Could Anyone In D4VD's Circle Still Face Charges In Celeste's Case?

**Tony Brueski** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers' half year in review. A look back at some of the most compelling cases of 2026 so far.
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:16)
Let's continue our conversation. Prosecutors alleged Celeste walked into David Burke's Hollywood Hills home on April 23rd, 2025, and was never heard from again. Her dismembered remains turned up months later in his Tesla. In between, Burke reportedly made a middle-of-the-night trip to a remote spot in Santa Barbara, performed at Coachella, you know, like you do, after someone's missing or dead in your presence, released a debut album, or was about to, and launched a world tour, including a show in Minneapolis the same night her body was found in Los Angeles. The charges are brutal, but the thing that eats at people is the silence, the months of normal, the people who knew him and said nothing, and the question nobody can shake, how? And let's get into this. He was on stage in Minneapolis the night her body was found in the trunk in LA. Months of shows, smiling, performing his love songs.
I think that's the interesting thing. We were just talking in our last segment about this way of thinking, about the compartmentalization that people of this age seem to have because it's just the atmosphere of which they grow up in, especially if it's mainly on line. The lack of depth. When you also have the lack of depth, I think you also seem to lack the ability to understand the weight of the events that are going on around you.
And I think that that's what might be what we're seeing in this case as well, where he's on stage in Minneapolis, they're finding a body in his frunk, and it's just another normal Tuesday for him. I mean, it seems that there's a level of numbness, if you will, to reality, that so many young narcissists seem to have, where it's just body in your trunk is about as important to know that as the McRib is back at McDonald's. It's like it's the same level of weight, and it obviously should not be. But if you don't naturally have the ability to experience that weight, to feel the weight of those being two very different things in life, how do you develop that? I mean, that really is the recipe for a psychopath, if you're not able to differentiate between something like that.

**Siobhan Hubbard** (2:33)
Yes. Yeah. And it also reminded me of the amount of compartmentalization that we see with serial killers, who can do something absolutely horrendous and then go to church the next day. I mean, it's like, how does a person compartmentalize like that? And yes, it's very concerning that this person can do that. I mean, just the dismemberment of a body, you know? That I always, just a little game I play in my mind when I look at criminals. It's like, can I ever imagine myself doing this, right? Can I even wrap my head around it? And I have always thought, could I kill another human being? It's certainly not something I think about or fantasize about. But I think, yes, if somebody were breaking in my house, someone threatening my children, could I do something to end their life? I think I could.
But would it ever occur to me to dismember their body ever? Is that something I can even wrap my head around somebody who would be okay with that, whether he did it himself or had someone else do it?
You're dealing with somebody with some very, very concerning personality traits there.

**Robin Drake** (3:54)
And these are very extremely, really salient points to bring up, because even, so here I am, former Marine and FBI, the amount of training we go through to take someone else's life, potentially, is pretty robust. Going through deadly force policies, going through rules of engagement, of war.
And every single time you're faced with these things, you're always someone with great deep empathy, because if you're in a life of service, which is what I've been in my entire life is, you're serving and protecting, which might mean you have to do horrendous things to other human beings. Even as they're horrendous human beings, the thought and the weight of even having to do that potentially weighs on you. The counseling that you go through afterwards. I mean, I'm getting a dry mouth just thinking about it. I mean, just the tremendous impact of you as an individual, because you actually have empathy, you don't have an ability to compartmentalize it, because you are a regular human being serving other human beings is tremendous. And so being able to do these things, so compartmentalized like he did, or anyone in that circle did, whoever did this, it's absolutely insane to think that this is normal human behavior, because it's not even close. And the thing, this is, we're so stuck on cults right now. It is so cult-like, with the duggars, the same kind of compartmentalization that you can completely abuse and have in your close society and system, this abuse of another human being, underage human being, and being able to try to move on from life, and diminishing it and rationalizing it. It's just so, it rings so similarly to all these other horrendous crimes. And the last thing I want to say on this is, in the music industry, there are some really, there's some great people and there's horrendous people as well. I remember years ago, I'm a country fan, country music fan, and I'll never forget, I was so impacted by Sugarland, Jennifer Nettles.