Wednesday, April 23, 2025
The musician is charged with the murder of 14-year-old Celeste Hernandez and dismembering her corpse, which was found in the trunk of his Tesla.
LOS ANGELES (CN) — Prosecutors on Friday displayed in a court a long series of text messages between the musician D4vd and the 14-year-old girl he is accused of killing and dismembering.
D4vd, whose real name is David Burke, and Celeste Rivas Hernandez met in August 2022, when Burke was 17 and Hernandez was 11. Their text messages began to discus sexual relations a little more than a year later, shortly after she had turned 13, and he was 18.
“They discussed past sexual liaisons, future sexual liaisons,” LAPD Detective Corey Farell testified on the fourth day of Burke’s preliminary hearing. “They discussed sexual positioning, they discussed their relationship, the future of their relationship. How and when they could meet up.”
They also discussed contraception and abortions — Hernandez appears to have had at least two of them throughout their roughly 2 1/2-year relationship. Though they sometimes joked about them, they became a source of shame for her.
“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.”
Their relationship was a passionate one; they discussed sex often, mostly in positive terms, although a few times, Hernandez texted about the sex causing her pain and leaving her sore. They took numerous photographs of each other naked and performing oral sex on each other. Those were not shown in court, but Farell did describe them for the record. As he did so, Hernandez’s mother, who was sitting in the audience, broke down in tears and left the court.
“I’m sorry,” Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told her, before she left. “It’s too much.”
Burke and Hernandez also texted about getting married and starting a family. At one point, Burke suggested to her that they “dip out the country n get married in Italy.” In one of the photographs shown in court, she appears to pose with what looks like an engagement ring.
The illegality of their relationship presented a constant danger as well as a challenge.
In February 2024, Farell said, they discussed moving in together. He planned to pick her up at her house in Lake Elsinore, with the help of his bodyguard. They called the plan “operation awesome.” He obsessed over how she would carry all her things, despite her insistence that she really didn’t own all that much.
“i can’t wait to move in tg without the cops bitching baby,” Burke texted her, in June 2024. “u gon be with me everywhere.”
Prosecutors have said that Burke murdered Hernandez after the two broke up and she threatened to tell people about their illicit affair. Her dismembered corpse was found, months after her disappearance, in the front-facing trunk of Burke’s Tesla, which had been towed to a city impound lot. He has pleaded not guilty and is being held custody without bail.
On Friday, Deputy Medical Examiner Grant Ho testified that Hernandez appeared to have died from two stab wounds. Ho was reluctant to say much of anything with certainty given the state of Hernandez’s badly decomposed body by the time it was discovered.
“Based on the features and severity of decomposition, I’m willing to say she’s been dead for weeks,” Ho said. “I can’t tell you anything further than that.
“Usually with decomposed bodies, you might smell it in autopsy area. In this case, it was noticeable before you reached autopsy area” — in other words, all the way down the hall.
When asked by Silverman how long it would take to bleed to death from the stab wounds, Ho said, “It would take minutes, at least … It could even go to an hour. I can only say minutes.”
Much of the preliminary hearing has focused on forensic evidence found inside the Hollywood Hills home Burke was living in. Crime scene investigators found traces of blood on the floor of Burke’s garage and the floor mats of his Tesla. On severed body parts, they found tiny pieces of blue plastic. Those plastic shards matched a large inflatable pool discovered in Burke’s garage, which appeared to have been cut in several places with a chain saw. Prosecutors believe Burke placed Hernandez’s body on the inflatable pool in his garage and then cut off her limbs.
Though the case that Burke dismembered Hernandez’s corpse appears quite strong, the murder charge seems less so. Investigators have not found the murder weapon.
Other questions remain. According to the prosecutor’s timeline of events, laid out in a memo, Burke waited more than 2 1/2 months to dismember the body. He then left the mangled corpse in his Tesla for another “several weeks, or possibly months,” they say.
On Wednesday, one of the criminologists testified she found 11 air fresheners scattered about the electric vehicle. A California Highway Patrol officer testified he found Hernandez’s passport card on the side of a highway between LA and Santa Barbara. An LAPD detective traced Burke’s Tesla making a number of trips to and from LA and Santa Barbara. Why leave the card on the side of the road? And why there?
During her cross-examination of Ho, Burke’s attorney Marilyn Bednarski offered a window into what his possible defense strategy might be, if the case goes to trial.
“You can’t rule that out that she had been holding the instrument that caused either of those wounds,” Bednarski said.
“Correct,” Ho answered.
It was similarly impossible to tell, Bednarski offered, whether or not there had been some kind of struggle.
“Unfortunately, due to the level of decomposition, I’m unable to tell,” Ho told her.
Ho also said that an initial round of toxicology testing revealed that Hernandez had benzodiazepines, such as Valium, and methamphetamines, an upper that could mean a street drug or prescription drug. However, he said, a later test came up negative for benzodiazepines and inconclusive for methamphetamines.
Prosecutors say that in the fall of 2024, Burke and Hernandez flew to London, and then to Texas where she met his parents. But their relationship began to sour around that time. They appear to have broken up and gotten back together a number of times.
In March, she wrote him, “we can be friends but like online ion want anything to do with you in person anymore.”
He responded, “oh ok.”
She explained: “all we do is have sex and just hang out man i want more than that for myself,” later adding: “without a label too is insane.”
The preliminary hearing is expected to continue and end on Monday, after which LA County Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo will decide if there is enough evidence to proceed to trial.
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