Girl found dead in D4vid case had abortion
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Text messages between singer D4vd and Celeste Rivas Hernandez shown in court Friday indicate she had gotten pregnant at age 13 and had an abortion more than a year before she was killed.
In one exchange in early January 2024, D4vd, whose legal name is David Burke, apologizes for “putting her through this.”
“It’s okay,” she said in a text, “neither of us are capable of watching and taking care of the baby. it’s for the best no?”
He later apologizes again before asking if it’s his, and she replies, “of course it’s yours David.”
The testimony came during a preliminary hearing where a judge will decide if Burke should go on trial in Rivas Hernandez’s killing. Prosecutors are seeking to prove Burke began sexually abusing Rivas Hernandez when she was 13 and he was 18, then stabbed her to death when she threatened to reveal their long sexual history and crater a career that had earned him millions.
They allege he dismembered the body in his garage, and a police analyst testified in the preliminary hearing that samples pulled from apparent blood stains there matched Rivas Hernandez’s DNA. Her body was discovered in the trunk of a Tesla that had been towed from the Hollywood Hills in September, nearly five months after authorities said she was killed. The Tesla was registered to Burke.
Burke has pleaded not guilty to murder, sexual abuse of a child and mutilation of a body, and his lawyers have said he is innocent.
Prosecutors spent Friday afternoon detailing the nature of the relationship between Burke and Rivas Hernandez. Photos of the two of them kissing and lying in bed were shown in court. The pictures showed that she had “David” tattooed in red ink on a finger — one of two that had been cut off when her body was found.
Then Los Angeles police detective Corey Farrell described one-by-one more than three dozen photos of the two of them that could not be shown in court because they depicted explicit sexual abuse. Rivas Hernandez was 13 and 14 in the photos.



