LOS ANGELES (AP) — Prosecutors on Monday gave a moment-by-moment account of the last night of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, showing that after a stream of text messages with singer D4vd, her phone went permanently silent when she arrived at his home.
The texts were shown in court on the fifth and likely final day of a Los Angeles hearing to determine whether he'll go to trial in her killing.
As she neared his Hollywood home shortly after 10 a.m.
on April 23, 2025, in an Uber he had sent to pick her up, she sent her final text: “girly pop i’m almost there open ur door if ur home.”
Prosecutors allege D4vd, whose legal name is David Burke, stabbed her to death when she came through the door.
The night before, the two argued via text about his relationship with a woman. She sent him an angry and profane text saying she will tell her dad so many lies about him and “i will end ur career and ur life.”
Detective Corey Farrell of the Los Angeles Police Department, under questioning from the prosecution, read the texts that were obtained from warrants on Burke's iPhone and iCloud accounts.
The hearing will end with a decision from Judge Charlaine Olmedo on whether to put the 21-year-old Burke on trial on charges of murder, sexual abuse of a child under 14 and mutilation of a body.
He has pleaded not guilty and his lawyers have said he didn’t cause her death.
Defense attorneys established that no witnesses saw and no cameras captured Rivas Hernandez entering the house or Burke being at the house in the time frame prosecutors say she was killed.
The defense showed several other texts from Rivas Hernandez threatening him about their relationship, and saying she would go to Burke's mother, talk to his friends and “leak” information about them.
Under questioning from defense attorney Blair Berk, Farrell said he saw no indication that she ever threatened to go to police or pursue any legal action against him.
The defense also established that she had asked seven times to come to see him in the days before her death, and he agreed only after she demanded it.
Farrell also said under questioning from Berk that the parents of both Burke and Rivas Hernandez knew about their relationship, that he had attended church with members of her family and that her parents had given their consent to go to London with him for a week.
The detective also agreed that Rivas Hernandez in her earliest conversations with Burke when he was 17 and she was 11, she had told him she was 16, and at other times said in messages she was 18.
After her phone went silent, Burke sent her several other messages that night asking where she was, and expressing concern. Prosecutors allege those messages were sent as cover after he had killed her.
Both sides finished their questioning of Farrell, the hearing's final witness, and were preparing for closing arguments before Olmedo makes her decision.
Prosecutors allege Burke dismembered the body in his garage. A police analyst testified earlier in the hearing that samples pulled from apparent blood stains there matched her DNA.
Her body was found in a Tesla registered to him nearly five months later.
On his first day on the stand Friday, Farrell recounted dozens of sexually explicit photos of Burke and Rivas Hernandez and years of text messages that described the same things, along with conversations that indicated she had gotten an abortion in 2024 at 13 after he got her pregnant.
Prosecutors showed some of the less graphic photos from his phone, which showed the two of them kissing and showed she had a tattoo of “David” on a finger, one of two that had been cut off when her body was found.
Farrell described the photos that could not be shown in court, material so graphic that it left Rivas Hernandez's mother in tears and prompted both parents to leave the courtroom on Friday. They were back in court Monday.
D4vd (pronounced “David”) became an online musical phenomenon as a teen with a blend of indie rock, R&B and lo-fi pop. He had huge followings on TikTok, Soundcloud and Spotify, where his top songs, including his 2022 breakthrough “Romantic Homicide,” have more than a billion plays.
In 2024 he played the Coachella music festival and released his first full-length album, “Withered,” two days after when authorities say Rivas Hernandez was killed.
