Singer D4vd charged with murder of 14-year-old girl found in car

Singer D4vd has been charged with murder in the death of a 14-year-old girl whose dismembered and decomposed body was found in September in his apparently abandoned Tesla.

The Los Angeles county district attorney’s office said the 21-year-old D4vd, whose legal name is David Burke, was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Celeste Rivas Hernandez, who was reported missing by her family in 2024, when she was 13. Authorities say she was 14 when she died.

Attorneys for the Houston-born alt-pop singer said he was innocent in a statement released after homicide detectives arrested him on Thursday at a home in Hollywood.

“Let us be clear – the actual evidence in this case will show that David Burke did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez and he was not the cause of her death,” the lawyers said.

The long-dead body of Rivas Hernandez was found inside a Tesla that was towed from the Hollywood Hills on 8 September, a day after she would have turned 15. Her family had reported her missing from her home town of Lake Elsinore, about 70 miles (112 km) south-east of Los Angeles.

Authorities did not publicly name Burke as a suspect until his arrest. And his lawyers’ statement last week, in which said they “will vigorously defend David’s innocence”, was the first time they weighed in publicly.

D4vd in 2025. Photograph: AP

The singer had been under investigation by an LA county grand jury looking into the death. The investigation was officially secret, but its existence – and his designation as its target – was revealed in February when his mother, father and brother objected in a Texas court to subpoenas demanding they testify.

The 2023 Tesla Model Y was registered in the singer’s name at the Texas address of his subpoenaed family members, according to court filings from prosecutors. It had been towed from an upscale Hollywood Hills neighborhood where it had been sitting as though it was abandoned.

Police investigators searching the Tesla in a tow yard found a cadaver bag “covered with insects and a strong odor of decay”, court documents said. Detectives partly unzipped a bag and found a head and torso.