Musician D4vd and murdered 14-year-old girl had matching tattoos

LOS ANGELES (CN) — D4vd, the musician accused of murdering a 14-year-old girl and dismembering her body, appeared in court Tuesday for the first day of his preliminary hearing.

The musician is charged with murdering Celeste Rivas Hernandez, as well as continuously sexually abusing her when she was under 14 and mutilating her human remains, which were discovered in the front-facing trunk of his black Tesla in a city-owned car impound lot in 2025. D4vd, whose real name is David Anthony Burke, has pleaded not guilty and is being held in custody.

Prosecutors presented into evidence gruesome photos of a bloody head and torso, its limbs removed, lying inside a long black body bag. Underneath that was a more conventional garbage bag containing severed arms and legs. According to LAPD detective Joshua Byers, the legs had been severed at the kneecap. The bloody body parts were covered in flies and maggots and were speckled with tiny pieces of blue plastic, which prosecutors say came from an inflatable pool that had likely been used to lay the body on while dismembering it.

Another photograph showed a close-up of a tattoo on the inside of Hernandez’s right index finger reading, “Shhh…” The ring and pinky fingers on her left hand had been removed; they have not been found. Byers told the court Burke had a nearly identical “Shhh…” tattoo on his right index finger. On the inside of his left ring finger, he had a tattoo written in red ink: “Celeste.”

Hernandez’s parents, who live in Lake Elsinore, a small city roughly 70 miles east of Los Angeles, reported her missing in February 2024. Acting on a tip, LA County sheriff’s deputies visited a home being rented by Burke to conduct a welfare check. Hernandez wasn’t there, but Burke happily spoke with the officers, appearing cooperative and helpful, even going so far as to offer them beer, which they declined.

“She said she was 18,” Burke told the officers, as heard in body camera footage of the visit played in court during the preliminary hearing. “Everybody saying she’s 13.”

Burke told the deputies they met over Instagram, messaged over the group chat platform Discord and had met in real life only once. Hernandez returned home two days later. Though her parents tried to keep her from seeing or talking to Burke, the two would spend “a significant amount of time” with each other, prosecutors said in a brief filed in April, “including summer weekends at his home in the Hollywood Hills and traveling with him to Las Vegas, London and Texas to meet his family.” On his phone, prosecutors say they found text messages referring to sex, pregnancy and abortion, as well as explicit photographs of Hernandez.

In their memo, prosecutors say after the couple broke up, Hernandez “became extremely upset and threatened to disclose damaging information about her relationship with defendant to end his career and destroy his life."

Burke first gained attention as a YouTuber, posting videos of himself playing Fortnite, for which he composed his own music. He would later produce music for video games professionally, and one of his tracks became the official Fortnite anthem. He had two multiplatinum singles in 2022, one of which was titled “Romantic Homicide,” and his debut album was set to be released on April 25, 2025, just as Hernandez was threatening to expose him, according to prosecutors.

“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," they wrote in their memo.

Prosecutors say that according to evidence gathered, Burke appears to have taken his time with the gruesome business of disposing of Hernandez’s corpse. They say the musician used online shopping services like Amazon and Uber Eats to order two chainsaws, another saw, a burn cage, a fireproof mat, a shovel, a spade, two cadaver bags and the inflatable pool. Byers told the court police found many of those items when they searched Burke’s house but that criminologists found no traces of blood on any of the saws.

Police are not believed to have found the weapon used to kill Hernandez. That could prove to be a key part of Burke’s defense.

Burke’s murder charge includes four “special allegations,” which can be used to increase a sentence — including one that the murder was for financial gain. To that point, prosecutors called the director of finance of Burke’s management company, who said he believed Burke made between $10 million and $11 million between 2023 and 2025.

Preliminary hearings are conducted to determine whether or not there is enough evidence to hold the defendant over for a trial, with a lower standard of proof than trials. They include witnesses and cross-examination but no opening statements or juries. The vast majority of them end with the defendants held over for a trial. They are also often the first glimpse of the evidence prosecutors have gathered to make their case. Defendants often do not call their own witnesses, although they are permitted to.

“We believe we will more than accomplish the evidentiary burden of probable cause,” LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman told reporters during a lunch break.

Burke’s preliminary hearing will continue Wednesday and is expected to last another two to four days.

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