Russell Brand Trial: The Jury Hears From the People She Told, ‘Put Crazy Back in the Bag’ in the Birchmore Trial, d4vd Gets a Trial Date

0:03 Calaroga Shark Media. Good morning. This is Daily Crime and Justice from Calaroga Media, powered by AI. I'm Garrett Fisher. It's Friday, October 23rd, 2026. Yesterday, Russell Brand walked into Souther Crown Court without his wife for the first time. Inside, the jury heard from a long line of witnesses, bringing the trial's total to 24. The people who say a woman told them over the course of 16 years that Brand raped her. Her mother, her father, the nurse who treated her, her ex-boyfriend, her boss.

0:43 And one of those witnesses told the jury that before he ever met her that night, Brand told an entire theater full of fans what he wanted from them. Here's today's question. When someone says they told people about an assault years ago, how much should the jury trust the people who heard it? Let's get into it. This segment discusses an allegation of rape. I won't be graphic, but it's adult material. The Essentials, Russell Brand, who is 51, is on trial at Southern Crown Court on seven charges, including three counts of rape involving six women between 1999 and 2009. He has pleaded not guilty to all of them and denies all of the allegations. As always, this is from evidence in open court, as reported by Sky News. Brand arrived yesterday in a white people carrier instead of his usual black Mercedes, in a gray suit, an open white shirt, brown boots, sunglasses, and a long white scarf that almost reached the ground.

1:44 He turned to the photographers on both sides, but didn't answer when they shouted, Morning, Russell. His wife, Laura, who has been with him most days, wasn't there. Inside, one of his supporters in the gallery was reading Brand's distinctive blue Bible. bristling with colorful sticky notes. And when he left court, a woman outside was holding a sign that read, Stay strong, Russell. He thanked the people waiting for him. Almost all of yesterday was about the fifth complainant, the woman who says Brand raped her at his house in Hampstead in 2009, a week after she met him at one of his shows. In English courts, the prosecution can call the people a complainant told at the time to show the jury her account has been consistent.

2:29 The defense uses the same witnesses to look for places where it hasn't. Both happened yesterday. It started with a friend who'd been with her at that show, his scandalous tour at the Hammersmith Apollo. Testifying by video link, the friend said she wasn't a huge brand fan herself, but she remembered how he ended the show. She said he told the audience that if they saw him in the foyer and fancied him, they could probably have sex with him, adding, quote, my age ranges from 16 to death. And she said he told them that if he invited them to his dressing room, it wasn't for an autograph. Or rather, he'd give them one, he said, but it will be on the inside of your uterus.

3:09 She said both of them were invited upstairs and into the dressing room, and that she left when the sexual activity began. Then she gave the jury a detail that cuts toward the defense. The next day, Brand texted her friend that he wanted to meet up and finish what they started, and her friend was, in the witness's words, excited, flattered, and intrigued. After her friend went to Brand's house, the witness said, everything changed. She said she asked her directly, did you say no? And her friend said, yes, lots of times. She said her friend couldn't sit down because of the pain. At one point, when the prosecutor pressed this witness on what she'd seen in the dressing room, the judge cut in, Miss Carmi Jones, you appear to be cross-examining your own witness. Then came the statements from her parents. Her father said she told them both during a car trip, and he pulled into the car park of a Little Chef, a British roadside restaurant, so she could tell them what had happened. When she finished, he said, he told her, you have been raped.

4:16 That is rape. A sexual health nurse who saw her in 2009 confirmed in a statement that she ran multiple tests and that the woman named Russell Brand. Her former manager testified that the woman knocked on her office door in 2009, sat down and almost immediately started crying. She looked ashen, gray and ill, the manager said. I thought someone had died. And in an interesting twist, the manager said the woman told her Bran got angry with her because he could smell alcohol on her breath, and he was in recovery. That echoes what Bran's barrister suggested on Wednesday about why Bran told her to shower. The manager said she asked directly whether her friend consented. The answer, she said, was, no, no, I didn't consent to that. Friends added new details the jury hadn't heard from the complainant herself. Two said she told them that someone at Brand's house took her phone away when she arrived. One friend's version of her text replied to Brand in Edinburgh the next summer was different from her own account. The friend remembered it as, I wouldn't treat a dog the way you have treated me.

5:25 Then her ex-boyfriend took the stand. They dated on and off for years after meeting at the Edinburgh Fringe, and he was with her when Brand's text arrived. It was rape, he told the jury, and she hated it. But under cross-examination, Brands barrister Ian Winter read from the statement the ex-boyfriend gave police in 2025, in which he said she had come round to it. Did he say that? Yes, he said. He explained that she had surrendered to it, and then made a point the jury will be thinking about. If you're being attacked, you either fight back or surrender, and surrendering doesn't make it not an attack. He also said she'd been Brand's biggest fan and called Brand famously a very charismatic man. Winter suggested Brand's charisma and power led her to do something she later regretted. The ex-boyfriend said he disagreed, and the defense found more to work with.

6:21 A former colleague read a message the woman sent her years later when the colleague suggested she talk to the Times journalist investigating Brand. The woman wrote, quote, I'm not sure my story has much in it. I was an idiot. Young and stupid, probably as much to blame. And her best friend acknowledged that the first time the woman told her what happened, she didn't use the word rape. She did in later conversations, the friend said, and lack of consent was clear from the start, which she said is what rape means. The day ended with the second complainant, the woman who says that in 2001 at MTV's offices in Leicester Square, Brand tried to drag her into a men's toilet after she complimented his t-shirt and showed him where it was. The jury heard her 999 call to police from 2023. She said she was in two minds about reporting it at all. Nothing did happen, she said, but it could have done if I hadn't pulled myself away.

7:20 She said she wasn't traumatized by it, but that the story shows what he's capable of. On a police officer's body camera, she added, to be honest, He probably wouldn't remember it at all. The court heard she has never sought compensation. That's where the case stands. The jury now has the words of the people these women told, and the defense has its list of inconsistencies. There's no court today. The trial resumes Monday, and Sky reports the prosecution expects to rest its case by the middle of next week. Then it's the defense's turn, and the biggest question in this trial, will Russell Brand take the stand himself? No opinions from me until the verdict. Russell Brand denies all charges.

8:02 When we come back, a killing allegedly meant to keep a secret and a singer's murder trial. In Boston, the trial of former Stoughton, Massachusetts, police detective Matthew Farwell is in its second week of testimony. He's accused of killing Sandra Birchmore, who was 23 and pregnant, in February of. 2021 and staging it as a suicide. Prosecutors say their relationship began when she was 15 and in a police youth program he helped run. This week, the jury heard what prosecutors say was the moment the clock started running. In late January of 2021, a friend of Sandra's called the Stoughton Police Department and told a dispatcher about her relationship with Farwell. The dispatcher testified that Farwell was angry about it. Prosecutors say that until that call, Farwell believed Sandra hadn't told anyone and that less than two weeks later, she was dead. Then a former colleague testified that Farwell said something to him around that time that's now on every front page in Boston.

9:14 According to the Boston. Globe, Farwell told him,' I gotta put crazy back in the bag.' Then he reassured him it would be all right. Last week, an FBI agent read messages Farwell sent Sandra after she told him she was pregnant, including, as reported by Boston 25 News, I literally have nothing to say right now. And you are truly the worst person on the face of the earth. This week, prosecutors also called an expert on grooming. The defense says those messages show a man ending an affair with a woman who had a history of mental illness, who had previously lost a pregnancy, and who was struggling. They say she took her own life after he broke it off. And they'll point out that crazy back in the bag is an ugly phrase, but it isn't a confession. The government's medical experts who say Sandra was strangled are still to come. Sandra Birchmore was 23. Someone has to say her name. Prosecutors in Boston say Matthew Farwell killed a young woman to stop her from exposing what he'd done to her. Prosecutors in Los Angeles make a very similar allegation against a 21-year-old singer.

10:25 On Monday, a judge set a February trial date for David Burke, the TikTok famous singer known as David, with a final status conference on January 11th. Burke has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, to committing lewd acts with a child under 14, and to mutilating a human body in the death of Celeste Rivas Hernandez. Celeste's parents reported her missing several times in 2024. In September of 2025, her remains were found in the front trunk of a Tesla registered to Burke, which had been towed from a public street while he was on tour. She was 14. Her body was found on what would have been her 15th birthday. Prosecutors allege Burke began a sexual relationship with Celeste when she was 13, and that he killed her after she threatened to expose it and derail his music career.

11:17 At a preliminary hearing in July, a judge found there was enough evidence to send him to trial. The district attorney is not seeking the death penalty. If convicted, Burke faces life without parole. He's being held without bail. His lawyers say they'll vigorously defend him, and he's presumed innocent. Celeste's family has also filed a wrongful death lawsuit, which accuses not only Burke but his businesses and business managers of helping cover up the relationship and her death. Those are allegations too, and they're denied. Celeste Rivas Hernandez was 14 years old. Someone has to say her name. When we come back the week ahead. That's the show for this week. Here's my question for the Spotify crowd. If a friend told you something terrible had happened to her, and years later she wrote that she was probably as much to blame, which would you believe?

12:26 If you're listening on Spotify, drop a comment. If you've been following the brand trial with us all week, send an episode to someone who'd want to catch up. That's how we grow. And on Apple Podcasts, tap listen uninterrupted at the top of your screen. $ 5 a month. No ads. This show plus thousands of other Calaroga media shows and the first 30 days are free. To everyone already subscribed, thank you. Coming up Monday, the Russell Brand trial resumes and the prosecution heads toward resting its case. In Boston, the Birchmore jury is still waiting on the medical experts. And we'll keep watching Tennessee and Krista Pike. Have a good weekend. I'm Garrett Fisher.

13:07 Do better. This episode of Daily Crime and Justice is produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and is intended for news and commentary purposes only. It is not legal advice. Everyone charged with a crime is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. Russell Brand has pleaded not guilty to all charges and denies all of the allegations against him. Matthew Farwell and David Burke have pleaded not guilty. On Russell Brand, accounts of evidence are as reported by Sky News from Southwark Crown Court, and are allegations and testimony, not findings of fact. Witnesses linked to the complainants cannot be named under UK reporting rules.

13:48 Under the Sexual Offenses Amendment Act 1992, complainants in sexual offense cases in the United Kingdom are entitled to lifelong anonymity. On Sandra Birchmore, testimony is as reported by the Boston Globe, People, Boston 25 News, and Patch. On David Burke, details are as reported by Court TV, NBC Los Angeles, CBS Los Angeles, and Billboard. Allegations in the wrongful death lawsuit have not been proven. If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual violence, you can call RAINN at 800-656-4673. In England and Wales, you can reach Rape Crisis at 0808-500-2222.

14:34 If you suspect a child is being abused, call the Child Help National Child Abuse Hotline at 800-422-4453.