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Singer d4vd could face trial over the killing of a teenage girl. Here’s a timeline of the case

(CNN) — In the 10 months since a girl’s severely decomposed remains were found in d4vd’s abandoned car, prosecutors have described in gruesome detail how they believe the famed singer killed and dismembered the 14-year-old runaway to prevent her from disclosing details about their relationship.

The 21-year-old musician, whose legal name is David Anthony Burke, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder with special circumstances, continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14, and mutilating human remains in connection with the death of Celeste Rivas Hernandez.

Prosecutors are presenting their evidence in the case this week and a judge will decide whether there’s enough to move forward with a trial.

The following is a timeline of d4vd’s connection to Celeste, the circumstances surrounding her disappearance and death, and what we know about the investigation so far:

2022 to 2023: First encounters

D4vd first met Celeste in 2022, when she was 11, according to a document laying out the prosecution’s evidence to support the charges.

In November 2023, the pair began a sexual relationship, prosecutors said. D4vd was 18 and Celeste was 13. That month, d4vd appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and performed his hit “Romantic Homicide.”

Early 2024: Signs of connection

Celeste repeatedly appeared in Burke’s orbit before and after she was reported missing for the first time in February 2024, a CNN investigation found.

In January 2024, she appeared alongside the singer in a livestream video on the social media platform Twitch. The pair joke and banter until about 3 a.m. before d4vd laughingly proclaims, “Delete everything.”

Sometime between January and March 2024, d4vd was photographed getting out of a black Tesla a few blocks from Celeste’s home in Lake Elsinore, California. A local teen later posted the photos on TikTok. CNN geolocated and chronolocated the photos to verify when and where they were taken.

Early 2024: The seventh grader is reported missing

Celeste was reported missing three times in early 2024 as loved ones worried about the seventh grader’s well-being and whereabouts.

She was first reported missing in mid-February 2024 at age 13, according to 911 call logs and missing-person flyers. A poster from that time said she was last seen on or about February 14.

Around that time, someone concerned about her well-being sent an email to an address using d4vd’s name on his record company’s domain.

The writer referenced Celeste’s disappearance and said, “There’s been talk” that d4vd possibly had something to do with it. If there was any truth to that, the person wrote, “Please do the right thing and take her home. Her parents are very worried.”

CNN confirmed the authenticity of the email with the sender, who asked not to be identified due to safety concerns.

Celeste returned home within days of the email being sent, an acquaintance of the family told CNN.

She was reported missing a second time on or about March 19, according to 911 logs and missing-person posters.

The third and final missing-person report was made April 5, according to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office.

June 2024-early 2025: Photos capture Celeste alive

It is unclear when Celeste was killed, but photos indicate she was still alive almost a year after she was first reported missing. According to The Associated Press, court documents show authorities said she was 14 when she died.

In June 2024, Celeste was photographed backstage during a sold-out show d4vd performed at The Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles.

Another clue linking d4vd to Celeste was found in the singer’s rented home after Celeste’s body was identified in September 2025.

A private investigator hired by the owner of the property, Steve Fischer, said he uncovered a digital camera inside the house that contained photos of Celeste and d4vd taken in late December 2024 and early January 2025.

During that time, d4vd posted other photos from the camera’s memory card to his X account, captioned “took these pics,” along with a selfie of him wearing a camera of the same model.

April 22, 2025: An argument and a threat

The musician got in a heated argument with Celeste after the teen became upset about d4vd’s relationships with other women, prosecutors said. Text messages from that night show Celeste “threatened to disclose damaging information about her relationship” with d4vd, then 20, that would “end his career and destroy his life.”

April 23, 2025: Likely date Celeste was killed, prosecutors say

Prosecutors believe this is the day Celeste was killed. The next day, d4vd had an album release party ahead of an international tour.

September 8, 2025: Celeste’s body is found

A day after she would have turned 15, Celeste’s dismembered and decomposing body was found in the front trunk of a Tesla at a police impound yard.

The car, which was registered to d4vd, had apparently been abandoned on a street not far from where d4vd was living in the Hollywood Hills. The vehicle was eventually transferred to the tow yard, where an employee called police after noticing a foul smell coming from it.

No cause of death was released publicly. The autopsy results were later sealed by a judge at the request of the Los Angeles Police Department, whose Robbery-Homicide Division is investigating the girl’s death.

When the body was discovered, d4vd was on a world tour promoting his first full-length album, “Withered.”

September 19, 2025: d4vd cancels world tour

The singer canceled his final US tour stops in San Francisco and Los Angeles as news of Celeste’s death drew national headlines and fervent social media speculation. The entire European leg of the Withered World Tour was also canceled.

February 2026: Grand jury investigation revealed

Court documents revealed a grand jury was investigating d4vd in connection with Celeste’s death. Prosecutors described d4vd as a “target” of the investigation in court filings, submitted as part of a dispute over whether d4vd’s family members could be forced to appear before the grand jury.

April 16: d4vd is arrested

The singer was arrested on suspicion of killing Celeste. He is taken from a home in the Hollywood Hills just over a mile from the tow yard where Celeste’s body was found in his car.

Los Angeles police and US Marshals used a ramming device to breach a door, photos posted by police showed. As they prepared to enter, a squad of officers stood behind the breaching officer with guns drawn.

April 20: d4vd pleads not guilty

The musician pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, a charge that carries a potential sentence of life in prison or the death penalty.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide moratorium on the death penalty in 2019, banning executions during his time in office. But capital punishment remains legal in California, and prosecutors can still seek the death penalty.

July 21: Preliminary hearing begins

A preliminary hearing began to determine whether the case will go to trial, revealing new insight on some of the evidence prosecutors have gathered so far.

The hearing will feature over 10 witnesses, which will include law enforcement, a coroner and individual witnesses, and last about three to five days, according to Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman. A preliminary hearing is different from a trial in several ways, he said, including a lower legal burden of proof and the amount and type of evidence they share.

Photos of Celeste’s decomposing body were among the more jarring pieces of evidence shown on the first day of the hearing, showing her as she was found in a Tesla in a Hollywood tow lot. When the photos were shown in court, Celeste’s mother looked down and started crying, the family’s attorney, Patrick Steinfeld, said after the hearing.

Other evidence shared by prosecutors includes body camera footage of a search of d4vd’s home before Celeste disappeared, chainsaws, heavy-duty laundry bags and a shovel bought on Amazon, as well as an unused burn box.

During the hearing, d4vd sat at the defense table, wearing an orange jumpsuit and dark-rimmed glasses, and listened to the testimony.

This story has been updated with additional information.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

‘There is freedom’: Why Asian women are leaving their husbands in their 50s and 60s

(CNN) — Eiko Toyama had waited 32 years to leave her husband.Throughout their marriage, she said, she did all the housework and childcare in their Japan home, as well as supporting the family financially. Her husband “wanted to control everything,” from her social life to professional ambitions, leaving her feeling trapped and miserable. Still, she stuck it out for their two children.That finally changed when she turned 60. Her adult sons no longer needed her, and her husband was healthy – not yet so old that he needed a caretaker. It was a precious window of opportunity, and she took it.“I was nothing but happy (after the divorce). That was my only emotion,” she said. “I was so happy I wanted to run around all over the place.”Stories like hers are increasingly common around the world as the number of “gray divorces” – splits among couples aged 50 and older – rises each year. The trend has been seen in countries like the United States and elsewhere, but takes on particular significance in Asia, where people generally live longer.Many places like South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China are battling demographic crises as birth rates fall and elderly populations swell.The surge in gray divorces is also often driven by women – who have long faced restrictive gender norms in conservative Asian societies, as well as legal, financial, and social barriers to seeking divorce. That’s now changing; in Japan, for instance, among couples splitting after decades of marriage, twice as many women as men filed for divorce in 2024.This could reshape what Asia’s elderly population looks like in the coming decade: more people living alone and requiring more welfare support, as experts have predicted — but also perhaps more empowered to step out on their own.For women like Toyama, growing up in the 1960s and ‘70s, divorce was uncommon – and often met with judgment and shame.Back then, if you were a woman, “getting divorced was kind of like the end of life,” said Sangyoub Park, an associate professor of sociology at Washburn University in Kansas, who wrote a 2023 paper on late-life divorces in South Korea.That began changing in the second half of the 20th century as more women joined the workforce and pursued higher education. Gray divorces have risen steadily – particularly as Gen X began entering its 50s in the past decade, Park said.That’s an important demographic: born between 1965 and 1980, Gen X was the first generation to grow up in a globalizing Asia, watching American TV and movies. Through pop culture, they also absorbed American values such as prioritizing “personal choices rather than family obligation,” which – alongside those broader economic factors – helped gradually shift attitudes toward divorce, Park said.That’s reflected in data around the region. In South Korea last year, the number of divorces among couples who had been married at least 30 years surpassed divorces among younger couples who were married less than five years – for the first time ever.Taiwan has also seen divorces increase among long-married couples, according to government data. In Hong Kong, multiple law firms have described a surge in gray divorces, and in mainland China, the number of elderly divorces has doubled in the past 30 years.Part of this may be demographic: an aging society has a bigger pool of older people, so it’ll have more older divorces too. Young people are getting married less these days, so their divorces are also fewer.But legal reforms have also made a huge difference, creating safety nets for women who previously had to depend on their husbands’ livelihoods.For instance, South Korea ruled in 2014 that future pensions and severance pay could be included in the division of assets. That means if a housewife handled all the housework and childcare during their marriage, thus allowing her husband to work, she’s entitled to part of his elderly pension after getting divorced. Japan introduced a similar reform in 2007.These measures are especially critical given the high rate of elderly poverty in Asia. Among OECD nations, South Korea has the highest poverty rate for people over 65; Hong Kong (not an OECD member) is similarly high. While Japan ranks slightly lower, it’s still above the global average.And deep gender inequality still persists, despite these reforms.“For women in particular, the main reason they can’t get a divorce is the inability to be financially independent,” said Toyama, pointing to lower wages for women in Japan. “Once a woman becomes a full-time homemaker, it’s very hard to leave her husband and become independent.”“My two children are boys, but if I had a daughter, I would constantly tell her, ‘No matter what happens, never quit your job,’” she added.The biggest common factor across Asia is longevity, Park said – and how people are thinking differently about the final part of their lives.“Having an extra 20, 30 years creates new expectations,” with people more “willing to walk away from an unhappy, unfulfilled marriage,” he said. Divorce “is not a failure anymore – rather, it’s something new. It’s the beginning of a new chapter.”Iman Lau, 50, experienced this rebirth firsthand. Growing up in Hong Kong, her expectations for marriage were less than inspiring: spouses eat together, do activities together, and share blandly peaceful lives, she thought. “This is just how marriage is.”That mentality stayed even through years of infidelity by her husband. She would wonder: had she done something wrong, was she not good enough? He was ultimately the one to initiate the divorce despite her pleas to stay together; he even compared her to a bird who refused to fly out of an open cage.“I’m a pretty traditional woman,” she said. “In my whole life, I never thought I would get divorced.”It was a shock, as if she’d lost a limb or an organ. But it also made her realize that somewhere in that 14-year marriage, she’d lost her sense of self, neglecting her friends and interests to simply “orbit around him,” she said.She vowed to change that this year after finalizing the divorce, and threw herself into the world with determined vigor. She joined online meetup groups and made new friends. She discovered a love for the outdoors, going hiking, swimming, kayaking and snorkeling. She’s learning to play the piano and loves jazz.After traveling across Europe, she printed and hung up holiday photos in her apartment; it’s her “happy wall,” to remind her of the joy she found trekking across Sicily and camping in Georgia.“I didn’t know that life by yourself could be so spectacular,” she said.Toyama has embarked on a similar journey, describing herself as “full of life” at 63.She began livestreaming on TikTok, and created an account on a messaging app to dole out advice to people who call and text each week. She’s working to launch new business ventures including a marriage agency and a live events company.“For 32 years, I couldn’t do anything, but now I’m finally in my third year of being able to do whatever I want,” she said. The process wasn’t easy, but any challenges now are still “much better than the anxiety of being with my ex-husband,” she said. “Above all, there is freedom.”Both women described noticing an evolution in people’s attitudes when they shared news of their divorce. For Toyama, the reactions were overwhelmingly positive, with some even expressing envy. For Lau, they were more split – and in revealing ways.“Friends around my age treat it like a taboo, like you’ve had a death in the family – they don’t dare to ask about it, they’ll just say, ‘I’m so sorry,’” she said. “But with young Gen Z people, everybody congratulates me.”The increase in gray divorces might start to plateau when millennials – who got married under very different circumstances and social attitudes than their predecessors – start aging into retirement, said Park. But that’s not for another decade or so, and separations will likely continue rising until then.For those future divorcees, Lau has some encouragement from the other side. “Actually, this world is extraordinary,” she said.“Asians in particular often think divorce is like a stain or taboo in your life, like a label of failure. But that’s not true,” she added. “Just think of it as giving yourself the chance to see that you can have an even more vibrant life – as long as you’re willing to take that step.”The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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