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A Los Angeles prosecutor said that the singer D4vd, who was charged this week in the killing of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, was in possession of a “significant amount of child pornography”.
Police allegedly found the images on the iCloud account of the 21-year-old singer, whose legal name is David Anthony Burke.
The images, prosecutors said, were found during the investigation into the killing of Celeste, whose dismembered and decomposed remains were found in September in the trunk of a Tesla that was registered to the musician and had been abandoned in the Hollywood Hills.
Burke has pleaded not guilty. His legal team has said he did not kill the girl and that evidence would show “he was not the cause of her death”.
Burke was in court on Thursday during the proceedings where prosecutor Beth Silverman alleged police came across the child sexual abuse material after executing a search warrant on the singer’s phone and iCloud storage, the Los Angeles Times first reported.
The case, which had progressed quietly for months since the discovery of Celeste’s remains, has seen major developments since last week when police arrested Burke. On Monday, he was charged with first-degree murder, continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14 and unlawful mutilation of human remains.
Nathan Hochman, the LA district attorney, said during a press conference on Monday that Burke engaged in a sexual relationship with Celeste that began when she was 13, and authorities believe he killed her to prevent her from reporting on the relationship and to protect his lucrative music career.
The teenager went to Burke’s home on 23 April 2025 and was never heard from again, Hochman said. A criminal complaint alleges Burke killed Celeste with a sharp object and dismembered the body about two weeks later.
Burke faces first-degree murder with special circumstances of lying in wait, allegedly killing the teen for financial gain, and murdering a witness to an investigation.
The Los Angeles county medical examiner revealed on Wednesday that Celeste died from penetrating injuries and had significant wounds to her torso, including one that penetrated the liver. The condition of her remains delayed the medical examiner’s ability to determine her cause of death, police have said, and her body was so degraded examiners could not determine her eye color.
Burke’s attorneys have pushed the prosecution to publicly present the evidence they have against him quickly. The singer took the unusual step of exercising his right to have a judge decide whether there is enough evidence to move to trial within 10 court days of arraignment. Few defendants choose to exercise that right.
A judge set a hearing for next week in which prosecutors are expected to lay out the evidence against Burke publicly.
Silverman has said the prosecution is eager to present evidence, and that investigators collected about “40 terabytes” in the case. But it will take time to share the vast quantity, Silverman said on Thursday, particularly due to the sensitive materials found on Burke’s phone.
“I cannot turn that type of materials over,” Silverman said.
The evidence includes the contents of Burke’s phone and iCloud accounts, items seized from many search warrants and a huge amount of forensic material, Silverman said, as well as witness testimony given to grand juries.
Celeste’s remains were found a day after she would have turned 15. Her family had reported her missing from her home town of Lake Elsinore, about 70 miles (110km) from Los Angeles, in 2024. The seventh-grader had run away, and later returned home before leaving again, police have said.
On Tuesday, Jesus Rivas and Mercedes Martinez, Celeste’s parents, made their first public statement, calling their daughter “a beautiful, strong girl who loved to sing and dance”.
“We love her very much and she always told us that she loved us,” they said. “We miss her deeply. All we want is justice for Celeste.”
The Associated Press contributed
