Musician D4vd ordered to stand trial over murder of 14-year-old girl

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled Monday that there was enough evidence against the musician known as D4vd for him to stand trial over the murder of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez.

He is also charged with mutilating Hernandez’s corpse and performing continuous lewd and lascivious acts on a 13-year-old. D4vd, whose real name is David Anthony Burke, has pleaded not guilty.

After the hearing, District Attorney Nathan Hochman said his office is now weighing whether or not to seek the death penalty.

“The crime that we are dealing with is incredibly horrific and barbaric,” Hochman told reporters outside the courthouse.

Burke will continue to be held in custody without bail. His attorneys declined to comment on judge’s ruling.

The ruling follows a five-day preliminary hearing, much of which focused on forensic evidence collected at Burke’s home and Tesla, including her dismembered corpse, which sat around decomposing for some five months. Investigators found traces of what they determined to be Hernandez’s blood in Burke’s Tesla, which was discovered in a city impound law, and on his garage floor. The case that he cut her body up and destroyed evidence appears quite strong. But, Burke’s attorney Marilyn Bednarski pointed out, “concealment of death is not murder.”

“There’s no evidence here that Mr. Burke harbored a deliberate intention to kill Ms. Hernandez,” Bednarski told the judge Monday. His feelings, she argued, were “the opposite of homicidal animus. He repeatedly expressed his love and care for Ms. Hernandez.”

Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman conceded that evidence of the actual murder, as well as the intentions behind it, is thin — due in large measure to the length of time the killing was concealed.

“Crimes like this, that include sex with an underage minor, don’t tend to have other witnesses involved,” Silverman said. But the weight of circumstantial evidence, she said, was more than enough to hold Burke over for trial on first-degree murder. She noted that after Hernandez died, Burke didn’t call 911, nor do anything to help the girl he once professed love for.

“There’s nothing in this case that sounds like an accident,” Silverman said.

Text messages sent between Burke and Hernandez in the days leading up to her death showed a frayed, perhaps complicated relationship. Despite having broke up, the two appeared to be in almost constant contact, messaging each other back and forth hundreds if not thousands of times. Their feelings for each other had clearly changed. Burke sounded disinterested, though not ready to disconnect entirely. Hernandez, meanwhile, sounded jealous and bitter toward the musician whose career was taking off.

During one exchange, Hernandez interrogated Burke over whether or not Burke was involved with another girl, “Ayisa.” Burke denied it; Hernandez was unconvinced, and broke into a punctuation-less tirade, threatening him with both violence and ruining his career, presumably by going public about their relationship, texting him: “oh my fucken god I swear to GOD i will kill u she was in my dam seat i will strangle u to fucken death bro i will tell my dad so many fucken lies about u dead ass i will end ur career and ur life i will damage anything.”

She made other threats, at one point texting him: “i will straight up mutilate ur penis.”

For years, her texts revealed intense feelings for Burke, of love, of the desire to get married and to start a family with him — feelings he appeared to share. Now she seemed to goad him, calling him “queen,” “gurl” and “girly pop.” He didn’t rise to the bait, but was much shorter with her than before, less conciliatory.

Burke and Hernandez met when he was 17 years old, she 11. Prosecutors say they began to have sex when she was 13, he 18. During their long text message chain, entered into evidence, she took Plan B emergency contraception at least once, and, later, had an abortion. Though they initially joked about it, she would come to have regrets.

“i killed my kid for you,” she told him over text message in 2024, when she was still 13. “id do anything to have it back… took a innocent life of a literal baby.”

Burke started out as a YouTuber, posting videos of himself playing video games with his own soundtrack. He then began to make music, first for video games, then as a solo artist. He released two multiplatinum singles in 2022, one of which was titled “Romantic Homicide." His debut studio album, “Withered,” was scheduled to be released on April 25, around the time he was set to go on tour.

In the days before his departure, Hernandez begged to see him again. She was convinced he was sleeping with another woman, convinced he was lying. Burke was reluctant; he was busy, and his parents were coming to town. At one point, Burke, sounding exasperated, texted her: “i think its love cause ur the only one to ever show me that but its never happiness.”

“Cut this shit out i’m seeing you today,” she texted, on April 23.

“Fine,” Burke answered, finally relenting. He agreed to send an Uber to pick her up at her parents’ house in Lake Elsinore. It dropped her off a little after 10 p.m. She was never seen or heard from again.

Prosecutors say Burke killed her sometime between 10:10 and 10:30 p.m. After that, he sent her a series of text messages, as if she had never arrived and he was worried about her. Evidence shows that he drove somewhere in Santa Barbara County. A search of places previously programmed into the Tesla’s navigation app revealed that he once got directions to Lake Cachuma. Silverman suggested Burke disposed of key evidence — like the murder weapon and the chainsaw he purportedly used to cut up her body — on the large reservoir. For some reason, she said, he left her passport ID card on the side of the highway, later found by a California Highway patrolman.

Defense attorneys have revealed little about their trial strategy. But certain questions they asked during cross-examination suggest they may try to argue that Hernandez killed herself — and that Burke attempted to dispose of her body in order to hide the fact that he was sleeping with a minor.

“Did you learn that Celeste Rivas Hernandez frequently referenced something called BPD, bipolar disorder?” defense attorney Blair Berk asked an LAPD detective Monday. The question drew an objection from Silverman on relevance grounds. Judge Charlaine Olmedo sustained the objection, saying that it was irrelevant for the preliminary hearing, but may be brought up during a trial. She made a similar ruling about Berk’s claim that Hernandez had committed acts of domestic violence against Burke.

But the judge did allow Berk to ask detective Corey Farell if he was “aware that Celeste Rivas, on multiple occasions, referred to wanting to kill herself?”

“I have seen that,” Farell said. “I don’t know about multiple occasions.”

After the hearing, Patrick Steinfeld, an attorney representing Hernandez’s family, told reporters, “I find it abhorrent that defense attorneys are trying to put any blame on this young child.”

Burke is scheduled to be arraigned, again, Aug. 31. A trial date has not yet been set.

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