Hi everyone, Anthony Fantano here, internet's busiest music nerd. Hope you are doing well. And it's time to talk about a development in a very important story: the arrest of one singer and songwriter, D4vd, in connection with the death of Celeste Rivas Hernandez, which led to one of the most shocking stories to come out of the music industry last year.

Now, for those of you who haven't really been paying attention to how this story has been progressing, and basically the shockwaves it sent through the internet in 2025, you might be wondering, like, "This guy's getting arrested now, at this point, after all of this time?" And yes, D4vd is actually just getting arrested now after all of the evidence, all the images, all the questions, all the accusations that have risen out of Celeste, if you remember, being found dismembered in the trunk of his Tesla truck, which was impounded at the time when she was discovered.

You have to wonder why. Is it a lack of interest and care and action on the part of authorities? Because, as evidence has shown, Celeste had gone missing numerous times, over the course of years. And even with her cropping up here and there and there being a wider awareness of her missing person status, and her being as young as she was, among D4vd's audience, there was clearly a lack of action on the part of authorities in terms of making sure that she was in a home or in a place with a guardian, where somebody of her age should be rather than dating and following around this popstar, and who, in a now infamous clip, can be seen streaming live with him on Twitch with his chat literally making reference to how illegal, obviously, their relationship was.

D4vd: "I media trained you"
Celeste: "No, you didn't"
D4vd: "That's controversial"
Celeste: "As controversial as you raping kids?"
D4vd, urgently: "It's been a good one, bye guys. Delete everything. Delete. Delete everything. Everything goes. Everything."
– excerpt from Twitch stream

Look, in this video, we have to give the internet props because it is the online music community and those in D4vd's audience who saw fit to step up and say something, who actually pulled together a lot of the evidence and a lot of the greater awareness that we now have around this story and around this issue. From Discord messages to photos, a lot of the context that we have around this story is thanks to the internet.

But, since this story originally blew up, there has been some other evidence that has come out. I don't know if a lot of you guys saw this, but recently I was involved in a pretty long-form CNN piece that did, or at least attempted to do, a deeper investigation into this story and what happened to Celeste.

"We also obtained this email sent soon after Celeste was first reported missing. It's sent from a person close to Celeste to d4vd@mogul.vision. Mogul Vision is D4vd's management company: "There's been talk that the artist D4vd possibly has something to do with the disappearance of 13-year-old Celeste Rivas. If that statement holds any merit, please do the right thing and take her home."
– excerpt from CNN

Now, as it's noted in the piece, and what was said to me was that actually going to Celeste's hometown proved to be pretty difficult in terms of getting more information, or finding more background and what happened to her and why it happened to her, because there were very few people close to her in any capacity that were willing to talk and say something to the news media.

However, still, despite these obstacles and struggles, those at CNN were able to pull up some pretty valuable context and information, most notably photos that literally put Celeste, not just with D4vd very shortly before what might be estimated to be the time of her death, but she was actually at this pretty big Cali performance that D4vd did, where she was in the same row as many in his entourage, included members of his family. His manager was in the area too, which again makes you wonder not only who is responsible for Celeste's death, but how many of those in D4vd's immediate family, and the team of people who were working with him on his career and with his music, were aware of his connections to her.

Maybe even aware of her death, which again could be tied into the lack of action on D4vd's arrest all this time, because maybe there hasn't been a charge. Because despite the fact that you can sort of put these two in the same place at multiple points in time, and they clearly had a connection at one point, proving what the cause of death was, and when it happened, authorities might not have the full picture as of right now if there aren't people coming forward who are willing to talk. And there have been instances of the cops clearly pulling people in to try to gather more information, people who are connected to D4vd. And yet still it's taken them so long to decide that we're going to arrest this guy and bring him in.

Now, of course, as far as I know right now, D4vd and his defense, his team, are arguing for his innocence.

Defense: "We believe the actual evidence will show David Burke did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez, nor was he the cause of her death. And we would like to be able to have the evidence come into the light of day at the earliest opportunity in order to establish that."
Judge: "Anything from the people?"
Prosecutor: "We'll be very happy to put on the evidence that we've collected in this case over the last several months."
– excerpt from court video

Even though I, personally, don't think it's going to be likely, if D4vd somehow gets out of this scot-free, I don't think that equates to him and those around him bearing no responsibility for this poor girl's passing. Not only because the heinous state in which her remains were found, I think says to me that she suffered a very violent death. But again, this was a very young teen girl and a minor who had no business being around D4vd or anyone on his team, because that's not her family, that's not her guardian. So again, regardless of how the ruling against D4vd here pans out, for me personally there's still going to be a question of the broader implications of this.

Who connected to D4vd was fully aware of this situation, or maybe even involved in some way? And then, after that, I feel like we need to continue this conversation of abuses of power and influence in the music industry, because while I think artists are free to pursue whatever kind of creative careers they can manage to build for themselves, that does not mean you should then be allowed to use your influence and the love that your fans have for you to essentially file through your audience for whoever is the most malleable, manipulatable, who could... whoever can be pulled into an abusive relationship or arrangement of some sort, which I'm not sure how else to categorize this relationship, given what was Celeste's minor status at the time.

Now, in some recent updates to this story, it does seem like the LA County DA is really looking to throw the book at D4vd, saying there are some special additional enhancements that will have D4vd facing a potential death penalty. And the DA also accused D4vd of having a witness killed because of the active investigation into D4vd's sexual abuse of Celeste.

"In this particular case, as the evidence will come out in court, the witness to the investigation was Celeste, and the investigation was into the lewd and lascivious sexual acts committed by Mr. Burke that is the subject of count 2 of this complaint, with Celeste while she was under 14 years old."
– except from LA County Hall of Justice

Which again, when you take all of that potential context, the delay might make sense. Because, again, any prosecutor or any police department who is worth their salt, when they see somebody who was responsible for something as terrible and as horrific as this, what we're talking about here, and digging deeper into it you see a whole web of different crimes that all connect to this one terrible thing, you're going to investigate all of those various crimes and dig up evidence on all of those crimes to sort of book this person and arrest this person for all of that stuff. You're not just going to simply charge them for one of the bad things that they did. You're going to put all of it together into a court case to ensure this person does not do what they did again.

So, on this story, this is currently everything that I have for you now. I do think this story is indicative of, I think, a reckoning that we're having right now in the music industry in regards to, again, abuses of power.

Anthony Fantano. Forever.