More than six months after the body of a teenage girl was found in his abandoned Tesla, it emerged this week that the singer D4vd is the target of a Los Angeles county grand jury investigation.
In previously sealed subpoenas issued last month and recently obtained by the Associated Press, prosecutors described the 20-year-old artist, who is popular for hits such as Romantic Homicide, as the target in the legal case over the death of Celeste Rivas Hernandez.
The documents say the target, David Burke, the Houston-born singer’s legal name, “may be involved in having committed the following criminal offenses against the laws of the State of California, to wit: One count of Murder”.
While police sources told media in November that Burke had been identified as a suspect, authorities had not publicly named Burke as a suspect.
The body of Rivas Hernandez was found in an abandoned Tesla registered to Burke on 8 September 2025, just one day after she would have turned 15. Her family had reported her missing from her home town of Lake Elsinore, about 70 miles (112km ) south-east of Los Angeles, in 2024.
In court documents, authorities state that Rivas Hernandez was 14 when she was killed. The Tesla in which her body was found was registered in Burke’s name at the address of family members, who officials sought to subpoena in the case. The singer’s mother, father and brother have appealed against the subpoenas, which made the documents public.
The subpoenas reveal new details in the case, not previously made public, regarding the discovery of the girl’s body.
The 2023 Tesla Model Y where she was found had been towed from an upscale neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills where it had been seemingly abandoned. According to court documents, police investigators searching the vehicle in a tow yard found a cadaver bag “covered with insects and a strong odor of decay”.
It says “detectives partially unzipped the bag and observed a decomposed head and torso.” Investigators from the Los Angeles county medical examiner’s office responded to the scene.
“Upon removing the cadaver bag from the front storage compartment, it was discovered the arms and legs had been severed from the body,” the document says. “A second black bag was discovered underneath the cadaver bag. Upon opening the second bag, the dismembered body parts were discovered.”
The medical examiner’s office had previously said only that the body was found severely decomposed and that Rivas Hernandez had probably been dead for an extended period before she was found. No cause of death has been revealed at this time, and in November, Los Angeles police got a judge to prevent the chief medical examiner, Dr Odey Ukpo, from releasing the findings of the autopsy.
Burke was in the middle of a US tour and continued to play several shows after the girl’s body was found. But he eventually cancelled the rest of his concerts and a European tour after his connection to the case became widely reported.
Representatives for D4vd did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday, and they have not previously responded to emails from the AP seeking comment on the case.
A judge in Texas said Burke’s family members could not ignore the subpoenas and ordered them to appear in California and testify.
