Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Okay, hello, welcome back to Red Handed and our unplanned part two on the Deforbid case, which we had to do because there is just so much information. So we just thought it would make more sense to break it in two parts. So please listen to part one if you haven't done that yet. And then listen to the rest of this episode. It's gonna make you sick. And we'll still be here.
Chapter 2: What happened when Celeste's remains were found?
So now, coming back to when Celeste's remains were found in the Tesla. After she was identified, the people who owned the house that David had been living in hired a missing persons PI named Stephen Fisher to investigate. And they did this because the LAPD was basically telling them nothing, giving away absolutely nothing. They were very, very quiet the whole time.
And the people who owned this house, fair enough, wanted to know what the fuck had happened in this house that they had leased out. They wanted to know if Celeste had actually been killed in their house or not. And P.I. Steve He turns up a lot of information that he has been very openly sharing. You can go on his website. He's doing a lot of YouTube interviews like he has got a lot of stuff.
Now, obviously, he's a PI. He's not police like he can share all this information. And, you know, I do think he comes across as very credible. But who knows? So one of the things that Steve Fisher has turned up is the fact that someone from Celeste's hometown, possibly, he says, possibly someone connected to her school, had sent an email to David's management in February 2024 saying,
saying the following. There's been talk that the artist, D4VD, Deforbid, David, has something to do with the disappearance of 13-year-old Celeste. If this statement holds any merit, please do the right thing and take her home. Her parents are very worried. Now this person doesn't want to be publicly named, but that reads like a teacher wrote that.
And I feel like it's a teacher, maybe at Celeste School, who's overheard kids talking about where she is because everybody would have known she's a missing person by this point, right? And I think they've taken it upon themselves to write this email to David's management to be like, please sort this out. And I don't know why, but that email just like breaks my heart.
And Steve says that he has proof that this email was forwarded by David's manager to him. Which, if you remember, came in February 2024. It came right after the visit from the police asking if David knew Celeste. And this must have rattled David. Because the very next day, Celeste suddenly turned up back at her family's home.
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Chapter 3: How did the private investigator contribute to the case?
So I think he's been like, you need to go.
So we can see definitively that people knew. His manager knew. David knew. People in Celeste's hometown knew. People on Discord knew. Even after all of that, David still continued to pursue Celeste. Her parents apparently took her mobile phone away from her. So David drove all the way to Lake Elsinore and paid a classmate of hers $1,000 to give Celeste a new phone that he had bought her.
That's the classic, isn't it?
I mean, literally, when I used to do child safeguarding events, one of the number one signs of grooming is, has a child suddenly got a very expensive phone that they have no explanation for how they got it? Grooming.
There is absolutely no doubt that to Celeste, this gesture would have been incredibly romantic.
So romantic. Can you think of anything more romantic? Your famous boyfriend drove like a hundred miles nearly to your school and paid a thousand pounds and gave your classmate a very expensive phone to give you so that you can continue your romantic love affair. Oh, it's despicable. It's grade A grooming for this.
And while Celeste's parents did do the right thing here by taking away her phone, I also have to say, it really does look like they knew about David. And he's famous. They know who he is. They know how old he is. Celeste and he spent a lot of time together. She would go off for long stretches, like weeks at a time. She would spend so much time staying at his place.
And she even travelled all over the US with him when he was on tour. And he apparently even brought her to London because he recorded a huge amount of his album in London. And he brought her here with him. She was 13 and 14 at the time. Which again, makes me feel like there's no way all of the people around him didn't know. Everyone is coming out now being like, we didn't know how old she was.
We thought she was 19. I'm sorry, who the fuck is booking her flights to and from London? It's not David. Somebody else doing that. Guess what you need when you're booking a flight? The person's fucking passport. including their date of birth. Like, it's such a load of bullshit. How is that possible? How is it possible? And also, I looked this up, you cannot travel from the US into the UK.
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Chapter 4: What evidence was there of David's relationship with Celeste?
How did they do it? Did they fake it? Or did her parents give their consent? Again, I'm not like making that accusation of them. Because absolutely, the managers could have done something dodgy. They absolutely could have lied. They could have faked it. But like, so many people knew. And the parents like, look, Steve Fisher is quite critical of them.
I don't know how critical I want to be of them. I really don't want to be because they're grieving. Of course they're grieving. But there are some odd things about this case.
Steve Fisher? Private investigator Steve Fisher says that he has proof that members of Celeste's family visited the house that David was living in, that had been rented by his management.
And again, we don't know who. We don't know who. There's a lot of speculation that maybe it was like her cousins and they were just kids as well. But Steve Fisher says adult members of Celeste's family. I have proof they were at the house. Again, he's not the police. We have to take what he's saying with a grain of salt. We haven't seen that evidence. But if that is true, what the fuck?
And we're not going to slam them. They've lost their daughter. But as Saru said, quite a few strange details. It does seem like Celeste's family knew who David was and they knew how old he was.
And yeah, they did take her phone away. And I also read that her mum used to sleep in the same room as Celeste to stop her climbing out of the window. There are things that they were trying to do, it seems. And I'm not here to, certainly not here to fucking slam Celeste. I don't think she was an easy child. I think she was very troubled.
She posts a lot on social media about the breakdown of her family, how devastated she was by that. I think she probably was looking for love and attention and affection somewhere else. And bingo, that's like, you know, a fucking beacon call for a groomer like David, allegedly.
And there's, like, video footage of her, like, screaming at her next-door neighbours, using very, very, like, un-13, 14-year-old-ly, like, language, body language, verbal language. Like, I think she probably was quite difficult to parent. But, like, she's still a child and she's still your child.
And they did report her missing. That's true. But even that is a bit weird, right? Apparently Celeste went home multiple times during the periods that she was missing. She attended her cousin's high school graduation, she went to birthdays, and there's even a video recording of her having an argument with her family's neighbours. Which happens during the time that she's missing.
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Chapter 5: What actions did David take after Celeste went missing?
And it really seems like her parents and the other adults in her life, if it is true that they knew about David, didn't stop it, didn't report him, and they failed her. So like, I understand I don't want it to sound like victim blaming, but also is there to be no accountability? I mean, again, you could say they've been accountable enough because they've lost him.
But Celeste is the one who paid the ultimate price.
But while we're speaking about people who knew that this was going on, one of the weirdest twists in this tale is that even David's parents seem to have been very aware of this relationship. This is bonkers. David took Celeste to his family home so she could meet them.
What's happening? Because in a horrible, horrible way where I, you know, think the worst, I could understand the motivation for Celeste's family to have allowed it in a horrible way. What is their motivation? What is David's parents' motivations for allowing this to happen?
There are photos of Celeste sitting with David's family at one of his shows. I don't know. I just cannot believe for a singular second that they didn't know she was a child.
They are educated people. Not even that you need to be educated, but they are educated people. And you're telling me that these two sane, rational, educated people didn't have a single conversation with this girl and immediately be like, oh, she's a child. I don't believe her.
And we're going to go on to see David's parents were very, very strict about lots of things. How did their son fucking a child go unchecked? I do not know. Publicly? Yes. It's on socials. It's everywhere. Everyone knows.
So let's get into his childhood. David Anthony Burke was born in Queens, New York, on the 28th of March 2005. He's the eldest of three children, to Darwood and Colleen Burke. And it looks like David honestly had a very solid, financially comfortable upbringing. There is no like, you know, he's on the poverty line, he's out on the streets, he's being abused. There's none of that.
There's absolutely none of that. His dad was a litigator and his mum was a teacher. His parents were also very religious and they raised their children in a strict Christian household. But it seems like David doesn't even really resent them for that. He seems to be very close to his family.
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Chapter 6: How did David's upbringing influence his behavior?
So you know how we have like a bit of a thing before we come out? That thing you just heard, the invisible string theory bit that Celeste is saying to him is what people hear before he comes out on stage. And he was using it on his withered tour after he had killed Celeste while her body was decomposing in his car.
Allegedly.
Allegedly. Fucking hell.
Now let's step back into David's adolescence. It's not just the gaming and music that he was doing. He himself admits in posts he made online that he started watching gore content at the age of 14 after coming across a cartel torture video. And in this post, David explains that as he watched more and more, he stopped cringing and soon he found himself laughing.
He elaborates by saying, I watch it to disconnect the part of my brain that feels empathy for the wrong things. It's odd.
It's more than odd. But let's say it's odd. Because it's like he's actively trying to disassociate with his feelings. Yeah, he's like brain training himself. Yeah, that's exactly what it's like he's trying to do. It's like, you know, if you're being trained to be a fucking spy or something, why is he doing this to himself?
Makes me think of the Iceman tapes when he is a contract killer for the mob and is a psychopath in the purest sense of the word. And he said that he watches videos of bodies being eaten by rats because it's the only thing that makes him feel something.
Yeah, I don't know what's going on here with David. Because on the one hand, like we just heard in the clips we played, he says things like he can't wait to feel love. He can't wait to feel heartbreak. Well, he doesn't say he can't wait to feel love. He says he's scared of that, but he can't wait to feel heartbreak. But then he says how scared he is of it.
But then he's watching gore videos to desensitize himself from having any feelings. Like what's going on here? Like, I don't really get it. It's like he's training himself for something. Now look, perhaps he was just enjoying the gore and then he just noticed later on that his feelings of disgust were gone.
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