How Did D4VD's Relationship With Celeste Hide In Plain Sight?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers, Half Year in Review. A look back at some of the most compelling cases of 2026 so far.
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:15)
January 24th, a Twitch live stream, an 18-year-old singer and a 13-year-old girl laughing, talking into the early morning hours, sitting next to each other on camera for the world to see. And then near the end, he looks over, laughs, and says two words, delete everything. Delete everything.
Those words didn't delete anything. The live stream was archived, the relationship had captured, kept going, allegedly. And 14 months later, according to prosecutors, the girl sitting next to him in that video, a child named Celeste Rivas Hernandez, 13 at the time, walked into his Hollywood Hills home and was never seen or heard from again.
Her name was Celeste. She was from Lake Elsinore, California. Her parents immigrated from El Salvador. She was reported missing three separate times in the final year of her life. And the man prosecutors allege is responsible for her death, David Anthony Burke, the 21 year old now singer known professionally as David, D4VD has now been formally charged with her murder. Your thoughts in the comment section as we work our way through the latest in this story. And I guess the inevitable of what has finally transpired with charges now being brought against Burke. That aren't just severe.
They tell a story. And the story that Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office is telling is one of calculation, silence and self-preservation at the cost of a child's life. Now, I want to caution everybody, we're going to go through all of the charges. I'm going to say this and it's in no way try to stand up for David. But we are at the very beginning of this case. I know it's been dragging on forever, but truly, now that charges have been brought, we are at the very beginning of the new chapter in the case, I should say. We've turned the page, we've turned the leaf, we're going in a new direction here. And anytime this happens, anytime you have charges being brought by a district attorney, by a prosecutor, they basically have the stage right now. Whatever they're going to say, the full attention of the audience is on them. There's no one on that stage at this moment saying, uh-uh, I don't think so.

**Shavaun Scott** (2:52)
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

**Tony Brueski** (2:54)
Hold on a second here.
What you're saying, we don't agree with, we don't think that that's true. Now, that could be because someone's defending someone who's guilty, or could be because someone's defending somebody who is not guilty, someone who has a story that the DA's version of events may not be completely accurate to reality. That's why we have courts. That's why this is likely going to go to trial at some point in time. So both sides can present their case and say, here's why we think we're innocent. Here's why we think you're guilty. Then it's up to a jury of his peers, 12 people to decide who they actually believe. But in the noise of all of this at this moment in time, it is the stage of the DA and the prosecution. They're bringing the charges and it sounds pretty nasty, and it sounds pretty horrible. But before we make a full judgment here on anything, let's hear what he has to say. The defense of David has said that they have not gotten all of their discovery materials yet. Prosecution saying there's like 40 some terabytes of digital information, which at the end of the day, it's going to be pretty pretty damning if there's some stuff on there that points to guilt. Digital trails, Google histories, text messages, emails, all of it, all of that. If there's stuff within that, they point to David being, number one, calculating, planning the death of Celeste. Number two, the cover up of what happened to her and the motive behind all of that. The DA seems to think that they got quite a case here, so much so that they're saying this was done to further his career.
Not like killing somebody is going to help you go further in life, but more so killing somebody will prevent someone from not going further in life, meaning if information were to come out that an adult is having a relationship with a child, that might hinder one's musical career or ticket sales or album sales. At least you think it would. I mean, yeah, we got a great track record in this country of supporting folks like that. Well into the darkness. At a press conference on April 20th, 2026, DA Nathan Hockman stood alongside LAPD Chief Jim McDonald and laid out the most serious charges his office can bring. First-degree murder with special circumstances, continuous s-abuse of a minor, ludicrous acts with an individual under the age of 14, mutilation of human remains. Hockman called it a brutal and horrific act. And yeah, it wasn't wrong. But the special circumstances attached to the big charge of murder, where the prosecution's theories become something more than a charge seat, they become a a motive map, if you will.