Prosecutors in Los Angeles allege that singer D4vd, whose real name is David Burke, stabbed 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez to death, then used two chainsaws to dismember her body in his garage before stuffing her remains into bags and hiding them in the trunk of his Tesla. Burke has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and a string of related charges that could carry the death penalty.
The case, built through a mostly secret grand jury investigation, lays out allegations so grim they read less like a celebrity scandal and more like something out of a true-crime nightmare. And at the center of it sits a young girl whose family says she loved to sing and dance.
The LA County District Attorney's Office charged Burke with first-degree murder with special circumstances, including murder of a witness, murder for financial gain, and lying in wait. He also faces charges of lewd and lascivious acts with a person under 14, continuous sexual acts, and mutilating a body, as detailed in the criminal complaint. The charges came four days after his arrest.
Court filings paint a disturbing picture. Prosecutors say Burke first met Celeste when she was just 11 years old and began a sexual relationship with her when she was 13. By April 2025, she was 14, and prosecutors allege Burke lured her to his home.
Text messages obtained by prosecutors, exchanged between Burke and Celeste on the night investigators believe she was killed, form a key piece of the case. The court filings describe a volatile dynamic. As prosecutors wrote in a filing cited by AP News:
"The messages reveal the victim's jealousy over defendant's relationships with other women, as defendant led her to believe they had a future together."
Those same filings allege Celeste "became extremely upset and threatened to disclose damaging information about her relationship with defendant to end his career and destroy his life." That threat, prosecutors argue, sealed her fate.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman laid out the alleged motive bluntly. As Fox News reported, Hochman said:
"When she threatened to expose his criminal conduct and devastate his musical career, Burke allegedly murdered her, cut up her body and stuffed her body in two bags that were placed in the front trunk of his car."
Prosecutors described the killing itself in a court filing:
"Knowing he had to silence the victim before she ruined his music career as she had threatened, very soon after her arrival at his home, defendant stabbed the victim to death multiple times and stood by while she bled out."
The allegations do not end with the stabbing. Prosecutors say Burke waited approximately two weeks before mutilating Celeste's body. He allegedly purchased two chainsaws online, dismembered her in his garage, and placed her remains into bags that he loaded into his Tesla. Celeste's DNA was found in the garage, prosecutors claim. Two fingers and parts of her arms and legs were missing, lawyers said.
As prosecutors put it in the court filing, the singer "took horrifying measures to destroy and discard the victim's body." The LA County District Attorney's Office said it would share proof of Burke's alleged efforts to destroy the body and dispose of evidence.
Seven months after Celeste vanished, workers at a Hollywood tow yard noticed a rotting smell coming from the trunk of an abandoned car. That car was Burke's impounded Tesla. Inside the trunk, they found her remains. The grim discovery set off the investigation that would eventually lead to Burke's arrest.
Newsmax reported that the remains were found on September 8, seven months before police arrested the 21-year-old singer at his Hollywood Hills home on a probable cause warrant. Burke was held without bail.
The timeline raises hard questions. A body sat in an impounded vehicle for months. The investigation proceeded through a grand jury, largely in secret. How long law enforcement knew about Burke as a suspect before arresting him, and why the gap stretched as long as it did, remain unanswered.
Burke has pleaded not guilty to all charges and was denied bail at his arraignment. His defense team has publicly contested the prosecution's narrative. Lead defense attorney Blair Berk told reporters, "We believe the actual evidence will show David Burke did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez."
His attorneys went further in a separate statement. "Let us be clear, the actual evidence in this case will show that David Burke did not murder Hernandez and he was not the cause of her death," Burke's defense attorneys said in a statement to People, as Newsmax reported.
The defense has not publicly offered an alternative account of how Celeste died or how her remains ended up in the trunk of Burke's car. That gap between their blanket denial and the physical evidence prosecutors say they hold, DNA in the garage, the body in the Tesla, the purchased chainsaws, will be the fault line of this trial.
Celeste's parents, Jesus and Mercedes Rivas, broke their silence after Burke's arrest. Their words were spare and direct. The New York Post reported that the family released a statement saying simply: "All we want is Justice for Celeste."
They described their daughter as "a beautiful, strong girl who loved to sing and dance." Her father, Jesus Rivas, said through the family's attorney: "Thank God... justice for Celeste."
Those words carry the weight of a family that waited seven months not knowing where their child was, and then learned the worst possible answer. LAPD's arrest of Burke at his Hollywood Hills home came only after that long, agonizing stretch.
The criminal complaint filed by the LA County District Attorney's Office stacks charge upon charge. First-degree murder with special circumstances. Murder of a witness to an investigation. Murder for financial gain. Lying in wait. Lewd and lascivious sexual acts with a person under 14. Continuous sexual acts. Mutilating a body.
If convicted, Burke faces the death penalty.
The special-circumstances allegations, murder of a witness and murder for financial gain, tell a story on their own. Prosecutors believe Burke killed a child not in a moment of rage but because she threatened to expose conduct that would end his career. That is premeditation married to self-interest, the coldest kind of motive the law recognizes.
Prosecutors say text messages and DNA evidence will anchor their case. The defense says the evidence will tell a different story. A jury will decide. But what is already public, the allegations of a grown man grooming a child from age 11, the alleged sexual abuse starting at 13, the alleged murder at 14, the chainsaws, the garage, the Tesla trunk, already constitutes one of the most disturbing criminal cases in a city that has seen no shortage of violent crime.
Several open questions remain. The exact date of Celeste's death has not been publicly specified. The precise timeline of the investigation, when Burke became a suspect, what triggered the grand jury probe, why months elapsed between the discovery of the body and the arrest, has not been fully disclosed. The nature of the additional evidence the DA's office says it will present remains to be seen.
Cases involving forensic evidence and criminal investigations of this magnitude tend to unfold slowly. But for the Rivas family, every day of delay is another day without the justice they say they are owed.
A 14-year-old girl is dead. The man prosecutors say killed her had fame, money, and a platform. None of that should matter in a courtroom, and if the system works the way it is supposed to, it won't.
