Los Angeles Police Det. Corey Farell told a court on Friday afternoon that photographs and text messages from D4vd’s cellphone showed David Anthony Burke impregnated Celeste Rivas Hernandez when she was 13 and pressed her in January 2024 about an abortion. The testimony put graphic new evidence in front of the judge hearing Burke’s murder and sex abuse case.
Farell and Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman displayed hundreds of photos and texts as they walked through the phone evidence. The messages, Farell said, ran from November 2023 to March 2025 and included nearly 50 photographs depicting Hernandez naked or the pair engaged in sex acts. Burke has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing through his attorneys, but the material shown in court painted a far more intimate picture than the one he gave deputies.
The evidence also showed how the relationship developed. Burke’s cellphone lock screen was a picture of the pair, topless, locked in an embrace. Other photos shown in court captured Hernandez touching hands with Burke while wearing a ring, and at least one image showed a tattoo of the name “David” in red ink on Hernandez’s finger. Prosecutors have alleged that Burke fatally stabbed Hernandez inside his Hollywood home last April and amputated two of her fingers after dismembering her body with a chainsaw.
One thread in the messages centered on January 2024. Farell said Burke and Hernandez discussed whether she was pregnant with his child, and Burke asked, “wen u gonna get it done,” in reference to an abortion appointment. Hernandez replied, “two days.” Burke then asked, “also my mother always told me to ask this question if I was ever in this situation … it is mine right?” Hernandez answered, “of course its yours David.” Months later, Farell said, Hernandez expressed regret over the abortion.
That account sharpened the clash between what Burke told investigators and what the phone records appeared to show. When questioned by a deputy around the same time Hernandez was reported missing to Riverside County authorities by her parents in February 2024, Burke said he had only met her once in person and did not know she was under 18. He also allegedly paid a teenager to get Hernandez a new phone so they could stay in touch, a detail that suggests the pair kept contact after the first police inquiries and before the relationship became part of a murder case.
The testimony matters because it places the relationship on a timeline stretching from November 2023 through March 2025 and ties it to the prosecution’s theory that the killing was meant to conceal it. Court evidence earlier in the week showed the singer had the name “Celeste” tattooed on his own finger in the same color and script style. Burke’s preliminary hearing is still moving forward, and the unresolved question is no longer whether prosecutors have messages to show; it is how much of the case the judge believes those messages prove.
