LOS ANGELES (AP) — The doctor who performed the autopsy on 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez is set to give the difficult details of her death Friday at a hearing to determine whether singer D4vd, whose legal name is David Burke, should go on trial in her killing.
The April autopsy report from Dr. Grant Ho of the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner found that Rivas Hernandez's death was a homicide caused by penetrating wounds to her upper body.
The dismembered and decomposing body was discovered in a Tesla towed from the Hollywood Hills in September, 4 1/2 months after the time authorities say Rivas Hernandez was killed.
That meant the autopsy was limited by “extensive postmortem changes.” The body had so degraded that examiners couldn’t even determine the girl's eye color.
Prosecutors are seeking to prove Burke began sexually abusing Rivas Hernandez when she was 13 and he was 18, then stabbed her to death when she threatened to reveal their long sexual history and crater his career. They allege he dismembered the body in his garage, and a police analyst testified in the preliminary hearing that samples pulled from apparent blood stains there matched the DNA of Rivas Hernandez.
Burke has pleaded not guilty to murder, sexual abuse of a child and mutilation of a body, and his lawyers have said he is innocent.
There is some uncertain language in the autopsy report, which says the wounds “may represent sharp force injuries.” The defense, which has been seeking to dismantle the forensic evidence, may seize on this.
One wound on the upper abdomen penetrated the liver, the report said. Another, on the left chest, damaged her ribs. A tube top she was wearing appeared to be cut in three places.
Toxicology tests on Rivas Hernandez's liver showed a low level of alcohol, but it may have been produced postmortem by bacteria and didn’t appear to be a factor in her death, the report said.
LA County’s Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Odey C. Ukpo gave a statement with the autopsy report objecting to police keeping his office from releasing the results for several months, calling it “unfathomable” that her grieving family would have to wait so long to find out what had happened to her.
In an interview with The Associated Press in June, Ukpo elaborated, saying keeping information sealed “goes completely against our mission.”
“It’s so important for us to release the information that she did not die from something natural, she did not die from drugs, she was stabbed,” Ukpo said. “And then we start to look back at what made her vulnerable to be in that situation.”
An indie-pop singer whose music and online presence brought him a huge following, D4vd's songs and videos often have dark and violent imagery often delivered through an alter-ego character he calls Itami. His breakthrough single in 2022 was called “Romantic Homicide,” one of several of his songs with more than a billion plays on Spotify.
