broke a rib while he was,
you know, trying to figure out how to use the
(43:04):
saws all or the skill saw or the hacksaw or
the limbsaw or whatever it was.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
That he used.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Now, wow, that's a lot to unpack.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
We are going to be drowning.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
It's just my brain is kind of on overload with
this case because there's so there's so much here I
do want as a big mystery.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Yeah, it is, and I do want to address something
because I think it's important. The family of Celestivas Hernandez
has acknowledged a number of things, and I there are
children missing in this country where mom and dad have
no clue as to what happened. You know, their child
(43:46):
is gone. This case is a little bit different. She
was listed as missing, but the family had she had
communication and contact with the neighborhood after the date she
was listed as missing. The family knew. Now think about this,
this is a thirteen year old girl and they knew
(44:06):
she was in a and they're going to call it
a relationship with this David who was at least eighteen Okay,
he was over eighteen years old, and he's with a
thirteen year old at the time that he takes her
to the movies, which is her brother.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Said. Her brother's name is Matthew Reeves.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
He actually told NBCLA that the family was aware of
the relationship. He claimed his sister vanished after being picked
up by David Burke in Anthony David Burke in his tesla.
He picked her up in the tesla to go see
a movie in May of twenty twenty four. Now there
(44:46):
are pictures and videos that I've seen with David and
Celeste together talking, communicating with one another in the same frame, Okay,
in the same TikTok video, both of them right there.
So it wasn't that she was removed from her home
(45:07):
and taken away without anybody knowing. Now I don't know,
and we I don't know what we'll actually find out.
But the reality here is that her brother is saying
we knew they were in a relationship. Now, most of
us would say, allowing a thirteen year old to be
involved with an eighteen year old, well, it's illegal if
(45:29):
they're involved in sex sexual activity. As I said before,
that's rape. So we've got that. That's part of this discussion.
But the bottom line is she's dead now, Joe, And
well she was to make a decision to be with
an adult.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
Yeah, And the question, you know that I'll always come
back to is who's minding the store?
Speaker 3 (45:52):
Right?
Speaker 1 (45:52):
I want to know that question. You know, Look that
the world is full of predators. We know that. We
know it's evidenced every single day. We talk about at nauseum,
we talk about sex trafficking and missing and murdered children.
Every single We know the world is full of predators.
(46:18):
I want to know who is minding the store. Why
is a twelve or thirteen year old child run in
the streets. I want an answer to that question, because
you do not have the wherewithal developmentally at that age
(46:38):
to make these kind of decisions, you know. And even
if this individual, this pop star, has nothing to do
with her death, the fact that she is on streets
and no one actually knows where she is any given time,
(47:02):
that means she's being exposed to all potential dangers that
exist out in the world that she's not sophisticated enough
to understand. And now now her body has been dismembered, packaged,
(47:26):
and placed into the trunk of a dirty, abandoned car
on the side of the road and taken to an
impound lot. Friends, let me tell you something. There ain't
enough Texas. I am going to find out more about
(47:50):
this case. And I can promise you that myself and
Dave mac are going to have a follow up on
this and we're going to have further discussion. There's going
to be more forensics related to this case. We're going
to find out We're going to find out what the
car reveals. And I'm not just talking about like electronically,
(48:13):
I'm talking about what was going on in the cabin
of that car. I'm going to want to know about
DNA deposition within that car and within this house, which,
by the way, at the time of this recording is
being searched from stem to stern. They're executing search warrants
on this house right now. I want to know about
(48:35):
the other car in the garage. I want to know
if celeste DNA is in bow spots or in both vehicles.
I want to know if her DNA is in that
house anywhere. I don't care, if it's the cupboard in
the kitchen or if it's the bedroom, the bathroom, I
don't care. We want to know. We want to know
(48:56):
what essence of her life did she leave behind in
these environments. And we're going to continue to search and
see if LA County Corner Slash Medical Examiner comes up
with a specific cause of death. We need answers. We
need answers to this case and all the cases out
(49:17):
there involving children, involving children that are not protected that
are out there. Let's not let her death be in vain. Maybe,
(49:40):
just maybe this is a cautionary tale that somebody who
needs to hear it will take heed of I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this is bodybacks no
Body dots. But Joseph's gotten more. I have early memories
as a child of my mother going through the house
with lemon fresh pledge wiping down all of the surfaces everything.
(00:22):
We always had a piano in the house, by the way,
so you know that is going to be at the
top list for her. My mother taught piano for years,
but that smell is always stuck with me. And now
when I see something that's dust covered, I often think, Wow,
you know, wish I had a can of pledge could
(00:46):
wipe it down, remove the dust. Many times, though the
deposition of dust tells us a lot about a place
or an object, it's an indication that time has in
fact passed. Today we're going to talk about the deposition
(01:12):
of dust, dirt, and grime. Things you might see, for instance,
on the side of the street where car has been abandoned,
or maybe in an impound lot. But the thing about
it is the dust outside never quite reveals sometimes the
(01:37):
horror that is found within. Coming to you from the
beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University, I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is body bags. Well, it's all the rage
(01:58):
right Nowaday. We can't I can't turn on my computer
or look at my phone without what we're about to
discuss being the top line in the news. You know,
We've had a lot of busy news the last couple
of weeks, and but this thing keeps popping up, this case,
(02:21):
and the more it pops up, the I don't know
which which character was it that it said, Oh, it
is Alice in Wonderland. It just gets curiouser and curiouser,
you know, because you know, you begin to think about
this pop star David who has has got this car
(02:44):
that has been found abandoned and subsequently put into a
a lot, and all of a sudden, somebody caught a
whiff of something.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Well, I want to go to the timeline. Now we're
talking about a fifteen year old girl. It's a Leste
Revs Hernandez who is identified as the body. And I
want to get into the idea of being dismembered. But
a fifteen year old missing girl reported missing over a
(03:18):
year ago, year and a half ago. And that's why
it's all the rage, because you've got a fifteen year
old girl dismembered found in the trunk of a tesla
that was abandoned on the side of the road by
a fairly new musical artist who goes by We say David,
but it's spelled D four VD And it is a shocking.
(03:47):
I don't know any other word that actually really fits
Joe shocking. A an artist, a twenty year old new
artist who is out on his first world tour promoting
his first album. When a very expensive car that is
registered to him in Texas under his real name, David
(04:10):
Anthony Burke is just abandoned on the street. That's bad enough,
you know, think about it at twenty years old. How
much does a Tesla cost? Over one hundred thousand dollars?
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Right, yep?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, and you know, depending upon bells and whistles and
you know the model.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
I think, do you think some of those bells and
whistles are going to come into play in this?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah? I think they will. I look, I have to
I have to think because I got to tell you
we were just having a discussion before we started, brother Dave,
and I was thinking about the technology that's at our disposal.
And I'm talking in real broad terms right now, So
(04:53):
give me a little rope here.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
It's like.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I'm an old death the investigator of a forensics guy,
and now even the things that I've seen over the
course of my life as working in forensics and being
around really bright people, I don't necessarily count myself as
a really bright person compared to some of the folks
I know. I've just kind of hung around, like you say,
(05:22):
as a hair and a biscuit that can't get rid
of me. But we're in a whole different world.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Brother.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
When you think about technology, how many cases have you
and I covered on body bags just in the year
twenty twenty five so far in our catalog since January
where some kind of technology, new technology has come into play.
And you know, I think about Tesla. Tesla is one
(05:51):
of those things where the vehicles, whether you like evs
or not, it is it is getting to the point
where it's iconic in a sense that it's a marker
in time for the state of our technology. It's representative
of a lot of stuff, you know, everything from a
(06:11):
smart car to something that runs doesn't run on a
gas combustible engine. You think about musk, you know, going
to moon and when you ride in one of the
things which I've had an opportunity to ride and several
of them that have been ubers. It can't hear the thing,
and it's you know, there's all these screens and all
(06:34):
these sorts of things that are contained therein you know,
a guy like me. I don't want to speak out
of turn for you, but you know, it's I would
imagine you the same. We sit in here and you know,
and I have to think, you know now, I kind
of feel like, you know, one of those people that
back in the early nineteen hundreds that have been riding
(06:57):
buck boards their entire life suddenly got into an automobile
and they were like, wow, how is this even possible?
And we were kind of like in that, And so
this is a marking time. It's a marking crime science too,
because I don't know if you recall this. I don't
want to give anything away too far, but I'll put
it to you this way. And you and I had
had a planning meeting over the phone and I mentioned
(07:20):
this and you said you remembered it at the time.
Do you remember when the Idaho murders took place? One
of the questions they were asking were there any teslas around?
And I didn't understand it. I didn't, you know, because
it's so out of my depth. I didn't understand, you know,
because they're like these little centuries. You know, they're out there,
(07:44):
not in the numerical sense, I mean like century s E. N. T. R. Y.
You know you're sitting there and there watching. You know,
they have these sensors. So I don't know. For me,
it's a braving world. And the fact that this automobile
actually plays in to this story that involves this individual.
(08:06):
And you got to tell a story for all of
our friends. But a kid that has risen up through technology.
You know, you've been in radio forever and you understand
the guts of the music industry. Guys, listen, let me
tell you something about my friend here. He can tell
(08:26):
you more. He's forgotten more stuff about the famous rock
stars and pop stars and country stars and Christian stars,
all these people that have walked through the studio with
him there, and how the music industry works. I said, hey,
I could have listened to him for hours. And this
is a new world, Dave, this is a new world
that we've entered into. It is Please, if you don't mind,
(08:49):
please impart your knowledge about this because again I'm out
of touch with it.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
It is so weird that my grandson, Braylan. Yeah, is
the reason I know, or actually it's the reason I
started learning what was taking place within the music industry.
Because gaming has been a big part of entertainment since
you know, the early eighties really you know when you
(09:16):
got the first home game consoles, but the computer generation
of games that has grown to where it is interactive
online now, using games such as Fortnite as the example. Here,
you have people that record themselves playing Fortnite and they
(09:36):
post it on YouTube and they show they're actually talented
at being entertaining talking about what they're doing in the
game and how they're doing it and what they're trying
to accomplish. And those like my grandson, he's watching, you know,
and learning how to get these things, and it's a
fascinating thing. The game is and it happens with right now.
(10:00):
We have so many of these so called YouTube celebrities
who built their careers on gaming channels, you know, which
is them playing a game and showing you tricks and
things like that. Well, this guy, David Anthony Burke, he
became a Fortnite officionado online. He starts playing the game.
He's really he still is a gamer at heart. But
(10:22):
he actually built his entire music career because he was
making Please remember he's only twenty now, only twenty now.
A couple of years ago, he was releasing these videos
of him playing Fortnite on YouTube and he was making money.
But he got demonetized because he was using music that
(10:45):
he didn't own. You know, that was popular music he
was using in his videos and his tutorials and in
his entertainment, and you can't do that without paying rights
fees for it. So if Joseph Scott Morgan and I
record a song that you really like and you included
in your videos, you're gonna lose. You're gonna get demonetized
because you don't have the rights to use that song.
(11:05):
That's the way it is now. That happened to David
Anthony Burke. So he's fussing with his mother now. He's
living in Houston. He was born in the Bronx. This
is important because a lot of people are saying he's
from New York. He is not from New York. He
was born and raised in New York. He is from Houston, Texas, which,
by the way, is where this tesla was registered. David
(11:27):
Anthony Burke, but David Anthony Burg's mom. She gets tired
of hearing him fussing about not making any money with
his YouTube videos anymore, and she says, why don't you
just make your own music to put on your videos,
And he actually says okay. He downloads an app to
his iPhone and boom, he's creating his own music and
(11:49):
lyrics and everything and putting it on his Fortnite videos
and people liked it. He found and this is a
guy without any musical training, so we've been told it's
a great it's an incredible story. So out of being demonetized,
his mom tells him make your own music. He does,
it becomes successful, it goes viral on YouTube, and then
he goes to TikTok where it explodes. And that is
(12:13):
what led to where in terms of his career, where
he recorded and released his first album in April of
this year, and he's now out on a world tour
that just started with that album. That began as a
way of making money on his Fortnite YouTube videos. So
that's where it began. That's where he came into the money.
(12:35):
And that's why I told you earlier think about the money.
This young guy was making on these platforms, YouTube, TikTok,
what have you, that he could buy a Tesla, and
by the way, not just buy a Tesla, but rent
a twenty thousand dollars a month home in the Hollywood Hills.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
I can't even fan.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Then leave this tesla abandoned is how it was reported,
abandoned on the road right in front of the house,
you know, on the street. He just leaves it parked
there and goes out.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
It's like, well, I got to tell you if I'm
living in a neighborhood, If I'm living in a neighborhood
and it is populated with structures that at least for
his I'm sure you didn't have the biggest, biggest house
there and you're asking twenty grand a month for rental.
(13:29):
I got questions when there's an abandoned car in the
middle of the road or on the side of the road,
because aesthetically, when I'm coming home and I'm paying out
all that, Jack, I got to tell you, man, I
ain't pulling up to see julopies abandoned on the side
of the road.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
I want to be on.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yeah, even if it is a Tesla, I don't care,
you know, if I'm paying that kind of money to
live in the neighborhood, I want to know, you know,
why is this dirty car, you know, sitting out here on.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
The road, And that's what happened. That's actually no fan.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
I'm no fan of what do they call these things?
Hoa's I live out the countryside. I don't know. I
hear these horror stories. I'm no fan of that kind
of thing. But I got to tell you, if you know,
if you're if you're in that atmosphere, you know, people
are going to start to ask questions. Even in big city,
you know, where people ignore one another. They don't know
who your neighbor are.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
They did, and they actually did get tired of it.
And after a couple of weeks we're getting anywhere from
three to five weeks of that car sitting there, neighbors
had enough and they called and had it towed away.
The car was taken to the impound lot on September
the third, and after a couple of days in the
impound lot, they're going, man, something really stanks out here.
(14:45):
And they they being the employees, start looking, where's the
smell coming from from that tesla? Now the trunk is
in the front and a quick look inside they didn't
see anything. But when they popped the trunk they saw everything.
I get in a bag.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
And that's the horror of this because as talented as
this young man is, as gifted as he appears to
be with ringing in the dough, it really makes you
wonder were there any twelve or thirteen year old girls
(15:27):
listening to his music that may have developed an affection
for him. Celessne reeves she would be fifteen chronologically, she'd
(15:54):
be fifteen right now. Okay, if she were alive. A
big reveal here, she ain't. That's been scientifically verified by
the medical examiner out in Los Angeles County. We know
who the body is the or who the body belongs to.
(16:17):
Who this person is.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
I got to ask you about this, Joe, because when again,
just going to the meat and potatoes. Here, a car
is a labeled abandoned on a street on a residential area.
The neighbors call it in. It is towed to an
impound lot. After a couple of days, the stench attracts
flies or whatever, and they go look and inside the
(16:40):
trunk of the car they find a bag containing a person.
So they call police.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Joe.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Now, when police arrive on the scene at the impound lot,
what is the process going to be when they arrive
to this rancid smell? Because you know what, Joe, it
could be a dog in the car or in the
bag and a management you know, it could.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Be any Let me tell you something. It could be
somebody that forgot their groceries. That happens, you know, you
go through the frozen food all.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
I've walked into houses with decomposing bodies of people that
died immediately after getting back from the grocery store and
they left, they left the groceries out on the table
in the kitchen. They just brought them in. I remember
one case in particular where a person obviously had an
m I you know, a heart attack and they died
in the hallway after having brought the groceries into the house,
(17:37):
and the groceries were rotting there along with the body
which is decomposing down the hallway. So yeah, you you
never know, you know what's going to be there.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
But I got to.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Tell you you're walking around in that, you get a whiff
of that, and like I've said before, you know previously,
you're you're gonna questions relative to you know, what's the
source of the right, what is this happening?
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Man?
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Was it happening any of?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
The first news that came out was okay, police have
found the body of a of a female, Yeah, in
this Tesla And it did not take long before again
it is an expensive car at Tesla and it's found
in the Hollywood Hills. So TMZ the website, they're all
(18:27):
over it, you know, and they are right on the
cusp of finding out who owns.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
This car, who's it registered to.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
So before we knew who this individual was in the car,
we knew that it was. Oh, the Tesla was registered
in Texas to David Anthony Burke, who goes by the
name d Well David spelled d the number four VD.
So this artist, David, the car is registered to him
(18:56):
and police are investigating the body. Now what do they do, Joe,
Because we know the odor has overtaken the lot. I've
seen the red or the yellow tape, you know, around
the cars, and the vehicle is being searched. What method
are they going to use? What takes place? I'm guessing
(19:18):
they don't just grab the bag and throw it in
a car.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
No, no, no, no, no, you would never do that.
You have to be very purposed and planned when you're
entering into this process. The car itself is a crime scene.
It's certainly a death scene, all right. Now. I can't
say the crime has been committed that you know, an
(19:43):
actual homicide has been committed in the car. You don't
know that, but you have to.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
I've never actually heard you say that before.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
A crime scene and a death scene, but they are
two different things.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
They are they are because you know, first off, let's
just say that you had an intact body that was
found in the car, all right, it doesn't make it
a homicide scene. There are people that die in cars
that every single day, you know it just you know,
they die motor vehicle accidents or they die of some
kind of natural disease. And people need to remember, just
(20:15):
on a little side here, people need to remember the
number one killer in America's heart disease. It's not all
these traumatic things that you hear about. So think about it.
How just reflect my friends out there, about your loved
ones or somebody that suddenly succumb and they weren't traumatized,
(20:36):
you know, they weren't shot or stabbed or beaten. They
may have been at the grocery store. They may have
been outwalking the dog. They may have been over at
their child's house, you know, holding the grand babies, and
suddenly they clutch their chest. People die in all kinds
of places. So yeah, there's a difference between a death
scene and a crime scene. Crime scene implies that I
(20:59):
ve goes without stating I guess, but obviously that you know,
there has in fact been a violation of a law
here in this particular case, I can guarantee you when
they opened up that trunk and they verified that you
had we'll go and say a dismembered human remain in there. Well,
(21:21):
this scene actually becomes the primary scene, because in our world,
if you have a dead body wherever the corpus delecti is,
that is the primary scene, okay, and then everything else
radiates out from that. Now you've got a lot of
(21:44):
locations involved here, Dave, I mean you really do. There's
all kinds of secondary scenes, and you've got a ton
of what referred to as tertiary scenes too. So you
think about a secondary crime scene, Well, the first thing
I'm thinking about is a domicile. You know, the owner
of this car. Where does he lived? Well, we know
he lives in the Hollywood Hills. Where was the car found?
(22:06):
Well it was out on the curb. Well, he's got
a garage. Why wouldn't this car parked in the garage?
Because when they opened the garage at his house, well,
I'll be dog gone, there's another Tesla in the garage.
So you know, when you think about this, why in
the world would you take a car that has a
(22:29):
dismembered human remain in it and parking on the street.
You know, who has knowledge? I think the big question
is who has actual knowledge of this. I'm not saying
there's a perpetrator. I'm just saying, Okay, you're the first
person I'm going to is David. All right, I'm going
(22:49):
to have a question for you. Sure, when's the last
time you operated this vehicle? Is a vehicle operational? Is
there a problem with it? Do you commonly park your
car on the street? Is this something that you normally do?
And that car, in and of itself, you know, is
going to provide a lot of information relative to when
(23:16):
it was placed on the street, perhaps through biometrics, because
you have to operate the vehicle. So it's going to
give you an idea as to who logged into this
thing and put it there. Who's the last person to
get out of that vehicle? Is Is it sophisticated enough
to give you that specific identifying information. This is a
(23:36):
question we've never had before, Dave, relative to teslas. You know,
I don't recall a case like this. You know, I've
seen teslas burning up on the side of the road
as a result of rioting and all that stuff. But
I've never seen a Tesla. And I know I can
be proved wrong here, but I personally have yet to
cover a case where a Tesla is involved in a
(23:59):
homicide something, yeah, like this, I just I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
There's a couple of things in this show that where
the Tesla is parked on the street, as we mentioned
a few minutes ago, from three to five weeks, it's
it's there and long enough.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
As you mentioned that you'd get.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Irritated driving home in your neighborhood in this car is
sitting in the same spot and not being old right,
And we've got, you know, building the timeline. We have
neighbors saying it was you know, let's just go with
four weeks, and then they tow it to the impound lot,
where after a couple of days the odor is so
(24:42):
strong they call police. You know, they look in and
then call police. But the wording of dismembered body, Yes,
if this, and we will get into the victim here
because we want you to know who she is.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
But just.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Hang in there for just a minute. The mechanics of this.
The body is in that vehicle for an extended period
of time.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Is it possible for the body, through normal decomposition to
appear as if the body was dismembered while it was
in the back from conditions being I mean talking about
summertime in La here, is that possible that the body
was not dismembered but only appeared dismembered because of decomposition.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
No, this information is coming from the corner. So when
when in my world, if you use a term dismembered,
that means that's a that's an action word. We're going
to dismember something, Okay, and in order to dismember something,
(25:50):
tools have to be involved. This is not you know,
you're not just merely pulling a body apart. Okay, You're
talking about you know, you're talking about getting some type
or types of instruments in order to perform this act
(26:11):
and parse this body out. I'm going to be very
blunt with you, and Lord knows you and I have
done our time relative to dismemberments, you know, over these
years talking, you know, talking about these cases. But you know,
one of the most essential essential things I've I've come
to understand it was reinforced me yesterday. As a matter
(26:33):
of fact. My you know, at jack State, I'm surrounded
by you know, kids that are well, they're in their
early twenties. They know the singer and this came up
in conversation yesterday and you know, in class, I think
it was. It was my intro to forensics class that
(26:54):
I teach here to like sophomore it's like a sophomore
layer level class. And we got in we just had
this this dismemberment conversation, you know, saying, look, what do
what's required? Do you need power? If you're going to
use power tools, you're going to have access to hand tools.
If it's something that's kind of you know, personally driven
(27:16):
by you know, a hacksaw or something like that. If
you're using a saws awe, you have to have a
c current or you have to have a charge, a
charging station for the battery. You have to have privacy,
You have to have time where you can take your
time to do this, because if you're going to particulate
(27:37):
a body, most people that have never engaged in any
kind of butchering at all don't know where the weak
spots of the body are. They always and you know,
they always stop and start. You know, they get frustrated
in one area. They don't know if they're going to
go to the joints, most of them. You know, I've
(28:00):
seen tons of these cases where people will try to,
you know, use a saw and go directly through midshaft
of the femur, through tissue, you know, to the bone,
and that's it's impractical. I mean, you can do it,
but you have to have a steadiness of mind. This
is the other thing. A person that's never done this
before and it's not used to this kind of gore
(28:23):
and this kind of horror. They have to press that
down within them as they're you know, taking a part
of body. I've always imagined, you know, somebody that's doing
a dismemberment that's never done it before. They stand up,
get frustrated, They walk around for a little bit. Some
of them probably weep while they're doing it, and they
(28:46):
realize they're in way over their head, you know, because
they've chosen this course of action, try to get rid
of a body. But if I can go back to
something real quick, what does this tell us about a
car that contains a body, a dismembered body, and this timeline.
(29:09):
I'm really wondering, Dave, if if this victim had not
been dismembered for some time, maybe there was a foul
odor associated with it, if the if the body was
being stored somewhere else, when you know, trying to decide
(29:30):
what to do. Oh, I got it. I'll take the body,
you know. I'll take the body and place it into
a bag or bags, and I'll put it in the
in the tesla, and then I'll park it on the street.
That way, when I'm somewhere where the body is being stored,
(29:51):
I no longer have to smell it. You know, you're
trying to get separation, but you you don't. You still
want to be able to look out the window and
see the car, are passed by the car, and see
the car that it's still there, because that gives you
an idea, you know, of what's going on? What status
is this in his inboy founder yet wow? And then no,
(30:14):
So I don't know. I got to thinking about this
last night. I'm thinking, you know, all of various you know,
you know, things that could have happened. How does this
go down?
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Dave?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Because this is it's not the fact that there is
like a pop star, that's weird enough, but it's that
the circumstances are so bizarre. I mean they really are.
Even by the day standards where there's so much bizarre
stuff everywhere, this is really really odd.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Man, it is.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
And the part that I'm so glad you mentioned that
the pop star thing is not central to this, it's
I mean, it is central to the story because that's
why the story is getting the type of play. That
it is a twenty year old singer on his first
world tour and all of a sudden, this body is found.
But here's the key. The body is not The body
(31:11):
is that of a girl who is only fifteen years old,
who would yeah, would be fifteen, right, And she was
reported missing in April of twenty twenty four from Lake Elsinore,
which is about sixty eight miles from the Hollywood Hills.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
South south and east.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Okay, so he's you're in La Goes south and a
little bit east and that's Lake Elsinore and that's where
the community she's from. And she was reported missing April
fifth of twenty twenty four. Now there's going to be
a lot said about every aspect of this young girl's
life and her family.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
I know that.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
And we're not going there today because she's dead and
we need to know who killed her and when. The
why and the how are two different things that are
not really you know, but we need to know when,
why she killed and how because finding a dismembered body
in the trunk of a Tesla on the side of
(32:12):
the road does not tell us how she was killed
or when we go to get that out.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Joe. Yeah, and that's that's the most important thing, because
clues rest in. I think that some of the clues dave,
at least for me, rest in her age, because, as
you have said more eloquently than anybody I have ever
(32:39):
come in contact with in the media. You told me
this several years ago, and I have never forgotten it.
You told me that if you are not an adult
and you have sex with someone that is an adult
(33:03):
that ain't sex, that's rape and sexual assault. Anytime we
have a very young person, Dave that we cover on here,
(33:25):
the big question I always have to ask is what
did a child, because she's thirteen when she went missing? Okay,
what did a child do to somebody that would have
(33:46):
them react with such a level of rage towards this
child as to bring about her death and then desecrate
her remains in death? Who out there would have this
(34:07):
kind of level of anger? That's that's the big question
in that, Dave. Now you think about that, you know
who I mean. I don't know when you were thirteen fourteen.
When I was thirteen or fourteen, Yeah, I had problems
with people I was growing up with. You know, it
(34:27):
might wind up in a scuffle whoever. You know, who knows.
But there's not a whole lot of people out there
that are looking to murder a child.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Of this age.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
I just I don't understand it. So I think our
field gets narrowed down here pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
I want to share something with you because I went
back and looked at the missing person liar that was
put up last seeing Lake Elson, Or California, aged thirteen,
Her date of birth September seventh, twenty ten. All right,
when they put this missing person flyer out, she was
(35:08):
described as five foot three, one hundred and twenty pounds
right here right last scene, wearing gray pants and a
black sweater, a hat and hello, Kitty Sandals, that's the
little girl. Okay, yeah, go, five three, one hundred and
twenty pounds. I got the description of what they found
(35:29):
in the car, five foot two.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Seventy one pounds.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Well, let me, okay, before we go down this road,
just like me.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
That's why I wanted you to break down. Oh, that's possible,
because there's got to be an explanation for.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Losing There is, there is, And let me kind of
explain this to you and just brace yourself for what
I'm about to say. All right, let's go to height.
The height there they are measuring this body. And the
way we make as bodies in the morgue is from
heel to crown. So from the heel to the top
of the head. All right, that's how bodies are measured. Now,
(36:11):
what do we know about her or what do we
know about these remains? Well, it's pretty obvious they have
they've been dismembered. Is it possible to lose an inch
of height during that Yes, it is, because we don't
know that you have all of the components. Let's just say,
let's just say that a quarter of an inch of
(36:34):
bone drops out when you're sawing through the bone. It
becomes bone dust, and you're having to do this multiple times.
It's not beyond it's not beyond understanding that you know
you would lose overall length or height of a body.
(36:55):
That's pretty reasonable. But how do you get from one
hundred plus pain owns down to double digits. Well, here's
how it happens. They've she's been deceased for a while.
She has literally been cooking in that car or wherever
other locations she may have been prior to being placed
in the car. Part of her remains at this After
(37:24):
this amount of time, with this much heat exposed to her,
the body will take on a liquid quality, all right,
and you're going to lose some of that weight. So
if it's contained in a bag, you'll lose a lot
of the body that has been reduced down. You've also
(37:45):
got dehydration of the tissues. Remember, a lot of the
weight that we carry in life is in fact water.
Weight and in death too. And just think about the
ultimate dehydrator. Can you imagine being in a trunk in
LA during the summertime, just even if you were in
(38:08):
that in that location, living inside of a trunk, you're
a living person placed inside the trunk in the direct sunlight.
You're you're gonna lose maybe a couple of pounds just
in waterweight because you're gonna sweat it out. It's gonna
be like being in asauna. How much more so where
you've got constant exposure and decompositional breakdown. The cells are
(38:31):
all collapsing now and they become liquefied to a certain extent,
You'll still have some tissue that remains behind. And this
is one of the huge things here that I think
is very important. With who is now positively identified as
Celeste Revas, they have ruled her death, her manner of
(38:59):
death as a high homicide, but they still have yet
to come up with a cause. Well, one of the
reasons they don't have a cause, I think at this
point is that there's been so many tissue changes within
her that let's just say she's choked out, all right.
That it's a very personal thing where somebody's wrapped their
(39:21):
hands around her throat, and then you give you give
credence to this post mortem manipulation of the body those
dependent upon And I have no knowledge of this. I'm
just throwing this scenario out there. Let's just say you
go to dismember the body and one of the things
(39:43):
that I have yet to have a dismemberment case that
I've even either covered or worked where they didn't go
for the head first. That's generally how it works, all right.
So if you're removing a head, that means that somewhere
along the neck you're going to have to go into
that area with an instrument to separate it from the body. Well,
(40:06):
because you're doing that, any kind of artifact that's in
the neck, particularly when it's a long term decomposition, can
compromise the presentation. You can't really in or rule out anything.
The reason they're coming up with homicide as a manner, Dave,
is that the question I think that you have to
(40:28):
ask philosophically is who in the world dismembers the thirteen
or well, we don't know she would be fifteen. Who
in the world would dismember her? And you said they're
going to rule this as a homicide, you know, but
do we actually have evidence of specific homicidal trauma right now?
(40:52):
The LA County Corner has not released any of that.
I'm hoping that they will. I can tell you this
when they finally removed those remains from that trunk, Dave,
and I'm imagining the body. I'm imagining that they would
(41:15):
have taken out each individual this member remain, like whether
it's a foot, a lower leg, upper leg, head, and
they're going to X ray each one of those. And
this is a messy, messy affair, by the way, this
is not a standard kind of event, because you're dealing
with tissue that's so degraded that it's got a real
(41:38):
kind of oily, greasy feel to it. It's no longer
in this kind of firm state that you have with
with fresh remains, And so they would x ray every
single thing. Why would they x ray every single thing? Because, dude,
you cannot just simply look at the tissue and say, aha,
(41:58):
this is what brought about death. You've got to look
internally in this horrible mass that's left behind with an
X ray to sea, is there a bullet track? Do
I have a lead storm, you know, which we'll see
many times if somebody's shot, you'll see this kind of
lead storm where the round particulates inside the body and
(42:19):
you can follow a trail. Are there any broken bones
in here that are not associated with the act of dismemberment?
You know, I want to know if she's had her
ribs broken or and we can delineate that. And the
more you say, well, how do you know that that
wasn't as a result of of dismemberment, Well, there are
(42:43):
ways that you can actually examine the bone and tell
if at a microscopic level, you can actually tell if
this is if this is something that was in the
anti mortem or perry mortem state while she's dying, as
opposed to ya, he broke broke a rib while he was,
you know, trying to figure out how to use the
(43:04):
saws all or the skill saw or the hacksaw or
the limbsaw or whatever it was.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
That he used.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Now, wow, that's a lot to unpack.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
We are going to be drowning.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
It's just my brain is kind of on overload with
this case because there's so there's so much here I
do want as a big mystery.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Yeah, it is, and I do want to address something
because I think it's important. The family of Celestivas Hernandez
has acknowledged a number of things, and I there are
children missing in this country where mom and dad have
no clue as to what happened. You know, their child
(43:46):
is gone. This case is a little bit different. She
was listed as missing, but the family had she had
communication and contact with the neighborhood after the date she
was listed as missing. The family knew. Now think about this,
this is a thirteen year old girl and they knew
(44:06):
she was in a and they're going to call it
a relationship with this David who was at least eighteen Okay,
he was over eighteen years old, and he's with a
thirteen year old at the time that he takes her
to the movies, which is her brother.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Said. Her brother's name is Matthew Reeves.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
He actually told NBCLA that the family was aware of
the relationship. He claimed his sister vanished after being picked
up by David Burke in Anthony David Burke in his tesla.
He picked her up in the tesla to go see
a movie in May of twenty twenty four. Now there
(44:46):
are pictures and videos that I've seen with David and
Celeste together talking, communicating with one another in the same frame, Okay,
in the same TikTok video, both of them right there.
So it wasn't that she was removed from her home
(45:07):
and taken away without anybody knowing. Now I don't know,
and we I don't know what we'll actually find out.
But the reality here is that her brother is saying
we knew they were in a relationship. Now, most of
us would say, allowing a thirteen year old to be
involved with an eighteen year old, well, it's illegal if
(45:29):
they're involved in sex sexual activity. As I said before,
that's rape. So we've got that. That's part of this discussion.
But the bottom line is she's dead now, Joe, And
well she was to make a decision to be with
an adult.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
Yeah, And the question, you know that I'll always come
back to is who's minding the store?
Speaker 3 (45:52):
Right?
Speaker 1 (45:52):
I want to know that question. You know, Look that
the world is full of predators. We know that. We
know it's evidenced every single day. We talk about at nauseum,
we talk about sex trafficking and missing and murdered children.
Every single We know the world is full of predators.
(46:18):
I want to know who is minding the store. Why
is a twelve or thirteen year old child run in
the streets. I want an answer to that question, because
you do not have the wherewithal developmentally at that age
(46:38):
to make these kind of decisions, you know. And even
if this individual, this pop star, has nothing to do
with her death, the fact that she is on streets
and no one actually knows where she is any given time,
(47:02):
that means she's being exposed to all potential dangers that
exist out in the world that she's not sophisticated enough
to understand. And now now her body has been dismembered, packaged,
(47:26):
and placed into the trunk of a dirty, abandoned car
on the side of the road and taken to an
impound lot. Friends, let me tell you something. There ain't
enough Texas. I am going to find out more about
(47:50):
this case. And I can promise you that myself and
Dave mac are going to have a follow up on
this and we're going to have further discussion. There's going
to be more forensics related to this case. We're going
to find out We're going to find out what the
car reveals. And I'm not just talking about like electronically,
(48:13):
I'm talking about what was going on in the cabin
of that car. I'm going to want to know about
DNA deposition within that car and within this house, which,
by the way, at the time of this recording is
being searched from stem to stern. They're executing search warrants
on this house right now. I want to know about
(48:35):
the other car in the garage. I want to know
if celeste DNA is in bow spots or in both vehicles.
I want to know if her DNA is in that
house anywhere. I don't care, if it's the cupboard in
the kitchen or if it's the bedroom, the bathroom, I
don't care. We want to know. We want to know
(48:56):
what essence of her life did she leave behind in
these environments. And we're going to continue to search and
see if LA County Corner Slash Medical Examiner comes up
with a specific cause of death. We need answers. We
need answers to this case and all the cases out
(49:17):
there involving children, involving children that are not protected that
are out there. Let's not let her death be in vain. Maybe,
(49:40):
just maybe this is a cautionary tale that somebody who
needs to hear it will take heed of I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this is bodybacks no
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.