EDITOR’S NOTE: This story contains graphic and disturbing particulars.
The prolonged argument between the younger musician who created the anthem for Fortnite and the teenage runaway on April 22, 2025, would mark the finish of a turbulent relationship.
The battle was chronicled in textual content messages that instructed Celeste Rivas Hernandez was jealous of singer-songwriter d4vd’s relationship with different girls, in response to a nine-page brief laying out the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s proof to assist charging him with the 14-year-old’s murder. The artist, whose authorized identify is David Anthony Burke, had “led her to believe they had a future together.”
Extremely upset, Celeste “threatened to disclose damaging information about her relationship” with then-20-year-old d4vd “to end his career and destroy his life,” the brief stated.
His first studio album, “Withered,” was to be launched simply days after the dispute, setting in movement the horrific final hours of Celeste’s life – one prosecutors say ended when the teen woman was fatally stabbed after which dismembered in an inflatable pool with chainsaws ordered from Amazon.
“He had an emerging multi-million-dollar career already in progress,” in response to the brief. “He also had multiple product endorsements which were highly profitable.”
The killing doubtless passed off on April 23, 2025, in response to the prosecution. The subsequent evening, d4vd had an album launch occasion earlier than departing on a global tour in late July.
Text messages instructed d4vd had manipulated Celeste, even after their breakup in November 2024, the prosecution wrote. Their textual content exchanges continued, as did their sexual relationship, in response to the brief. In one textual content, Celeste wrote, “all we do is have sex and just hang out man I want more than that for myself.”
D4vd, now 21, and Celeste met three years earlier in 2022. She was simply 11 at the time, in response to the brief. Prosecutors say they started a sexual relationship in November 2023; he was 18 and he or she was 13.
Celeste would quickly set out on her troubled journey as a runaway from Lake Elsinore in Riverside County, California. D4vd, a bed room pop artist with a multi-million-dollar report deal, was on the verge of world stardom.
Also in November 2023, he made his late-night tv debut on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and carried out his breakthrough hit, “Romantic Homicide.” In the music’s music video, d4vd stands over the bloodied physique of a girl in a white gown as he sings, “In the back of my mind, I killed you / And I didn’t even regret it.”
D4vd was arrested in April and has pleaded not guilty to costs of first-degree murder with particular circumstances, steady sexual abuse of a toddler below 14 and mutilating human stays. After his arraignment, Blair Berk, a lawyer for the singer, maintained d4vd’s innocence, saying in a press release proof “will show that David Burke did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez and he was not the cause of her death.”
Celeste was reported lacking by household and associates on a number of events, beginning in early 2024. Her dismembered remains had been present in the trunk of d4vd’s impounded Tesla in Los Angeles on September 8, 2025, a day after she would have turned 15.
On the evening after the April 2025 argument, d4vd despatched an Uber to Celeste’s house in Lake Elsinore to take her to his house in the Hollywood Hills, in response to the prosecution’s brief. She was dropped off at his house round 10:10 p.m.
“Knowing he had to silence the victim before she ruined his music career as she had threatened, very soon after her arrival at his home, defendant stabbed the victim to death multiple times and stood by while she bled out,” the prosecution wrote in the brief.
In the days after the killing, d4vd bought on-line “two chainsaws,” together with “a body bag, heavy-duty laundry bags, and a blue inflatable pool,” in response to the prosecution.
D4vd then “took horrifying measures to destroy and discard the victim’s body,” the prosecution stated.
“After placing her body into the blue inflatable pool to prevent her blood from spilling onto his garage floor,” the brief stated, “defendant used a chainsaw and perhaps other tools to cut off her limbs.”
Small blue plastic fragments had been embedded in Celeste’s stays. An knowledgeable with Los Angeles police made “a physical fit match … to the blue inflatable pool” wherein Celeste was dismembered, in response to the prosecution.
D4vd then allegedly minimize off her left ring and pinky fingers as a result of her ring finger had a tattoo of his identify. “Her fingers have not been recovered,” the prosecution wrote.
Part of her physique was stuffed into the cadaver bag; different elements right into a rubbish bag. D4vd then positioned the luggage into the entrance trunk of his Tesla – the cadaver bag on prime – leaving the physique to decompose, in response to the prosecution.
As weeks handed, prosecutors allege, d4vd “lied to friends, business associates, and others who noticed the strong smell of decay in and around his home and vehicle.”
Before embarking on his live performance tour at the finish of July 2025, the singer-songwriter parked the Tesla round the nook from his house. When police discovered Celeste’s stays in the trunk, she was in an “advanced state of decomposition,” the health worker’s report stated.
“There are no words to express the indescribable pain the family is experiencing right now,” a lawyer for Celeste’s household, Patrick Steinfeld, stated in a press release. “They still have bills to pay and jobs they go to every day. All they want is time to grieve and heal.”
NCS’s Kyung Lah, Alaa Elassar, Zoe Sottile and Elizabeth Wolfe contributed to this report.