Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - D4VD GOES RADIO SILENT AS CELESTE MURDER INVESTIGATION INTENSIFIES

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. D4VD, aka David Burke, goes radio silent as the Celeste murder investigation boils over. This is a Celeste body double rocks the investigation. I'm Nancy Grace. This is crime stories. I want to thank you for being. with us. There is a dead body in there 150 feet away from his house. Her body was an advanced

Starting point is 00:00:38 state of decontosure. It's not just a car. This is a car containing his girlfriends, allegedly, dead dismembered body. As we go to air tonight, David Burke, aka the artist known as David, but spelled D4VD. Okay, whatever, remains real. Radio silent as the murder investigation into the little teen girl found in his Tesla trunk boils over. Joining me an all-star panel to make sense of what we are learning tonight. But first, a new theory rocking online sleuths and beyond. The theory that there is a body double being used. Let me explain the theory.

Starting point is 00:01:28 Melissa McCarty joining us. investigative reporter, host of killer genes, and author of a book, The Making of a Crime Reporter, Melissa, the working theory is that don't poo-poo it. Melissa McCarty joining us, what is the body double theory? What's the story, Melissa? Nancy, definitely plausible. I've seen similar elaborate cover-ups in other cases. Now, the sleuthing is there pretty much stripping everything he's ever done online.

Starting point is 00:01:58 And one of the things, not only the two Celeste theory, but is it using a body devil? Are there images of her surfacing online to make it seem as though she was alive and messing at the timeline? You know, these are conspiracy theories, but they are plausible at the same time. So it's something that the LAPD is going to have to continue to, you know, investigate. But it's confusing for the mass to follow with all the new tidbits coming about from the sleuthing. By joining me now is Steve Fisher, missing person's private investigator, search and rescue specialist and owner of search investigations. Steve, thank you for being with us. Number one, a lot happening in the case, the case boiling over. I wonder why D4VD, aka David

Starting point is 00:02:41 Anthony Burke, has remained totally silent. He's on social. Don't worry about that. He's busy deleting negative comments. So I know he's alive and well, but he's saying nothing about the disappearance and death of this little girl. Celeste found in his trunk. I wonder what his father, the lawyer, has to do with that, if anything, his decision to remain silent as it relates to Celeste. But this new theory has spreading like wildfire that there is a body double Celeste. Many of these are posted by him. These are not the same girl. It's not her. But yet it's posted all over his internet social postings. She has been spotted at various functions. What do you make of it? Yeah, do they look

Starting point is 00:03:33 remarkably alike? And like you said, she has shown up, but, you know, there's been backstage concert photos of her and, you know, just being tagged as Celeste. And I believe that girl's 22 years old. So, um, whether it's deliberate or not, I can't say, but it's definitely, um, uh, you know, interesting that, uh, okay. Stay Fisher. I don't rely on crystal balls to prove a case. I don't expect you to guess or surmise, read the tea leaves. What I'm saying, point blank, is it's been done before and before we discount anything, it needs to be proven or disproven.

Starting point is 00:04:20 The theory is that knowing Celeste is gone, she's dead in his Tesla. she's not reported missing the car is not reported stolen or missing why and then a celeste body double lookalike starts appearing on his feed on his social and even at events it's not Celeste but it looks like Celeste during this critical time period it's not a leap of faith to surmise it is intentional can you can you understand what I'm saying. Yeah, no, I agree with you. Although I will say that that girl did show up in some even just even, you know, back in 2024, but there were a lot more prominent in 2025. And so, yeah, I think that this could be a reason to explain, you know, or for people not to be looking for

Starting point is 00:05:16 the other, you know, Celeste, but they look remarkably alike. Is that what's happening here? We don't know. And recall David Anthony Burke, aka David, aka D.4. for VD is presumed innocent under the law. He will be innocent. He is innocent right now until the presumption of innocence is pierced and overcome by evidence that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he is in fact guilty. Now, I want to move on to this. Take a look at Celeste's little middle school boyfriend.

Starting point is 00:05:51 She said how her mom didn't treat her well or whatever, and she didn't like where she was at. We were at PE, and she told me, my friend, that she was running away. And she said it was because of her parents, and she was, like, joking about it. And she was, like, she was, like, happy, like, joking like she always was. And, like, it didn't seem real because, like, she was, like, playing around, joking about it. And the next day, she wasn't at school. And, like, that's the last time I saw her. My heart dropped until I was, like, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:06:26 I just couldn't believe it. I thought, I mean, I kind of had a feeling when I saw, like, the first thing, I was like, what if it is her? But I just, like, brushed it off. But when I saw it really was her, I was like, damn, I really knew. That's for our friends over at TMZ. That's Celeste, the Rev's little middle school boyfriend, describing how years in the making she had trouble at home, a very difficult home life.

Starting point is 00:06:56 And it brings to mind a beautiful little girl, Madeline Soto, Maddie Soto, who had told friends, as soon as she was 13, she was running away from home and living in the woods. And I couldn't help wonder why would a little girl want to run away from home and live in the woods. Then I found out. Mommy's boyfriend, Stefan Stearns, had been molesting her and taking videos of the molestation for years back as, early as when she was nine years old. No wonder she wanted to run away and live in the woods. Why did Celeste Rivas continue to run away from home? How did everybody know that there was trouble at home? As a matter of fact, on this occasion that she ran away from home, her sister went looking for her, even poking her head, the sister, into a liquor store.

Starting point is 00:07:56 asking if they could look at the surveillance video and see if Celeste had walked by. And sure enough, Celeste was caught on videocam on the incident when she ran away from home. To Dave Mack, Crime Stories investigative reporter, what happened in that instance? You know, in that instance, Nancy, we actually can see that Celeste is kind of doing a walk run. Oh, hey, Dave, look, look at your monitor. We're showing the video the sister got from the store. And there she is literally running away from home. Let me be clear.

Starting point is 00:08:35 Celeste was not in the liquor store. The surveillance video showed her going by. This little girl running away from home. And I got to ask, why? In this video from our friend Harvey Levin at TMZ. Now, what were you saying, Dave Mack? I just wanted you to see the video. I just wanted to point out that, you know, that video was at 7 a.m.

Starting point is 00:08:53 That's when it was taken. And at a time when he would kill me when normally going to school. But so instead, Celeste is clearly kind of in a confused state. If you watch her stride, she's partially walking, partially running. It's like she's not quite sure what she's going to do. But that's the last they see ever. She takes off. And it's a fascinating reading to the 13-year-old that is trying to figure out what to do.

Starting point is 00:09:18 And as you just pointed out, Nancy, this is a child who spoke about being unhappy at home, not being treated well at home and wanting to be away. And when I see her walking and stutter stopping kind of and then running, it just breaks my heart to think of that child not knowing where to go, who she is, or what she should be doing. She's been gone over a year with him. She had been living with this grown man.

Starting point is 00:09:45 And now she's dead. Celeste is found dead in the trunk of his Tesla. We were just showing us. you video obtained from a liquor store. Imagine this, Celeste, a little girl's sister, also a little girl, goes looking for her sister, asking stores and homes along the way if they had seen her sister. Even a young girl going in a liquor store asking if they had seen Celeste, because she looked at the surveillance video. This is from our friend Harvey Levin over at TMZ. And here is Celeste 7 a.m. running away from home. Now, I'm certainly not the church lady, but I can tell you this.

Starting point is 00:10:31 You need to know where your 12-year-old daughter is at 7 a.m. I think we could all agree with that. I'm very, very curious to Jeffrey Gentry joining us, a crime scene analyst and death investigator. Jeffrey, how many little girls are snatched up once they become runaways every year? It's, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands. Can you imagine parents not knowing where their daughter is at 7 a.m.? It is way too many, and the stats on that are very disturbing. But, you know, that doesn't happen in homes. So, like, for example, I've got three teenagers at home, and I know exactly where they're at all times.

Starting point is 00:11:16 I have apps and everything in them. I know I've got phones that I can contact them on at all times. So that is very abnormal. And you've got to look into the home life as well as the circumstances going around this case just to figure out why in the world is this girl out and able to run away. How is this girl able to establish a relationship with an older man? So those are all very disturbing facts that need to be looked into. Melissa McCarty, joining us investigative reporter and host, listen.

Starting point is 00:11:44 A friend of Celeste mother, Mercedes-Martinez, says the family, Family was aware of the relationship with Burke. She doesn't know why they didn't ask where she had been staying. Celeste left again and went back to him. Someone called Celeste's mother and said, Stop looking for her. She's fine. Take down social media post about Celeste being missing.

Starting point is 00:12:04 She felt scared and took down a social media post asking for help finding Celeste. I mean, Melissa, somebody calls me and tells me, don't look for Lucy. Take down the social media post. The first thing I would do would be Starseeing. their bony rear end and find out who was calling me, threatening me, to take down social postings about my missing daughter, number one. But that person was never reported to police and they apparently took down the social

Starting point is 00:12:35 media postings and quit looking. What happened? First of all, that's a very haunting call to receive. But I think it really goes into the backstory of Celeste and what was happening in her home. clear there were a lot of issues either within the family dynamic or even the environment where she was living for her to come and go seemingly as she pleased at this point. I think they were just used to her leaving. And, you know, they also do seem like a proactive family trying to find her whereabouts,

Starting point is 00:13:05 but then they didn't have any loss. Melissa McCarty, I like you. I really do. Do you have children? I do not. Well, you will one day if you're a fortunate. I will say this, those teen years, 12 to 15, they are rough. I think any parents and any teen would admit to that, those are rough years in the home

Starting point is 00:13:28 environment, the social environment. I don't get a fine figure about what you're saying right now and I don't care. Please mute her. I don't care how rough they are. When your daughter goes missing, you find her. You find her. You do not allow your child to go as they please, like you just said. no and oh what i don't even know what you're saying i'm concerned

Starting point is 00:13:55 did you fall in here ahead are you okay there's a back story of her leaving home for a long year a period of time where at one point there's only so much a family can do if they made all of those calls to police and nothing came of it she would continue to run away from home the police okay you know what melissa um i'm gonna let you rest for a few moments and I'm going to go to a specialist who finds missing people. Okay. Steve Fisher, you do not let a child go as they please. Now, when they become 18 or they move out of your home as an adult, then you can't

Starting point is 00:14:39 stop them. They will go and come as they please. And the same reason that you have to watch over them is the reason they can't buy liquor. They can't buy alcohol. They can't enter into a contract. They can't go tell somebody, yeah, I want to buy your car. Miners cannot negotiate contracts. Why? Because they don't have the wherewithal, the maturity to do that. So even if I sell a minor, my Lamborghini, and then guess what? They don't pay the car note and then they wreck it. I can't sue them because I entered a contract with a minor. So when you hear Melissa McCarty state, well, you know,

Starting point is 00:15:20 a lot of parents let their children come and go as they place, no, they don't. And what more could they do? Well, they could hire PI. They could continue to call police. They could put up the social media postings. They could go out and look for her. The mom knew she was dating a guy named David. She's all over social media. I can see her. Can't they? Can't they see? She is with D4VD, aka Burke? Yeah, that's what you do.

Starting point is 00:15:47 You don't give up, play dad, roll over. No. I mean, could you school McCarty on what you do when your child goes missing?

Starting point is 00:15:58 Yes, so the Celeste was just failed on so many levels when it comes to this. And I'll tell you, I have talked directly with people in that neighborhood that were helping

Starting point is 00:16:08 to search for Celeste and were told by family members to lay off because she was with a, quote, unquote, family member in Los Angeles and everything was okay. Okay, this is bringing to mind other cases. Let's talk about R. Kelly, R. Kelly, who would gift his victims and their families, expensive gifts, money, so he could basically keep these young girls as sex slaves. Then we've got Michael Jackson. Family after family after family thought it was just perfectly fine for their child to go sleep with Michael Jackson.

Starting point is 00:16:49 Okay, Dr. Bethany Marshall, I know a lot of people think Jackson's innocent. I get that. I don't want to believe he was a child molester either because he was one of the most incredible music talents that ever lived. That said, he was a child molester. There. So how do families get hoodwinked into thinking? it's okay for their child to be with an adult male. Nancy, I think they get swayed by the celebrity.

Starting point is 00:17:18 They're not protective. They don't understand that they have a legal duty to their children. Reminds me of a dad in my practice once got into an argument with his 16-year-old. Told the 16-year-old in session, if you don't comply, I'm going to kick you out of the house. And I said, if you kick him out of the house, I'm going to call child protective services. Because you are his legal guardian. you have a duty to put a roof over his head to nurture him to make sure there's food in his belly that he's going to school. You do not let a 16-year-old, 15-year-old, 14-year-old come and go

Starting point is 00:17:51 as they please. All is forgiven, Melissa. But does FYI to the world at large, no parenting advice from Melissa McCarty, who thinks children can come and go as they please? Yeah, no. Nancy, but to my point, we really don't know what was happening in her home life inside the home. Okay. I need you to tell me things I don't already know. That's why I have you. Okay. I know something was wrong. Even a little middle school boyfriend, you want me to play that again, said something was wrong in the home. She was very upset. She was very sad. She thought her mother was very mean to her and she wanted to run away. So far, neither of my children have run away or even said the words run away. Not yet. Okay. Now, I'm not giving myself a gold standard. but I can tell you this much, if one of them disappeared, all hell would break loose. And I would not be sitting on my rear end watching reruns on TV while my son or daughter were unaccounted for. You darn right. However, there were 11 calls to police. We don't know the context of those calls or who were calling. Was it Celeste? Was it the parents? I think this is a family that was

Starting point is 00:19:06 trying they were proactive at one point you don't know what the cut calls were about do you because they took down the social media posts and they quit looking according to neighbors and by the way i've looked up and researched what you said and yes police were at the home multiple times deputies were there several times the day that the little sister got the video of celeste running down the street at seven a.m. Do you even have a pet? McCarty? Do you have a cat or a dog? A snake, a frog, and anything, a lizard. Anything? Do you have a pet? I do. Two rescue dogs. So far so good. Put her up. They're still alive. Do you know where your rescue dogs are right now? I bet you do, don't you? Where are they? I do at all times. I do.

Starting point is 00:19:58 So you think it's okay to know where your dog is, but that children, you know, the human... Boy, here's the thing, Nancy. Is that a kid, let them go and trouble teens? But no, no. However, I've worked with a lot of troubled teens. And not saying that she was, but there are some circumstances where a family can try so hard to do everything that they have the capacity and the tools to do. And it's still not enough. There's overriding factors such as this wealthy young celebrity lowering her in.

Starting point is 00:20:32 They lay down, rolled over and played dead. And I could put that in a lot of different ways, but they wouldn't be fit for the air. You're seeing that video of her running down the street at 7 a.m. I can tell you this much, I know where my children are at 7 a.m. You ever heard of Life 360? Even when I'm not with them, I know where they are because there's no way they're going to be separated from their cell phone. That video from our friends at TMZ. Very expensive items were saying on Celeste that her parents did not give her and she certainly did not buy herself.

Starting point is 00:21:15 For instance, a very expensive purse and a diamond ring. Let's take a look. Now, what about it, Dr. Bethany? Where did she get those? Well, that's a Louis Vuitton purse. That looks like a one, one and a half carrot diamond. She certainly didn't go get a job and buy them herself. what what girl is given gifts like that if not that somebody's trying to have power over her

Starting point is 00:21:40 and also we saw this with cassie ventura the gifts were given taken away given taken away so we don't know that those gifts were permanently under her possession either i've had uh women in my practice who are abused whose husband buys husbands buy them expensive purses but will not allow them access to cash and when i say to the husband's you know, she needs to go to the grocery store. She needs the shop. He goes, well, I gave her purses. So purses here in Southern California are a very common thing for men to give to women to have control over them.

Starting point is 00:22:16 The conspiracy theorists online sleuthing has exploded, literally dozens and dozens of theories. How do you know that this isn't somebody's setting up David? Why? Why would anyone want to frame him? That's crazy talk. This model sends a notification to cell phone whenever the front trunk is open for more than 10 minutes. If someone was loading Celeste's body into the car and it took more than 10 minutes, Burke could have received a notification and this notification could be found on his phone by law enforcement.

Starting point is 00:22:55 The Tesla Model Y belonging to Burke, David Anthony Burke, the artist known as David, It looks like D4VD. Joining me now, Scott Eicher, who has actually performed experiments with a Tesla. Founding member FBI Cellular Analysis Survey Team, former police officer, homicide detective with Norfolk, Virginia. Currently, precision cellular analysis. Scott, thank you for being with us. Explain what you learned about this Tesla other than the fact that if the trunk is open, in over 10 minutes, an alert is sent by text or email to the owner.

Starting point is 00:23:38 Yeah, and the Tesla, as we have talked before, has numerous cameras on it. So you get these alerts when the trunk is open or the front, front trunk, they call it the front. And there's a small area in front of the car there in the front of the front that you can put baggage or groceries, that's what I use it for. But in this case, you know, her body was found inside the front of this, of the Tesla. It's a very small area. And you can see some of the pictures. This is my daughter here sitting in it. Who is that? That's your reenact. Okay. Yes, yes, ma'am. That's my daughter. She's about 100 pounds. So it's pretty tight in there for her. But as if it, you know, if the victim in this case with Celeste, you know, she's already deceased, they're more foldable and bendable at that point in time.

Starting point is 00:24:42 Scott Eicher, how tall is your daughter? Five to one hundred pounds. Okay. That's generally the same size as Celeste, generally speaking. Let's see that shot again. We also know that Celeste's body was in a bag, which. that's a whole another can of worms

Starting point is 00:25:02 for Jeffrey Gentry our blood pattern analyst but back to Scott Iker regarding the Tesla Celeste was dismembered okay which means that

Starting point is 00:25:17 although we don't know the specifics of the dismemberment yet that could have made it much easy made it much easier to put her body in the trunk since she was dismembered

Starting point is 00:25:29 What were you saying about the degree of rigor or live or mortis? What were you saying about that? Yeah. As I said, if she's dead, she's more foldable or manipulable and her body so could fit into that small area of the trunk of the Tesla. And there's numerous cameras all around that. I'm curious about that USB that goes into the Tesla that does all the recording and the recordings are stored on the USB.

Starting point is 00:26:03 Would the car start if someone had removed the USB? Yes, it will. It will start. And it's just not going to save any of the data, the recordings from the cameras. The USB is really just there to save the pictures and the recordings. Also, Scott, it's almost a 360-degree video of the surroundings of the car. What all would the cameras catch? They catch numerous aspects of the front, back, and side of views of the camera, and this is me reenacting, bringing a bag to the front of the car, opening the hood, placing that bag into that frunk area, that little space that we saw earlier, and then showing.

Starting point is 00:26:46 As you can see, that's the dash camera in front of the car and right by the mirror, and it's facing right down the front of the car. So anybody coming to the front of that car will get viewed pretty clearly, as you can see. And then there's cameras on each side of the car and the rear of the car, too. Melissa, how many days passed from, let's just go with the last time she was cited in August to the day that her body was discovered? I believe it was about 11 days. 11 days. Okay. Dr. Kendall Crowns is joining me.

Starting point is 00:27:24 chief medical examiner, Tarrant County, that's Fort Worth. He is an esteemed lecturer at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU, and he is now the star of a hit podcast, Mayhem in the Morg. Dr. Crowns, how would rigor mortis or liver mortis affect the foldability of Celeste's body? And how can we tell by looking at the body, what instance? instrument was used to dismember her? All right, so let's start with Rigamortis. Rigamortis is basically the stiffening of the body after death.

Starting point is 00:28:04 It usually sets in within a couple of hours, up to six hours after death, lasts about a day or two before it disappears. So when it initially sets in, the body is very stiff, and it can make it very hard to bend the body. But if you force it enough, you can still bend the arms and the legs and even fold the person in half. And once you break the rigor, it can't set back in. So will it make it difficult to put it in it?

Starting point is 00:28:33 Slow down. Slow down. Slow down. Dr. Kendall Crowns, you're speaking to mere mortals like myself. We're not all medical geniuses. You just said something about, I can't even repeat what you said, but I can ask a question. Isn't it true that after a period of hours rigor, where you stiffen like a board,

Starting point is 00:28:55 it's like cracking a two by four and a half to fold a body like the legs or the arms that are in rigor. After a period of hours, rigor dissipates and the body again becomes malleable. Isn't that true? Yeah, after about a day or two, the rigor will actually disappear.

Starting point is 00:29:13 Starts in the small muscles first and goes to the larger ones. So it only lasts about a day or two before it's gone, but you can break the rigor by pushing on the arms or the extremities and folding them along the joint spaces, you're able to still break the rigor and you can fold a person into a suitcase or a trunk or whatever if you need to.

Starting point is 00:29:35 Dr. Kendall Crowns, how long does it take? What's the body, what's the person's killed for rigor to sit in? About two to six hours. It starts in the smaller muscles first, like your jaw muscles, and then spreads to the larger muscles at the end. Okay. So you know what that says to me? Dr. Kendall Crowns, I think that whoever dismembered her did it very quickly after she was killed

Starting point is 00:29:58 before rigor had set in. And again, Dr. Kendall Crowns, how can we look at her body? Of course, it will be microscopic, in a microscopic investigation, to look at the actual tissue. Let's just pretend that the body was severed at the knee. Let's just pretend. You, let's just pretend. you take the severed limb and you put it under a microscope at the point of severance and you look at those microscopic cells of the leg. Then you look at the bone. How can you determine what type of tool was used to sever this child's body? So what you can do is if they used a saw or something along those lines,

Starting point is 00:30:50 the saw has the little teeth in it, they will actually leave kind of hash marks in the bone as they're sawing through the bone that can be looked at and then be used as a comparison back to what is the alleged instrument used to dismember the body. So you can do basically a comparison analysis of the marks on the bones compared back to the instrument that was used to do the dismembering. a tissue itself, the tissue tearing, all that, there is no way to really look at that and know if it was a saw or not, but you can kind of get an idea of how rough the tissue looks is could they use a knife because the wounds will be cleaner than if they used a saw, which will be more ragged. But it is actually the bones themselves. When you look at those, you can kind of get an idea of the tool and actually do a toolmark comparison with the bones to the actual tool. Law enforcement saying it's very likely her body was in Burke's Tesla for several weeks.

Starting point is 00:31:51 The remains were severely decomposed, dismembered, and found wrapped in a bag. There has been no comment about how the body was dismembered, no indication if a knife, saw, axe, or anything else was used. But whatever was used to dismember the teen, there will be tool marks left behind to provide a way to identify what was used and possibly link them back to the killer. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. As we go to air tonight, David Anthony Burke, aka David, aka D4VD, who by the way, his music is through the roof on Spotify, amazing, the irony, that said, he is radio silent, although we are learning, he's going on social media and monitoring Reddit users, everybody posting about Celeste's murder, and he is trying to control the narrative as it relates to him. So he's not

Starting point is 00:32:58 totally quiet. He can go online and do that, but not mention a word of condolence. Speaking of remaining silent, did he not notice Celeste wasn't there? Did nobody say, hey, we're Celeste? apparently not because she was never reported missing by either him or her parents yeah digest that for a minute nor was his car reported stolen interesting right that's called circumstantial evidence and again burke is innocent as we go to air tonight but still no word from burke again radio silent i want to circle back to scott iker joining us uh forensics expert. Iker, I want to see the video of you again carrying the bag to the Tesla in which you performed multiple experiments. The bag. The bag. I want to go to Jeffrey Gentry joining

Starting point is 00:33:58 us. Forensic certified bloodstain pattern analyst, senior crime scene analyst and death investigator. Author of Forensic Science Applications to Death and Crime Scene Investigator. Authors of Bloodstain Pattern Analysis. Author of Death Investigations information to obtain during a forensic death investigation. Can we talk one moment, Gentry, about my beloved trash bags. Oh, how I love them. Why? Because they're so easy to lift prints from.

Starting point is 00:34:33 Explain. They are very easy to lift prints. If you know what you're doing, you can use super glue techniques where You can put the bag in a controlled environment. There are multiple different enhancement techniques where you can't actually get usable fingerprints from plastic bags. And you might even want to consider obtaining DNA from these bags as well. So you might be able to figure out who was handling the bags, either before they were filled with body parts or during the process or when they were being put inside of the vehicle. Veteran Defense Attorney Joanna and you have us joining us from this jurisdiction.

Starting point is 00:35:08 and Joanna, I guess you would argue with a straight face that, hey, if his fingerprints are on that bag, that means nothing. This bag was probably from his home. Oh, it wouldn't be with a straight face because I think we need a lot more before we can tie him to this act. First of all, we haven't even established the manner of death or the time of death. And so we don't know if an actual murder was committed. Could this be a situation where there's this alternate theory where maybe she's, She's engaged in some drug activity, ODs, pass, you know, fall dead in front of someone,

Starting point is 00:35:45 maybe not even David, and they panic. And of course, and maybe their stupor, they, with lacking judgment, decide to get rid of the body and dismember it, not the best decision, but it could have been a panic state. And I think that's why right now, nobody has been named yet as the primary suspect in this,

Starting point is 00:36:05 because we have to establish what actually happened to her first, and then we can get to whose fingerprints were on the back. No, we don't. I don't know why you're saying that. Put her up. Let me jog your memory. Refresh your recollection, as we say in court, with a little photo. Do you recognize this person? Do you recognize her, Joanna Nevis? That's Lacey Peterson. Her body, along with the body of her little boy, her unborn child, Connor, washed up on the shore of San Francisco Bay near the marina, where her husband was fishing on Christmas Eve. We never got a COD on her, did we? But yet, there was a murder conviction. Let's try another photo. Look at this person. Do you recognize her? Her name is Suzanne Morfew, Joanna Nevis. We don't have her COD either. Her bones.

Starting point is 00:37:03 were buried miles and miles and miles away from home. But her bike was found not too far from her home, her helmet in another area. Her husband suggested a wild animal did it, a mountain lion. Okay, here's another photo. Do you recognize this woman? Her name is Anna Walsh. Her body's never been found, but all of those cases are going forward, Joanne and the of us.

Starting point is 00:37:29 Just because you can get rid of a COD cause of death? does not mean you're walking free. Melissa McCarty joining us, investigative reporter, host of killer jeans, and author of the making of a crime reporter, who I can assure you knows where her dogs are at this hour.

Starting point is 00:37:47 Melissa, tell me about the search of D4VD's mansion. Right, so the house in the Hollywood Hills, it was leased under his manager's name, but we know that LAPD, during the investigation, They issued a search warrant. They were taking out electronics and looking for blood traces, anything that could piece together,

Starting point is 00:38:08 some kind of forensic connection between the two of those. Did a homicide take place in the house? Was it location number one, location number two? But they did go search the house. What they found has not been revealed yet. This is from our friend Harvey Levin at TMC. Jeffrey Gentry, following up on what Melissa McCarty just stated, she said they were looking for blood evidence.

Starting point is 00:38:31 What specifically were they looking for? And how would luminal play into that? Luminol is a chemical that can be used to detect blood that's not visible with the naked eye. So I've used it in many cases, and it's on areas that are either dark or areas that have been cleaned up. So if I were in that home looking, I would search in areas where I think a body has been dismembered. And keep in mind that when you're dismembering a body, if you don't know what you're doing, you're going to make a mess for sure. So I would be looking in areas like bathrooms. I would be looking outside, like on patios, I'd be looking in garages.

Starting point is 00:39:04 And you spray this chemical, and under dark conditions, it will light up. So it's going to tell you where that dismemberment occurred. If it was inside the house or on the back patio, it's a very useful technique. And then after you've sprayed this chemical, if you're using the right one, you can actually swab it for DNA to confirm that there was blood there at one point. because keep in mind, after several days, weeks, that stuff is going to get cleaned up. And if somebody does a good job, it's not going to be really visible with a naked eye, but this chemical is perfect for enhancing blood stains so that you can see them, document them, and then collect DNA.

Starting point is 00:39:38 Gentry, you know what I love, cast off. And when I say cast off, I mean, for instance, if you stab someone and swing back, blood, my neat particles are cast off of your weapon, and we'll hit the wall or the ceiling, or we don't know where. And when looking for blood at a crime scene, not only do you use aluminum, as Jeffrey Gensry accurately described, you look for blood in very odd places, like on the ceiling, at the tops of the walls, places where you would not find Celeste's blood normally. Like if she cut her leg shaving in the tub, you would expect to find blood there. but not on the ceiling

Starting point is 00:40:24 and not at the tops of the walls, not on the curtains. And the type of blood matters. Is it a dot? You look at the way it runs. Is it running large here and trails off

Starting point is 00:40:40 here, which will tell you the direction in which it was cast off? It's an art. It's a science and an art. And I just pray they get all that evidence. If there is any, before the home is professionally cleaned or repainted. If you know or you think you know anything about this case,

Starting point is 00:41:02 have you been called in as a professional cleaner? Have you been called in to David Burke's mansion to repaint, to strip up carpet? Please dial this number, 213, 486, 6890. Repeat, 213-486-6-8-9-0. We remember an American hero, Detective Isaiah Eminizer. Northern New York County Regional Police, Pennsylvania, shot in the line of duty after 20 years of service, leaving behind grieving wife, Lona, and two beautiful children. American hero, Detective Isaiah Eminizer.

Starting point is 00:41:45 Nancy Gray, signing off. Goodbye, friend.

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - D4VD GOES RADIO SILENT AS CELESTE MURDER INVESTIGATION INTENSIFIES

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