A teen lady was found lifeless in a automotive owned by d4vd. NCS went to her hometown to research the mysterious hyperlink between her and the rising music star. Upgrade to watch the full report.
Los Angeles
—
In the summer time of 2024, a budding musical sensation identified to his legion of largely younger followers as d4vd posted on social media that he was experiencing a case of author’s block.
“I’m in a song crisis right now,” the entertainer, then 19, lamented on Discord.
Within minutes, certainly one of his followers on the favored platform provided an oddly particular suggestion:
“Drop the one with the missing girl celeste rivas hernandez,” the nameless person wrote, referring to a 13-year-old runaway whose face was plastered on “missing person” posters on the time.
The message went unaddressed by the singer, whose full identify is David Anthony Burke.
But the cryptic—seemingly taunting—put up has since emerged as an intriguing nugget in reference to a grand jury investigation in which prosecutors have deemed Burke a “target.”
That’s as a result of a few yr after the put up mentioning Rivas, her dismembered and decomposed body was found in the trunk of Burke’s Tesla, which had been deserted not removed from the rented multimillion-dollar house the place he was residing in the glitzy Hollywood Hills overlooking Los Angeles. The automotive was finally transferred to a tow yard, the place an worker known as police after noticing a foul odor emanating from the automobile.
Following the grisly discovery in September, Burke canceled a world tour upon which he had simply embarked. He has made no public remark in the months since.
Authorities investigating her dying have been tight-lipped as nicely. A choose has ordered that the outcomes of Rivas’ post-mortem stay confidential on the request of the LAPD’s elite Robbery-Homicide Division, which is investigating the younger lady’s dying.
Interest in the case, in the meantime, has exploded on the web: The singer was the No. 1 searched particular person on Google worldwide for 2025 based mostly on queries following the invention of Rivas’ body. An military of beginner on-line sleuths has been parsing Burke’s lyrics, interviews and social media posts for clues, and the case has resulted in headlines in publications from the Los Angeles Times to the New York Post.
A NCS investigation, based mostly on an in depth assessment of social media postings each by and about Burke, in addition to greater than a dozen interviews, found that Rivas repeatedly appeared in Burke’s orbit before and after she was reported lacking for the primary time in February of 2024.
She was simply 13 years previous when she appeared alongside Burke in a livestream video shot in the wee hours of the morning from inside a West Hollywood house linked to the entertainer. She was photographed backstage at certainly one of his concert events a couple of months later and appeared in pictures on the reminiscence card of a digicam left behind on the singer’s house in the Hollywood Hills after information of her dying turned public.
NCS additionally used geolocation to confirm Burke’s unexplained presence a couple of blocks from Rivas’ household house greater than an hour’s drive from the place he lived in Hollywood across the time the lady was reported lacking.
Citing the continued grand jury probe, Burke’s lawyer, Blair Berk, declined touch upon any side of the case, together with what relationship, if any, her consumer had with Rivas.
The singer and the runaway
Before certainly one of his music movies went viral and made him a web-based phenomenon, Burke was a homeschooled teenager residing in a devoutly non secular family exterior Houston. He was a gaming fanatic and a lover of music.
A mix of these two passions led to him making music to accompany movies he posted of himself gaming, and in 2022, his debut single “Romantic Homicide” went viral on TikTok.
As his profession took off, he moved to Los Angeles, the place his administration firm rented a lavish home in the Hollywood Hills for $20,000 a month. He was residing the fast-paced lifetime of a younger celeb when Rivas by some means ended up in his orbit.
Lake Elsinore, California, Rivas’ hometown, is a few 90-minute drive from LA, however the working-class metropolis feels a world away.
Rivas was reported lacking from her neighborhood in early 2024. Posters of her face had been plastered round city and shared on social media on the time.
Elie Naddaf, a nook retailer proprietor in Rivas’ neighborhood, advised NCS he would typically see Rivas come in with her buddies after faculty for snacks.
He remembered her as a well mannered, respectful child among the many generally rowdy ones who would frequent his retailer.
“Always nice,” he stated of Rivas.
Hints in regards to the lady’s connection to Burke started to floor even before she was reported lacking.
In January of 2024, Rivas appeared facet by facet with Burke in a livestream video on the social medial platform Twitch. In it, the pair joke and banter till about 3 a.m. before Burke laughingly proclaims, “Delete everything.”
A month later, an individual involved over Rivas’ well-being despatched an e-mail to an handle bearing Burke’s stage identify — d4vd — on his file firm’s area.
The author referenced Rivas’ disappearance and stated “There’s been talk” that Burke presumably had one thing to do with it.
If there was any reality to that, the particular person wrote, “please do the right thing and take her home. Her parents are very worried.”
NCS confirmed the authenticity of the e-mail with the one that despatched it. But that particular person requested to not be recognized as a result of security considerations.
Rivas returned house inside days of the e-mail being despatched, an acquaintance of the household confirmed to NCS.
Around that very same time, between January and March of 2024, the singer was photographed getting out of a black Tesla a couple of blocks from Rivas’ house. An area teen in Lake Elsinore later posted the images on TikTok. NCS geolocated and chronolocated the images to confirm when and the place they had been taken.
A number of months later, after having been reported lacking once more, Rivas was photographed backstage throughout a sold-out present the entertainer carried out on the Fonda Theater in Los Angeles in June.
Then, in August, got here the message on Discord asking Burke when he was going to drop the music in regards to the lacking lady.
Another piece of the puzzle linking Burke to Rivas was found in Burke’s rented house after Rivas’ body was recognized in September 2025 and the case started making nationwide headlines.
Steve Fischer, a personal investigator employed by the proprietor of the property, stated he uncovered a digital digicam inside the home with images of each Rivas and Burke taken in late December of 2024 and early January of 2025. During that point, the entertainer posted different images from the digicam’s reminiscence card to his X account, captioned “took these pics” together with a selfie of him sporting a digicam of the identical mannequin.
After Rivas’ body was found and the case was extensively publicized, her brother advised NBCLA that the household was conscious she knew Burke, and that she was on her option to see a film with the singer when she disappeared. The household has since stopped talking publicly in regards to the case and didn’t reply to requests from NCS to be interviewed for this text.
Some of the intrigue surrounding Burke and his ties to Rivas comes from the singer himself. Though Burke comes throughout in interviews as a soft-spoken artist with a delicate demeanor, he has acknowledged having a darker alter ego he refers to as IT4MI, which he stated was impressed by the Japanese phrase for “pain.”
“A part of that manga was an evil version of me,” he said in May to the music YouTube channel Mahogany.
“And he would commit the crimes that I would have to solve as the detective. … I’d be, like, solving murders that I’m committing myself.”
The music that went viral in 2022 and primarily launched his stardom was entitled “Romantic Homicide.” Among the lyrics was the road: “In the back of my mind I killed you and I didn’t even regret it.” The music video accommodates violent imagery of a younger, dark-haired lady’s lifeless body and bloody knives.
In a later music video for the music “One More Dance,” Burke’s alterego drags his personal body into the trunk of a automotive. Following the invention of Rivas’ body in the trunk of Burke’s automotive, some followers started to attach the bloody aesthetic of his fantasy alterego, which may be frequent in the anime style, to the real-life circumstances.
While authorities have saved quiet for months in regards to the investigation, latest developments have signaled some motion in the probe.
In January, a younger affiliate of Burke’s, who frolicked with him on the home in the Hollywood Hills and was typically photographed with him at occasions, was arrested at his mom’s home in Helena, Montana.
Lt. Adam Shanks with the Helena Police Department stated detectives from Los Angeles had a cloth witness warrant for the younger man.
“They came up here and scooped him up,” Shanks advised NCS. He was then transported to Los Angeles, the place he was booked into jail and launched a day afterward a $60,000 bond.
Then, final month, courtroom paperwork in Texas turned public, revealing a dispute over whether or not Burke’s relations could possibly be pressured to seem before the grand jury in Los Angeles. The filings additionally revealed a grotesque new element in regards to the case and offered some readability about Burke’s standing in the eyes of prosecutors.
The element was that Rivas’ body was not solely badly decomposed when it was found – it had been dismembered and separated into two baggage before being positioned in the trunk of the Tesla.
The readability got here in prosecutors describing Burke as a “target” of the investigation, titled, “The People of the State of California v. David Burke.”
The paperwork didn’t specify what function authorities suspect Burke might have performed in the lady’s dying, solely that he was a “target” of the probe.
“It is alleged in this case that the Target may be involved in the death of 14-year-old victim Celeste Rivas Hernandez,” prosecutors wrote.