Inside the Trial of D4vd: A Tesla, a Body, and a Singer Accused of Grisly Murder | Vanity Fair

A crowd of people swarmed the lobby of the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning, hoping to nab a seat for the preliminary hearing in the case against singer David Anthony Burke, a.k.a. D4vd. A scrum of reporters, YouTubers, and rubberneckers threw their names into a golden lottery spinner—not to win a million dollars or a chocolate-factory tour, but to spend the day hearing evidence in a particularly gruesome case. Twenty-one-year-old Burke has been charged with the first-degree murder of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, as well as lewd and lascivious acts with a 13-year-old, and mutilation of human remains.

The first day of the preliminary hearings made it clear why this case has fascinated and horrified so many, as the prosecution began laying out evidence: graphic, stomach-turning images of Hernandez’s mutilated and decomposed body, discovered in September 2025 in the front trunk (or “frunk”) of a Tesla registered to Burke, which was abandoned around the corner from his rented house in the Hollywood Hills. Burke has pleaded not guilty.

Burke entered the packed courtroom with shackles around his waist and, for a brief moment, seemed to smile shyly at the room. Judge Charlaine Olmedo denied his lawyer’s request to have Burke’s chains removed, but agreed to drop the handcuffs. He nodded appreciatively at her, and spent the rest of the day watching whoever was testifying.

But Burke did not look over at the victim’s parents, who sat stoically in the courtroom in the row right in front of me. At one point, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman, who presented the evidence for the prosecution, leaned over to the couple and asked if they were okay. During a break in the proceedings, she murmured comfortingly to them in Spanish.

It’s hard to imagine how any parent could be anywhere close to okay after hearing and seeing the evidence presented. Hernandez’s mother looked stricken at various points, staring down and dabbing her eyes with a tissue during the testimony of LAPD detective Joshua Byers, which was accompanied by more grisly photos. He told the court that he was summoned after Burke’s Tesla had been impounded in a Hollywood towing lot, and that a dead body had been discovered inside it. When Detective Byers arrived, he found himself looking at “a partially unzipped body bag with a dismembered torso and head, missing some extremities.” Those missing arms and legs were quickly discovered, braided together in a garbage bag laying underneath the body bag. The whole frunk area was swarming with maggots and viscous liquid, making it impossible to preserve the body.

One of the most startling photos was of Hernandez’s right index finger, which had been severed. It curved eerily, as if permanently trapped in a state of beckoning. The letters “Shhhh” were visible on the side of the finger, tattooed in cursive. Burke looked impassive through it all, sometimes resting his chin on hand as if he were trying to make it through a slightly dull high school class. I couldn’t help staring at his fingers after the prosecution revealed that Burke has the name “Celeste” tattooed in red on his left ring finger—and on his right index finger, the letters “Shhhh,” just like Hernandez. Unlike Hernandez, all of his digits remained intact, clasped together on the table.

One less gory but still disconcerting video shown in court was the bodycam footage from the night in February 2024 when members of the LA County Sheriff’s Department paid a visit to Burke’s Hollywood Hills home. They’d received a request to check the house for Hernandez, who was then just 13 years old. We see Burke welcoming them in, chomping casually on a snack as he claims that he mostly knew the girl through online platforms and had only met her once. He volunteers a few photos of her that he has in his phone—one apparently from school picture day, the other an internet flyer asking if anyone has seen Celeste, the word “MISSING” in large red letters over her picture.

“She told me she was 18,” Burke says casually to the officers at one point. “Everybody’s telling me she was 13.” As they are finishing up, one officer says he hopes the girl is found. The singer, surrounded by gold records and photos of himself, responds earnestly: “I do too.” Nothing in their visit triggered any suspicions. The officers knew that he was a musician, but had no idea that he’d had his first hit with a 2022 song called “Romantic Homicide.” Or that the video for his 2025 single “One More Dance” featured a blood-spattered D4vd dragging around a body that two others later cram into a car trunk.

Hernandez returned home a few days after the detectives visited Burke, according to the prosecution. But they allege that over the next year, he traveled with the teenager to his home state of Texas and London—and say they have the airline records to prove it. Detective Byers also went into extensive detail about the digital evidence they say they found in Burke’s phones, computers, and even the infotainment system of the recovered Tesla. The prosecution accessed his Amazon account, showing purchases and deliveries made under an alias for a cadaver bag, chainsaws, a mop, and an inflatable swimming pool seemingly made of the same blue material that was embedded in the corpse’s skin.

The prosecution also opened up a few new paths with the testimony of a former employee of Mogul Vision, Burke’s management company, who spoke about Burke’s sizable music industry earnings and possible attempts to transfer assets to protect his money from civil lawsuits. The former employee also revealed that he has been working with the musician’s mother, Colleen Burke, to find a new entertainment attorney for her imprisoned son. “Apparently the threat of a lifetime in jail or a potential death penalty is not stopping him,” Patrick Steinfeld, the family’s attorney, told reporters at the end of the day. “He’s pursuing his musical career like nothing happened.”

Defense attorneys Blair Berk and Marilyn Bednarski did their best to poke holes in all this testimony during cross examination, and even tried to slip in wholesome details like Burke’s religious upbringing. But they did not give any major clues to their strategy on day one, or talk to the media at any point.

The stakes couldn’t be higher for Burke. The prosecution proposed a motive for the murder in a brief back in April: that Hernandez was jealous of Burke’s relationships with other women and “threatened to disclose damaging information about her relationship with defendant to end his career and destroy his life.” All this happened just days before the release of his first major label album. Burke’s murder charge comes with special circumstances— “lying in wait, committing this crime for financial gain, or murdering a witness in an investigation.” When Los Angeles County district attorney Nathan Hochman spoke to reporters midway through the first day of the hearings, he indicated that Burke’s own life could be on the line: “We will let you know at a future date whether or not that sentence will also include the death penalty.” Meanwhile, the crowd gathered once more at the courthouse this morning: The hearings are scheduled to continue for at least another day.

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