A judge on Monday scheduled another status conference for January 11 for singer D4VD, who is accused of murdering a 14-year-old girl, whose dismembered and decomposed remains were found in the trunk of his Tesla at a Hollywood tow yard.
The 21-year-old singer, whose real name is David Anthony Burke, pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges connected to the death of Celeste Rivas Hernandez on August 31.
Burke is being represented by attorneys with the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office. He was previously represented by three private attorneys – Blair Burke, Marilyn Bednarski and Regina Peter – who withdrew from the case on August 31.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charlene Olmedo found enough evidence, after more than four days of sometimes graphic testimony during a preliminary hearing in July, to allow the case against Burke to proceed to trial.
Burke was charged on April 20 with capital murder in Celeste’s 2025 death, as well as special circumstance charges of lying in wait, murder for financial gain and murder of a witness in a criminal investigation.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office has not announced whether it will seek the death penalty against Burke, who was arrested by Los Angeles Police Department officers on April 16 and is being held without bail.
Burke is also charged with one count each of aggravated sexual battery of a child under 14 and mutilation of human remains.
In a statement released last month, the girl’s family called for Burke to be given the death penalty.
“If the death penalty is activated, it would be perfect for this kind of human being, without emotions and void of conscience, and without a conscience, who has only caused pain to our daughter, our family and the world that supported our precious daughter,” the Rivas Hernandez family said in a statement to the media as they celebrated her 16th birthday.
“But this is not in our hands, but in the hands of God and the California justice system,” the family said.
The family objected to Burke being represented by the public defender’s office, saying he was “not indigent.”
Prosecutors argue that the singer killed the underage girl to prevent her from damaging his burgeoning music career by going public about their longstanding sexual relationship.
District Attorney Nathan Hochman has said that the lie-in-wait charge stems from D4vd’s invitation to the teen to visit his Hollywood Hills home on April 23, 2025, while the financial gain charge stems from the singer’s attempt to maintain his lucrative music career, which was being threatened due to his relationship with Celeste.
The district attorney said Celeste was considered the key witness in the investigation of Burke’s alleged sexual activity with an underage girl, leading to a charge of murder of a witness.
The teen’s body was found on September 8, 2025, just days after her 15th birthday. According to prosecutors’ court filing, the vehicle was pulled over three days earlier while it was parked about 400 feet from Burke’s Hollywood Hills home.
During the preliminary hearing, Bednarski argued that there was insufficient evidence to support any charges against Burke.
Defense attorneys argued that Burke “repeatedly expressed his love and care” for the girl even after the breakup and that there was no evidence that Burke ever said he intended to harm her. She told the judge that Burke finally agreed to come to her home after the girl repeatedly insisted on meeting him.
Bednarski also argued that the evidence “failed to establish” that Burke was keeping an eye on the girl and waiting for her or had any advance planning, and that prosecutors had no evidence that the girl intended to inform police about their relationship.
Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman countered that “there is nothing in this case that appears to be an accident” and said the teen was “apparently dead” within 20 minutes of being dropped off by an Uber driver at Burke’s rented Hollywood Hills home on April 23, 2025.
“We have an underage minor who was threatening to expose this relationship,” Silverman told the judge, later arguing that the defense had tried to “dirt” the girl.
During a preliminary hearing in July, prosecutors presented graphic photos of the girl’s remains, as well as sexually explicit photos of the two from Burke’s cell phone and stored text messages on an iCloud account that discussed abortion, suggesting that Celeste had been impregnated by the singer when she was 13 years old.
LAPD Robbery-Homicide Detective Corey Farrell testified in July that data from Burke’s iCloud account showed that communications with the girl began in 2022 when she was 11 years old and ended on April 23, 2025. According to Farrell, the text messages exchanged between the two contained sex-related material, which were written between November 2023 and March 2025.
The detective testified that the teen sent Burke a text message on the evening of April 22, 2025, in which he threatened to strangle her, tell her father to “lie” about the singer, and “end her career and her life.”
Farrell admitted under cross-examination that the teen’s parents had given their consent for Celeste to travel to London with Burke and that her adult sister knew that she had traveled to Las Vegas with the singer.
Prosecutors alleged in a court filing that the two had “engaged in a lengthy argument described in detail in their text messages” the night before that “revealed the victim’s jealousy over defendant’s relationships with other women, after defendant had assured her they had a future together.”
The teen “became extremely upset and threatened to reveal damaging information about her relationship with the defendant and end his career and destroy his life,” according to the filing, which said her debut studio album was scheduled to be released days later.
In their court filing in April, prosecutors alleged that Burke sent an Uber to bring the girl from her Lake Elsinore home to his Hollywood Hills residence and then sent her text messages asking where she was after the Uber dropped her off.
The prosecution argued in the brief that those messages were “part of a premeditated plan to conceal the defendant’s murder, since by this time she was already dead.”
Prosecutors allege that Burke stabbed the girl multiple times shortly after arriving at his home, then dismembered her body and hid the remains in his Tesla.
A deputy county medical examiner testified in July that the teen had two fatal wounds – one on the right side of her abdomen and the other on the left side of her chest – and concluded that her death was a homicide.
Dr. Grant Ho testified that the severely decomposed state of the girl’s remains made it “extremely difficult” to determine how long she had been dead before her body was discovered.
Shortly after Burke’s arrest, his then-lawyers released a statement denying that he had murdered the teen.
“Let us be clear, the actual evidence in this case will show that David Burke did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez, and he did not cause her death,” he said then. “We will vigorously defend David’s innocence.”