By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES, July 21 (Reuters) – The indie pop vocalist known as D4vd appeared on Tuesday for a court hearing during which prosecutors will outline their murder case against the musician, accused of fatally stabbing and dismembering his 14-year-old girlfriend after she threatened to make their relationship public.
The 21-year-old singer-songwriter, whose stage name is D4vd (pronounced “David”) but is referred to in court records by his legal name, David Burke, had his hands shackled to his waist. The court session began with the judge denying a defense motion to allow him to appear in court without shackles.
Burke was arrested in April and charged with first-degree murder, mutilation of human remains and child sexual abuse in a killing last year. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The preliminary hearing, which may run several days, requires the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office to demonstrate to a judge that sufficient evidence exists to proceed to trial with the case.
Burke gained fame as a teenager in 2022 after songs he recorded on his phone for Fortnite gaming videos went viral on TikTok, with the hit single “Romantic Homicide” helping him sign a deal with Interscope Records.
He performed at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California last year, less than two weeks before prosecutors say he committed murder out of fear that his underage girlfriend would upend his budding career.
Burke is accused of killing and concealing the remains of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, who vanished in April 2025. Her badly decomposed corpse was discovered five months later in the trunk of an abandoned car the singer owned.
“We believe the actual evidence will show David Burke did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez, nor was he the cause of her death,” defense attorney Blair Berk said during her client’s April 20 arraignment.
Prosecutors filed a court brief the following week outlining their evidence and their alleged motive for the girl’s slaying, which the DA’s office said was likely April 23, 2025, when her cellular activity ceased.
Prosecutors said Burke was out to silence the girl because she had grown jealous of him and threatened to ruin his burgeoning music career by going public with damaging information about their relationship.
Burke’s first studio album was due for release that week, and he had secured highly profitable product endorsements at the time, the district attorney’s office said.
In one of the special allegations included in the charges against him, Burke is accused of committing murder for financial gain. Another alleges he did so because the victim was a witness to a crime.
‘HORRIFYING MEASURES’
According to prosecutors, Burke’s sexual relations with the girl began when she was 11, and investigators recovered text message references to sex, pregnancy, abortion and Plan B emergency contraception, as well as sexually explicit photos.
One day after they had quarreled over her threats to expose him, according to the court brief, Burke hailed her an Uber ride to his home in the Hollywood Hills, then stabbed the victim to death after she arrived. An autopsy found she died of “multiple penetrating injuries.”
In their brief, prosecutors also alleged in graphic detail the “horrifying measures” they said Burke took to dismember and dispose of the girl’s body.
According to the document, the performer placed the victim’s corpse in a blue inflatable pool “to prevent blood from spilling onto his garage floor,” then removed her limbs with a chainsaw “and perhaps other tools.”
The brief said that Burke had purchased the pool, two chainsaws, a shovel, a cadaver bag and other materials online under a fictitious name and had them delivered to his home after the killing.
The victim’s torso and head were ultimately found inside a cadaver bag stuffed in the front trunk of a Tesla registered to Burke, according to police, prosecutors and medical examiners. Underneath was a plastic garbage bag containing the victim’s limbs, they said.
Two fingers on the girl’s left hand, one of them tattooed with Burke’s name, had been amputated but were not recovered, prosecutors said.
According to their court brief, Burke was the last person to drive the vehicle on July 29, 2025, before he left it abandoned near his home and departed on a concert tour. Weeks later, the car was towed to an impoundment lot where workers reported the odor of decay and alerted authorities on September 8.
A search of Burke’s garage that month found evidence of dismemberment, including blood samples and remnants of an inflatable pool with “multiple linear cuts,” according to prosecutors.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Stephen Coates and David Gaffen)
