Trial by text
Prosecutors offered strong preliminary evidence D4vd dismembered a teen girl, but questions remain ahead of the Gen Z pop star's gruesome murder trial.
A Los Angeles judge on Monday ordered the 21-year-old singer known as D4vd to stand trial in the murder of a 14-year-old girl, setting the stage for one of the biggest murder trials of the internet age.
Across a five-day preliminary hearing, prosecutors laid out evidence that David Burke started having sex with Celeste Rivas Hernandez when she was 13, sent a car to pick her up on the night of her death in April 2025 — two days before the release of his debut album — and later dismembered her body, which was found in the trunk of the pop star’s Tesla in September 2025.
Investigators found Hernandez’s blood in Burke’s garage, traced online purchases of chainsaws under a fake name and one criminologist even testified that blue fragments from her body matched missing parts of an inflatable pool in his garage like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
But as the Robert Durst case showed, mutilation doesn’t necessarily mean murder, at least according to one Texas jury. Burke’s attorney signaled the pop star’s likely defense when she asked a detective if he was aware that Hernandez referred to wanting to kill herself on multiple occasions.
Prosecutors say Burke stabbed Hernandez and watched her bleed out, but their evidence — so far — is purely circumstantial. The murder weapon remains a mystery, though prosecutors have suggested Burke hid it near Santa Barbara’s Lake Cachuma based on three trips his Tesla made to the isolated area and the nearby discovery of her passport card.
As Courthouse News reporter Hillel Aron listened to the long series of text messages between Burke and Hernandez unveiled Friday, he was reminded of Soulja Boy’s sexual assault civil trial from last year — specifically, the difference between the two cases.
“Soulja Boy was accused of being a horribly abusive person, and the text messages bore that out: He appeared to be a horribly abusive person — sexually abusive, physically abusive, all this stuff,” Aron recalled. “I was surprised, all the text messages that the prosecutors brought out, this guy D4vd really didn’t seem like that. There was not a single text message where he sounded abusive or angry at her. That doesn’t mean he didn’t do it or anything, but it was surprising.”
Although there are a few factors that could complicate the case, Aron still believes it’s “pretty much a slam dunk” for the prosecution.
Once a rising star who played Coachella, created Fortnite’s first official anthem and opened for SZA’s stadium tour with songs like “Romantic Homicide,” Burke may now face the death penalty due to special circumstances like killing for financial gain and silencing a witness.
Aron predicts LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman will ultimately pursue life without parole instead of capital punishment for Burke.
“Hochman is definitely to the right of (former District Attorney George) Gascón, but he’s very sensible,” Aron said. “He’s very level-headed and fair when he talks. I just don’t see it, but I could be wrong.”
See what else fell under the lights this month:
Quick hits ⚡
Deleted tweets
Elon Musk’s X must turn over deleted posts in its defamation case against Media Matters, a watchdog group that exposed the tech billionaire’s social media platform for advertising major brands next to white nationalist and pro-Nazi content. [Christina van Waasbergen]
King’s ransom
DraftKings is in hot water after a California federal judge indicated the daily fantasy sports site likely violates the state’s ban on commercial gambling, opening the door for a preliminary injunction that could block the popular app. [Margaret Attridge]
Victim blaming
An NFL employee injured during a mass shooting at the league’s New York City headquarters last year sued the city for $24 million, pointing to newly reviewed security footage as proof that a slain NYPD detective is to blame for the deadly rampage. [Erik Uebelacker]
Locker room talk 🎤
“It’s not different to the 20-year-old sitting in his basement, to the 20-year-old kid who emptied his savings on the outcome of a World Cup game. The fact that it might not fit a particular set of language means very little,” U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez said, rebuking prediction markets’ argument that they’re structurally different from traditional sports betting sites.
But despite sympathy for Minnesota’s effort to crack down on predatory gambling apps, the Joe Biden appointee ultimately granted Kalshi and Polymarket’s request to block the state’s first-in-the-nation ban on prediction markets just days before it was set to take effect. [Ryan Luetkemeyer]
Leaderboard 🏆
Judge cautions Melania Trump against trying to sanction journalist Michael Wolff 🥇 [Erik Uebelacker]
Text messages shine light on illicit relationship between D4vd and murdered teen 🥈 [Hillel Aron]
Former Epoch Times executive pleads guilty to multimillion-dollar fraud scheme that funded newspaper 🥉 [Erik Uebelacker]
From the vault 🔒
The last defendant as famous as D4vd to stand trial for murder was likely New England Patriots star tight end Aaron Hernandez, who was found guilty in 2015 and died by suicide in prison two years later. However, under an arcane process known as abatement ab initio, a Massachusetts judge said she had no choice but to vacate his guilty verdict because he died while his appeal was pending.
“The defendant should not be allowed to accomplish in death what he was not able to accomplish in life,” Bristol District Attorney Tom Quinn said afterward.
Ultimately, the decision sparked so much backlash that the state’s high court abandoned the practice and reinstated Hernandez’s conviction.
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