WARNING: This article contains graphic & disturbing details of an alleged murder & sexual abuse of a minor.

D4vd‘s preliminary hearing in downtown LA today for the alleged murder and sexual abuse of teen Celeste Rivas Hernandez was fleeting. However, a grisly filing from prosecutors Wednesday detailing the ‘Romantic Homicide’ singer’s “horrifying” crimes paints a very vivid and permanent portrait of butchery.

“Knowing he had to silence the victim before she ruined his music career as she had threatened, very soon after her arrival at his home, defendant stabbed the victim to death multiple times and stood by while she bled out,” the brief from the District Attorney’s office claims of 21-year-old D4vd (real name David Anthony Burke) killing then-14-year-old Hernandez on April 23, 2025.

Previously, contacted by Riverside police and the LA County Sheriff’s department and under investigation, D4vd repeatedly denied to authorities he knew Hernandez was a minor or that he had been pursuing her since she was 11-years-old.The prosecution believes D4vd killed Hernandez last year because that night because of her texted jealous threats “to end his career and destroy his life” over their relationship and his involvement with others.

Reported missing by her Riverside parents over a year ago after catching an Uber to the singer’s house, the teen’s rotting, decomposed and dismembered body was finally discovered on September 8, 2025 in an impounded Tesla registered in D4vd’s name. Away on tour at the time the car was opened, the TikTok star promised to work with police in their investigation. On September 16, 2025, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Department positively identified the body from dental records as belonging to the victim,” today’s filing states of just how hacked-up and putrified Hernandez’s remains were.

D4vd was arrested by the LAPD at his residence on April 16 and taken into custody in DTLA where he remains without bail. Potentially facing the death penalty or at least life beind bars, the not guilty pleading D4vd has been charged with first-degree murder and continuous sexual abuse.

With those charges at the fore, the nine-page filing against D4vd today also puts paid to Elmore Leonard‘s notion that it’s many criminals’ sheer stupidity that comes to bite them in the end. In this case, D4vd seems to have left a blatant and easily discovered digital trail that makes any alibi, like leaving messages on Hernandez’s phone after she was dead, crumble.

“Tellingly, defendant …purchased tools to carry out his plot to dismember and dispose of the victim’s body,” the DA’s filing outlines. “On April 24, 2025, defendant ordered a shovel from Home Depot that was delivered to his home from Postmates,” they add, compiling a timeline. “On May 1, 2025, defendant ordered, and subsequently Amazon delivered, two chainsaws to his home. On May 5, 2025, defendant ordered, and Amazon subsequently delivered, a body bag, heavy-duty laundry bags, and a blue inflatable pool to his home. He made these purchases under the fake name Victoria Mendez.”

Along with a series of late night and surveillance camera documented trips to a somewhat isolated area of Santa Barbara County and eventually leaving his car abandoned just up the street from his house, the filng says that “on July 7, 2025, defendant ordered, and subsequently Amazon delivered, a bum cage to his home under the same fake name as part of his plan to incinerate evidence.”

It gets worse.

“Moreover, defendant took horrifying measures to destroy and discard the victim’s body,” the document’s ultimately unsuccessful argument against any continuance adds. “After placing her body into the blue inflatable pool to prevent her blood from spilling onto his garage floor, defendant used a chainsaw and perhaps other tools to cut off her limbs.”

The filing from Deputy DA Beth Silverman and DA Nathan Hochman goes on to reveal how that pool became pivotal to the case: “Small blue plastic fragments were found embedded in the victim’s remains, which were collected by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Department. The fragments were analyzed by the LAPD‘s Forensic Science Division, Trace Analysis Unit. An expert was able to make a physical fit match from the blue fragments to the blue inflatable pool purchased by defendant in May 2025. In order to distance himself from the victim, he amputated her left ring and pinky fingers because her ring finger contained a tattoo of his name. Her fingers have not been recovered.”

Allowing D4vd’s defense lawyers  Blair Berk and Marilyn Bednarski more time to look at the accumulated evidence, including sexual images of Hernandez found on their client’s phone, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo has ordered a preliminary hearing in the case for May 26. Before that, a status hearing will take place at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center on May 12.

Judge Olmedo, who oversaw the rape trials of now incarcerated  That ’70s Show star Danny Masterson, denied the defense’s desire to have today’s graphic filing from the DA’s office sealed.