D4vd allegedly stabbed 14-year-old Celeste Rivas to death in her Hollywood home on April 23, 2025. He later dismembered her body with a chainsaw in a blue inflatable wading pool in his garage, then placed the remains in the trunk of his Tesla and went on tour.
This is the reconstruction of the Los Angeles prosecutors contained in a brief filed on Wednesday in view of the preliminary hearing. The horror story was made public by Judge Charlaine Olmedo despite the opposition of the rapper's defense team.
According to the prosecution, surveillance videos clearly show that, when it was parked near the Hollywood Hills mansion, the singer was driving the Tesla. As is known, the car was removed in September 2025. Suspicious of the strong odor and the presence of insects, the removal workers called the police, who opened the front trunk. Contained in two bags, Rivas' dismembered and highly decomposed remains were found.
“For weeks or perhaps months the defendant left the victim's body to decompose in the Tesla. He lied to friends, co-workers and other people who had smelled a strong odor in and around the house and vehicle.”
The rapper, real name David Anthony Burke, allegedly first met Rivas when she was 11 and had a sexual relationship with her when she was 13. In February 2024, when the family reported the girl missing, Riverside County authorities contacted him and informed him of Rivas' age. However, the rapper continued to look for her by going to her home in Lake Elsinore and giving a classmate $1,000 to give the girl a phone to stay in touch.
In the messages recovered by investigators there are references to sex, pregnancy, abortion and contraceptives, as well as “explicit photos documenting their sexual relationship”. A message attributed to Rivas and recovered from Burke's iCloud reads: «Let's just have sex and be together, manbut I want something more.”
D4vd reportedly broke up with Rivas in November 2024. However, the two remained in contact. The night before the girl's disappearance there would have been a long argument documented by the messages the two exchanged. They reveal that “the victim was jealous because of the defendant's relationships with other women, as he made her believe they had a future together.” Rivas allegedly threatened D4vd to speak publicly about their relationship, effectively ending his career.
This brings us to April 23, 2025 when the rapper allegedly sent an Uber car to pick up Rivas in Lake Elsinore. It is the night in which the girl, according to the prosecution, was killed. Rivas would arrive in Hollywood Hills around 10.10pm. D4vd sent her messages asking where she was at 10.30pm in order to cover up the murder, given that at that time the girl had already died “stabbed several times”. The rapper would have “stayed and watched while he bled out”. D4vd left the house at 11.30pm to get rid of Rivas' belongings, but continued to call and text her on the phone to create an alibi.
Using a false name, Victoria Mendez, Burke then ordered a shovel from Home Depot (which arrived the next day), two chainsaws, a body bag, heavy-duty laundry bags and a blue inflatable wading pool, delivered by Amazon in early May. He also ordered an incinerator to make the evidence disappear.
He would have used the chainsaw to dismember Rivas' body in the garage, using the paddling pool to prevent the blood from ending up on the floor. The fragments of blue plastic that were found in the wounds inflicted on Rivas would therefore be from the swimming pool. The singer also amputated the girl's left ring finger where the rapper's name was tattooed. Blood samples found in the villa's garage match the girl's genetic profile. His identification was found in January 2026 along a highway in Santa Barbara County.
The defense asked to postpone the preliminary hearing to May 26 to have time to examine the new evidence.
