Singer D4vd dismembered 14-year-old Celeste Rivas with a chainsaw after stabbing her to death, prosecutors allege.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office filed a brief on Wednesday, April 29, laying out its case against the 21-year-old singer — real name David Anthony Burke — after he was charged with murder earlier in April. He pleaded not guilty during an April 20 arraignment.
Rivas’ remains were found in the trunk of Dv4d’s Tesla in September 2025. He was arrested on April 16 after a months-long investigation and later charged with one count of murder, one count of continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14 and one count of unlawful mutilation of human remains.
In Wednesday’s brief, obtained by Courthouse News and viewed by Us Weekly, prosecutors allege that D4vd killed Rivas on April 23, 2025, one day after they had a “lengthy argument” over text messages.
D4vd was accused of murder after a teenage girl’s body was found in the trunk of a Tesla registered to the singer. Us Weekly confirmed that D4vd (born David Burke) was arrested on April 16, 2026, following a months-long investigation. “Detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department, Robbery-Homicide Division have arrested David Burke, a 21-year-old […]
“The messages reveal the victim’s jealousy over defendant’s relationships with other women, as defendant led her to believe they had a future together,” prosecutors claim. “She became extremely upset and threatened to disclose damaging information about her relationship with defendant to end his career and destroy his life. Defendant’s first studio album was due to be released on April 25, 2025. He had an emerging multi-million-dollar career already in progress. He also had multiple product endorsements, which were highly profitable.”
Prosecutors claim that the following day, Dv4d ordered Rivas an Uber to transport her to his home in the Hollywood Hills, where he “stabbed the victim to death multiple times and stood by while she bled out.”
The brief alleges that the singer then called and texted Rivas’ phone asking where she was, claiming he “calculated and planned to set up his defense within a very short timeline after the victim’s vicious murder.”
D4vd “subsequently purchased tools to carry out his plot to dismember and dispose of the victim’s body,” prosecutors said, including allegedly ordering a body bag, heavy-duty laundry bags and a blue inflatable pool from Amazon under the fake name Victoria Mendez.
Celeste Rivas GoFundMe
Prosecutors allege that the “defendant took horrifying measures to destroy and discard the victim’s body,” such as “placing her body into the blue inflatable pool to prevent her blood from spilling onto his garage floor,” before using a “chainsaw and perhaps other tools to cut off her limbs.”
The prosecution further alleges that D4vd “amputated her left ring and pinky fingers because her ring finger contained a tattoo of his name. Her fingers have not been recovered. Defendant then placed her head and torso into the cadaver bag he purchased. He placed her limbs into a garbage bag, which he deposited into his front trunk, laying the cadaver bag on top. For several weeks, or possibly months, defendant left the victim’s body to decompose inside his Tesla.”
Us has reached out to D4vd’s attorneys for comment.
In an April 16 statement following his initial arrest, D4vd’s attorneys, Blair Berk, Marilyn Bednarski and Regina Peter, denied that he was involved in Rivas’ death.
“Let us be clear — the actual evidence in this case will show that David Burke did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez and he was not the cause of her death,” the singer’s attorneys told TMZ, vowing to “vigorously defend David’s innocence.”
