What D4vd's Defense Says Celeste Did To Herself

**Tony Brueski** (0:00)
This is The Big Breakdown, a long look back at some of the biggest stories we're covering for you at the Hidden Killers podcast and True Crime Today. This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:17)
The evidence prosecutors laid out over five days tracks the timeline from the first online messages when Celeste was 11 to the inflatable pool in the garage and the body in the Tesla. The judge hurt it all and ruled the people met their burden on every count. And David now faces a trial with special circumstances that put the death penalty on the table. Eric Faddis, defense attorney and former prosecutor, is with us to help us break it down. Robin has the day off. Prosecutors mapped a 21-minute window. Celeste's Uber arrived at 10, 10 p.m. Her phone went permanently silent short after. The next morning, Burke sat for her radio interview about his album, then allegedly started ordering chainsaws, a body bag and a burn cage under a fake name.
Does that timeline alone get the prosecution to premeditation, or do they need the financial motive in this as well to help seal it here?

**Eric Faddis** (1:22)
A few things. I think that timeline certainly gets them to abuse of a corpse or covering up a murder or something like that. But when it comes to premeditation for the killing of Celeste, that is a little more debatable, I think. Certainly, there are some precursors, but I think that that motive is going to loom large once the trial comes because it makes sense.
If a person is on the rise and is already a star, it might be a megastar at some point, and then, oh my gosh, your underage lover is threatening to ruin your career, and then shortly thereafter, that lover disappears. Certainly, common sense can put together those dots, and that's what the prosecution will be asking the jury to do.

**Tony Brueski** (2:11)
Blair Berk pressed Detective Farell and Celeste's messages, threats to strangle Berk, to destroy his career, references to harming herself. She also got the medical examiner to say he couldn't definitively rule out that the wounds occurred post-mortem. I mean, is there a self-inflicted death defense here? They were insinuating that could possibly be part of this as well, or is Berk just building a record that she can point to during trial to manufacture? Reasonable doubt at the end of the day, that's what they're going for. Reasonable doubt, is there a way that they can get there?
That Celeste did this all to herself, and then David reacted in a horrible, horrible way to cover up the relationship and the corpse.

**Eric Faddis** (3:07)
Absolutely.
I think the defense is going to go down that route. They're gonna say, and they've made statements to the press consistent with this, saying, hey, David did not cause the death and is not guilty of murder. They're gonna go in there, I think, and say that this was a very tumultuous situation. It was kind of rapidly escalating. You know, you have this underage, romantic, pardons criminal victim under those circumstances, and she's threatening to out him, and things just got chaotic and crazy, and she caused the injuries to herself and died. And then David is left with this dead miner's body in his vicinity, and he's saying, what do I do about this? Well, if I call the police, they're gonna say, they're gonna think I did it. I can't have that, so what's the next course of action? Trying to get rid of the evidence, and doing that in a cover-up fashion, and covering up or, you know, interfering with a dead body is one charge, but causing the death of another person is a much more serious charge. I think that's the route they're gonna take at trial.

**Tony Brueski** (4:12)
Do you think that that is where this eventually ends up once this trial actually does get underway, however many years it is down the road, that David is going to basically be admitting to several of the charges, you know, the disposal of the body, the cover-up end of this, but not the actual murder itself? If they go down that road, I mean, there's certainly penalties to that. It's not the death penalty. It might not be life in prison. It's certainly going to be sometime. It's not just, oh, you overreacted and you didn't go to police to get help. You did all this.
Is that going to be the goal? I mean, is that the goal, do you think, at this point, when they're with the attorneys for David of, obviously keep him alive, but is it more so damage control than it is, you're going to walk out of here and drop a new album?