Law&Crime Sidebar - D4vd Tesla Body Bombshells: Teen Found Frozen, New Suspect Eyed Per Reports

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

There are major new developments in the Celeste Rivas Hernandez death investigation. Reports allege the teenage girl's body, found in the trunk of a Tesla registered to singer D4vd, was frozen, dismembered, and decapitated. Now, a potential second suspect who may have helped with the body's disposal has been identified. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber and former police commander Mike King break down the shocking new details and what they mean for the investigation into the singer.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Use code SIDEBAR20 to get a 20% OFF discount directly on Plaud products in the links below. This is the biggest discount of the year—save on your BFCM shopping now! @PlaudAI- Plaud Website: https://bit.ly/4ohxpFe- Plaud Amazon: https://amzn.to/4lG76aO#blackFriday #BFCM #PlaudHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea, Alex Ciccarone, & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. There is major new reporting in the David case right now. Allegations of a new second suspect and macabre details of how the body of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez was allegedly disposed of that will just make you sick. And again, this is the girl whose body was found in a car reportedly registered to the singer. If this is all true, it raises a whole new set of questions about what we can expect next. Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime, I'm Jesse Weber. By the way,

before we get more into this, I just got to say something real quick. Have you ever left a meeting and thought to yourself, what do we just talk about for the last 30 minutes, hour? I have been there a lot of times, not ashamed to say it, but that can be a thing of the past with this. Quad, nope, this tiny AI power device. It's more. than just a recorder. It's like a hands-free AI secretary that you can carry with you every day. So whether it's meetings, interviews, brainstorms, the no-pin doesn't just catch everything. It also identifies key points. It expands into summaries, and it delivers role-specific action items to keep your team aligned. And the best part is ask Plaud. Because instead of going through all

these hours of meeting notes, you can ask it to hunt for answers. Like, hey, Plaud, what hot trials do we talk about covering next year? And Plaud will pull up that conversation. So if you're over messy notes, it's time to try Plaud Notepin. Right now, you can get 20% off with code sidebar 20. Just click the link below or scan the QR code. Major, major update in the Celeste Rivas Hernandez death investigation. So this comes after we reported last week how TMZ claims that they spoke with the LAPD, and they allegedly said that an arrest is not imminent in this case.

And it was also reported that singer David is being considered a suspect. There's been a little bit of back and forth on whether this is strictly a death investigation or officially a homicide investigation, the LAPD. hasn't labeled this a homicide investigation per se. And of course, this comes as this 14-year-old girl was found in the trunk of a car allegedly registered to David back on September 8th out in LA. But the back and forth on this has been really, really confusing because the LAPD had come out at one point and said they weren't sure if there was a crime beyond concealment of the body. And we were all waiting for the official L.A. County Medical Examiner's results and toxicology reports to come in.

to be clear, there have been no arrests in connection with Celeste's death. But now let's talk about what just happened. According to TMZ, sources close to the investigation tell them that Celeste's body was frozen, that it had actually been thawed out, that she had been decapitated, that her limbs had been severed and cut into pieces. Look, I'm sorry. I have to say this, okay? I'm sorry I'm mentioning this.

But this is the reporting. I hope it's not true. And I will add this, though, if it is true, the ME potentially can't determine a cause of death. Again, this is all according to TMZ. And actually, talking the ME, KTLA reported that Celeste's case number is 2025-14252. And when searching that number on the ME's page online, it had listed the cause of death as deferred pending additional tests. However, now, according to KTLA, that has changed on Friday. When you plug in that case number, all the fields are now empty.

So KTLA has speculated whether that means a determination has been made in this case or whether there has been a security measure been put in place upon official release to the public. And sources apparently telling TMZ, though, that the cause and manner of death could ultimately be listed as undetermined. Now, if that's true, it raises a ton of questions. And it may explain some of the confusing elements of this case. And look, it should also be noted that TMZ is reporting that in the real, rental property in the Hollywood Hills, which was near where that Tesla was parked on Bluebird Avenue, seemingly abandoned before it was towed away to the tow yard and Celeste body was found inside.

In that rental property where David had apparently been staying, TMZ claims that if you look at photos from inside that house from a few years ago, there is a large kitchen aid refrigerator freezer. And they go into the dimensions and whether it's possible a, again, I'm sorry, a mutilated body could fit in there. By the way, a search warrant was executed on that property and reportedly items were seized. But to be clear, this is all speculative. Okay, this is all speculative. We're trying to put in the dots here. And you have to wonder if this reporting is true, that body was found in a hot car, right? It was reported that that Tesla had been there for weeks, even having been ticketed. So where was the body stored? When was it transferred?

And I also have to mention this, TMZ had previously reported, and now is really talking about this, that police may be looking into an alleged trip that David had made to a remote area. of Santa Barbara County in the middle of the night months ago in the spring, spent a couple hours there apparently. This is a new allegation. TMZ's Harvey Levin saying on his two angry men podcast that he believes, quote, that Santa Barbara trip is the key to this case. Now, a police source told People magazine that while LAPD haven't been able to pinpoint exactly when Celeste died, quote, springtime is the closest we've come to determining the time of her death, not before then. Again, this is unidentified source, no independent verification.

of that, particularly from the LAPD. Before I go any further, before I go into the next development, let me just say this real quick. Whether this is true or not about what happened to Celeste, this must be incredibly painful for Celeste's family to even hear this theory, to hear this reporting. And I don't want that to get lost in all of this. Yes, there's a large community who is following and invested in what happened to this girl. And while we can speculate and theorize and try to provide more information to law enforcement, let's never forget we are talking about the loss of such a young life under very disturbing circumstances. But that now leads into this second piece of major news that we need to get into as well.

TMZ is now reporting that there is a second person who may be considered a suspect in this investigation, someone who allegedly may have helped in the disposal of Celeste's body. In fact, acclaimed criminal defense attorney, Mark Garigos, said on his Two Angry Men podcast with Harvey Levin, he claimed that he knew the identity of this person, that authority. told him this person may have been involved, quote, before, during, and after Celeste's death. And Garagos claimed that it was a combination of cell phone data and electronic data from the Tesla, location data from social media, that all leads to this second potential suspect with Garagos saying he thinks this all means that this person, quote, connected to one of

the last times that car was moved. And when we spoke to Steve Fisher, the private investigator, who was hired by the person that owns the rental property that David had lived at, he says he says he's. saw video of someone driving that Tesla and provided that information to law enforcement. I say all that now to bring in Mike King, retired police commander, host of profiling evil, author of Wolves and Sheep's Clothing, thank you so much for coming on. First time you and I had a chance to talk about this case. This is a big development.

Talk to me about what you make of this reporting that Celeste's body may have been dismembered, decapitated, and frozen because that, those are very specific. actions that are not so easy to do. Well, Jesse, great to be with you. And I think there are a couple of things that maybe might help put this into buckets that will make a lot more sense for those who are listening to us today. And that is breaking the, for lack of a better word right now, crime scenes or the event locations down into three kinds of locations.

First being that initial contact site where David and. Celeste may have come in contact with each other? Was there grooming involved? What led up to that relationship happening? And we're seeing reports going back even as much as April of 2024 of Celeste being reported missing. So when we think about the victimology or who she is, was she ungovernable at some degree? It sounded like she was a really good kid that was really working hard and she came from a really strong family. We may learn different things that point different directions and that's not victim blaming it's just talking about kind of the storyline behind the victim but we have that initial contact site where these two come together in space and time and

somehow become an item and start seeing each other and there are reports that they were seeing each other that she was regularly coming over to david's house there in hollywood hills but then we've got wherever this event happened whether it was an overdose a suicide an accident or she died by natural causes from some goofy event that happened with her body. We don't know the answer there. We're learning more and we will continue to learn more. But that becomes the place where this happened or maybe where she was murdered. That's the crime scene.

And then we've got things that make really good sense to me. It is. It's horrible to talk about. But you talk about the decapitation and the disorganization that appears to be going on in this crime. And all of a sudden it makes sense that we're, We're hearing now that there are frost burns and freezer burns, things that would indicate that that body not only had been dismembered, but that had been frozen. And if it's that refrigerator freezer in the house or a freezer in the garage or some other place, it makes sense if they were so disorganized in either trying to hide her body or hide a crime that they may try to dismember her and freezer there. Let me get into that. And just so everyone's clear, the LAPD hasn't confirmed what exactly the relationship between Celeste and David was. There have been unconfirmed reports that the two were in a relationship. There's alleged images and video of them together. Again, we can't say with certainty. But going to the freezer, if you have a body that's recovered in the tow yard that's in a state of thawing, how long did the body have to be frozen for? And I'm sorry to talk in such cavalier. It's just we have to be clinical about this. How long was the

body frozen for and how long could it be out of the freezer if it's still in a state of thawing. I don't even know when the body would have been put in the car, right, for this to happen. But can a body be frozen in such a state that even if you take it out into the heat, into a trunk, it can still be in a state of thawing for quite some time? I mean, do you know that? Yeah, I'm troubled by that as well. And I wonder if it's some inaccurate reporting or some assumptions that are being made and then we're kind of dogpiling on the reporting.

What seems to be more scientific is that there is evidence that the flesh was freezer burned, that there were marks, and we all understand what that looks like. And again, we've got to keep in mind, this vehicle, if I remember right, was recovered, towed off of the street on September 3rd. She very minutes before that or hours before was placed in a frozen state inside of the vehicle. Unless she was somehow preserved in there with ice and other kinds of things, I don't know how she could remain frozen for the five days that she sits in the sun baking under a tin roof of Tesla and still be frozen. So I'm thinking there's probably some inaccuracies there, but we might learn something that really clarifies all of that. But over five days, I don't know of anything that would remain frozen for that long without some kind of ice pack or other things to keep it in that condition.

But can the body be in such a state that they don't know what happened to her? You heard me talk the back and forth about the M.E. The results apparently haven't come in. There are those who are wondering, okay, well, you know, maybe a security measure is being put in place. Maybe they're trying to prepare the public before they release this information, or is it going to be undetermined? Can the body be in such a state that they do not know if this is a homicide? They do not know if this is something else.

Is that a possibility? So I think there are a couple of things to consider here, again, is whether we're premature on what we're trying to theorize on. But what's very clear to me is that during the autopsy and all of the testing that will be done, they're going to be able to determine some things that might lead toward homicide. Broken hyoid, you think back to the old days of looking at just those kinds of criminal cases. Or there may be some toxicology that comes back that says, hey, this individual. has a drug introduced that is not consistent with self-introduction of drugs or other things. So maybe they will find a way to say there are toxicology or physical abnormalities that suggest that this individual was suffocated or strangled or had bones broken, things that are consistent. And they're going to be able to tell the difference between post-mortem and before death whether those injuries occurred. And all of those could point toward things like a homicide. case. They may find that there are drugs in her system, and those drugs would be self-administered

drugs, where maybe it was an accident that occurred. So all of that, I think, is going to come out in the course of the investigation. But bottom line is, is it possible that they could walk away from this thing saying, we don't know how she died because of the state of decomposition? Absolutely. But I still hold hope that there's a lot of good evidence there. But there could be an arrest, even if cause manner undetermined, right? Absolutely. And I'm frustrated by a number of things that we don't seem to be talking about. Number one is if there was grooming or anything on social media or in their communications through digital methods that suggest this child's being groomed, that could be criminal charges from those kinds of things. There could be criminal charges from the desecration of the body. There could be criminal charges from trying to move the investigation in different directions. or to compel witnesses to do things. So there are a lot of things outside of a homicide charge

that still need to be considered in a case like this. This idea of what happened to her, and you couple this with this idea of this alleged Santa Barbara trip, where there's now a theory that perhaps what happened to her happened in this area, this remote area, we don't know for sure. And then you couple this with the reporting that there could be a second suspect, a second suspect who may have helped with the disposal, allegedly. Does that make sense to you if we're talking about a body that was in this state?

If we take it all as true, decapitated, decomposed, dismembered, frozen, is it seem more likely than not than this has to be more than one person involved? I think it all points to some very strong possibilities in that regard. And frankly, I always look at these cases and say, what makes sense? And you think about it, that does make sense. if you're a disorganized criminal who didn't plan something but things fell apart or even if it's an accident quite frankly jesse that you might say holy cow i can't have this thing appear under my name and you could have the disfigurement and the dismemberment and the moving things into the fridge and then what am i going to do with this thing now that i've created this bigger challenge i've got a body here that i've cut up it makes perfect sense that somebody might go and start disposing of parts in different locations we've seen that

in a lot of criminal cases, not only is a way to maybe throw investigators off, but to put smaller parts in several locations. The trip to Santa Barbara makes some really good sense from a behavioral perspective. And then, of course, cutting up a body is really hard work from people that I've talked to that went through this, killers themselves. It is a massive amount of work. And then if you have somebody of influence who's saying, hey, I've got all these underlings that I can send to do some of my dirty work and incidentally, do it during a time period when I'm going to be away on tour. And again, this is all alleged about whether David is involved in this or not. But what a perfect alibi in some people's mind to think, hey, look, I was completely

across the countryside when this happened. What they don't realize is it's about the time of the murder, not about the time of the discovery that the alibis are really strong. What do you think they may be doing behind the scenes to verify this alleged Santa Barbara trip? Well, hopefully if they do have suspect number two and they're interviewing them, they're able to put enough pressure on them to have that person step up and say, wait a minute, I didn't sign up for this much. This is what I was asked to do and point back to maybe some behaviors that led up to that second person being involved.

If that second person was involved from the get-go, then, of course, they're going to be trying to impeach that person's interview and confession or admission with digital evidence and other kinds of pieces of evidence. And we take all that forensic evidence and physical evidence and eyewitness accounts and confessions and admissions and we start bringing them all together and either use it to collaborate and corroborate what this number two person is saying or to frankly impeach them. So let me ask you this. You mentioned conversations, right? According to People Magazine, there is a police source that has come out and corrected the record and said that David is not cooperating with authorities and hasn't been from the start, that they haven't even interviewed him. Now, we don't know this for sure, but that would be very different than what we previously understood because his representative reportedly told NBC Los Angeles that David was fully cooperating.

And we know he canceled his tour dates. He reportedly hired a high-powered criminal defense attorney Blair Burke. Both he and Burke, though, have been Radio's Island throughout this whole investigation by all accounts. If that is true, what are your thoughts on that, Mike? Well, again, it all seems to make sense, doesn't it? Number one, this is a high-profile individual, probably immediately sought out legal counsel. And if, in fact, this young woman was murdered

or died by accident back in the springtime, had plenty of time to start putting a bunch of pieces in place. And, of course, I don't know a defense attorney out there that would say if they were representing someone like this, go talk to the police and tell them everything you know. They might just say, no. Let's see from the law enforcement side of things what they have and then we'll respond. How can you reconcile everything that I just mentioned, right?

The reports of Santa Barbara Tripp, led second suspect, new details about what happened to Celeste. Again, these are allegations. This is based on reporting. It's not like LAPD has come out with this at first. But assuming for the moment all of this is true, how do we reconcile all of this with what TMZ reported last week that the LAPD told them an arrest is not imminent. Now, either LAPD is not being forthcoming or there's some missing gap here. What am I not understanding? It might boil down to just logistics too, Jess, that the idea is that the law enforcement folks understand that they've got a long uphill

trail that they've got across with getting all of the toxicology done on this individual, getting the autopsy completed, getting a cause of death, getting witness statements, collaborating. I guarantee there are probably now hundreds of search warrants that have been issued from a digital perspective on vehicle telematics and cell phones and other things. And they're going to be going through ring cameras and doorbell cameras and CCTV across the city. There is so much work that needs to be done that I would want to say something like that in order to just let the public know because the public's going to start demanding, hey, wait, why aren't you doing something? Well, I can just about promise that they are doing a lot right now. And they probably are like a whole batch of ducks sitting on the water that look pretty calm,

but their feet are going 100 miles an hour. I want to go back to the family before we wrap things up. This is devastating details. We don't know if it's for sure. I mentioned that they have to go through this. What do you think, if we even go back to the ME's report, and now there's this apparent change in the file, Do you think that law enforcement is communicating details to the family before it's released publicly?

Do you think that they have said, listen, we have the ME's report, this is what it is, we're going to lease it on Tuesday, we've listed off the website. Do you think that is happening? Should it be happening, particularly in a case like this? Because it would be pretty devastating for this family to learn this information for the first time if it didn't come from law enforcement directly. Although, again, we don't know if this is true. I mean, law enforcement maybe could be speaking to them and saying, this reporting is not true. I can tell you this much. What do you think that communication is? Well, number one, this is a police department that's built around a whole bunch of professionals that have a lot of experience in these death investigations. When you're dealing with an

unequivocal death, you've got to move carefully, but they also are an agency, the Los Angeles Police Department, that has victim advocacy. They have people who are dealing with the family and trying to take care of that part of allowing them with enough information to know that something's moving forward, but it would be, in my opinion, really an improper move to let the family know anything that's happening in the investigation that could cause problems for the investigation down the road, including alerting them to whether they're developing a suspect more strongly in one area or another or a theory in one area or another. I would hope that when they get to the point of announcing that they have solved this crime or this

death and if in fact there is going to be an arrest that they would let them know a little bit of time moments perhaps before a press release because you can't control a family who might jump on social media and say I've been told this and it could really throw some kinks into your works my king thank you so much for taking the time really appreciate it good to be with you that is all we have for you right now here on sidebar everybody thank you so much for joining us And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast. You can follow me on X or Instagram. I'm Jesse Weber.

I'll speak to you next time. Bye.