RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Judge rules singer D4vd must stand trial in killing of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez Authorities said Celeste had threatened to expose their relationship.
Watch ABC News live news stream and get 24/7 latest, breaking news coverage, and live video. LOS ANGELES (AP) — -- A judge ruled Monday that there is enough evidence to put singer D4vd on trial in the killing and dismemberment of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez after, authorities said, she had threatened to expose their relationship and crater his career.
Los Angeles Judge Charlaine Olmedo decided the evidence prosecutors presented at a preliminary hearing that spanned five days provided probable cause for a trial on charges of murder, continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14 and unlawful mutilation of human remains.
D4vd, the 21-year-old singer born David Burke whose career was steeply rising before the allegations emerged, has pleaded not guilty.
“The people have met their burden on all counts,” Olmedo said. She ordered that Burke continue to be held without bail.
Olmedo emphasized that the probable cause standard for a preliminary hearing like this is much lower than the threshold at trial. However, prosecutors asserted 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 had no visible reaction to the decision. The defense declined to comment outside court.
Prosecutors on Monday wrapped up their case 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 10 a.m. 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.”
Prosecutors allege Burke stabbed her to death when she came through the door.
The night before, the two argued via text about his relationship with a woman. She 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.”
Detective Corey Farrell of the Los Angeles Police Department, under questioning from the prosecution, read the texts that were obtained from warrants on Burke's iPhone and iCloud accounts.
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.
She 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 isn't required to.
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.
Under questioning from defense attorney Blair Berk, Farrell said he saw no indication that she ever threatened to go to police or pursue any legal action against him.
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, and that she had threatened to kill Burke and to mutilate him.
The defense argued that all of the malice had come from her.
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 said 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.
Prosecutors allege Burke dismembered the body in his garage. A police analyst testified earlier in the hearing that samples pulled from apparent blood stains there matched her DNA.
Her body was found in a Tesla registered to him nearly five months later.
In earlier testimony, Farrell recounted dozens of sexually explicit photos of Burke and Rivas Hernandez and years of text messages that described the same things, along with conversations that indicated she had gotten an abortion in 2024 at 13 after he got her pregnant.
Farrell described the photos that could not be shown in court, material so graphic that it left Rivas Hernandez's mother in tears and prompted both parents to leave the courtroom on Friday. They were back in court Monday.
D4vd (pronounced “David”) 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.
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