Swatting, Smears, and the Scandalous PR War: How a Victim’s Past is Being Weaponized to Protect the Accused

The high-profile investigation surrounding the disappearance and death of 14-year-old Celeste has taken a dark and dangerous turn, revealing a chilling landscape where public sympathy is ruthlessly weaponized and the memory of a young victim is being sacrificed in a calculated campaign of damage control. In a span of days, the family of the accused, David, was subjected to a terrifying criminal prank, while an insidious stream of negative headlines and leaked private footage began to emerge, targeting Celeste’s character in what many observers now believe is a desperate effort by David’s legal team to manipulate the narrative.

The situation has escalated from a complex legal investigation into a full-blown psychological warfare, played out across social media and tabloid headlines, leaving the public frustrated by a timeline that simply doesn’t add up and a media focus that seems disturbingly misplaced.

The Nightmare on David’s Doorstep: Swatting and the Fear of Retaliation

The chaos erupted not in Hollywood, but at the suburban Texas home of David’s parents, where a chilling criminal act known as “swatting” unfolded. Swatting is a dangerous, criminal hoax where a false emergency report—often claiming a hostage situation or murder—is made to 911, prompting an overwhelming response from heavily armed police (SWAT teams).

In this instance, local authorities confirmed receiving a 911 call reporting gunshots and a woman screaming at the family’s address. Body camera footage from the responding officers captured the terrifying reality of the moment: David’s parents, visibly shaken, were forced to confront a police presence treating their home as a volatile crime scene.

“Somebody’s messing with us,” David’s father can be heard telling the officers, a poignant admission that cuts through the tension. His wife, Colleen Berg, appeared “terrified,” anxiously glancing around the property. The caller, clearly a perpetrator with malicious intent, had employed sophisticated technology to spoof their location and even played audio of gunshots and a woman screaming, a chilling, almost “Hollywood sound effect” designed to convince dispatchers of a genuine emergency. The police, bound by procedure, had “no choice but to treat it like a real emergency.”

This violent, digital harassment underscores the extreme pressure surrounding the case, leading to visible signs of anxiety from the accused’s family. David’s mother, Colleen Berg, was photographed shortly after the incident, seen shopping at a Texas gun store and holding an instruction manual for an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. While such an action speaks to the high level of fear and the need for personal security in the face of what feels like direct targeting, it also contributes to the narrative of high drama that now overshadows the central tragedy. Whoever is targeting David’s family, as the video suggests, is clearly attempting to “send a message.”

The Calculated Smear: Weaponizing a Victim’s Past

While one side of the case deals with direct physical intimidation, the other side is facing an insidious, carefully orchestrated smear campaign aimed directly at Celeste’s memory. The campaign appears to have begun with a strategically timed leak to TMZ: a clip recorded on a Nest cam dated September 8, 2024, months before the tragedy came fully to light.

The footage shows Celeste arguing loudly and heatedly with her neighbors, her emotions running high in a “messy and uncomfortable” exchange. However, as the video commentary astutely points out, this clip adds “nothing” to the investigation; it doesn’t answer questions about her disappearance or bring clarity to the circumstances of her death. What it does, chillingly, is “paint Celeste in a negative light.”

This is the core of the suspected PR strategy. By dropping headlines that paint Celeste as “troubled, rebellious or even living some kind of double life,” David’s legal team is theorized to be “pushing these narratives, releasing clips, planting headlines—all to sway public opinion.” The goal is simple, yet morally repugnant: make Celeste look “bad so the public feels less sympathy.”

It’s a classic, cold-blooded tactic of victim-blaming, where the natural, often messy struggles of a teenager are exploited to distract from the central accusation against an adult. As one commenter noted, putting out this video was solely “just to make her look bad.” Even if she was not “perfect,” the narrative argues, she still “deserves safety, respect and ultimately justice.” To drag her reputation now, after her death, feels “cruel and unnecessary.”

The Broken Timeline and The Silence of Officials

Further muddying the waters are significant inconsistencies in the timeline of Celeste’s final months. The most glaring contradiction lies in her reported missing status. She had already been reported missing in April 2024, yet the inflammatory Nest cam footage places her clearly at home in September 2024, just a day after her birthday.

This five-month gap is suspicious. It suggests a complicated, “unstable back and forth relationship with her family, disappearing and reappearing.” However, rather than offering clarity, this gap has fueled online conspiracy theories, with people questioning her family’s timeline and degree of involvement.

Compounding this is the media’s decision to platform marginal figures in Celeste’s life. TMZ, in a move widely criticized, tracked down one of Celeste’s ex-boyfriends from middle school. The young man, who dated her briefly when she was “barely into her teens,” confirmed that she had a difficult home life and had been “open about wanting to run away.” While this provides context to her instability, it further directs attention away from the central fact: a 14-year-old was killed while allegedly involved in a romantic relationship with a grown man. The relationship between David and Celeste, which involved “engagement rings, matching tattoos and rumors that she might have even been pregnant,” was on a completely different level than her adolescent history.

The public is desperate for answers regarding the core issue: “How Celeste ended up tied to David in the first place.” Yet, the focus remains stubbornly fixed on side narratives. The timeline surrounding the pregnancy rumor—a post made by Celeste in July 2024 claiming she was pregnant—also fails to align with the autopsy results or the overall chronology. The “pieces don’t fit, the timelines clash, and yet we still don’t have solid answers.”

The silence and the inconsistencies from official sources are only exacerbating the situation, giving fertile ground for “halftruths, old footage leaking at random, and endless speculation.”

Justice vs. Damage Control

The overwhelming consensus among observers is that the media’s current narrative strategy is a textbook case of corporate and legal damage control. Insiders point out that Hollywood often “tends to circle wagons when one of their own is in trouble.” The goal is not just to defend David, but to tilt the public narrative, making him look “less like a predator and more like someone caught in a messy relationship gone wrong.”

At the end of the day, the fundamental truth remains: Celeste was a minor child—a 14-year-old—who was way “too young to be entangled in a situation this serious.” Every teenager rebels, acts out, and makes mistakes. None of that changes the fact that she was the victim, and she deserved “protection and a chance at life, not to be remembered through rumors and headlines.”

The current barrage of media distraction makes it painfully clear that the campaign underway benefits only one person: David. For the public, for Celeste’s grieving family, and for the hope of truth, it’s crucial to look beyond the smears, recognize the cynical PR machine at work, and demand accountability for the primary crime, ensuring that a young life tragically lost is not defined by the deliberate destruction of her memory. The quest for justice for Celeste is far from over.