The Celeste Rivas Case: d4vd's Charges, the Full Timeline, and the Trial Ahead

On September 8, 2025, a tow yard in Hollywood processed a 2023 Tesla Model Y that had been sitting on a Hollywood Hills street for weeks. When LAPD investigators opened the front trunk, they found a cadaver bag. Inside were the dismembered remains of a teenage girl, decomposed beyond recognition.

The car was registered to David Burke — the 20-year-old singer known to millions as d4vd, whose melancholy bedroom-pop had gone from Fortnite montages to hundreds of millions of streams. The girl, identified eight days later by dental records, was Celeste Rivas Hernandez of Lake Elsinore. She was 14.

Eleven months later, Burke sits in a Los Angeles jail without bail, charged with first-degree murder, child sexual abuse, and mutilating human remains — and a judge has ruled the case goes to trial. He has pleaded not guilty to everything, and he is presumed innocent unless and until a jury says otherwise. What follows is what is actually established in the record: the timeline prosecutors have assembled, the rulings a court has already made, and the schedule for what comes next.

The girl from Lake Elsinore

Celeste Rivas Hernandez was a seventh-grader when her name first entered a police file. In February 2024 she was reported missing from her home in Lake Elsinore, in Riverside County. When sheriff's investigators pulled her phone records, they found a number belonging to David Burke — then a fast-rising 18-year-old star. Deputies contacted him on February 17, 2024; per the prosecution's account, he said he didn't know she was a minor. Celeste came home two days later.

Prosecutors allege the contact did not stop there — that Burke paid one of Celeste's classmates $1,000 to give her a phone so they could keep communicating, and that through 2024 she spent time with him at his Hollywood Hills home and on trips as far as Las Vegas, Texas, and London. In April 2024 she was reported missing again. She never returned.

The state's charging documents go further back: prosecutors allege the two first met in January 2022, when Celeste was 11, and that a sexual relationship began in November 2023 — she was 13; Burke was 18. Those allegations are the foundation of the child sexual abuse counts. They are, like everything else in this file, allegations the defense will contest at trial.

April 23, 2025: the night prosecutors say she died

The prosecution's theory of the killing, laid out in charging documents and at the preliminary hearing, is precise. On April 22, 2025, Burke and Celeste argued — and she threatened, in the state's telling, to expose the relationship and "end his career and destroy his life." The next night, April 23, an Uber dropped her at Burke's rented Hollywood Hills home around 10:10 p.m. Prosecutors allege Burke stabbed her multiple times shortly after she arrived — the medical examiner would eventually attribute her death to two penetrating injuries to the torso — and by 11:30 p.m. was driving toward Santa Barbara County, texting her phone as he went: messages the state characterizes as a cover story being written in real time.

What prosecutors presented next reads like a purchasing ledger. A shovel, ordered the following day. Two chainsaws, ordered under a false name on May 1. A body bag, heavy-duty laundry bags, and an inflatable pool on May 5 — the day the state believes her body was dismembered. A "burn cage" in July. Two more drives to the Santa Barbara area, where a Caltrans worker would later find Celeste's passport card along State Route 154. And on July 29, 2025, the Tesla was parked on a Hollywood Hills street and left there — until the tow, and the discovery, six weeks later.

One more date sits in the middle of that sequence, and it is the one the internet has never let go of: on April 25, 2025 — two days after the alleged killing — Burke released his debut album Withered. The video for one of its songs depicts a bloodied body being placed in the trunk of a car.

From undetermined to homicide to arrest

The condition of the remains meant answers came slowly. The initial death certificate, issued September 29, 2025, listed the cause as undetermined. Investigators searched Burke's home on September 17, seizing a computer — and finding material in the garage that tested positive for blood matching Celeste's DNA. By November he was publicly a suspect; in December 2025 the medical examiner ruled the death a homicide.

Through early 2026 a grand jury worked in the background — Burke's own parents were subpoenaed and, after fighting the subpoenas in a Texas court, ordered to testify. On April 16, 2026, Burke was arrested at a Hollywood Hills residence. Four days later, LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced the charges: first-degree murder, continuous sexual abuse of a child, lewd acts with a child under 14, and unlawful mutilation of human remains. The alleged motive, in Hochman's framing: Burke killed her to protect his career. The complaint attached special-circumstance allegations to the murder count — murder of a witness, murder for financial gain, and murder by means of lying in wait — plus an allegation that Burke personally used a deadly weapon, "a sharp instrument." Those three phrases are why the stakes in this case have no ceiling: a special-circumstance conviction in California means life without parole or the death penalty, a choice the DA's office has said it will make later. Prosecutors also told the court that Burke's phone — part of more than 40 terabytes of seized data — contained a "significant amount" of child sexual abuse material. Burke pleaded not guilty to all counts.

The preliminary hearing: five days, one ruling

Over five days in late July 2026, Judge Charlaine Olmedo heard the state's evidence: the garage blood testimony, the purchase records, the cellphone geolocation, the explicit messages, the Santa Barbara drives. Defense attorney Marilyn Bednarski tested the state's case — a preliminary hearing is not a trial, and the defense's full answer is still to come — but the bar at this stage is only probable cause. On July 27, 2026, Olmedo ruled: there is enough evidence for David Burke to stand trial.

Arraignment day: not guilty — and a stunning change of lawyers

The August 31 arraignment produced the case's biggest procedural twist yet. After the lawyers met with Judge Olmedo in chambers, defense attorney Blair Berk — one of Los Angeles's best-known private defense lawyers — told the court that her client wanted to be represented by the public defender. "Is that your wish, Mr. Burke?" Olmedo asked. "Yes," he answered. Deputy Public Defender Walid Fouad Kandeel, who had been sitting in the gallery, stepped forward as Burke's new counsel; Berk and co-counsel Regina Peter were out. Neither side said why.

Kandeel asked to postpone the arraignment to study the case; Olmedo denied the continuance and entered not guilty pleas to every count on Burke's behalf, promising the new defense team preparation time later. In a statement, Berk's office said the court granted its request to withdraw "after it was determined David qualified for appointed counsel" — a striking line about an artist who charted globally two years ago, and one that echoes the prosecution's own theory that this case has consumed his career. The Public Defender's Office extended sympathies to Celeste's family while pledging Burke "a defense that takes his circumstances seriously." DA Nathan Hochman's response: "I'm sure the Public Defender will give him a zealous representation."

What happens next

• October 19, 2026 — all parties return to court before Judge Olmedo, with the new defense team's preparation timeline (and any time waiver) likely to shape when trial actually starts.
• The 90-day clock. Under California's speedy-trial rules, trial must begin within roughly 90 days of arraignment unless Burke waives time — but a brand-new defense team taking over 40 terabytes of discovery makes a waiver, and a later trial date, the realistic expectation.
• The stakes. With the special-circumstance allegations, a first-degree murder conviction means life without parole — or death, if prosecutors elect to seek it. Burke remains held without bail.

We track every date in this case alongside the rest of the year's major hearings on our court dates tracker, and this file will be updated as the trial approaches.

Why this case file matters

Strip away the celebrity and this is a case about a 13-year-old whose disappearance was reported, investigated, and closed when she came home — and about everything that allegedly happened after the system moved on. It is also, legally, a case that has decided nothing yet: every fact above from the state's side is an allegation awaiting a jury, which is why the difference between charged and convicted matters more here than in almost any case we cover. Celeste's family, in their only public statement, described "a beautiful, strong girl who loved to sing and dance." What they asked for is the thing the next few months will decide: "All we want is justice for Celeste."

Case status as of this writing: David Burke (d4vd) is charged with first-degree murder, continuous sexual abuse of a child, lewd acts with a child under 14, and unlawful mutilation of human remains; he has pleaded not guilty to all charges and is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. He was ordered to stand trial on July 27, 2026, and arraigned August 31, 2026, with not guilty pleas entered to all counts; he is now represented by the Los Angeles County Public Defender's Office, and all parties return to court October 19, 2026. This article is based on charging documents, preliminary-hearing coverage, medical examiner findings, and contemporaneous reporting by CNN, ABC7, NBC Los Angeles, Deadline, and others. Featured image: AI illustration of a Hollywood Hills street at dusk created for this article; it does not depict real persons, vehicles, or locations from the case.