D4vd on Trial: Gruesome Photos and the Prosecution’s Bombshells Wrap the First Hearings

Farrell read many of their text messages aloud to the courtroom from the witness stand, including one written a few months after Hernandez’s 13th birthday, when she anxiously wrote to Burke about missing her period. “If I’m pregnant tho I’m not having it,” she texted. When Hernandez established that she was in fact pregnant, Burke replied: “my mother always told me to ask in this situation….it is mine right?”

According to the text messages the prosecution showed in court, several months after her abortion, they made a plan for her to run away from home and move in with him. He fantasized to her about the family they would have when they were finally able to marry. “Lets let this abortion be the last one til we have the real one,” he wrote in June 2024. “If we end up having twins cool cuz we wanted 2 kids.” No more than that, he warned, because “I don’t want your pussy getting loose.” But a few months later, Hernandez broke through the banter with a mournful text. “I killed my first kid [for] you,” she wrote. “I don’t like talking about it because it gets me really upset.”

Hernandez’s parents, who sat mutely in the courtroom for most of the five-day hearing, looked stricken at the start of Farrell’s testimony. “It’s too much,”Patrick Seinfeld, the Rivas’ attorney, told Silverman softly. The couple quickly exited the room, trembling.

On the final day of the hearings, the prosecution presented some of the many texts exchanged by the couple in the days before her disappearance and alleged murder on April 23, 2025. The night before, Hernandez expressed jealousy about Burke’s relationship with Twitch streamer Aysia Collins, who had posted about being at Burke’s house, and the teen’s anger escalated as the conversation went on. “Oh my fucken god I swear to GOD I will kill you she was in my dam seat I will strangle u to fucken death bro….I will tell my dad so many fucken lies abt you deadass…i will end ur career and ur life I will damage anything…” She further threatened, “i will straight up mutilate your penis.”

Her last text was sent around 10 pm on the night of April 23 night, as her Uber arrived at Burke’s Hollywood Hills home. “im almost there open ur door if ur home,” she wrote. He replied, “got u.”

Plenty of other horrors were presented to those of us in the courtroom, including graphic images of Hernandez’s corpse and the appendages (limbs and fingers) that had allegedly been severed from her. The photo of her decomposed body on a metal slab showed flesh that was mottled and sagging, often barely recognizable as human; Dr. Grant Ho, deputy medical examiner for Los Angeles County, told the prosecution that the face had been “skeletonized” so that her features were no longer identifiable. The prosecution placed a black box over the vaginal area for “privacy”—as if such a thing were possible for a teenage girl whose body is now the subject of so much attention.

Hernandez’s body was found in a Tesla registered to Burke, abandoned around the corner from the music star’s rented house in the Hollywood Hills. Police detectives and forensics experts testified about objects they say were found at the house, among them an inflatable swimming pool the prosecution alleges was made of the same blue material that was embedded in the corpse’s skin. LAPD criminalist Lisa LaHendro testified on Thursday that two fragments recovered from Hernandez’s body matched with cuts in the pool, like missing puzzle pieces, according to LaHendro. “It formed a physical fit with the pool,” she told the court. A criminalist from the LAPD serology lab testified that some DNA samples taken from inside Burke’s Tesla were tied to Hernandez, as was a double-bagged garbage bag and a cleaning wipe that tested positive for DNA consistent with Hernandez.

Clothing items recovered from the girl’s corpse included socks, shredded leggings, a tube top, and a Victoria’s Secret thong, according to testimony in the hearings. LaHendro testified that they were presented for forensic specialists to examine in a mushed-up lump: wet, soiled, and covered in insects. In photos shown to the court, the garments resembled ancient relics—blackened, shrunken, and waxy.

Other witnesses over the course of the five-day hearing included Dr. Ho, who testified that Hernandez appeared to have had two stab wounds, either of which could have led to her bleeding to death. And a few music industry associates took the stand. Benjamin Greger, who formerly worked on Burke’s management team and is currently helping the musician’s mother find a new entertainment attorney for her imprisoned son, according to his testimony, answered queries about Burke’s finances—and the kind of big money potentially at stake in his future.

The music industry has a long, dark history of keeping sexual misconduct under wraps—something that #MeToo didn’t change much, with a few exceptions. So one of the many questions hanging in the air is who, if anyone, in Burke’s wider circle of colleagues and friends, knew about his relationship with Hernandez? How many of them might have looked the other way, or even facilitated it?

While on the stand, Greger testified that he knew Burke had bought tickets for Hernandez so she could travel with him to London at one point—but said he knew nothing about who Hernandez was, or the nature of their relationship. Twitch streamer Aysia Collins recently posted a livestream in which she said that she confronted Burke after hearing that Hernandez was a minor. “He was like, ‘Dude, that’s not even true, she’s like 19.’” Collins said she demanded proof: “He showed me proof. And I was like, Okay, Imma back off. I feel like I’m harassing my friend.”

The defense argued that many people in their circles knew of the relationship—including her parents, who at one point consented to her accompanying Burke alone on a trip to London—though it’s not clear how many, if any, of them knew the sexual nature of it. But considering that the two had matching tattoos on their fingers that read “shhhh” and that they had each other’s names inked on their hands, it seems clear that their bond was pretty intimate.

There was some internecine drama in the courtroom over the course of the five-day hearing, including tense exchanges between Silverman and defense attorney Blair Berk, who previously represented Harvey Weinstein. At one point, Judge Olmedo noted that the two women had faced each other recently in a difficult murder trial, which found the defendant guilty of murder, and said that “emotions may be overflowing” from that experience. Tension was high with the possibility of a death sentence hanging overhead, though the DA has not yet said whether the prosecution will pursue this. The proceedings were structured so that the defense did not get to present witnesses in this preliminary hearing; all they could do was object to the prosecution’s narrative and point out discrepancies in the testimonies presented.

In her final argument, defense attorney Marilyn Bednarski made a motion of insufficiency on all counts. She argued that there was “no evidence that he harbored a deliberate intention to kill Miss Hernandez,” and that none of the hundreds of texts collected by the prosecution show any statements of intent to harm her. “He repeatedly expressed his love and care for Miss Hernandez, even when they broke up.” Silverman described Burke’s actions as “grooming” and gaslighting,” and told the court, “All of the charges and allegations have been proven way beyond the standard required” for a preliminary hearing. The judge agreed.

Although most Americans over thirty probably hadn’t heard of D4vd before all of this, his case will continue to be a judicial circus. The-21-year-old musician at the center of the ring sat impassively through the gruesome testimony about dismemberment and numbing technical discussions of bureaucratic matters. On Monday afternoon, he was led out of the courtroom in his orange jumpsuit, shackles jangling, seemingly unbothered—as if it was just another day in sunny LA.