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- [00:04]
A
A singer at the top of his music career accused of murder.
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I played with her in the car, she was like, David, this song is too violent. You're talking about killing people in your music. No, not my son. I was like, wait, I might be on to something.
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Correct.
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So I dropped it right after that and it went crazy. TikTok viral. Million views overnight.
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What police found inside of hitmaker David's garage in the online paper trail that linked a missing 14 year old to the Hollywood Hill's home. This one made me sick to my stomach. Let's get into the details. I'm Lyndon Blake and you're listening to. That's so criminal.
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That's so criminal.
- [00:51]
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There has been a bombshell arrest in the case of murdered 14 year old Celeste Rivas Hernandez. And the guy now behind bars just so happens to have a hit song called Romantic Homicide. You may not know his name, he goes by David on stage. Real name David Anthony Burke. But if you've spent any time online over the last several years, you know his music. One of his biggest hits, like I just mentioned, Romantic Homicide. Here are some of the lyrics of the song. In the back of my mind you died and I didn't even cry. No, not a single tear. If that song doesn't ring a bell, which now looking back at these lyrics, it is eerie. There's this other song that went mega viral called Here with me, a lovely song that I feel like was on every single TikTok for about six months. Any lovey dovey TikTok you saw, this song Here with Me was behind it. So this guy on the up and up in his career. I now have what the prosecution laid out as evidence against David before this preliminary hearing that's coming up in a couple of weeks and it is disturbing, it is shocking and this all happened in the last few weeks. But the body of 14 year old Celeste was actually found last September. September 8, 2025. And it took quite a few months for an arrest to be made in this case. But now it seems like the prosecution has done their due diligence. They have their ducks in a row. So let's get into this. So what the prosecution is saying is this was an alleged murder to silence this 14 year old girl. David had been in a sexual relationship with Celeste since she was 13 and he was 18. They have known each other since she was 11 years old. This is a child of a middle schooler and during this time where all her friends are going to school, just having fun, maybe getting a cell phone for the first time, I mean, doing what you do in middle school, Celeste was running away from her home multiple times to David. They met in 2022. So during this time frame, from 2022 all the way to the end of her life, she was reported missing twice by her family. She was reported missing to the Riverside County Sheriff's Office for the first time In February of 2024, then again in April of 2024, a year before she was allegedly murdered by this singer. During this time, David, like I mentioned on the upswing of his career, he was a hit maker. He was releasing songs. Just to put in perspective of where David's career is at right now while all of this is going on behind the scenes, the weekend before he allegedly killed Celeste, he performed at Coachella, arguably one of the biggest festivals in the world. It was his debut Coachella. He was attempting to do backflips on the stage, entertaining the crowd, having the time of his life. It wasn't but just three days later, the next week, when he allegedly took a teenager's life. One of his songs, feel it was for the series Invincible. He had a hit My House is Not a Home. This is all while traveling the world in his budding music career with a then 13 year old Celeste. Celeste, when she was just 13, went with David to London to write an album. She went with him to Las Vegas. She even went with David to Texas to meet his family. Thirteen years old, this is a middle school child because she was reported as a runaway multiple times. Police eventually go to David's house in Hollywood and they ask him, do you know how old Celeste is? David said, no, I had no idea. She was a minor. But he had a yearbook photo of the 13 year old on his phone. There was also these explicit photos on his phone confirming their sexual relationship. I mean, LA County District Attorney Nathan Hockman called this situation a parent's worst nightmare. And it is you have this young, innocent child that somehow met this singer that she probably thinks is the coolest person in the world and she's in love with him. She thinks she's in love with him and he's sitting there grooming her at her most vulnerable age where she's trying to figure out who she is and he's abusing her sexually and taking her away from her family. This is horrible. There's still no indication of how these two even met. She was 11. So young. After the runaway incident, Celeste's parents, they took her phone away. Naturally, you're not going to talk to this man anymore. What did David do? Remember, he's making music, he has money. He drives to her middle school, pays one of her classmates $1,000, which, to a middle schooler, I mean, that's like a million dollars to give Celeste a new phone. So he pays $1,000 to this classmate, gives Celeste a new phone so he can talk to her. Not normal controlling behavior with a child. At the end of 2024, in November, the two break up. The prosecution claims, though, they were still talking, they even still had sexual relations. And their texts involved talks about pregnancy, abortion, plan B, pills, all of this going on post breakup. So Celeste is probably thinking they're going to get back together. I mean, she is so young, and this person who has fame and who's gaining all this money is giving her the time of day and is probably telling her how much she means to him. So in 2025, why did David go from having somewhat of a relationship with Celeste to allegedly killing her? Well, prosecutors say it's because Celeste actually threatened David to take their frankly illegal relationship public because she was finding out David was with other women and she was getting jealous, obviously, because they're still having sexual relations, they're still talking all the time, and she is saying, hey, this isn't cool with me at 14 years old at this point, I don't like this. I'm going to tell everyone you've been grooming me since I was 13 years old. Since I was 11, actually. Since I met you. And ruined his music career. If this would have gotten out when it did. Early 2025, as David's getting ready to release his first studio album. I mean, this. This is something that would have ended his career. He is over 18 years old. She is a child, and she was done with it. The fight that really set everything off was on April 22, 2025. This is two days before that first studio album was set to be released on April 24, 2025. He has multimillion dollar deals on the line here with the release of this album. The next day is April 23rd. They're still talking. This is the day before his album release. David goes, you know what? I'm going to order an Uber for you, Celeste, to come to my house in the Hollywood Hills. This is on a Wednesday night. Celeste has school the next day, but they're fighting right now. And she takes the Uber at 8:40 at night to go to his home. The Uber dropped Celeste off at 10:10 that night. She lived about an hour and a half away from David's home. According to the prosecution, that day, April 23rd, would now be the last day anyone saw the 14 year old alive. Celeste gets to David's house a little after 10. And that's when prosecutors say he stabbed Celeste in her torso with a sharp object multiple times. And he sat there as she bled out and died. This is what some legal experts are saying, make this alleged murder premeditated. Because that night he drives and starts trying to create this narrative that he didn't know where Celeste was. He leaves his home after he allegedly murdered her, and then starts calling her phone, asking where she is. Where are you? He drove all the way to Santa Barbara county, an hour and a half away, and stayed out all night, eventually returning home the next morning, less than 24 hours after he allegedly killed a teenager. On April 24, he goes and does a radio interview because it is album release day. David did an interview after brutally murdering a teenage girl, allegedly, and sitting there and watching her die. You know when these crimes happen and you're looking for someone and you're saying, did anyone start acting odd around you? Did you notice anyone's behavior change? They become kind of shut off. Not David. He has an album coming out, his career is about to pop off, and he is following suit with his engagements that he has planned for the rest of the week. At this point, Celeste's body is still at his mansion in the Hollywood Hills. On April 24, the day of his album release party, David allegedly starts ordering the tools that he needed to get rid of her body. According to the court documents I was able to get from Los Angeles County District attorney's office, on April 24, David ordered a shovel from the Home Depot. It was delivered via Postmates. Then he goes to his album release party, all on the same day, April 25, his album the Withered is out to the world. So he starts his press tour. That's what you do. Your first studio album. You're about to be in front of every single radio show, every. Any show that will have you on to promote your new Release. So on April 28, he goes on the Zach Sang Show.
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Didn't you say you never experienced love or hadn't been in love? You didn't? Yeah, I didn't. I wasn't in a relationship then. Nah. But today you are. Or you. I've been through a couple. I'm single right now, but I've been through a few, and they've taught me a lot of things, and they've shown me what love is and what love isn't and how to approach it and how to be human with it and not be so artists, you know, that's a real conversation that happened. And the irony of it was that person that was saying, I love you, I love you, she's not in my life anymore. So it's like people say that the string can't be cut and the connection cannot be severed.
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On May 1, a couple days later, after the album released, he ordered two chainsaws on Amazon under a fake name. May 5, he orders a body bag, heavy duty laundry bags, and a blue inflatable pool still under this fake name. On May 9, he does another interview. He's on Hot Hits with Nick and Lauren. He's talking about his new album and how great life is.
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I was expecting a lot of hate, I can't lie. But it's done. But there's none. Everybody likes a song off of it, at least one. I'm really happy about it. There's no skips.
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So he's on his press tour. His Amazon orders stop for his cleanup equipment. But then on July 7, the prosecution says he ordered a burn cage on Amazon still under the same fake name. So what does he do with all this stuff that he's ordered? Well, prosecutors say David used the inflatable pool to prevent blood from Celeste from spilling out. Then the singer used those chainsaws to cut her limbs off. Her arms and legs severed from her body. Then David cut off Celeste's ring and pinky finger because her ring finger had a tattoo of his name on it and he thought that would connect the two together. By the way, her fingers are still missing. They still have yet to be found. Her left eye was gone as well. The evidence says David then put Celeste's head and torso in the cadaver bag. Then he placed her arms and legs in a garbage bag. He put the limbs on the bottom and her head and torso on top, stacked in the front trunk of his Tesla X. I'm going to paint a picture here. And if you're watching, you can look at this. This is a similar Tesla model not far off. We're looking at the front trunk right now. Look how small it is. This is where the 14 year old's body just stayed and decomposed. So tiny. That just gives you a visual of how frankly cut up she was and just stacked on top of each other. It's. It truly makes your stomach turn. And by the way, her body sat in that Tesla for months.
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My bathroom smelled. I took a to where I went.
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I don't care.
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I just took A. Another one tight. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about.
- [14:50]
A
So David was a big streamer. His. His music was even purchased to be put into the game Fortnite. And the video you just saw, you had other fellow streamers that were at his home in Hollywood Hills streaming games, doing what Gen Z kids do together sometimes. And what does David do? He brings up the foul smell in his home and tries to blame it on a dump. And what's interesting about this video is the girl in it kind of responds, and she's like, oh, yeah, I just went to the bathroom too. And the guy in the video is like, this looks kind of suspicious because a decomposing body does not smell like you just went and took a number two. The smell of human decomposition is so very unique. It is so assaulting. It is so insulting that this is literally indwelling the space. I've done thousands, thousands of decomposed bodies over the course of my career as an investigator. It's something you never get used to. You can't mistake that smell. And people just thought that was a normal smell at his house for weeks, months. And it's hot at this point in the year, too. We're in the summer months now. And there's that. Oh, just Tesla holding poor Celeste body. He didn't move that Tesla from his home until the end of July. Why? Because he was about to go on tour. They say in the documents the last time he drove The Tesla was July 29th. Then he took his Tesla, parked it just around the corner from his home, and left the rotting corpse in there. And that's where the Tesla sat till September 8, when it had just recently been impounded. And people could not ignore the horrible smell coming out of it and the insects that were surrounding this Tesla. So finally, the police are called, and on September 8, a body was found. That was one day after Celeste would have turned 15 years old. Now his name's in headlines everywhere. Body found in singer David's Tesla. I think the correct verbiage was there was a body found in a Tesla registered to David, the singer. He's all over, but still he's accused of nothing. At this point, David's on tour. He's on the US Leg of his world tour. He played the next night in Minnesota,
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Who got no fight over no fight
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over no fight over who got it,
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who got it, who got it. Okay, now we do.
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Got on stage, performed, was throwing out labuboose the crowd, entertaining the crowd again. This is a guy who just is going about his life like he would never get caught, like he would never be connected. And that honestly, to me, it feels like he didn't do anything wrong. He's acting no different. So while he's on tour, LAPD had a search warrant for his home on September 17th. During this search of his Hollywood Hills home, they found evidence of a dismembered body in an inflatable pool. They found biological evidence. The blood they found in the garage did match Celeste's DNA profile. He cancels his tour September 19th. He had two dates left in the U.S. his whole European leg. All those shows squashed. And months and months went by before he was finally arrested April 16th in connection with the murder of 14 year old Celeste. So I call this arrest a bombshell arrest because it was for months, seven months, people were wondering, how has David not been arrested in connection with this case? It was his Tesla stuff was found at his house. I reached out to one of my sources in California, someone that's practiced law for forever, and he said he thinks the Los Angeles Police Department finally forced the LA County DA's hand to do the charging papers to make him come in to arrest him. But it wasn't until after this arrest that we learned the gruesome details of what happened to Celeste. So now David faces one count of first degree murder under special circumstances. Nathan Hockman, the LA county da, said that those circumstances in this case are lying in wait. He was sitting there waiting for Celeste to come to him that night, committing a crime for financial gain. He had a lot to lose in this case. Millions of dollars from his music career, from the endorsement deals he had, and murdering a witness in an investigation because Celeste was a minor and their relationship was illegal. David is also charged with the mutilation of human remains and he does face sex abuse charges of a child under the age of 14. Since David's arrest, we've learned that investigators were able to match blue plastic found in the 14 year old's remains to the pool that David bought back in May of last year. David's pled not guilty to the charges. His preliminary hearing is set for May 26th. So at this point in this case, we know there are 40 terabytes of discovery. That just gives you an idea of how much the defense team has to go through before we get this thing to trial. So we're going to keep following this case and let you know of any updates as we look to see if justice will be served by for 14 year old Celeste Rives Hernandez. I'm Lyndon Blake, and you've been listening to. That's so Criminal.
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That's so Criminal.