Prosecutors allege singer D4vd dismembered a 14-year-old girl using a chainsaw he bought a week after her death, including amputating a finger tattooed with his name to “distance himself from the victim,” according to a graphic new nine-page filing in the murder case.
D4vd, 21-year-old Los Angeles resident David Burke, was charged last week with the murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez following a monthslong investigation. He has pleaded not guilty and his attorneys say he is innocent.
Police said the teen’s badly decomposed, dismembered body was found in Burke’s Tesla in September 2025 at a Hollywood impound lot. Her head and torso were inside a cadaver bag and her limbs were in a garbage bag placed in the front trunk of the vehicle, prosecutors said.
The filing alleges Burke lured Rivas Hernandez to his Hollywood Hills home months earlier in a premeditated plan to kill her after she threatened to expose their sexual relationship and ruin his music career. Prosecutors say the two began a sexual relationship in 2023 when Rivas Hernandez was 13 and Burke was 18; they reportedly broke up in November 2024 but are believed to have continued a sexual relationship. Prosecutors say Rivas Hernandez grew jealous of Burke’s relationships with other women.
According to the filing, text messages show that during an argument on April 22, 2025, Rivas Hernandez “became extremely upset and threatened to disclose damaging information about her relationship with defendant to end his career and destroy his life.” Prosecutors say Burke invited her to his home the next day, arranging for an Uber to pick her up from her Lake Elsinore home.
“Knowing he had to silence the victim before she ruined his music career as she had threatened, very soon after her arrival at his home, defendant stabbed the victim to death multiple times and stood by while she bled out,” prosecutors wrote. They say the girl was killed on April 23, 2025 — two days before the release of Burke’s debut studio album — when all her cell activity stopped.
Prosecutors allege Burke then took steps to cover up the crime. In the days after the alleged murder, he ordered two chainsaws, a body bag, heavy-duty laundry bags and a blue inflatable pool from Amazon, some items purchased under the fake name Victoria Mendez. Investigators say he used a chainsaw to sever the victim’s limbs in the inflatable pool “to prevent her blood from spilling onto his garage floor.” Small blue plastic fragments embedded in the remains matched the pool Burke purchased, and DNA from blood stains in his garage matched the victim’s genetic profile, prosecutors said.
“In order to distance himself from the victim, he amputated her left ring and pinky fingers because her ring finger contained a tattoo of his name,” the filing says; the fingers have not been recovered. Prosecutors allege Burke then placed the dismembered remains in the body bag and garbage bag and left the body to decompose inside his Tesla. They say he lied to friends, business associates and others who reported noticing a strong smell of decay near his home and vehicle.
The filing states Burke disposed of some of the victim’s property at an isolated location in Santa Barbara County; investigators later found the teen’s identification there in January 2026. Prosecutors say Burke was the last person to drive the Tesla and that he parked it near his home on July 29, 2025 before leaving on a concert tour.
A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for May 26. The prosecution filed the brief to “assist the court in understanding the scope and relevance of evidence the prosecution intends to present at the preliminary hearing,” prosecutors wrote.
Burke faces charges including murder, continuous sexual abuse and unlawfully mutilating a body, and is being held without bail.