An executive from Interscope Records testified under oath that d4vd's recording contract was worth up to nineteen million dollars. His financial manager put his total earnings above ten million. Prosecutors allege that Celeste Rivas Hernandez — fourteen years old — was threatening to expose their relationship and that the money is the motive for her death.

The five-day hearing produced the full evidence picture for the first time: chainsaws bought under an alias, an inflatable pool with cuts matching the victim's clothing, eleven air fresheners in a Tesla where remains sat for months, bodycam from February 2024 where a deputy said she was thirteen, Uber records placing her at his door the night she vanished, texts about pregnancy and abortion when she was thirteen, and a notarized consent form from her parents allowing international travel with him.

Tony takes on the ten questions this audience will not stop asking. The money. The bodycam. The parents. The platforms. The missing chainsaw. The Uber records. The defense strategy. Everything the hearing revealed and everything it left unanswered.

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Everything connected to the d4vd murder case is moving fast, and this covers exactly where it stands. David Anthony Burke, known to millions as d4vd, has been held to answer on first-degree murder with special circumstances in the death of fourteen-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, plus charges tied to illegal conduct with Celeste and unlawful mutilation of her remains. 
The hearing has surfaced two very different stories. LAPD Detective Corey Farell testified that both families knew about the relationship — a notarized consent form, a Las Vegas trip with Celeste's sister, VIP concert seats, even church together. Celeste's father has since told reporters he never had any contact with Burke at all, a claim that doesn't match what's now on the record. 
Then came the defense. Attorney Blair Berk pressed the medical examiner on whether Celeste's wounds could have happened after she was already dead, and had a detective read messages where Celeste referenced harming herself, an early look at how Burke's team plans to fight this at trial. 
The physical evidence sits in the middle of it all. Prosecutors have mapped a twenty-one-minute window between Celeste's Uber arrival and her phone going permanently silent. Three chainsaws recovered from Burke's home tested negative for blood and were never collected by LAPD. His Interscope deal was reportedly worth up to nineteen million dollars. 
Burke faces the death penalty and has pleaded not guilty to everything. Arraignment is set for August 31st. For anyone following this case closely, the next hearing is where the real fight over evidence begins. 
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What d4vd allegedly removed from Celeste Rivas Hernandez's hand is a detail sitting in a prosecution court brief that most people following this case still haven't seen. Two of her fingers, prosecutors wrote, were removed because of what was inked on them. That's where this breakdown starts. 
Work backward from there. At 12:04 in the morning, from an empty road off Highway 154 in Santa Barbara County, a call went out from David Burke's phone to Celeste's number, hours after prosecutors say she was already dead. An LAPD criminalist testified about Bluestar reactions on rubber mats in Burke's garage, the bricks underneath, a rowing machine, a tarp, a cord, and a bag of wipes, all presumptive positive. Defense attorney Blair Berk got her to admit she can't call it definitively blood, and pointed to two chainsaws never swabbed for touch DNA. 
Then the hearing's final session. A medical examiner testified Celeste died from two sharp-force wounds and had been dead for weeks before she was found. A detective walked the court through her phone, messages tracing back to when she was eleven, close to fifty images labeled illegal material involving a minor, and texts from January 2024 indicating she was thirteen and pregnant. 
Her mother cried in the gallery. Her father looked at the floor. Burke has pleaded not guilty to every count. A judge now decides whether this case reaches a jury, and we go through what the record actually shows. None of it is settled. A judge still has to decide if a jury ever hears it. 
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Before the arrest, before the garage, before any of it, d4vd filmed a music video of his character dragging a body and loading it into a car. That video exists on the internet right now, and prosecutors allege he later did the real version to a fourteen-year-old girl. 
David Burke's rise started small and fast. A homeschooled kid recording on an iPhone in his sister's closet, building an audience inside Fortnite lobbies, a record deal and a billion streams four years later. Prosecutors say he met Celeste Rivas Hernandez online through gaming, both of them still teenagers, and the connection never drew the attention it should have from anyone around them. 
At seventeen, newly signed to Darkroom and Interscope, Burke built an alter ego named Itami, the Japanese word for pain, describing him as an agent of chaos who wears a blindfold, a concept from a manga about a detective whose double commits the murders he then investigates. He compared it to Tyler Durden. The character held a bloody knife in one video and took a woman's arm in another. 
Then came the forensic testimony. A trace analyst matched cuts on a garage pool to fragments recovered on Celeste's leggings. DNA from the Tesla and the home matched her. A criminalist described blood scrubbed from the garage near shelves stocked with fake blood. Cell tower records tracked the Tesla to Santa Barbara County three times in the weeks after Celeste allegedly died. 
She was fourteen when she went to Burke's Hollywood Hills home on April 23, 2025. Her remains were found in his Tesla months later. Burke has pleaded not guilty. We go through the persona he built, the machine around him, and the physical evidence now in front of a judge. 
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After d4vd's arrest, Celeste Rivas Hernandez's father released a statement through his attorney. "I never had any contact with this guy." That denial — given to Rolling Stone, TMZ, and other outlets — ran headfirst into what surfaced at the preliminary hearing. A notarized London travel form. A Vegas trip with Celeste's sister tagging along. Burke sitting with the family in VIP sections and attending their church.

A judge held David Anthony Burke to answer on all counts July 27th — first-degree murder with special circumstances, continuous illegal conduct with a child under fourteen, and mutilation of remains. No bail. The DA is weighing the death penalty and says what was presented was only a fraction of the evidence. But the testimony about what Celeste's parents knew — and what they facilitated — opened a question the DA himself wouldn't answer when reporters asked.

Burke has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Celeste never got to see her fifteenth birthday.

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After five days of preliminary hearing testimony that included DNA evidence, purchase records for chainsaws and body bags, and a twenty-one-minute timeline on the night Celeste Rivas Hernandez disappeared, defense attorney Blair Berk made moves the prosecution didn’t expect. She pressed the medical examiner on self-inflicted wounds. She introduced messages from Celeste. She highlighted three chainsaws that tested negative for blood.

Former prosecutor Eric Faddis examines what Berk is building for trial — a genuine defense theory or a reasonable-doubt machine — and what the defense’s carefully worded claim means: “He did not murder her and he was not the cause of her death.”

Bodycam from February 2024 shows Burke was told she was thirteen. The relationship allegedly continued. The Interscope deal was worth up to nineteen million dollars. Faddis on whether financial-gain special circumstances actually fit this case and what it means for the death penalty.

Burke has pleaded not guilty. Celeste was fourteen.

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After David Anthony Burke’s arrest, Celeste Rivas Hernandez’s father made a public claim through his attorney: he’d never had any contact with the singer. The preliminary hearing produced sworn testimony that said the opposite — church attendance together, a Las Vegas trip with her sister, and a notarized travel form bearing the parents’ signatures that sent their thirteen-year-old daughter to London with a grown man.

Defense attorney and former prosecutor Eric Faddis examines the legal fallout for Celeste’s parents — whether a father’s provable public denial, combined with signed documents and testimony about a pregnancy at thirteen, gives California prosecutors enough for an endangerment case.

Teachers tried to warn authorities. Deputies visited Burke’s home and left. The question Faddis answers: do the people who were supposed to protect Celeste face charges for what they allegedly signed off on?

Burke has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Celeste was fourteen.

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Celeste Rivas Hernandez was pregnant at thirteen, and when she told d4vd that neither of them could care for the baby, his reply came back with a laugh attached. Those words were read into the record at the July 24 session of the preliminary hearing, by LAPD Detective Corey Farell, the prosecution's final witness. This update walks the timeline the way the courtroom heard it, with the pregnancy texts at its core. August 2022, the first messages, when Celeste was eleven. November 2023, the point Farell testified the relationship changed, two months after her thirteenth birthday. January 2024, texts indicating a pregnancy, a procedure two days away, a question Burke said his mother advised him to ask, and an answer from Celeste that carried his name. Then April 23, 2025, and silence. Alongside the texts, Farell described nearly fifty images from Burke's devices that investigators labeled illegal material involving a minor, described to the court but never displayed. Earlier in the session, Dr. Grant Ho of the county medical examiner's office testified that Celeste died from two sharp-force wounds and had been dead at least weeks before anyone found her in the Tesla, and that decomposition closed doors no examination can reopen. Prosecutors say the tattoo of Burke's name in red ink explains the two fingers missing from her hand, and their brief says so in writing. Burke has pleaded not guilty to every count. His defense contested the evidence collection throughout the hearing, and Judge Charlaine Olmedo decides whether the case is held to answer. The texts are the spine of this case, from the first message to the last. This is where they end, and this is what was said before they did.

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Prosecutors put on days of evidence when probable cause needed far less. Smart pressure before trial, or showing the defense their whole hand?

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By seventeen he was signed to Interscope and still in high school. Prosecutors say that by then he had already met Celeste Rivas Hernandez online through gaming, and the age they put on that first contact is the fact that changes how the whole rise reads.

This one is for everybody who has followed the d4vd case from the beginning and keeps circling the same question: who was David Burke before any of this happened?

Tony and Robin build the timeline. Homeschooled after seventh grade. Gospel music only until he turned thirteen. Almost every relationship he had ran through a screen. A mother who told him to stop crying about copyright strikes on his gaming clips and go write his own songs. A deal with Darkroom and Interscope at seventeen, signed while he was still in high school.

And an alter ego named Itami, which is pain in Japanese. Burke described him on camera as an agent of chaos, an evil version of himself in a blindfold, lifted from a manga about a detective who has to solve the murders his other self commits.

He filmed the character with a bloody knife. He animated him taking a woman's arm. He released a video in which he personally drags a body and loads it into a car.

There is a serious counterargument here and it gets made: violent material proves nothing by itself, and plenty of artists build entire careers on darkness and never hurt anyone.

But prosecutors allege Burke did what his character did, and now the whole persona reads differently to everyone who bought it.

Tony and Robin also put the industry on the table. A label valued him in the millions and sold the darkness as the product. Does anyone in that building own a piece of this?

Burke has pleaded not guilty. Celeste Rivas Hernandez was fourteen years old.

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Day three of the preliminary hearing produced the detail that stopped the room. Cell records and Tesla data put Burke's phone and his car off Highway 154 in Santa Barbara County the night prosecutors say Celeste died, and at 12:04 in the morning that phone dialed her number.

For everyone following the d4vd case day by day, this is the evidence conversation. Tony and Robin take the state's exhibits one at a time and hand each one to the defense.

An LAPD criminalist testified that Bluestar reacted strongly on the rubber mats covering the Hollywood Hills garage floor and on the bricks beneath them. A rowing machine, a green tarp, a charging cord, and a trash bag containing wipes all tested presumptive positive. A blue inflatable pool in the same garage showed nothing to the eye, smelled almost like laundry months later, and still produced a glow in one area. Another criminalist physically matched plastic fragments taken during the autopsy to the cuts in that pool.

And in the same room, out in plain view, were jugs. Tested. Negative. Written up. Left in the report.

The defense has a name for what those jugs were, and the whole question is whether that explanation survives being in the same room as everything else the state put on the table.

Blair Berk's cross has been built on absence. Two chain saws whose handles were never swabbed for touch DNA, and a third saw found in a closet that investigators decided was not worth collecting. There were also possible footwear impressions on the pool that were never lifted or compared to any shoe.

Testimony also placed a phone and a Tesla traveling together from that house to a remote part of Santa Barbara County on three separate occasions.

Burke has pleaded not guilty and denies all wrongdoing. Celeste Rivas Hernandez was fourteen years old.

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