D4vd is ordered to stand trial for murder of Celeste Rivas

Singer D4vd has been formally ordered to stand trial for the murder of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, who was found ᴅᴇᴀᴅ and dismembered in a car last year.

After five days of preliminary hearings, the judge ruled that the singer, whose real name is David Anthony Burke, must stand trial on charges of murder, continuous Sєxual abuse of a child under the age of 14 and unlawful mutilation of human remains.

‘The people have met their burden on all counts,’ Judge Charlaine Olmedo said before ordering that Burke, 21, continue to be held without bail. 

She then went on to emphasize that the probable cause standard for a preliminary hearing like this is lower than the threshold to prove guilt at trial. However, prosecutors ᴀsserted the evidence was overwhelming.

‘Based on the mountains of evidence presented,’ Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman said, ‘all of the allegations have been proved way beyond the standard required.’

Burke remained emotionless as the judge handed down the ruling, and his attorneys declined to comment following the hearing on Monday.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman said outside court that prosecutors are still weighing whether to seek the death penalty in the case. 

Singer D4vd, real name David Anthony Burke, has been charged with first-degree murder, lewd and lascivious acts with a person under 14 and mutilating a body

He will now stand trial for the murder of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez

Prosecutors have claimed Burke first met Rivas Hernandez when she was just 11 years old and began Sєxually abusing her two years later, in November 2023, when she was 13 and he was 18.

When she then went missing that year, Hernandez’s mother told police her daughter was dating a guy she had never met, named David.

Authorities then questioned Burke about his relationship with the teenager, to which he said he believed Hernandez was 18 because ‘she told me she was 18,’ LA County Sheriff’s Senior Deputy Juan Gonzalez testified last week.

The singer then allegedly shared Hernandez’s phone number with the deputies and showed them pH๏τos from his phone of her yearbook picture.

When Hernandez later returned home, her family took her phone away. 

But prosecutors say Burke continued to pursue her – even paying a junior high school student in her class $1,000 so that the classmate could get Hernandez a new phone.

‘Throughout 2024, the victim spent a significant amount of time with defendant, including summer weekends at his home in the Hollywood Hills and traveling with him to Las Vegas, London, and Texas to meet his family,’ they alleged in court documents.

‘Text exchanges between the victim and defendant contain references to Sєx, pregnancy, abortion and use of the Plan B emergency contraceptive.’

Burke, who was arrested in April, has pleaded not guilty to the charges

Prosecutors further alleged that they broke up in November 2024, but they continued to communicate.  

A preliminary trial brief further alleged that Burke ‘continued to manipulate’ Rivas Hernandez into March 2025.

‘All we do is have Sєx and just hang out man I want more than that for myself,’ she texted him at one point, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors said that texts from April 22 of that year showed how Rivas Hernandez became jealous over Burke’s relationship with other women, the brief said.

She then ‘threatened to disclose damaging information about her relationship with defendant to end his career and destroy his life,’ the document continued.

Burke was set to release his first studio album and had an ’emerging multi-million-dollar career already in progress’ at stake, prosecutors said. 

With that in mind, the singer allegedly sent an Uber to pick Rivas Hernandez up at her home in Lake Elsinore, California, at around 8.40pm on April 23, 2025.

She was then dropped off at the home he was renting in Hollywood Hills at around 10.10pm, when Burke allegedly stabbed the teenager to death multiple times and stood by while she bled out, according to the filing.

Prosecutors claim Burke began a Sєxual relationship with Rivas Hernandez when she was 13 and he was 18 

Her chopped up remains were found in the trunk of Burke’s Tesla last September 

Prosecutors said they have records showing Burke ordered the chainsaws and wading pools that he used to dismember her body in his garage, and that her DNA was found on blood stains when the police served a search warrant.

They said he then drove around for weeks and even months with the body in the trunk. Her decomposing body was found in the Tesla registered to Burke that was towed from the Hollywood Hills in September, a little more than four months later.

The car had been parked around the corner from his house, and surveillance video will show he was the last person to drive it, the prosecution claimed.

They wrapped up their case on Monday by giving a moment-by-moment account of Rivas Hernandez’s last night, showing that after a stream of text messages with Burke, her phone went permanently silent when she arrived at his home.

As she neared his Hollywood home shortly after 10am on April 23, 2025, in an Uber he had sent to pick her up, she sent her final text: ‘girly pop i´m almost there open ur door if ur home.’

Burke then allegedly stabbed her to death when she came through the door.

Burke did not react when the judge announced there was sufficient evidence to bring the murder case to trial

Prosecutors also noted that the two had argued via text about his relationship with a woman just the night before her alleged death. 

Rivas Hernandez sent him an angry and profane text saying she will tell her dad so many lies about him and ‘i will end ur career and ur life.’

But after the final witness on Monday, the defense argued that the evidence was insufficient and the murder charge should be dismissed.

‘There´s no evidence that Mr. Burke harbored a deliberate intent to kill Miss Hernandez,’ said Burke’s attorney, Marilyn Bednarski.

She said the communications between Burke and Rivas Hernandez showed ‘no threat, no evidence of a history of violence’ and that he had ‘the opposite of homicidal malice’ toward her.

The attorney further argued that a medical examiner ruling that her death was a homicide from two puncture wounds was too vague and inconclusive to be evidence of murder. The defense did not directly give an alternative theory on how she died and wasn’t required to.

Defense attorneys argued that a medical examiner’s ruling that Rivas Hernandez’s death was a homicide based on two puncture wounds was too vague and inconclusive to be evidence of murder 

The defense showed several other texts from Rivas Hernandez threatening him about their relationship, and saying she would go to Burke’s mother, talk to his friends and ‘leak’ information about them.

The defense also established that she had asked seven times to come to see him in the days before her death, and he reluctantly agreed only after she demanded it.

They even claimed Rivas Hernandez threatened to kill Burke and mutilate him – saying all of that malice had come for her.

Yet Deputy District Attorney Silverman told the judge that ‘the defense tried numerous times throughout these proceedings to dirty up the victim’ despite her being a child.

The detective also admitted under questioning from Berk that the parents of both Burke and Rivas Hernandez knew about their relationship, that he had attended church with members of her family and that her parents had given their consent for her to go to London with him for a week.

After her phone went silent, Burke sent her several other messages that night asking where she was, and expressing concern. Prosecutors allege those messages were sent as cover after he had killed her.

D4vd performed at last year’s Coachella music festival just a few weeks before prosecutors said Rivas Hernandez was killed

D4vd became an online musical phenomenon as a teen with a blend of indie rock, R&B and lo-fi pop. He had huge followings on TikTok, Soundcloud and Spotify, where his top songs, including his 2022 breakthrough ‘Romantic Homicide,’ have more than a billion plays.

In 2024 he played the Coachella music festival and released his first full-length album, Withered, two days after authorities say Rivas Hernandez was killed.

Burke is to be arraigned on August 31.