A Los Angeles judge has ruled that prosecutors have “met their burden of proof” in the case of the musician D4vd (real name David Anthony Burke), who has been charged in the murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez when she was 14 years old.
“It appears to me,
for the purposes of preliminary hearing, the people have met their burden of proof on all charges,” Judge Charlaine Olmedo ruled. “I order that Mr. Burke be held to answer.” Burke’s arraignment has been set for August 31st.
D4vd was a “very clever adult” who sexually abused Rivas, “gaslit” the minor, and eventually murdered her after causing her such severe emotional anguish that she threatened to expose the abuse, Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman argued Monday.
Silverman spoke in a Los Angeles courtroom on the fifth and final day of a preliminary hearing for the singer. She was responding to a defense motion arguing that prosecutors had failed to present enough evidence to send Burke to trial on a murder charge and special circumstance allegations that he killed the 14-year-old girl for financial gain and to prevent her from reporting his abuse.
Defense lawyer Marilyn Bednarski argued that Rivas had invited herself to Burke’s home on the night of April 23, 2025, and that Burke had been participating in a multiplayer virtual-reality game in the minutes before she arrived, not preparing to kill her.
Bednarski said the scores of text messages presented in court showed on Friday showed “the opposite of homicidal animus.” Burke, she said, “repeatedly expressed his love and care [for Rivas] even after they broke up.”
Burke also faces charges of continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14 and unlawful mutilation of human remains. Prosecutors allege that he dismembered Rivas’ body in his garage with a chainsaw, placed the remains in a cadaver bag and a laundry bag, and concealed them in the front trunk of his Tesla. Bednarski challenged only the murder charge on Monday, not whether prosecutors had met their burden to proceed to trial on the two other counts.
“Dismemberment is post-mortem conduct. It says nothing about what caused the death, when, where or how,” Bednarski argued. “There is no evidence of a deliberate intention to kill. We cannot impute malice from concealment. What remains is suspicion of concealment of a death, which is not murder. The court should decline to hold Mr. Burke to answer for Count One.”
After Bednarski finished, Silverman argued that the evidence supporting a murder trial was overwhelming. “We have a minor who was sexually abused for many, many months. She was groomed. … She was being gaslit,” Silverman said. “The defendant was telling her over and over again that this was sex she asked for, and he just went along with her. This is very obvious grooming. We have a young victim who really doesn’t know what is in store for her.”
Silverman said the messages between Burke and Rivas were sexually graphic and included discussions of contraception, pregnancy, and abortion. Even after Burke ended their relationship in late 2024, she said, “he unfortunately continued to use the victim for sex.”
“We saw some of the devastating consequences of that on this young girl through her text messages revealing mental health issues caused by the way she was being used by someone who was an adult, telling her that he loved her,” Silverman argued. “She wanted to have a future, and yet she had enough maturity to indicate to this adult that she was clearly head over heels in love with that she wanted more for herself than hanging out and having sex.”
Judge Charlaine Olmedo was expected to decide whether to send the case to trial after final arguments concluded later Monday.
The final witness, Los Angeles police Detective Corey Farell, returned to the stand after testifying Friday. During cross-examination, defense lawyer Blair Berk asked him to confirm a text Rivas sent Burke on April 22, 2025, the night before prosecutors say she was killed. In a series of messages that night, Rivas expressed jealousy over Burke’s relationship with another female, Aysia Collins, who had attended Coachella with him in the weeks before the alleged murder.
“Oh my fucken god I swear to GOD I will kil u she was in my dam seat I will strangle u to fucken death bro I will tell my dad so many fucken lies about u dead ass I will end ur career and ur life I will damage anything,” Rivas wrote in the message, which was read aloud in court and displayed on a screen.
Berk also asked Farell to confirm that Rivas’ parents knew she was spending time with Burke after they had previously reported her missing. Farell said his investigation found that her parents had signed a four-page, notarized consent form allowing Rivas to travel with Burke to London in September 2024.
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