D4VD: The Murder Case Of Celeste Rivas Hernandez

A status conference just wrapped in the case against D4VD, and a new Hulu documentary dropped right alongside it, reigniting the conversation about what happened to fourteen-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez. Legal analyst Eric Faddis joins us for a deep focus on where this case stands, what the documentary got right, and where Faddis sees real bias in how it was presented. We start with the pretri...

Prosecutors allege David Anthony Burke killed Celeste Rivas Hernandez on April 23, 2025. Two days later, he released his debut album. He performed at Coachella days before. He launched a world tour. For months, according to the prosecution's timeline, he allegedly stood on stages and smiled for cameras while investigators were quietly building a case behind him. Then a tow-yard worker in Los Angel...

The silence in this case is its own story. A close friend who fled to another state to avoid testifying. A manager who reportedly testified for days. Parents who fought their own subpoenas through an appeals court. And prosecutors who have reportedly said David Anthony Burke did not act alone in what happened to Celeste Rivas Hernandez's remains. This look back sits with the question that haunts t...

She was fourteen years old. She walked into a Hollywood Hills home, and according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney, she was never heard from again. But the hardest part of Celeste Rivas Hernandez's story isn't the ending — it's everything that came before it, in plain sight, while every system meant to protect her failed. A livestream where he allegedly told a thirteen-year-old to delet...

The DA's office didn't just charge David Anthony Burke with first-degree murder. They alleged he did it for financial gain — that a fourteen-year-old girl was treated as a liability to a brand and allegedly eliminated because she was threatening to expose a relationship that could destroy his career. This look back sits with that allegation and everything it carries. Criminal defense attorney Bob...

For a year, the public has been told one version of this story: a thirteen-year-old ran from home, vanished into the world of a rising musician, and was found in the front trunk of his Tesla. This look back goes into the year before that discovery — and what it reveals is harder to hold than the headline version. Celeste Rivas Hernandez was not actually missing for most of the timeline. She attend...

Celeste Rivas Hernandez was thirteen when she was first reported missing from Lake Elsinore. She was reported missing three separate times. She was gone for roughly seventeen months. And she was only found because a car got a parking ticket, was towed, and a worker at the lot noticed something wrong. The vehicle was registered to the singer known as D4VD. Her remains were inside. This look back tr...

Celeste Rivas Hernandez was thirteen when she was first reported missing from Lake Elsinore. She was found roughly seventeen months later — and only because a car got a parking ticket, was towed, and someone at the lot opened the front trunk. She was fourteen years old. This look back at the D4VD case starts with the question the headlines keep glancing past: how does a child go missing for that l...

Before he was opening for SZA, D4VD was a homeschooled kid in Houston recording music in his sister's closet. The only music allowed in the house was gospel until he was thirteen. His mother was his teacher. His social world. The person who reportedly suggested he start making music. Then the internet opened everything up and nobody was apparently standing between a sheltered teenager and unlimite...

David Anthony Burke was thirteen when the internet opened up a world his strictly religious household had kept sealed. He was seventeen when he signed with Darkroom and Interscope. He was opening for SZA, touring globally, making real money. He was still a kid. And prosecutors now allege that by twenty, he had killed fourteen-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez to protect the career that had consumed...

Everyone’s covering the evidence. The charges. The alleged timeline. This episode asks the question underneath all of it: who was David Anthony Burke before any of this allegedly happened, and what about the way he grew up allegedly made it possible? This episode strips the case back to the person. Burke grew up homeschooled and isolated in Houston. He told multiple interviewers he’d never experie...

The alleged murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez is the center of this case. But the people who were allegedly around David Anthony Burke — who reportedly saw, heard, and still didn't act — are the reason this story won't let go. Three separate grand juries heard testimony from friends, managers, and family. Burke's manager was reportedly overheard telling his attorney that calling police after alleg...

This is the D4vd case at its strangest. David Anthony Burke stands charged in the death of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, he has pleaded not guilty, and a preliminary hearing is coming that will decide whether this goes to trial. But this episode isn't about the calendar. It's about the question that has taken over every comment section: was Burke looking to other corners of macabre pop cult...

Three missing persons reports in early 2024. Three times Celeste Rivas Hernandez was allegedly brought back into the orbit of the man prosecutors now say was grooming her since she was eleven years old. Three chances the system allegedly had to protect a child — and three alleged failures that ended with her dismembered remains reportedly found in the front trunk of a Tesla. Tony Brueski and retir...

Celeste Rivas Hernandez was a child. Her parents knew something was wrong. They took her phone. They reported her missing — not once, but twice. Deputies went to David Anthony Burke's door and reportedly told him directly that she was thirteen. According to prosecutors, none of it stopped what was happening to her. This Hidden Killers Week in Review brings together two episodes honoring Celeste's...

"Victoria Mendez." That's the alias prosecutors allege David Anthony Burke used to order chainsaws, a body bag, and an inflatable pool from Amazon after fourteen-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez was allegedly stabbed to death. Blue plastic fragments embedded in Celeste's remains were reportedly matched to that pool by the LAPD forensic lab. Prosecutors say he drove to a remote highway near Lake Ca...

She loved Hello Kitty. She had thick dark curls and a soft smile. Neighbors in Lake Elsinore remember her walking to the corner store with her backpack. Her parents reported her missing three times. She was fourteen years old — and according to prosecutors, the person who allegedly took her from that life is facing first-degree murder charges with special circumstances that could carry the death p...

She was five-foot-two. She had braces. She loved Hello Kitty. And prosecutors allege the adults around David Anthony Burke — the singer known as D4vd — accepted his story that Celeste Rivas Hernandez was a nineteen-year-old college student without question. Three separate grand juries heard from Burke's friends, his manager, and his family. His manager was reportedly overheard saying that calling...

Celeste Rivas Hernandez was eleven years old. She reportedly loved Hello Kitty. She had braces. And prosecutors allege that is when David Anthony Burke — a rising singer building a career under the name D4vd — first entered her life. By thirteen, prosecutors allege the contact became sexual. By fourteen, she was reportedly living in his Hollywood Hills home, traveling with him, embedded so deeply...

Celeste Rivas Hernandez loved to sing and dance. Friday nights were movie nights with her family. She had thick dark curls, a soft smile, and Hello Kitty slippers on the day she went missing. She was fourteen years old. Her family said she was beautiful and strong and that she always told them she loved them. She is not here to say any of it herself. The People’s Brief filed in the case against Da...

The most detailed breakdown of the People's Brief against David Anthony Burke — covering every major piece of evidence prosecutors plan to present at the preliminary hearing. Deputy DA Beth Silverman filed a nine-page roadmap this week alleging Burke texted Celeste Rivas Hernandez's phone after she was allegedly already dead. The brief describes purchases made under the fake name "Victoria Mendez"...

David Anthony Burke's defense demanded speed — then asked for time. The reversal happened in open court, and the prosecution made sure the judge knew they'd warned the defense it was coming. At Burke's arraignment, lead attorney Blair Berk invoked California's right to a preliminary hearing within ten court days. She projected confidence. She wanted the evidence tested publicly. But when discovery...

Eleven years old. That's the age prosecutors say Celeste Rivas Hernandez was when she first met David Anthony Burke. By thirteen, the People's Brief alleges they were in a sexual relationship. By fourteen, she was allegedly living parts of her life inside a celebrity's world — Hollywood Hills weekends, Las Vegas trips, flights to London and Texas — while her family in Lake Elsinore was left wonder...

A shovel the day after. Chainsaws a week later. A body bag and inflatable pool ten days after that. A burn cage two months later. All allegedly ordered by David Anthony Burke under the fake name "Victoria Mendez." The People's Brief filed by Deputy DA Beth Silverman this week describes what prosecutors call a calculated, months-long cover-up following the alleged murder of fourteen-year-old Celest...

Celeste Rivas Hernandez was reported missing three times in fourteen months. She had not been in school for a year. She was a seventh grader from Lake Elsinore with long curly black hair and braces who weighed seventy-one pounds when the medical examiner received what was left of her. And people in the orbit of the man now charged with her murder reportedly believed she was a nineteen-year-old col...