D4vd’s Recovered Texts With Celeste Rivas Hernandez Reveal Talk of Abortion

D4vd exchanged multiple text messages with Celeste Rivas Hernandez regarding an abortion she allegedly had in January 2024, when she was only 13 years old and the singer was an adult, according to cell phone records shared by prosecutors Friday. 

The messages were extracted from a phone found in the singer’s home along with a trove of alleged child sex abuse material. The singer, born David Anthony Burke, is accused of murdering Rivas on April 23, 2025, after she allegedly threatened to go public with the abuse. (Burke has denied the allegations.)

Testifying as the last witness at a hearing that will determine whether Burke’s case proceeds to trial, LAPD Detective Corey Farrell read the text messages aloud from the witness box and described dozens of images depicting Burke’s alleged sex abuse of the girl. The photos, depicting multiple sex acts at Burke’s residence, were too sensitive to show on the courtroom screen, the prosecutor said.

During a description of one photo allegedly showing penetration, Rivas’ mother, Mercedes Martínez, began to cry. Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman walked over to comfort Martínez, telling her, “I really think this is stuff you don’t need to hear. I just think it’s too much.” Martínez then got up and walked out of the courtroom with Jesus Rivas, the teen’s father.

Text messages showed that Rivas repeatedly told Burke she feared she was pregnant. The earliest such message presented in court was from late November 2023, around the time prosecutors allege Burke began a sexual relationship with her.

“Currently [manifesting] my period bc I refuse to have kids,” Rivas wrote. Burke allegedly replied, “did you miss your date,” and urged her to begin tracking her menstrual cycle with an app. “I just need to make sure ur on top of ur shit,” he allegedly wrote. 

According to Farrell’s testimony, Rivas got an abortion in early January 2024. In the days before the procedure, Rivas allegedly texted Burke, “Both of us aren’t able to take care of it.” Burke allegedly replied, “you’re sm [so much] stronger than me baby lmao” and “I love you.” 

A few moments later, he allegedly wrote, “also my mother told me to ask this question… It is mine right?”

Rivas replied: “Of course it’s yours David.” 

Burke’s messages with Rivas could be sexually explicit and controlling. Hers were at times affectionate, but often distressed. In one exchange on June 11, 2024, Burke allegedly wrote, “I can’t wait to move in together without the cops bitchin.” He promised to take Rivas out every day, and she replied that she missed him deeply. A few hours later, he said he wanted to gather her documents so they could “dip out the country n get married in Italy.”

Soon afterward, Rivas wrote that she feared she might be pregnant again. “I don’t like this,” she said, asking, “what if the first abortion didn’t work.”

Burke allegedly replied, “You would have a baby bump lmao you have hella periods since then, what you smoking.” He added, “nah first baby gone.”

Later that month, on June 19, she texted, “I can see u and sleep over, just do not get me pregnant.” He purportedly responded, “We’ve done a good job the past few months baby … The last and only time u were pregnant was because of a fucked up condom in December.”

A little more than a week later, Rivas texted Burke on June 27 that she had to run to the bathroom after they last had sex because “it hurt.” Burke was dismissive in his reply. “Nuh uh,” he texted back. “I remember every time you say ow when we fuck. … Last time u aint say ow once.” Related Content Pentagon Says Some Servicemember Deaths Don’t Count Sean Combs Placed in Solitary Confinement After Brawl With Fellow Inmate: Reports D4vd’s DNA Allegedly Found on Trash Bag Linked to Teen Victim’s Blood Trey Songz Gets Zero Jail Time After Arrest for Allegedly Punching Nightclub Employee

In another text exchange on July 10, Rivas asked, “Does anyone know we even had sex?” He replied, “Nope, and I would like to keep it that way before we married.” He allegedly added, “Let’s get married next year and make the baby simplee.”

By Aug. 30, 2024, Rivas sent a series of distraught texts to Burke, expressing regret over the abortion. “Realistically I care about you. I killed my kid for you,” she wrote. When she added that she “would have been there for it” had they proceeded with the pregnancy, Burke responded that she would have been acting “selfishly.”

“David, I’m going to have to lie to people around me, even my kid, for the rest of my life,” she texted back. “I don’t like talking about it because it gets me really upset, but I’d do anything to have it back.”

Burke’s reply to the 13-year-old girl was cold: “Let’s end that there.” He texted, “I don’t like talking to u when you’re upset.” When Rivas asked how he felt about the abortion, he replied, “I’m saddened by it, I’m even more saddened by the way it was conceived, outside of marriage and outside of the way I had pictured my first child going. …But I don’t dwell on it.”

Other messages shown in court depicted Burke blaming Rivas after they had sex in late December 2024, after the date when prosecutors say the two “broke up”

“You asked me if I wanted to have sex, and I folded,” he texted on Dec. 20. “Then we stopped, and you cried, and I held you.”

Rivas pushed back. “No I didn’t, David,” she replied. “We made out and I was gonna go home.”

About a month before the alleged murder, Burke and Rivas were still in communication, with the alleged sexual abuse ongoing, Farrell testified. On March 14, Rivas texted, “We can be friends but like online. I don’t want anything to do with you in person anymore if I’m gonna try and move on.”

Before Farrell took the stand, the court heard from Dr. Grant Ho, the medical examiner who performed Rivas’ autopsy. One of Burke’s attorneys, Marilyn Bednarski, offered a glimpse of his possible defense as she questioned Ho about how his office concluded that Rivas died from “multiple penetrating injuries” inflicted by another person. Over more than an hour, Bednarski suggested that Rivas may have taken some action that set in motion the events leading to her death.

She first asked whether “collateral information” about a victim’s history could help determine a cause of death, such as whether the person had been “potentially suicidal,” frequently used drugs, or had a history of violence. Dr. Ho acknowledged such information could “potentially” effect a determination. He added that he did not speak with Rivas’ family before his office ruled her death a homicide.

The defense lawyer then focused on the two penetrating wounds found on Rivas’ body. During his direct testimony, Dr. Ho said the lower wound, in Rivas’ abdomen, was about 1.5 inches deep and penetrated her liver. A second wound, on the left side of her chest, was about two inches deep and entered near her lung, damaging the surface of an adjacent rib.

Bednarski asked whether Dr. Ho could determine who had been “holding the instrument” that caused the wounds on which the homicide ruling was based. He said he could not.

“So you can’t rule out that she could have been holding the instrument,” Bednarski said.

“That is a consideration,” Dr. Ho replied, “but we would expect to find hesitation marks,” meaning superficial wounds around the deeper injury.

“Is it fair to say you don’t know the circumstances under which these wounds occurred?” Bednarski asked.

Bednarski then questioned what the autopsy could reveal about Rivas’ position when she was wounded. She asked whether Dr. Ho could determine if her body was moving toward the instrument at the moment of contact, or at what speed it might have been moving. He said he could not determine either.