MUSK MELTDOWN ON THE STAND, D4VD’S CHAINSAW SHOPPING LIST, AND THE “BABY LAMB” WHO STRANGLED A CHILD

0:03 Kalaroga Shark Media. Good morning. I'm Garrett Fisher. This is Daily Crime in Justice for Friday, May first, twenty twenty six. We're going to be honest with you. There's a version of today's show where we tell you day three of the Open Ai trial was about emails and term sheets and corporate structure, and you tune out before we get to the courtroom. There's a version where we tell you the David case had a procedural hearing yesterday and you assume nothing important happened. There's a version where we say the Athena Strand defense brought more witnesses and we pretend that's news. We're not doing those versions. Wednesday in Oakland, Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet, spent six hours getting cornered by a lawyer who has done this dance with him before, the same lawyer who beat him on the Twitter deal three years ago. Musk lost his composure.

1:00 He told the lawyer the questions were lies. He compared a yes or no question to have you stopped beating your wife. The judge had to step in. We're going to walk you through it. Yesterday in Los Angeles, the David case took a turn. The preliminary hearing that was supposed to start today today Friday, has been pushed to May twenty sixth. The defense asked for time. They also asked the judge to seal a brief the prosecution had just filed. The judge said no, then the public got to read the brief. We're going to walk you through that too. Content advisory up front. It is bad. It is some of the most disturbing material we've had to summarize on this show. And in Fort Worth, the defense for Tanner Horner is running out of witnesses. They had a man testify from the seal across from Horner who described him as a baby lamb. That is a direct quote about a man who pleaded guilty to capital murder of a seven year old. Three stories, three completely different rooms, same lesson. When the people in charge stop pretending what's underneath isn't pretty. Let's go Wednesday morning in Oakland, day three of the trial. That could either restructure one of the most valuable AI companies in the world or hand Elon Musk one hundred and thirty billion dollars in damages or both. A quick recap for anyone who joined. Late two years ago, Elon Musk sued open Ai, the company

2:32 he co founded in twenty fifteen with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Musk says he gave the company about thirty eight million dollars when it was a nonprofit. He says they promised it would stay a nonprofit. He says when they spun up a for profit subsidiary, partnered with Microsoft, and started making real money, they betrayed the original mission. He calls it stealing a charity. He wants Altman and Brockman removed from the board. He wants the company restructure, and he wants the money to go back to open AI's nonprofit foundation, not to him personally. Open AI's position is simpler. Musk wanted control, he didn't get control. He left, He started his own AI company called Xai, and only when open ai started winning did he show up with a lawsuit. They call it harassment. They want the case dismissed. Tuesday, Day two was Musk's direct examination, his own lawyer walking him through his version of the founding story. That's the easy part. Wednesday was the hard part, cross examination, and the lawyer doing the cross examining is William Savat of Walktaeil, Lipton, Rosen and Kats, the same man who represented Twitter when Musk tried to back out of buying it for forty four billion dollars in twenty twenty two. Musk lost that fight, and now Sabat is across the courtroom from him again.

3:52 Here's what happened. Savat opened by trying to establish a basic point that Musk had in fact supported a four profit version of open Ai, not opposed it. He pulled emails, he pulled meeting notes. He showed the jury that in twenty seventeen, Musk had directed Jared Birchell, who runs his family office, to register a for profit public benefit corporation in open AI's name. Musk's explanation, he did it in case it was needed. Sabbath then showed the jury an email where Musk told the other co founders he needed to have control of any proposed for profit quote, I needed to make sure it would go in the right direction, and I was providing almost all the money. That is not the position of a man who was philosophically opposed to a for profit. That is the position of a man who wanted to be the for profit. Musk's answer was that he was fine with a for profit as long as the tail didn't wag the dog. He told the court he was fine with a for profit as long as it was a subsidiary of the nonprofit. Quote, what you can't have is the for profit if it become the main event. And that's what we have here.

5:04 Reasonable answer, coherent answer. The problem is what came next. Savat pulled up Musk's tweets, specifically a recent tweet in which Musk claimed Tesla was working on artificial general intelligence. Then save It asked Musk under oath whether Tesla was actually working on AGI. Musk had to admit on the stand that Tesla is not currently pursuing AGI. The tweet, which Musk had posted to his two hundred million followers was, to put it generously and exaggeration. You don't want to be the witness whose own social media posts are state's evidence, especially when you own the social media platform. Then came the term sheet. Savat asked Musk about a specific open AI term sheet from years ago. Musk said on the stand that he had read it. Specifically, He said he had read the very first part of it to get a high level grasp. Sabat then pointed out that in Musk's previous depositions sworn testimony given before trial, Musk had not mentioned reading the term sheet. Musk said he had tried to express in those depositions that he didn't look closely at the term sheet, not that he didn't read it.

6:19 That distinction, I read it, but didn't look closely versus I didn't mention reading it became the most animated Musk got the entire day. Several minutes of back and forth, voices raised, words like simple and complex, thrown around like accusations. Savat, I'm asking you a simple question, Musk. Your questions are definitionally complex, not simple. It is a lie to say they are simple. That's a witness telling a federal trial lawyer that his questions are lies in a federal courtroom with a jury watching. Then it got worse. Musk told Sabat his questions were designed to trick him. He compared the line of questioning to quote, have you stopped beating your wife? That's a textbook example of a loaded question.

7:08 It's also perhaps not the analogy you want to invoke when you're a billionaire who's been publicly accused of being difficult to your female employees and ex partners. Judge Evone Gonzalez Rogers cut him off, quote, we are not going to go there. That is a federal judge telling Elon Musk to stop, and Musk, to his very limited credit, stopped. There were other moments Savag confronted Musk about his contributions to open ai. Musk had originally promised one billion dollars. He delivered about thirty eight million. When Save It pressed him on the gap, Musk started explaining what else he'd contributed beyond money, his reputation, his recruiting power, his advice.

7:54 The judge cut in and reminded Musk to answer the question. Musk eventually conceded that he had not delivered the billion. He said he lost confidence in the team. Seven pulled emails where Shiven Zealis, who was on Open Aiy's board and who happens to be the mother of four of Musk's children, had described two paths for restructuring open ai. Musk's lawyers will tell you those communications don't mean what Savot thinks they mean. But there is something important happening here, and the jury is watching it. Musk's personal life, his business life, and his legal arguments are all the same shape. He surrounds himself with people who agree with him, he puts them in positions of authority, and then he's outraged when an institution he doesn't control makes a decision he doesn't like. Make it makes sense. Late in the day, the jury looked tired. CNBC's reporter in the courtroom noted that several jurors were fidgeting. One kept closing her eyes.

8:55 That's normal in a complex civil trial, but it's also a tell when jury check out during your testimony, you're not winning the room. Musk will return to the stand today Thursday for a final round of cross examination. Sabag has said he has about an hour and a half of questions left. Then Musk's own lawyers get a second pass at redirect, the chance to clean up the damage. After that, Jared Birchall takes the stand. The man who manages Musk's billions, registered the for profit corporation in twenty seventeen and runs XAI and Neuralink as side jobs. Greg Brockman, open AI's president, sitting in the gallery for three days now watching this all play out, has been put on a forty eight hour notice. He could be called to testify as soon as today. Look, I'm going to be honest with you. There's a real legal question buried in this trial. Did Open AI breach a charitable trust by becoming for profit? Reasonable people can disagree. Charity law is genuinely complicated. The expert witnesses Musk has lined up, Stuart Russell from Berkeley, the AI safety researcher, and David Scheiser, the Columbia tax law professor, are real heavyweights. This is not a frivolous suit. But Musk's problem is that the trial isn't about charitable trust law. The trial is about whether nine ordinary citizens in Oakland believe his version of events.

10:22 And every time must takes the stand and tells a federal judge that her courtroom is unfair, that the lawyer's questions are lies, that the math on his ownership stake is too complicated to explain. He's losing those nine people, one closed eye at a time. Coming up the David case, the preliminary hearing was supposed to start today, it didn't, And what the prosecution put on the public record yesterday is worse than anything we've told you about this case so far, stay with us a content advisory before we go into this. We're about to summarize a court filing that contains detailed allegations of sexual abuse of a child, of the killing of a child, and of the dismemberment of a child's body. We are not going to read the filing word for word, but we are going to tell you what is in it, because the prosecution put it on the public record yesterday and a Los Angeles County judge specifically refused to seal it. If you need to skip ahead, the next segment starts in about eleven minutes.

11:31 We've been on this case since last September. The artist, who records under the name D four VD pronounced David, which is what we'll call him, was arrested on April sixteenth of this year. His legal name is David Anthony Burke. He is twenty one years old. He has been charged with first degree murder of fourteen year old Celeste Revas Hernandez, with three special circumstances, lying in wait financial gain, and killing a witness. He's also charged with continue he was sexual abuse of a child under fourteen, and with the unlawful mutilation of human remains. He has pleaded not guilty. He is being held at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles. He faces life without parole or possibly the death penalty. The district Attorney has not yet decided. Yesterday, Wednesday, April twenty ninth, he was in court for what was supposed to be a routine preliminary hearing status check. The preliminary hearing itself was scheduled to start today Friday, May first.

12:34 It's not happening today. It's been pushed to May twenty sixth. Burke's defense team, led by Blair Burke, who took the case last October, asked Superior Court Judge Charlene Olmeto for more time. They said they need to review all of the evidence. The judge agreed. Prosecutors objected. They said they had already cleared their schedules for May first. The judge granted the postponement anyway, May twenty sixth. That's the procedural news. Well, here's the actual news. Before the hearing, prosecutors had filed what's called a preliminary hearing brief. It's the document where the state lays out what evidence they plan to present at the prelim and what they think the evidence proves.

13:14 It's a strategic document. It is not always made public. Sometimes it gets sealed. Burke's defense asked the judge to seal it. They argued the brief was one sided and replete with hearsay, and that releasing it could taint the jury pool. Given the enormous media attention this case is getting, that is a real concern. It's a concern courts take seriously. Judge Olmeto said no. She told the defense this case was no different from countless other high profile cases in Los Angeles County and the public has a right to see what the state is alleging. The brief is now public. Here's what it says. Prosecutors alleged that Burke met Celeste Revas Hernandez when she was eleven years old. Eleven he began sexually abusing her. Prosecutors say when she was thirteen and he was eighteen. By twenty twenty four, she was spending much of her time at his home in the Hollywood Hills. The brief alleges she traveled with him to Las Vegas, to London, to Texas to meet his family.

14:17 She was thirteen, he was nineteen when Celeste's parents took her phone away because, as any parent would, they were trying to figure out what was going on. Prosecutors alleged Burke paid another student one thousand dollars to get her a new phone so they could keep talking, so they could keep doing whatever it was they were doing. There's a word for what that's called, when an adult systematically removes a child from her parents oversight. That word is grooming. In November of twenty twenty three, before any of this came to law enforcement's attention, there was a welfare check at Burke's home. Riverside County authorities had asked Los Angeles County to look in on him. According to the brief, Burke told the deputies who showed up that he had only met Celeste once in person. He showed them what he claimed was a yearbook photo of her on his phone.

15:11 Prosecutors are now alleging that statement was a lie. They're alleging he had been sleeping with her for months by that point. The brief alleges that on April twenty second, twenty twenty five, Celestin Burke had an argument. She told him she was going to expose what was going on. Quote in the brief, she threatened to disclose damaging information to end his career and destroy his life. On April twenty third, twenty twenty five, prosecutors say Burke paid for a ride share driver to bring Celeste to his Hollywood Hills home. They alleged that very soon after she arrived, he stabbed her to death multiple times and then quote stood by while she bled out. He did not call nine one one, He did not take her to a hospital.

16:00 At about ten thirty that night, he texted her asking where she was. Prosecutors say that was part of his cover up. He knew where she was. She was dead in his house. The next day, April twenty fourth, twenty twenty five, Burke gave a radio interview. He held a record release party his debut full length album called Withered Drop. The day after that. Take a second with that she'd been dead for less than twenty four hours. He went on the radio, He had a party, he released an album. Then comes the part of the brief that is the worst part to summarize. Using a fake name. Prosecutor's allege, Burke ordered the following items on Amazon and Postmates delivered to his home, a shovel, a body bag, heavy duty laundry bags, two chainsaws, a blue inflatable pool, and a burn cage. The burn cage, prosecutors say was part of a plan to incinerate evidence. They alleged that he used the chainsaws to dis remember Celeste's body in the inflatable pool in his garage. They say her DNA was later found there. They alleged he drove three separate times to Lake Kachuma in Santa Barbara County, about one hundred and ten miles northwest of his house, to get rid of evidence.

17:15 Her passport, prosecutors say, was found near the lake in January. On September eighth, twenty twenty five, Celest's remains were found in the front trunk of Burke's tesla, abandoned in the Hollywood Hills, towed to a police impound lot, where an employee noticed the smell. Prosecutors also confirmed in earlier hearings that Burke's electronic devices contained quote A significant amount of child sexual abuse material. The brief alleges some of that material was of Celeste herself. He had been recording it. That is the state's allegation. To be clear and to be fair, David Burke has pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Blair Burke, has stated on the record, quote, the actual evidence in this case will show that David Burke did not murder Celeste Reevas Hernandez and he was not the cause of her death. That is the defense position. They are entitled to that defense. Burke is entitled to a presumption of innocence until twelve people in a courtroom say otherwise.

18:17 But here's where the procedural part of yesterday matters. The defense asked for the brief to be sealed. They invoked the jury pool. They said, this case is getting too much attention. Of course they did, because if you're defending David Burke, the absolute last thing you want the public reading is that he met an eleven year old, started sleeping with her at thirteen, lied about it to police, killed her when she threatened to talk, and then the day after he stabbed a child to death in his own home, went on the radio to promote his album. There's no version of that story a lawyer can spin into something the public will forgive. And there's a deeper problem here. We've been telling you about this case since September of twenty twenty five, seven months. The medical examiner sat on the cause of death for months. The grand jury was convened, records were sealed, Investigators told the public there might only be concealment of a body charges. Independent investigators, the ones using their actual names, were screaming into the void about how slow this was moving, about what they were hearing about the state of Celeste's body, about a friend named Neo who was a target, about other people who knew about what it took to get from a tesla in a towyard to an arrest. Look, I'm going to be honest with you. There's an old, ugly pattern in cases like this. When the suspect is a young man with a million followers and a record deal, the system slows down. When the victim is a fourteen year

19:50 old Latina girl from Lake Elsinore, the system slows down. The Hollywood Hills got more sympathy than the Inland Empire always has. Celeste Revas Hernandez was thirteen when David Burke allegedly started raping her. She was fourteen when he allegedly killed her. She would be fifteen now. She should be a sophomore in high school. She should be arguing with her parents about a new phone for legitimate reasons. She should be alive. Someone has to say her name. Celeste Revas Hernandez May twenty six will be there commercial break when we come back. The defense for Tanner Horner runs out of psychiatrists and starts calling the man's mom's friends.

20:31 Athena Strands killer days thirteen and fourteen Stay with US Fort Worth, Texas Terrant County day thirteen and day fourteen of the penalty phase for Tanner Lynn Horner Quick reset for anyone who joined late. Horner is the FedEx contract driver who please did guilty on day one, April seventh, to capital murder and aggravated kidnapping for the killing of seven year old Athena Strand. He hit her with his van delivering a Christmas package to her house in November of twenty twenty two. She told him her name. He decided she'd tell on him. He tried to break her neck.

21:18 When that didn't work, he strangled her with his bare hands in the back of the van. He drove around for hours. Afterward, he cleaned the van at a love's gas station. He sang jingle Bell Rock as he drove past search teams looking for her. The entire thing was on dash camp. Because he pleaded guilty, the only question now is whether he gets the death penalty or life in prison without parole. Texas requires the jury to make two findings unanimously. First, would Horner be a continuing threat to society? Second? Is there enough in his background to mitigate against death. The defense's only job at this point is the second question, find and anything at all that gives twelve people in Fort Worth a reason to vote for life. They've been at it for two weeks. They put up the brain scientists. They put up the speech pathologists who said his language in the abduction video turn quote horrific. They put up his mother, who told the jury about her own catastrophic childhood and her drinking during pregnancy.

22:23 They put up the cousin who said Tanner eight coins as a kid. They put up the metals expert who said he had high light exposure. They put up the school counselor. They put up the special education teacher. They put up his pastor. They put up his fifth grade best friend, Ruby, who dated him in high school for a few months and described him as sweet and endearing right up until the part where she broke up with him to date someone else and he quote got mad. That was through day twelve. Now we're at day thirteen and day fourteen. Day thirteen Tuesday brought the mother of one of Horner's friends. She told the jury that both her son and Tanner were bullied as children. Some of the witnesses are starting to blur together at this point.

23:06 The defense is hammering one note difficult childhood, difficult brain, difficult life. They're hoping the cumulative weight of it tips one juror. Then a friend named Jay testified said he met Horner in twenty fourteen through a mutual friend. Said he was shocked when he heard the news, described Horner as a goofball. Then Jay added a detail that the defense almost certainly didn't want him to add. Unprompted. He said Tanner would hit himself several times before hitting somebody else. Think about that for a second. The defense is trying to argue Horner's violence was the product of brain damage and a bad upbringing. Their own witness just told the jury that Horner's violence had a process a pregame ritual.

23:55 He hit himself to work himself up to hit other people. That that's not damage, that's a method. There's a difference, and a Texas jury is going to know the difference. Day thirteen also brought a convicted felon, a man who knew Horner through music and who admitted to using drugs with him. Then doctor Eileen Ryan, a professor of psychiatry. She did a comprehensive forensic psychiatric evaluation. She walked through Horner's diagnoses. She told the jury about a suicide attempt Horner made in jail, cuts to his upper and lower extremities. She mentioned a previous suicide attempt in twenty eighteen. That last detail matters. The defense will tell you it shows Horner is a man in psychological distress deserving of mercy.

24:43 The prosecution will tell you a suicide attempt in jail after he's been caught is what guilty people do when they realize they're going to spend the rest of their life paying for what they did. The jury gets to decide which version they believe. Day fourteen, yesterday, When's brought four more witnesses, none of them experts, all of them people who knew Horner, and this is where the defense's strategy starts to feel like a weather forecast that just keeps repeating itself. A woman named Elizabeth, who knew Horner through one of his ex girlfriends, told the jury he gravitated toward controlling women. That's the defense framing Tanner was a follower. Tanner kept to himself. Tanner had social anxiety.

25:28 Then she added that he had an apparent fascination with dominating women. Court TV titled the clip quote friend reveals child killer's fascination with dominating women. That headline is doing some work. The defense was trying to make Horner sound passive. Their own witness made him sound predatory. A man named Lee testified he met Horner through a friend worked with him at a glass company, described him as funny and a little different. A man named Jason, a contractor for FedEx, testified that Horner had a good work ethic during the five or six months he worked for him. Then he added that he had given Horner about eleven hundred dollars to help him out financially. That too, is doing some work for the defense. See look, he had bosses who liked him, who helped him out. Then there's the part nobody on the defense team wants the jury to do the math on he had a thousand dollars loan from his boss in late twenty twenty two, and then he killed a child, and then and I want you to brace yourself. The defense called a convicted felon who lives across from Horner in jail to testify about what kind of man Horner is. His description quote he called Horner a cool, little white dude and quote a baby lamb.

26:50 He told the jury he believes Horner is a good man despite what he did. Then he admitted he didn't actually know all the details of what Horner did a baby lamb. Athena Strand was seven years old. She had a stepmother named Elizabeth, who called nine one one at six forty one pm on November thirtieth, twenty twenty two, because dinner was ready and Athena was supposed to be sorting laundry and Elizabeth couldn't find her. Three hundred volunteers showed up the next morning with horses and four wheelers and dogs to look for her. Her body was found face down in the Trinity River twelve to thirteen miles from her house, naked with her hands covered in brown bags by the medical examiner who would later testify she died from blunt force injuries with smothering and strangulation. Her face had a zigzag tread pattern from a shoe. Tanner Horner is not a baby lamb. There is a playbook for this. The defense knows the playbook. They put up neurological abnormalities. They put up family trauma, they put up substance exposure, they put up bullies and breakups and bad bosses, and then when they're running thin in week three, they reach for whatever character witnesses they can get, even from the cell across from their client, to humanize him to twelve strangers. The strategy is not crazy. Sometimes it works.

28:10 Mitigation is real, the constitution requires it, Texas law requires the jury to consider it, and there are real cases, cases like Susan Smith's, cases like the Menendez brothers, where the mitigation was strong enough to flip a death verdict to life. But there's a difference between mitigation that explains and mitigation that excuses. Athena Strand told Tanner Horner her name, he decided to kill her. He tried to break her neck. He strangled her with his bare hands. He drove around singing Christmas songs. He went to a love's, he cleaned the van. He kept her clothing in his backpack and took it home. No amount of lead exposure explains that no bag of knives explains that no Baby Lamb testimony explains that the defense is expected to wrap their mitigation case in the next several days. Then prosecution rebuttal, then closing arguments. Then twelve people in Fort Worth go behind a closed door and decide whether Tanner Horner lives or dies.

29:11 Athena Strand should be turning eleven later this year. That's the show for Friday. Three rooms, three completely different stories, same thing underneath all of them. In Oakland, the richest man on the planet found out that owning the platform doesn't mean controlling the courtroom. A federal judge made him sit down. A federal lawyer made an answer, the jury took notes. In Los Angeles, the defense for the singer who calls himself David tried to have the truth sealed. The judge said no, So now the public knows. The chainsaws, the pool, the radio interview, the album release the eleven year old he met, the fourteen year old he killed.

29:55 We're going to keep saying her name. Celeste Revas Hernandez in fort Worth, the defense for a man who pleaded guilty to murdering a seven year old asked the jury to remember he was once a fifth grader who liked Harry Potter. We're going to keep saying her name too. Athena Strand Quick programming note, We're back Monday with the first show of May. Then on Tuesday, May fifth, we're launching something different. Ten episodes, two weeks, no murder cases. The series is called Fighting Back, and it's about ordinary people who took on impossible institutions and one the Central Park Five, The Radium Girls, Aaron Brokovich, The Sacklers, Karen Silkwood, Gideon Versus Wainwright. Stories where the David's actually beat the goliaths.

30:42 The production team is taking some well earned time off. I'm going to be here every weekday telling you those stories myself. I think you're going to like it. We start Tuesday May fifth. Until then, look out for each other, say their names do better. Daily Crime and Justice is a production of Calaroga Shark Media. This program uses AI assisted research, scripting and voice synthesis. Our production is fast, but it is not infallible. We aim for accuracy, but we may make errors. This program is for information and entertainment. It is not legal advice, and it is not the official record. Court documents, transcripts, and verified reporting from outlets we cite are the actual record. Today's episode included reporting from court, TV, CNBC, CNN, NPR, ABC seven San Francisco, NBC Los Angeles, KTLA, CBS Los Angeles, Fox, LA, KSAT, the Associated Press, and Tech Crunch. The Open AI Trial Day four Thursday, April thirtieth may have produced developments after this episode was recorded. Check the next episode for any updates.

31:56 The David Anthony Burke case is at the preliminary hearing stage. The allegations summarized in this episode come from the prosecution's preliminary hearing brief filed April twenty ninth, twenty twenty six. Burke has pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Blair Burke, has stated her client is innocent. He is presumed innocent unless and until convicted. The Tanner Horner case is in the penalty phase. He has pleaded guilty. Witness names from the Tanner Horner trial reflect Court TV's daily Summary format, which protects some witnesses last names from the public record. If you spot something we got wrong, tell us. If you want to argue with us, tell us that too. Where Daily Crime and Justice be back Monday.