Text messages read aloud in a Los Angeles courtroom on July 25, 2026, reveal that singer David Anthony Burke, who performs as D4vd, spent weeks in February 2024 coaching his 13-year-old girlfriend Celeste Abigail Rivas Hernandez on how to leave her family home and move in with him under a plan they called “Operation Awesome.” The exchanges, recovered from Burke’s iCloud account and phone records, show him listing what she should pack, when he would drive to Lake Elsinore from his West Hollywood residence, and whether he should hide nearby with a bodyguard so she could slip out undetected. Two days after the final planning messages, her parents reported her missing for the first time. The case advanced to trial after a Los Angeles judge ruled on July 27, 2026 that prosecutors had presented enough evidence for Burke to face three felony counts, including first-degree murder, in the teen’s death.
Burke instructed Rivas Hernandez on packing when she texted that she did not know what to bring, replying that they had already gone over the list for weeks and telling her to take anything he could not immediately replace, including clothes she liked along with makeup, jewelry, and shoes. He promised to arrive with two duffle bags and later confirmed he was driving to Lake Elsinore to pick her up. According to the BBC’s reporting on the Operation Awesome text messages read in court, the relocation plan was detailed across dozens of exchanges in the weeks before her parents first reported her missing.
On February 13, 2024, he asked whether she wanted him to wait in hiding near her house so his bodyguard could walk her to the car. She answered that the idea felt embarrassing. Burke responded that the day ranked as the most important of her life, second only to a wedding day, and asked why she was worrying about embarrassment. Her parents, Jesus Rivas and Mercedes MartĂnez, contacted the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department on February 15, 2024, and filed additional missing person reports on March 19 and April 5 of that year.
The February exchange sits inside a longer chain of messages that began on August 8, 2022, when Rivas Hernandez was 11 and Burke was 17, and continued until April 2025. Prosecutors say the sexual relationship started in November 2023, when she was 13 and he was 18, and that she underwent at least one abortion during the relationship. Earlier reporting on the pregnancy allegations in the amended death certificate notes that the pregnancy status in the year prior to her death was changed to “unknown” in an amendment dated April 22, 2026.
In a January 2024 exchange, Burke apologized for “putting her through this” and asked whether the child was his; she replied that of course it was. In a June 2024 text, after she asked “What [if] the first abortion didn’t work?” Burke wrote “Let’s let this abortion be the last one til we have the real one…” The pair also discussed marriage in Italy, obtaining travel documents, and living together without police interference. Matching tattoos of each other’s first names appeared on their ring fingers, and a second set of matching tattoos reading “Shhh” appeared on their index fingers.
Rivas Hernandez, born September 7, 2010, grew up in Lake Elsinore with parents who had immigrated from El Salvador. Neighbors later recalled she had run away from home on multiple occasions. After the February 2024 missing report, investigators contacted Burke, who claimed he had met the girl only once and believed she was 18. Authorities performed a welfare check at his West Hollywood residence, yet the contact continued. Burke allegedly paid a classmate $1,000 to deliver a new phone so the pair could keep communicating after her parents confiscated the original device.
The pair “broke up” in November 2024 but remained in contact, according to a prosecution memo. By March 2025, Rivas Hernandez texted that she wanted only an online friendship because all they did was have sex and hang out. Prosecutors allege that on April 22, 2025, the two argued and she threatened to expose the relationship. The following evening, an Uber carried her from Lake Elsinore to Burke’s Hollywood Hills home.
Rivas Hernandez’s badly decomposed remains were discovered on September 8, 2025, inside two body bags in the front trunk of a Tesla registered to Burke after the vehicle had been impounded for parking violations. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide caused by multiple penetrating injuries. Earlier coverage of the body being discovered in the Tesla traces the early LAPD investigation that eventually led to Burke’s arrest. Dr. Grant Ho of the medical examiner’s office testified at the preliminary hearing that it was “extremely difficult to tell” exactly when she died, owing to the state of decomposition. Burke was arrested on April 16, 2026, and charged with first-degree murder, continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14, and unlawful mutilation of human remains. He has pleaded not guilty and remains held without bail.
The preliminary hearing that concluded July 27, 2026, resulted in an order that he stand trial. According to the Courthouse News dispatch from inside the Los Angeles preliminary hearing, testimony spanned five days and featured a dozen prosecution witnesses. A post-preliminary arraignment is scheduled for August 31, 2026, with trial expected within 90 days.
According to the ABC News coverage of the judge’s July 27 ruling that Burke will stand trial, the prosecution presented evidence including the full set of text messages, photos of the abuse recovered from Burke’s phone, purchases of chainsaws, a body bag, and a blue inflatable pool under the alias “Travion Davis” shortly after the alleged date of death, blue plastic fragments embedded in Rivas Hernandez’s right knee that forensic testing matched to the damaged pool, and DNA recovered from the garage of the Hollywood Hills residence.
Burke’s music career had risen rapidly through viral tracks on TikTok, including “Romantic Homicide” and “Here With Me,” which earned him a recording agreement with Darkroom and Interscope. His worldwide tour was cancelled after his arrest. According to the Rolling Stone coverage of the case advancing to trial, the music industry’s reckoning with abuse and exploitation has intensified as Burke’s case joins a growing list of high-profile allegations against chart-topping artists.
The Operation Awesome messages force a hard look at how a relationship between an adult musician and a middle school student could continue in plain sight for so long. Local law enforcement received repeated missing person reports, yet the contact persisted. The language of permanence, wedding references, joint living plans, and bodyguard-assisted departures reveals a level of calculation that prosecutors now present as evidence of ongoing control. The defense has indicated it will challenge the interpretation of certain forensic findings and the precise circumstances of the fatal injuries. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman told reporters his office had presented only a “small fraction” of the evidence and has not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty. The case also fits a broader pattern of underage-accusation scandals roiling the hip-hop industry, and parallels another recent music-industry child-endangerment controversy that has drawn public scrutiny.
Whatever the eventual verdict, the February 2024 texts already demonstrate that the two discussed a shared future in concrete logistical terms at a moment when Rivas Hernandez was still 13 and her parents were already searching for her. That single exchange continues to shape public understanding of a case that has moved from viral music success to a murder trial in which a capital sentence remains on the table.
