D4vd dismembered teen girl with chainsaw and tried to cover his tracks, prosecutors allege

D4vd allegedly used a chainsaw to dismember the body of a teenager he was sexually abusing, then amputated two of her fingers to destroy a tattoo linking him to the girl, according to a court document made public Wednesday afternoon by L.A. County prosecutors.

David Anthony Burke, 21, is charged with murder, continuous sex abuse of a minor and mutilating a corpse. Prosecutors say he killed 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez because she threatened to expose his abuse and ruin his music career. He pleaded not guilty last week.

In advance of a preliminary hearing that was supposed to begin Friday, Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman filed a nine-page brief laying out the evidence she planned to present. In the document, Silverman detailed an abusive relationship between the singer and the young girl, which started when she was just 11, and wrote that Burke had chainsaws, body bags, an inflatable pool and a shovel delivered to his home in order to dispose of Hernandez’s body.

“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,” Silverman wrote.

Burke also had a “burn cage” delivered to his residence, which acts as a portable incinerator, according to the document. The pool was apparently used to contain Hernandez’s body as the singer dismembered her remains. Bits of plastic from the pool were discovered embedded in Hernandez’s corpse, the document said.

The purchases from online retailers like Amazon and Home Depot were made under an alias, Victoria Mendez.

The singer has long been linked to Hernandez’s disappearance and death, after her badly decomposed body was found in the trunk of a Tesla he owned at a Hollywood tow yard last September. Authorities said Hernandez was last seen at Burke’s Hollywood residence on April 23, 2025. The two got into a “lengthy argument” the night before, with Hernandez expressing jealousy over Burke’s relationships with other women, prosecutors said.

“[Hernandez] became extremely upset and threatened to disclose damaging information about her relationship with defendant to end his career and destroy his life,” Silverman wrote.

On the night police believe Hernandez was killed, according to the new court filing from prosecutors, the singer ordered an Uber to bring her from her Lake Elsinore home to Hollywood around 8:40 p.m.

An autopsy report made public last week revealed Hernandez died from a pair of stab wounds. Her body was dismembered when police found it in the trunk and two of her fingers had been amputated, according to the medical examiner’s report. In the document made public Wednesday, Silverman alleged Burke cut off those digits to remove evidence of a tattoo Hernandez had gotten of the singer’s name.

In the document, Silverman said Burke first met Hernandez when she was only 11. The two began a sexual relationship when she turned 13 but “broke up” in late November 2024, according to Silverman. Text messages between the two contained references to “sex, pregnancy, abortion and use of the Plan B emergency contraceptive,” she wrote.

Investigators also found images of Hernandez naked and performing sex acts on Burke’s phone, according to the document. Silverman said in court last week that search warrants turned up “a significant amount of child pornography” on Burke’s devices.

Hernandez was reported missing by her family multiple times in Lake Elsinore in 2024. Riverside County sheriff’s investigators questioned Burke about her whereabouts in February 2024, but Burke claimed he was “unaware she was a minor or that she had been reported missing,” Silverman wrote.

Two days later, she returned home and her parents took away her cellphone. But Burke allegedly drove to Lake Elsinore and paid a junior high school student $1,000 to give her a new phone so they could stay in touch, according to the document filed Wednesday. Over the next year, Hernandez traveled with the singer to Las Vegas, Texas and London where she met “his family,” Silverman wrote.

Burke’s lead defense attorney, Blair Berk, was not immediately available for comment on the filing.

She asked Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo to seal the filing on Wednesday afternoon, but the judge denied her request.

The singer took steps to cover his tracks in the moments before the killing, as well as the days after. Twenty minutes after she arrived on the night of April 23, Burke allegedly sent a series of text messages to her phone asking where she was. Prosecutors charge that he had just killed Hernandez and was trying to make it seem as though she never arrived.

That night he drove to a lake in Santa Barbara County, where prosecutors say he disposed of many of her personal items. He returned to the same remote area two other times last May, according to the Wednesday court filing. In January 2026, Hernandez’s identification was found off the highway near Lake Cachuma.

Berk previously said she does not believe the prosecution’s case can hold up to scrutiny and pushed for an immediate preliminary hearing. Defendants have a right to a preliminary hearing, in which a judge determines whether prosecutors have enough evidence to bring a case to trial, within 10 business days.

But on Wednesday afternoon, attorney Marilyn Bednarski asked that the hearing be pushed back to May 26, citing the voluminous amount of discovery in the case. Olmedo agreed there was “good cause” to delay the hearing a few weeks. Burke is due back in court on May 1 for a status hearing.

Silverman expressed some annoyance at Bednarski and Berk’s change of heart, noting she’d already warned the defense team that prosecutors had a trove of evidence to turn over.

Silverman said last week that discovery materials would include the results of a wiretap and searches of Burke’s cellphone and iCloud accounts. Law enforcement executed 54 search warrants in the case, according to court records.

The medical examiner’s report detailing how Hernandez died was not available to the defense until last week. Prosecutors also convened three secret grand juries between November 2025 and February 2026 to collect evidence against Burke, according to Silverman. Transcripts from those hearings were under seal as of last week.

Bednarski said Wednesday she needed “additional time to review the discovery we either just got, or are about to get, in order to have a full and free preliminary hearing.”

“We told them that this was what was going to be coming,” Silverman argued in reply. “As I said in my brief, we sent out subpoenas, we’ve been preparing, we’ve been telling witnesses to cancel planned vacations.”

In asking Olmedo to seal the brief, Berk expressed worry it was “one-sided” and might taint the jury pool.

“The prosecution has appeared to file a rather unusual pre-preliminary hearing brief that appears to be a very one-sided view of what is anticipated as the evidence in this case. But no evidence has been presented by the prosecution in a courtroom. Certainly there has been no adjudication of the admissibility of that evidence,” Berk said.

Legal experts said Silverman’s move to show her hand so early in the case was as unorthodox as Berk’s initial decision to race toward a preliminary hearing.

“It is very unusual in pre-prelim for a prosecutor to file such a brief. But the prosecutor wants to be transparent with the public, and it educates the judge,” said Dmitry Gorin, a former sex crimes prosecutor in Los Angeles.

“The defense was seeking to capture the government off balance. But obviously, the DA was more than ready here,” Gorin said. “As a defense attorney, you have to be ready like a good boxer; you need to know how to pivot.”