Platinum-selling singer D4vd pleaded not guilty Monday at his rearraignment on charges he sexually abused 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez before killing and dismembering her and concealing her remains in the front trunk of his Tesla. He also switched out his defense team, replacing high-profile lawyers Blair Berk and Marilyn Bednarski with two public defenders.
After the hearing, Bednarski said “there is no conflict,” and that D4vd, born David Anthony Burke, made the decision. She declined to say how he might qualify for a publicly funded defense considering his financial success as a recording artist.
“This morning, the court granted our request to withdraw as counsel and appoint the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, after it was determined David qualified for appointed counsel,” Berk, Bednarski, and third lawyer Regina Peter said in a written statement handed out in the hallway outside the courtroom. “We continue to support David and his defense against these serious charges. We are grateful that the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office had taken over the representation and that David has a highly capable and committed team of attorneys and investigators behind him.”
After the hearing, Burke smiled and shook hands with Berk and Peter. He appeared to look around for Bednarski before deputies led him back into custody.
Burke’s new lawyer, Los Angeles County Public Defender Walid Kandeel, asked to delay Burke’s arraignment following the preliminary hearing so he could review transcripts in the case. Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo denied the request, noting that Burke still faced the same three charges filed against him when he was arrested in April.
“[The new charging document] is three counts, the same three in the complaint. It’s not particularly complicated. I don’t think you need to review,” Olmedo said. Kandeel then entered a not guilty plea on Burke’s behalf. Olmedo set the next hearing for Oct. 19. No trial date has been set.
Monday’s hearing came after Rolling Stone published an investigation into the “Romantic Homicide” singer earlier this month that detailed a pattern of concerning behavior, much of which predated his alleged abuse of the girl.
Burke, 21, is fighting charges he murdered Rivas Hernandez while lying in wait, for financial gain, and to prevent her from reporting the alleged sexual abuse. He also faces charges of continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14 and unlawful mutilation of human remains.
A five-day preliminary hearing ended in late July with Judge Olmedo ruling that prosecutors had presented enough evidence to send him to trial. About a dozen witnesses testified, most of them law enforcement officers, though prosecutors also called financial employees from Burke’s management company and his record label, Darkroom/Interscope, part of Universal Music Group.
“It appears to me, for the purposes of preliminary hearing, the people have met their burden of proof on all charges,” Olmedo said. “I order that Mr. Burke be held to answer.”
Prosecutors allege Burke sexually abused Rivas Hernandez for more than a year before killing her on April 23, 2025, after the 14-year-old threatened to expose him. They say he dismembered her body in his garage with a chainsaw, placed her torso and head in a cadaver bag and her limbs in a black laundry bag, then concealed the remains in the Tesla Model X with air fresheners scattered around the vehicle.
Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman called Burke a “very clever adult” who groomed and “gaslit” Rivas Hernandez. She argued investigators had presented a “mountain of evidence” that easily cleared the relatively low threshold required at a preliminary hearing. “We have a minor who was sexually abused for many, many months,” Silverman told the judge. “She was groomed.”
Silverman said sexually graphic messages between the pair included discussions of contraception, pregnancy, and abortion. Even after Burke ended their relationship in late 2024, she argued, he “continued to use the victim for sex,” contributing to the emotional turmoil reflected in Rivas Hernandez’s messages.
Messages and photographs recovered from Burke’s iCloud account and a phone seized from his residence showed Rivas Hernandez discussing pregnancy and an abortion with him in January 2024, when she was 13, and he was an adult. Messages spanning November 2023 through April 2025 showed she repeatedly expressed fears about becoming pregnant.
Burke told the girl he wanted her to live with him and that they would marry. When she wrote in June 2024 that she feared the abortion had failed and that she might still be pregnant, he mocked her concern. “You would have a baby bump lmao you had hella periods since then. What the fuck you smoke?” he wrote in an exchange presented at the hearing. “Nah first baby gone.”
Burke and Rivas Hernandez “broke up” in November 2024, prosecutors say, but the sexual abuse continued. By March 2025, she appeared increasingly frustrated. “All we do is have sex and just hang out man I want more than that for myself,” she texted Burke.
On April 22, 2025, the pair argued at length over text messages as Rivas Hernandez expressed jealousy over Burke’s relationship with Aysia Collins, a friend and stylist on his Withered tour. During the exchange, Rivas Hernandez threatened to reveal their relationship and ruin his career. She said she wanted to see Burke, and he agreed to send a car.
Burke’s lawyers argued during the preliminary hearing that prosecutors failed to establish that he killed Rivas Hernandez, much less that he planned her death in advance. Defense lawyer Marilyn Bednarski said Rivas Hernandez invited herself over that night and Burke was still playing a multiplayer virtual-reality game around the time she arrived.
Bednarski also pointed to scores of messages in which Burke expressed affection for Rivas Hernandez, saying they showed “the opposite of homicidal animus.” “Dismemberment is post-mortem conduct. It says nothing about what caused the death, when, where or how,” she argued. “We cannot impute malice from concealment.”
After Olmedo ordered Burke to stand trial, a lawyer for Rivas Hernandez’s parents criticized the defense for suggesting she may have been suicidal or violent toward Burke. “The family was horrified that the defense attorneys brought up evidence to put the blame on a 14-year-old child,” lawyer Patrick Steinfeld said.
Steinfeld also disputed Burke’s claim that Rivas Hernandez initially told him she was 18. He pointed to evidence that sheriff’s deputies contacted Burke in February 2024, after her parents reported her missing, and told him she was 13.
“He knew because he was told in February of 2024 that Celeste was only 13 years old,” Steinfeld said.
Swiftiephylus amator and Swiftiephylus taylorae, two of the bugs named after Taylor Swift because of their blonde and red coloring. Courtesy of Brad Balukjian, Ph.D.