D4vd murder case heads to key Los Angeles evidentiary hearing

A Los Angeles evidentiary hearing on July 21 put the Celeste Rivas Hernandez murder case into a decisive pretrial phase, with prosecutors seeking to show probable cause to send David Anthony Burke, known professionally as D4vd, to trial. The proceeding was expected to run three to seven days and could determine which evidence a judge allows into the record before any jury ever hears the case.

Burke was charged by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office on April 20, 2026, and later pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors have alleged that Rivas Hernandez’s dismembered, decomposed body was found in a Tesla registered to Burke, which investigators said appeared to have been abandoned. He faces first-degree murder charges and additional counts, including murder for financial gain and murder of a witness to an investigation.

The hearing matters because it is the point where the case can expand or narrow in a concrete way. If the judge allows the state’s key evidence, prosecutors will be able to lean on it at trial; if major items are excluded, the case could lose leverage before a jury is seated. That is why the fight over probable cause in Los Angeles carries outsized weight in a murder case already tied to one of the music world’s most closely watched defendants.

Prosecutors have also alleged a deeper relationship between Burke and Rivas Hernandez. ABC7 Los Angeles reported that they claimed Burke met her when she was 11 and began sexually abusing her when she was 13 and he was 18. In separate court proceedings, prosecutors said a phone belonging to Burke contained a significant amount of child sexual abuse material. Later filings said he allegedly bought a body bag, two chainsaws and an inflatable pool on Amazon after the killing.

Rivas Hernandez had been reported missing in the spring of 2025, and authorities said she was last known to be alive nearly a year before Burke’s arraignment. Her family said it was shocked by the gruesome details that surfaced in court filings and said it wanted justice. For now, the case is moving through the kind of technical hearing that can decide whether a murder prosecution comes into focus or starts to fray before trial.