Disturbing Evidence Reveals How d4vd Killed Celeste in a Kiddie Pool – Prosecutor
Okay, I need you to stop whatever you’re doing right now because what I’m about to walk you through is one of the most disturbing, jaw-dropping, completely unbelievable alleged cases I have ever covered on this channel. And I say that knowing exactly how heavy that statement is.
We’re talking about a 21-year-old music star, someone with hundreds of millions of streams, a Fortnite deal, a debut album dropping, who investigators say stabbed a 14-year-old girl to death, dismembered her body with a chainsaw inside a blue inflatable kiddie pool in his own garage, and then went and did a radio interview the next morning, and then lived his life for months.
There is so much to get into here. The text messages, the Amazon orders under a fake name, the passport card found on the side of a highway, the tattoo, the fingers, the smell that people around him kept asking about and that he kept brushing off. All of it. We’re going through all of it today. His name is David Anthony Burke.
The world knows him as D4 VD. And before all of this, before the arrest, before the charges, before the towyard, he was genuinely one of the most exciting young artists in music. And the girl at the center of this story is Celeste Rivas Hernandez. She was 14 years old. She was from Lake Elsenor, California.
She loved to sing and dance. Her family had movie nights every Friday. She got into an Uber on the night of April the 23rd, 2025. A car that investigators say David Burke ordered for her and she never came home. I want to warn you right now. This video contains descriptions of extreme violence, child sexual abuse, and details that are genuinely disturbing.
Keep that in mind as we go through everything. But I also want to say Celeste deserves for this story to be told fully. She deserves for people to understand exactly what investigators say happened to her. And that is what we’re going to do today. Let’s get into it. Before anything else, I want to talk about Celeste.
Because in cases like this, especially cases that get as much attention as this one, it is so easy for the victim to get lost in the horror of the allegations. And I refuse to let that happen here. Celeste Abigail Riva Hernandez was born on September the 7th, 2010. Her parents immigrated from El Salvador and built their lives in Lake Elsenor, a working-class city in Riverside County, California, about 80 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
Not a glamorous place, not a place you hear about on the news, just a community of families trying to build something good. And by all accounts, Celeste was a bright, warm, lively kid. The kind of kid who lit up a room. Her family, in a statement released through their attorney after David Burke’s arrest, said this, and I’m going to read this slowly because it matters.
Celeste was a beautiful, strong girl who loved to sing and dance. Every Friday night was movie night, and we spent wonderful times together. We love her very much, and she always told us that she loved us. We miss her deeply. All we want is justice for Celeste. She told her parents she loved them right up until she couldn’t anymore.
Now, here is the first detail that I think is just heartbreaking when you sit with it. When her remains were found in September 2025, it was one day after what would have been her 15th birthday. One day, she never made it. And here’s something else investigators found that speaks to just how deeply she was in this situation.
She and David Burke had matching tattoos. She had his name tattooed on her ring finger. And investigators say that’s exactly why he cut that finger off. But we’ll get to that. Keep that in mind. Celeste deserved so much better than what she allegedly got. And that is why this story matters. That is why we are here. So let’s go back and figure out exactly how it all started.
Now I have to talk about David Burke for a second because to understand why investigators say this happened, you have to understand what was at stake for him. David Anthony Burke grew up in Texas. He started making music as a teenager, self-produced stuff, posted online, and in 2022, one song just took off. Romantic Homicide.
I mean, look, hundreds of millions of streams. It was everywhere. Tik Tok, playlist, radio, you name it. It is genuinely one of those songs that you probably heard without even knowing who made it. And I have to point this out because once you know what investigators are alleging in this case, the title Romantic Homicide hits very differently.
Very, very differently. He got signed to Dark Room, Inner Scope Records. That’s a major deal. One of the most powerful labels in the industry. He started performing at major festivals. He dropped a song called Locked and Loaded that became the first ever official theme song for Fortnite, the biggest video game on the planet.
We’re talking hundreds of millions of players. He had endorsements, real money, real career momentum. And then in 2025, his debut studio album called Withered was scheduled to drop on April the 25th, 2025. He had a world tour booked. The Wii tour, North America, Europe, the whole thing. He was 21 years old. He had everything a young musician dreams of having, right? So, keep all of that in the back of your mind because according to investigators, everything I just described, the album, the tour, the Fortnite deal, all of it is what he was allegedly trying to
protect at any cost. Now, before I get into the night of April the 23rd, I need to take you back because this situation did not start in 2025. Not even close. And the further back you go, the more disturbing this gets. January 2022. Celeste Rivas Hernandez is 11 years old. She joins an online Discord server, an official fan community connected to David Burke. 11 years old.
According to investigators, records from that server show a user with the name Celeste, who and this is what other members of the server reportedly said at the time. They referred to as Burke’s girlfriend. Now, in 2022, Burke would have been around 17 or 18, and Celeste was 11. Let that sit for just a second.
Fast forward to November 2023. Celeste is now 13 years old. Burke is 18. And according to investigators, that is when a sexual relationship allegedly began between them. Now, I want to be very clear here. David Burke has pleaded not guilty. His legal team maintains that the evidence will show he did not murder Celeste and that he was not the cause of her death.
We are going to come back to that defense position, but right now, I need to walk you through what investigators say they found because it is extensive. Investigators say they have explicit photographs from Burke’s phone. Photographs of Celeste when she was 13 and 14 years old. That material is classified as child sexual abuse imagery.
It will not be shown publicly in court, but investigators say it exists and corroborates the alleged sexual relationship. And then throughout 2024, Celeste was, according to all accounts, deeply embedded in Burke’s world. Weekends at his Hollywood Hills rental house, a trip to Las Vegas, a trip to London, a trip to Texas where she reportedly met his family, his actual family.
I mean, think about that for a second. She met his family. She was traveling internationally with him. and people in his circle apparently just thought she was around his age. Nobody stopped to ask questions or if they did, they didn’t do anything about it. So, we have a girl who is 13, then 14, traveling across the country and across the world with a rising music star while her parents in Lake Elsenor have no idea where she is.
Now, here is the part of this story that I know is going to get a lot of people very upset because there was a moment more than a year before Celeste allegedly died where law enforcement had David Burke’s name, went to his house, and walked away. February 2024, Celeste’s family reported her missing to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
She is 13 years old. She is gone. Her parents have no idea where she is. Investigators start tracing her phone records and they find a number that keeps coming up. It belongs to David Burke. So, they call him and here’s what he tells them. He says he barely knows her. He says he only met her once in person back in November 2023.
He claims he had no idea she was a minor. Had no idea she had been reported missing. Okay, fine. That’s what he says on the phone. But then LAPD deputies show up at his home in West Hollywood that same night at 8:15 in the evening. They knock on his door. They tell him directly, “This girl is 13 years old. She is a runaway. We are looking for her.
” And he says, “Again, I didn’t know she was a minor. I barely know her. I have no idea where she is.” And then, and I need you to hear this part carefully, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out his phone, and shows the deputies a yearbook photo of Celeste. A school yearbook photo saved on his personal phone of a girl he claims to barely know.
The deputies noted this. They had no explanation for it either, but they left. A couple of days later, Celeste came home on her own. Her parents, now terrified and trying to protect her, took her cell phone away, cut off her access, trying to cut off whatever this was. Here is what David Burke allegedly did next. He drove 80 plus miles from Los Angeles down to Lake Elsenor.
He went to Celeste Junior High School. He found a classmate of hers, another kid, a student, and he paid that kid $1,000 in cash to hand Celeste a brand new phone that Burke had purchased himself so that the two of them could keep talking. He had been told by law enforcement she was 13 years old, and his response to her parents taking her phone was to pay her classmate $1,000 to smuggle a new one to her.
She was reported missing again in April 2024. Now listen, if you’re watching this and you are finding this channel for the first time, I want to tell you something. This is exactly the kind of deep, detailed start to finish coverage we bring to every major case on this channel. We don’t do surface level recaps.
We go all the way through from the first court date to the final verdict. So, if you want to be here for every update in this case, every hearing, every new piece of evidence that comes out, subscribe right now. Turn on notifications. Do it now before you forget because this case is only going to get more intense from here. Okay, so now we’re deep into 2024 and into early 2025.
And here’s where the digital evidence that investigators say they have becomes really, really significant. Because investigators pulled everything, his iCloud, his iPhone, his Tesla’s data, and what they found, according to court documents, paints a very clear picture of this alleged relationship and what it looked like in its final months.
The messages between Burke and Celeste, investigators say, reference sex. They reference pregnancy. They reference abortion. They reference the use of plan B emergency contraception. That is the level of what is allegedly documented in these text exchanges. And now here is a detail that just came out and is really important.
Celeste’s death certificate was recently updated. The section on pregnancy previously said no. It has now been changed to unknown, meaning investigators cannot rule out that Celeste may have been pregnant at the time of her death. Legal experts who have commented on this case have said if she was pregnant, even if Burke didn’t know about it, that could mean an additional murder charge.
But the most striking message, and this one I want you to think about, came in March 2025, about a month before she allegedly died. Celeste sent Burke a text, and she essentially told him, “All we ever do is have sex and hang out. I want more than this for myself.” a 14-year-old girl telling a grown man that she deserved more. She was right.
She did deserve more and she deserved to be alive to go get it. But investigators say there was something else happening at the same time. According to the messages, Burke had been seeing other women and Celeste knew about it and she was furious because he had allegedly led her to believe they had a real future together. So, by the time we get to the night of April the 22nd, 2025, the night before she allegedly died, Celeste and Burke are in the middle of a lengthy argument over text.
The kind of argument that goes back and forth for a long time. She is jealous. She is hurt. And she is done being strung along. And then she says something, something that according to investigators changed everything. She threatened him. She told him she was going to expose him. She said she would go public, tell the world about their relationship, about everything that had allegedly happened between them since she was 13 years old, and that she was going to end his career and destroy his life.
His album was dropping in 48 hours. He had a world tour booked. He had endorsements. He had Fortnite deals. He had millions of dollars on the line. and a 14-year-old girl who had been with him for years, who knew everything, was telling him she was going to burn it all down. April the 23rd, 2025, 8:40 in the evening.
David Burke opens his Uber app and orders a car, not for himself, for Celeste. Picked up from her home in Lake Elsenor destination, his Hollywood Hills rental house, a trip of more than 80 miles. She gets in the car and according to investigators, they are texting during the ride back and forth the whole way.
She had no reason to think anything was wrong. She was going to see someone she had known for years, someone she cared about. The Uber drops her off at his Hollywood Hills home at approximately 10:10 in the evening. That is the last time Celeste Rivas Hernandez was alive. Because at approximately 10:30 p.m., roughly 20 minutes later, Burke allegedly sent text messages to Celeste’s phone asking where she was.
Where are you? What’s going on? Are you here? Investigators say those messages were calculated and deliberate, a plan already in motion to make it look like he had no idea what had happened to her. She was already dead by the time he sent them. The autopsy report, which was sealed for months and only unsealed in April 2026, confirmed how she died.
Multiple penetrating wounds to the torso, one went through her liver. Another damaged her ribs. The medical examiner noted signs of a violent struggle, a knife, multiple stab wounds. She bled out. He did not call 911. He did not take her to a hospital. He did not try to save her. He stood there while she died on his floor.
And then right around 11:30 that night, he got in his Tesla, drove north on the 101 freeway, and headed to a remote area off State Route 154 near Lake Kachuma in Santa Barbara County, about 110 miles from his house. He was allegedly out there in the middle of the night to start getting rid of evidence, her belongings, things that could connect him to her.
He came back home in the early hours of April the 24th and then he went to a radio interview for his album release. I need you to really sit with that. He allegedly stabbed a 14-year-old girl the night before. He drove out to Santa Barbara County in the middle of the night. He drove back and then he put on clothes, got in a car, went to a radio station and did an interview about his music.
That same day, April the 24th, he sent two more text messages to Celeste’s phone asking where she was. Obviously, there was no response because she was already dead. After April the 26th, investigators note he stopped texting her entirely, never tried to contact her again. And you know what? Think about that for a second.
If you had a person in your life that you cared about, someone you’d been with for years, and they suddenly just vanished, wouldn’t you be frantically trying to reach them, calling everyone, going to the police? You would, right? Unless you already knew exactly why they weren’t responding.
Okay, so now we get into the part of this story that is what the title of this video is about. And I want to be straightforward with you. This is hard to describe, but it is important. So, here we go. In the days and weeks after April the 23rd, 2025, a series of deliveries started arriving at David Burke’s Hollywood Hills home.
April the 24th, one day after Celeste allegedly died, a shovel arrives, ordered from Home Depot through Postmates, delivered to his door. May the first two chainsaws arrive from Amazon. May the 5th, a body bag, heavyduty laundry bags, and a blue inflatable kitty pool arrived from Amazon. July the 7th, a burn cage arrives from Amazon.
Every single one of those Amazon orders, the chainsaws, the body bag, the pool, the burn cage, was placed under a fake name, Victoria Mendes. Investigators have not publicly explained where that name came from, but every single one of those packages was addressed to Victoria Mendes and delivered to Burke’s home. Now, let me tell you what investigators say happened with all of that.
According to court documents, Burke placed the blue inflatable kitty pool on the floor of his garage. He put Celeste’s body into the pool to keep the blood off the concrete floor. And then he used the chainsaws. He cut her apart in his garage in an inflatable kitty pool. When LAPD later executed a search warrant at the Hollywood Hills house after Celeste was identified, they went into that garage and what they found there was devastating biological evidence.
Blood tested confirmed it matched Celeste’s unique DNA profile. The inflatable pool was still there. And investigators noted it had multiple long straight cuts in the plastic, linear cuts, consistent with chainsaw use going right through the pool. And then, and this is the forensic detail that really ties it together, investigators found tiny blue plastic fragments embedded inside Celeste remains.
small pieces of blue plastic found in the tissue of her body. The LAPD’s forensic science division ran a physical fit analysis. They matched those fragments, matched them directly to the blue inflatable pool purchased by Burke in May 2025. Think about what that means for a moment as a piece of physical evidence. There is also one more detail here that speaks to how deliberate investigators say all of this was.
Celeste had a tattoo on her ring finger, his name. So, investigators say Burke cut off her ring finger and pinky finger on her left hand to remove the tattoo that connected her to him. Those fingers have never been found. He placed her head and torso into the body bag. Her arms and legs went into a heavyduty laundry bag.
Both bags went into the front trunk of his Tesla Model X. And that is where she stayed for weeks, maybe months. While he went on with his life, he went back to Santa Barbara County on May the 8th late at night again, leaving around 11:30. He went back again on May the 31st to that same remote stretch of State Route 154 near Lake Kachuma, the same isolated spot.
Investigators believe he was returning to dispose of additional evidence over multiple trips. And here is something that investigators note as significant. He also lied to the people around him, friends, business associates, people at the house. There was apparently a terrible smell. The kind of smell you cannot ignore. And he kept telling people it was nothing.
A dead animal somewhere. Don’t worry about it. By late July 2025, Burke had been driving around with Celeste remains in his trunk since April. And on July the 29th surveillance cameras captured him parking the Tesla on a street just 400 ft from his house. He went on tour, the Wii tour, North America, Europe.
He performed on stage. Meanwhile, the car sat there on the street for weeks. Neighbors noticed a car parked in the same spot, not moving day after day. Eventually, someone called to have it towed. And on September the 8th, 2025, one day after what would have been Celeste’s 15th birthday, a manager at the towyard walked up to the Tesla and immediately knew something was wrong.
The smell was overwhelming and there were flies swarming around the front trunk. LAPD was called. They went to the yard, documented what they saw, got a search warrant, and opened the trunk. Inside, a black body bag covered in insects. Inside the bag, a severely decomposed human head and torso. Beneath the body bag, a plastic garbage bag.
Inside that bag, dismembered arms and legs. No ring finger, no pinky finger on the left hand. On September the 16th, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner used dental records to make a positive identification. It was Celeste Rivas Hernandez. She had been in that trunk since April. Now, here is where I want to talk about what happened after the discovery because the arrest did not come right away, and that frustrated a lot of people, understandably.
After Celeste was identified, investigators began what would turn out to be one of the most extensive investigations in recent Los Angeles history. Around 54 to 55 search warrants were filed. 54. Think about what that means in terms of the scope of evidence they were going after. They went after Apple, his iCloud account, which reportedly contained over 10 terabytes of data.
They went after Google, Meta, Instagram, Facebook. They pulled records from his booking agents, his management team, people in his personal inner circle. They got Uber records, Amazon records, Postmates records, Tesla vehicle data, cell tower data. In October 2025, Burke quietly hired Blair Burke, one of the most prominent criminal defense attorneys in the country, a Harvard Law graduate who has represented Mel Gibson, Britney Spears, Kanye West, Harvey Weinstein.
That is a legal team that does not come cheap. And it tells you something about how seriously he was treating his exposure here. And then in November 2025, LAPD held a press conference where they publicly for the first time described the case as a murder investigation. Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton stood at that podium and said accountability is coming.
He made it clear that no one was off the table as a suspect, including David Burke. A secret grand jury was convened. multiple sessions apparently over several months and for whatever reason whether it was not enough evidence at the time or whether it was being used purely as an investigative tool and was never actually asked to indict no indictment came down but investigators kept working and on April the 16th 2026 almost exactly one year to the day after Celeste was last known to be alived robbery homicide division arrested David Anthony Burke at a property on Marmont
Avenue in Los Angeles held without bail. And here is the evidence picture that investigators say they now have text messages spanning years obtained from his iCloud documenting the alleged sexual relationship referencing pregnancy, abortion, plan B. Explicit photographs of Celeste at 13 and 14 years old found on his devices.
cell phone and Tesla location data, placing him at Santa Barbara County in the middle of the night on April the 23rd. Uber records confirming he booked and paid for the car that brought Celeste to his house that night. Amazon purchase records confirming the chainsaws, the body bag, the kiddie pool, the burn cage, all delivered to his home after April the 23rd.
All under the name Victoria Menddees. DNA evidence from the blood in his garage matching Celeste. The blue plastic fragments from her remains matching the pool. And surveillance footage of him driving the Tesla on July the 29th believed to be the last time anyone drove it before the car was abandoned and later towed with her remains inside.
Oh, and one more thing. a CALR highway worker doing routine stops along State Route 154 in Santa Barbara County, that same remote stretch that Burke allegedly drove to three times, found something in January 2026, discarded on the side of the road, Celeste’s US passport card. On April the 20th, 2026, David Anthony Burke appeared in court before Superior Court Judge Charlene F.
Almo. He was charged with first-degree murder with special circumstances, that means lying in weight, murder for financial gain, murder of a witness. He also faces charges of continuous lewd and lascivious acts upon a child under 14, and unlawful mutilation of human remains. Special circumstances on a first-degree murder charge means one thing.
If convicted, he faces either life in prison without the possibility of parole or the death penalty. Prosecutors have not yet publicly stated whether they intend to seek death. His attorney, Blair Burke, told the court clearly, “We believe the actual evidence will show David Burke did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez, nor was he the cause of her death.
” And his legal team called for a speedy preliminary hearing. They wanted to force the prosecution to lay out its evidence in open court as quickly as possible, which is actually a fascinating strategy. Private investigator Steve Fiser, who has been on this case since the beginning and who was hired by the owner of the Hollywood Hills property, put it bluntly on social media after the hearing was pushed back to May the 26th.
He said the speedy preliminary was a bluff by the defense. The game of hide the ball from the public has started. And I think that is an interesting observation, right? because the defense came in hot demanding a fast public hearing and then turned around and said they needed more time to go through the evidence. Make of that what you will.
There is also something else worth flagging here. Investigators say they found a significant amount of child pornography on Burke’s devices. Not just images of Celeste, possibly other material. Whether that leads to additional federal charges is something legal experts are actively discussing. The preliminary hearing is scheduled for May the 26th, 2026.
That is where a judge will determine whether there is sufficient evidence to send this case to trial. And here is the reality of where this stands. Investigators say they have digital evidence, forensic evidence, purchase records, location data, surveillance video, and DNA. The defense says the actual evidence will show their client is innocent.
That is what a trial is for. After Burke’s arrest, the entertainment industry moved fast. Fortnite announced that anyone who had purchased D4 VD related cosmetics and in-game items could get an immediate full refund. Universal Music Group worked to remove his collaborative tracks from streaming platforms. His tour already cancelled in September 2025, was obviously never coming back.
Dark Room Inner Scope Records said nothing publicly. His career has been effectively frozen in place. And I keep coming back to the name of the song that made him famous. Romantic Homicide. Hundreds of millions of streams. A song that was in everyone’s playlist. I do not think there is a word for the irony of that. Or maybe it isn’t irony at all.
Maybe it is just the truth of what investigators say he is. I want to end this the same way I started it with Celeste. Not with the evidence list, not with the charges, not with the legal maneuvering over hearing dates, with a 14-year-old girl from Lake Elsenor who loved to sing and dance, who had movie nights with her family every Friday, who in a text message to the man investigators say killed her, told him she deserved more than what she was getting. She was right.
She deserved everything. She deserved a future, a full one, a long one, one that was entirely her own. Her family has been patient and dignified through all of this. They have watched every hearing, every delay, every new revelation come out into the public. And through all of it, their message has been the same. Simple, devastating.
All we want is justice for Celeste. That is all any of us can want for her right now. We are going to follow this case all the way through the preliminary hearing on May the 26th. Whatever comes after that, the trial, we will be here for every single development. If this video gave you something, if you feel like you have a clearer picture of who Celeste was and what investigators say happened to her, then please subscribe to this channel, hit the bell so you get notified the moment a new update drops, and share this video because the more people who
know Celeste name, the better. She should not be forgotten. Justice for Celeste Rivas Hernandez. David Anthony Burke has pleaded not guilty to all charges and is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law. In loving memory of Celeste Abigail Riva Hernandez, September the 7th, 2010 to April the 23rd, 2025. Five.
