D4vd charged with murder in death of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez

Celeste Rivas Hernandez was 14 when prosecutors say she was killed, then hidden for months in the front trunk of a 2023 Tesla Model Y registered to David Anthony Burke. Los Angeles County prosecutors have charged Burke, known professionally as D4vd, with first-degree murder, continuous sexual abuse and unlawfully mutilating a body. He pleaded not guilty and remains held without bail.

The case came into focus after the Tesla was towed from Hollywood Hills and investigators found dismembered remains in the vehicle’s front trunk on Sept. 8, 2025. Police said the body was in a cadaver bag, covered with insects and emitting a strong odor of decay, and that the arms and legs had been severed. Authorities identified the remains as Celeste on Sept. 16, 2025. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner later ruled the death a homicide and listed the cause as multiple penetrating injuries caused by objects, with stab wounds to the right abdomen and left chest. The autopsy report said the body weighed 71 pounds and was in an advanced state of decomposition.

Investigators and prosecutors have reconstructed a timeline that stretches back more than a year before the arrest. Celeste was reported missing from Lake Elsinore, California, on April 5, 2024, in what ABC7 reported was the third missing-person report for her that year. The last confirmed contact with her family was a phone call in May 2024. Prosecutors believe she was last known to be alive when she arrived at Burke’s rented Hollywood Hills home on April 23, 2025, and they say her body was mutilated on May 5, 2025. The charge sheet also includes special-circumstances and lewd-and-lascivious-acts allegations involving a child under 14, and Nathan Hochman said prosecutors believe the killing was meant to preserve Burke’s musical career after Celeste threatened to expose the relationship.

Celeste’s family has said she loved to sing and dance and is deeply missed. Through their attorney, Patrick Steinfeld, the family said it is devastated and wants justice, thanking the Los Angeles Police Department and the district attorney’s office for their work. “All we want is justice for Celeste,” her parents said.

The case has also raised harder questions about how child-abuse and homicide investigations move across agencies, and how a missing teen can remain unaccounted for while warning signs accumulate. Police searched a Hollywood Hills home tied to the case and removed a computer and other items, and D4vd canceled the remaining dates of his U.S. tour as scrutiny intensified. What remains now is a record of missed chances, a family’s loss, and a prosecution that will test how far the justice system can go in answering when a child disappeared, who knew what, and whether more could have been done sooner.