Courts and Crime blogherads.adq.push(function () ); D4vd Texts Suggest He Got Celeste Rivas Hernandez Pregnant at 13, Talked Her Through Abortion: LAPD Messages between the singer and Celeste Rivas Hernandez were shared in court, along with descriptions of child sex abuse material allegedly found on D4vd’s phone By Nancy Dillon, Jon Blistein July 24, 2026 David Anthony Burke, a.k.a. D4vd, in March 2025 in Paris Antoine Flament/Getty Images D4vd exchanged a series of text messages with his alleged murder victim Celeste Rivas Hernandez about an abortion she purportedly had in January 2024, when she was 13 and he was an adult, according to phone records presented today by prosecutors. The messages were recovered from the singer’s iCloud account and presented alongside what investigators described as an extensive collection of child sexual abuse material involving Rivas Hernandez, found on a phone seized from his Los Angeles home.
The platinum-selling singer, whose legal name is David Anthony Burke, is accused of killing Rivas Hernandez on April 23, 2025, after she threatened to disclose the alleged abuse. Prosecutors say he later dismembered her body with a chainsaw inside a blue inflatable pool in his three-car garage. Burke has denied the allegations.
Testifying as the prosecution’s final witness at a hearing to determine whether Burke should stand trial, Detective Corey Farell of the Los Angeles Police Department read the messages aloud and described dozens of images that he said documented Burke’s sexual abuse of Rivas Hernandez. Prosecutors said the images, which depicted sex acts at Burke’s home, were too sensitive to display in court. Farell said one screenshot recovered from Burke’s phone showed that his lock screen at one point was a photograph of him and Rivas Hernandez embracing while both were naked from the waist up. blogherads.adq.push(function () { blogherads .defineSlot( 'medrec', 'gpt-dsk-tab-article-inbody-uid0' ) .setTargeting( 'pos', ["mid-article","mid","in-article1","mid-article1","inbody","inbody1"] ) .setTargeting( 'viewable', 'yes' ) .setSubAdUnitPath("music\/article\/inbody1") .addSize([[300,250],[620,350],[2,2],[3,3],[2,4],[4,2],[640,250],[6,6],[620,366]]) .setClsOptimization("minsize") ; }); During a description of one graphic photo, Rivas Hernandez’s mother, Mercedes Martínez, began to cry while seated in the gallery.
Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman walked over to comfort Martínez, telling her, “I really think this is stuff you don’t need to hear. I just think it’s too much.” Martínez then got up and walked out of the courtroom in tears, along with Jesus Rivas, the teen’s father. The text messages, spanning November 2023 through April 2025, showed that Rivas Hernandez repeatedly told Burke she feared she was pregnant.
The earliest such message presented in court was from late November 2023, around the time prosecutors allege Burke began a sexual relationship with her. blogherads.adq.push(function () { blogherads .defineSlot( 'medrec', 'gpt-dsk-tab-article-inbody2-uid1' ) .setTargeting( 'pos', ["mid-article2","mid","in-article2","mid-article","inbody","inbody2"] ) .setTargeting( 'viewable', 'yes' ) .setSubAdUnitPath("music\/article\/inbody2") .addSize([[300,250],[300,251],[620,350],[2,4],[4,2],[3,3],[2,2],[6,6],[620,366]]) .setLazyLoadMultiplier(2) .setClsOptimization("minsize") ; }); Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century “Currently [manifesting] my period bc I refuse to have kids,” Rivas Hernandez wrote. Burke allegedly replied, “Did you miss your date.” He urged her to begin tracking her menstrual cycle with an app. According to Farell’s testimony, Rivas Hernandez did get pregnant and allegedly had an abortion in early January 2024.
In the days before the termination, Rivas Hernandez texted Burke, “Both of us aren’t able to take care of it.” Burke allegedly replied, “you’re sm [so much] stronger than me baby lmao,” and “I love you.” He then told Rivas Hernandez his mother had advised him to question paternity if he ever found himself “in this situation.” He asked, “It is mine right?” Rivas Hernandez replied: “Of course it’s yours David.” He then asked when the appointment was, told her “it should take 45,” and followed up after, asking, “how it go,” saying he felt like he was the one “waiting for test results,” the detective testified. Burke’s communication with Rivas Hernandez dated back to 2022, when Rivas Hernandez would have been 11 years old, Farell testified. The singer’s texts, as read in court, were often sexually explicit and controlling.
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