A Los Angeles judge opened a preliminary hearing on Tuesday that will decide whether D4vd should stand trial in the killing and dismemberment of Celeste Rivas Hernandez. Judge Charlaine Olmedo is hearing the prosecution’s first public case against the singer, whose legal name is David Burke.
The hearing is expected to run about four days, and the question before Olmedo is narrow but decisive: whether the evidence shows probable cause to send the case to trial. Burke, 21, has pleaded not guilty to murder, continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14 and unlawful mutilation of human remains, and he has remained in jail near the courthouse without bail since his arrest in April.
Prosecutors say the evidence will show Burke brought Rivas Hernandez to the Hollywood Hills house he was renting after sending a car to pick her up from Lake Elsinore on the night of April 23, 2025. They say the messages between them continued until she reached the home, then her phone went dead, and that he killed her after she threatened to report him. They also say he met her when she was 11 and began sexually abusing her when she was 13 and he was 18.
The filing the judge is weighing goes further, laying out the prosecution’s version in stark terms: that Burke stabbed the victim multiple times, then used chain saws and wading pools in his garage to cut apart her body. Investigators say her DNA was found on blood stains collected after a search warrant was served, and prosecutors say he drove around for months with the body in the trunk before it was found about four months later in the Tesla registered to Burke that had been towed from the Hollywood Hills in September.
That account is the heart of the case, but it is also where the defense is expected to press hardest. The prosecution must persuade Olmedo that the timeline, the messages, the DNA and the physical evidence add up to probable cause, while Burke’s attorney says he is not responsible for Rivas Hernandez’s death. The judge has already rejected a request that Burke be allowed to wear a suit in court, underscoring how closely watched the hearing has become.
By the end of the week, Olmedo will decide whether the case moves forward to trial or stops at the threshold. For Rivas Hernandez’s family, and for a defendant who has denied the charges, the hearing is the first public test of whether prosecutors can turn a gruesome accusation into a case a jury will hear.
