A cell phone belonging to David Anthony Burke, better known as the singer D4vd, contained “a significant amount of child pornography,” a prosecutor said in court Thursday morning.
Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman made the claim during a court proceeding to schedule a preliminary hearing on murder charges in the killing of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez. The images were uncovered as part of a broad series of search warrants executed on Burke’s phone and iCloud, Silverman said.
Burke’s attorneys have insisted he is innocent and are demanding a preliminary hearing begin next week, meaning evidence in the closely followed case could become public as soon as May 1. He appeared in court Thursday in an orange jail jumpsuit and worked into court with his hands in his pockets.
A status hearing was set for April 29.
Burke was arrested by Los Angeles police last week and charged Monday with murder, continuous sexual abuse of a child and corpse mutilation, according to a criminal complaint. He has pleaded not guilty.
The singer allegedly began sexually abusing Hernandez in September 2023, when she was just 13. Burke’s attorneys have said the case cannot stand up to scrutiny and pushed for the immediate preliminary hearing.
Hernandez was reported missing from her family’s Lake Elsinore neighborhood three times in 2024, and she was spotted at some of D4vd’s concerts during that time frame.
Prosecutors allege Hernandez was last seen at Burke’s Hollywood Hills residence on April 23. She “threatened to expose his criminal conduct and devastate his musical career,” according to L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, though the prosecutor has not answered questions about whether Hernandez was going to report Burke to police.
Burke surged in popularity after one of his tracks was included in the wildly popular video game “Fortnite,” and he has also collaborated with artists like 21 Savage. He was beginning to tour in support of his debut album, “Withered,” when reports surfaced linking him to Hernandez’s death. He quickly canceled all shows.
The details of the crime echoed some of the violent imagery associated with Burke’s songs. The Queens-born vocalist has appeared in a music video filled with violent imagery: a young woman with an apparent chest wound lies on a bed as the singer hovers over her, blindfolded, his white shirt spattered with blood. In another video, “One More Dance,” D4vd drags a person — who bears the singer’s likeness — to a car, where a couple stuffs the person into the trunk.
Hernandez’s badly decomposed body was found in the trunk of a Tesla at Hollywood tow yard last September. An autopsy report made public this week revealed she died from a pair of stab wounds to the chest and abdomen. When police arrived on the scene they found Hernandez’s body was “dismembered” and two of her fingers had been amputated, according to the medical examiner’s report.
Prosecutors charged Burke with murder with special circumstances, including allegations that Hernandez was a witness to a crime — her own sexual abuse — and that Burke killed her for financial gain to protect his ascendant music career. If convicted as charged, he faces life in prison without the possibility of parole or the death penalty.
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