Singer must stand trial for 14-y-o’s killing

A judge ruled on Monday that there is enough evidence to put singer D4vd (pronounced David) on trial in the killing and dismemberment of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez.
The authorities said she had threatened to expose their relationship and crater his career. Los Angeles Judge Charlaine Olmedo decided the evidence prosecutors presented at a preliminary hearing that spanned five days provided probable cause for a trial on charges of murder, continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14, and unlawful mutilation of human remains. D4vd, the 21-year-old singer born David Burke, whose career was steeply rising before the allegations emerged, has pleaded not guilty.
“The people have met their burden on all counts,” Olmedo said. She ordered that D4vd continue to be held without bail. Olmedo emphasised that the probable cause standard for a preliminary hearing like this is much lower than the threshold at trial. However, prosecutors asserted the evidence was overwhelming.
“Based on the mountains of evidence presented, all of the allegations have been proved way beyond the standard required,” Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman said. D4vd had no visible reaction to the decision. The defence declined to comment outside court.
Prosecutors on Monday wrapped up their case by giving a moment-by-moment account of Rivas Hernandez’s last night, showing that, after a stream of text messages with Burke, her phone went permanently silent when she arrived at his home. Prosecutors allege the singer stabbed her to death when she came through the door. 
The night before, the two argued via text about his relationship with a woman. She sent him an angry and profane text saying she would tell her dad lies about him and would end his career and life. Detective Corey Farrell of the Los Angeles Police Department, under questioning from the prosecution, read the texts that were obtained from warrants on the singer’s iPhone and iCloud accounts.
After the final witness on Monday, the defence argued that the evidence was insufficient and the murder charge should be dismissed.
“There’s no evidence that Mr Burke harboured a deliberate intent to kill Miss Hernandez,” said Burke’s attorney, Marilyn Bednarski. She said the communications between them showed “no threat, no evidence of a history of violence” and that he had “the opposite of homicidal malice” toward her.
She argued that a medical examiner ruling that her death was a homicide from two puncture wounds was too vague and inconclusive to be evidence of murder. The defence showed several other texts from Rivas Hernandez threatening the singer about their relationship, and saying she would go to the singer’s mother, talk to his friends and “leak” information about them.
Under questioning from defence attorney Blair Berk, Farrell said he saw no indication that she ever threatened to go to police or pursue any legal action against him. The defence also established that she had asked seven times to come to see him in the days before her death, and he reluctantly agreed only after she demanded it, and that she had threatened to kill and mutilate him. The defence argued that all of the malice had come from her. The detective also said under questioning from Berk that the parents of both the singer and the teen knew about their relationship, that he had attended church with members of her family and that her parents had given their consent for her to go to London with him for a week.
Prosecutors allege Burke dismembered the body in his garage. A police analyst testified earlier in the hearing that samples pulled from apparent blood stains there matched her DNA. The teen’s body was found in a Tesla registered to the singer nearly five months later.
D4vd became an online musical phenomenon as a teen. He had huge followings on TikTok, Soundcloud and Spotify, where his top songs, including his 2022 breakthrough Romantic Homicide, have more than a billion plays.