Last September, the dismembered, decomposed remains of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez were found in the front trunk of a Tesla sitting in a Los Angeles impound lot. The car was registered to David Anthony Burke, better known as D4vd, a rising singer-songwriter
who’d become a Gen Z favorite with his brooding, moody bedroom pop. While links between Burke and Rivas Hernandez quickly began to emerge online, it wasn’t until April that Burke was arrested and formally charged with murdering Rivas Hernandez to cover up his sexual abuse of the girl.
Not long after he was taken into custody, Rolling Stone launched an extensive investigation into Burke. The article, published Monday, contains interviews with an array of former friends and fans, as well as people who worked with Burke on various projects. It also features interviews with a source at Burke’s former label, Darkroom/Interscope, as well as another young woman with whom Burke developed an intense online relationship when she was underage. Both the label source and the young woman are speaking and sharing new details, under the condition of anonymity, for the first time.
The article also examines the disturbing evidence and allegations detailed in court filings and at a recent five-day preliminary hearing. Prosecutors have alleged that Burke maintained an extensive sexual relationship with Rivas Hernandez. A recovered phone and Burke’s iCloud allegedly contained a trove of child sex abuse material, as well as text messages between Rivas Hernandez and Burke about marriage, sex, and an abortion when Rivas Hernandez would have been 13.
Investigators believe Burke stabbed Rivas Hernandez to death in April 2025 after she threatened to expose their relationship and destroy his budding career. A few days or weeks after the alleged murder, prosecutors say Burke dismembered Rivas Hernandez with a chain saw in his garage, then stashed her remains in the Tesla, where they allegedly sat for months.
Burke has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, and has hired two prominent attorneys, Blair Berk and Marilyn Bednarski, to oversee his defense. (Berk and Bednarski did not reply to a request for comment.) The recent preliminary hearing ended with a judge sending the case to trial. (A start date has yet to be announced.)
Here are 10 key takeaways from our story.
1. D4vd Allegedly Helped Rivas Hernandez Run Away From Home on Valentine’s Day, Dubbing It “Operation Awesome”
According to prosecutors, Burke and Rivas Hernandez began chatting in 2022, when she was 11 and he was 16. Their relationship allegedly became sexual in November 2023 when she was 13. And in February 2024, Rivas Hernandez’s family reported her missing for the first time.
According to recovered texts, Burke allegedly messaged Rivas Hernandez on Feb. 14, 2024, that he would pick her up that night in Lake Elsinore, the Los Angeles exurb where she lived with her family. The two planned to move in together. According to texts read in court, Burke described the Valentine’s Day escape to Rivas Hernandez as the “most important day of ur life next to the wedding day.”
Burke and Rivas Hernandez even came up with a name for the plan: “Operation Awesome.”
2. One of D4vd’s Friends Contacted a Person Who Had Shared a Missing-Person Flyer for Rivas Hernandez
The day after Rivas Hernandez went missing, her mother, Mercedes Martínez, posted a flyer on Facebook: “Missing!!!” it read in bold letters. In the caption, she wrote in Spanish, “I’m distressed. I’ve already filed a report with the police. If you know anything, call me.”
One of Burke’s close friends at the time, Aysia Collins, a model, streamer, and stylist, recently revealed that she saw the missing-person flyer when it was initially posted. On a Twitch stream in July, Collins said she had texted the person who posted it and told them the photo was of her friend’s girlfriend. When the person replied that Rivas Hernandez was 13, Collins said, she wrote back, “What the fuck.”
She claimed she confronted Burke, who told her Rivas Hernandez was 19 and produced some kind of “proof.” (Collins declined to say what that proof was, and she declined to comment for Rolling Stone’s article.)
3. Rivas Hernandez Allegedly Had an Abortion in Early 2024
According to text messages, Rivas Hernandez allegedly became pregnant and underwent an abortion when she was 13. The teenager began to fear she was pregnant in November 2023, and Burke allegedly responded by telling her to track her menstrual cycle with an app. An abortion was eventually scheduled for January 2024, and Burke appeared to coach Rivas Hernandez through the ordeal, praising her strength and telling her he loved her. But he also texted that his mother would want him to ask, “It is mine right?”
A few months after the abortion, Rivas Hernandez allegedly expressed concern to Burke that the procedure hadn’t been successful. Burke appeared to mock her, texting back, “You would have a baby bump lmao you had hella periods since then. What the fuck you smoke?… Nah first baby gone.”
4. D4vd and Rivas Hernandez Discussed Whether Anyone Knew They Were Having Sex
In text messages shared in court, Burke often oscillated between tenderness and control with Rivas Hernandez, sometimes dangling a future together before turning cold or sermonizing. In one exchange, Rivas Hernandez asked Burke, “Does anyone know we even had sex?” Burke allegedly replied, “Nope, and I would like to keep it that way before we married.”
Other exchanges, however, were more unsettling. On June 27, 2024, Rivas Hernandez texted Burke that she had to run to the bathroom after they last had sex because “it hurt…SO MUCH.” Burke was dismissive. “NUH,” he replied in all caps. “I remember every time when you say ow when we fuck. … And last time u aint say ow once.”
5. D4vd Maintained an Intense Online Relationship With Another Young Woman
Jane (a pseudonym) says she first messaged Burke in summer 2022. Eventually, they were texting and calling each other regularly.
According to Jane, Burke, then 18, was often a caring and attentive friend, but could also be stern and, on a few occasions, unnerving. Once, Jane was joking with Burke about Itami, an evil, manga-style alter ego he’d created for his music videos, who would commit crimes that D4vd would have to solve. Jane joked that she could beat Itami in a karate fight. “David said I could never beat Itami in a fight,” she recalls. “He joked about him and Itami doing a violent act toward me, cutting my arms off. It was a joke, but it came out of nowhere.”
Burke ended their relationship in mid-2023, Jane claims, saying they weren’t at the same “maturity level” and different stages of life. “He was touring, he had a music career starting. I was in high school,” she recalls. Unbeknownst to Jane, Burke allegedly began his sexual relationship with Rivas Hernandez not long after. “I feel like she got the worst version of him. A different version,” Jane says. “It’s just really shocking and saddening.”
6. D4vd’s Former Label Immediately Dropped Him After Rivas Hernandez Was Identified
A source at Burke’s former label Darkroom/Interscope remembers the “confusion” and “shock” that accompanied the initial news that a dismembered, decomposing body had been found in the front trunk of Burke’s Tesla. Those feelings hardened into resolve after Rivas Hernandez was identified. The label shelved a planned deluxe edition of D4vd’s album, Withered, and cut ties with him.
“Right away, it was very apparent, due to all the social media and pictures that we were seeing, that he was [sexually] involved with her, and we made a choice immediately to step away from him and his business,” the source says. “When there’s an [underage] girl involved with an artist, it’s pretty simple.”
No formal announcement was made at the time, and the source acknowledges it took several months, and the involvement of Universal Music Group lawyers, to formally sever the relationship. The label also “ceased all communication” with Burke and his team, the source says, “and there’s been zero communication since.”
7. D4vd’s Label Saw Nothing Strange About His Behavior Around the Time He Allegedly Killed Rivas Hernandez
According to prosecutors, Burke killed Rivas Hernandez on April 23, 2025, just two days before the release of his highly anticipated debut album. After allegedly committing the crime, Burke took part in an array of promotional events for Withered, including a multiday pop-up in New York City, with an accompanying show in his hometown of Houston.
To his label, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The Darkroom/Interscope source says Burke appeared “locked in” professionally, adding: “He was releasing an album; he was at a major inflection point in his career. It’s almost the opposite of warning signs. He was definitely somebody that, in front of us, was hyper-focused and wanted to work.”
8. D4vd Was “So Comfortable” Climbing Into a Car Trunk While Filming a Music Video
Unsettling parallels have emerged between scenes in D4vd’s music videos and the alleged particulars of Rivas Hernandez’s death. His video for the song “Romantic Homicide,” for instance, contains an image of an actress lying in a bed with stab wounds dotting her abdomen while Burke, in character as Itami, stands over her. In the video for “One More Dance,” Itami delivers a half-conscious D4vd to a young couple on a crime spree. The couple stuff D4vd into the trunk of a car, steal shovels from a store, and bury their victim alive.
Burke filmed the video for “One More Dance” in January 2025, just a few months before the alleged murder of Rivas Hernandez. Multiple crew members recall the ease with which Burke approached the scene where he got stuffed in the trunk. He climbed inside without hesitation and appeared unfazed as the door shut over him. “He was just so comfortable in the trunk,” one crew member, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says. “He just hops in, of his own free will. It was so weird.”
9. D4vd’s Childhood Friend Disputes Singer’s Claim About Being Abandoned By Middle School Classmates
A key piece of lore that D4vd frequently repeated in interviews involved the swift, unexpected dissolution of his social life as a teenager. After seventh grade, Burke’s parents decided to take him out of middle school and start homeschooling him. Burke often claimed that, after leaving middle school, he never heard from his supposed friends again.
But one of his closest childhood friends, Ore-Oluwa Oyinloye, disputes that. Rather, he remembers reaching out to Burke himself, but says he never heard back.
10. D4vd “Became a New Person” After Moving From Houston to Los Angeles
Burke spent much of his childhood in Houston, growing up in what was, by all accounts, a strict but supportive, and deeply religious, household. After he began homeschooling, his social life migrated almost entirely online. When Burke finally left home, he was a rising pop star, going on tour and eventually settling in Los Angeles. In one interview from May 2025, Burke insisted the change was “super smooth,” explaining that, upon entering the real world, he “just treated everybody like they were behind the screen.”
But one person who knew Burke before he became famous, Santiago Pascoe, says the transition was more destabilizing. “Everything happened so fast,” Pascoe says. “He was real big on Christianity, and then that dissolved. His spirit and his whole appearance changed. He became a new person.”
For more, read ‘A Soulless Demon’: D4vd’s Path From Pop Star to Accused Killer
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