threatened to expose their relationship and destroy his career. <\/a><\/p>\nLos Angeles Police Det. Corey Farell spent hours on the stand describing the contents of Burke\u2019s cell phone, including dozens of pictures that seemed to indisputably show Burke engaged in sex acts with Hernandez while she was a minor. (The images were not made public as prosecutors said they constituted illegal child sex material.)<\/p>\n
Farell also described hundreds of texts between the pair spanning from November 2023 to the night of the alleged murder. The texts confirmed Hernandez was pregnant with Burke\u2019s child in early 2024 and had an abortion. The decision seemed to haunt the young girl.<\/p>\n
\u201cI care abt u i killed my kid [for] you,\u201d Hernandez wrote to Burke in August 2024. \u201ci don\u2019t like talking about it cause it gets [me really] upset but id do anything to have it back.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pair \u201cbroke up\u201d in November of 2024, according to prosecutors, and subsequent text messages showed Hernandez became increasingly jealous of Burke\u2019s involvement with other women, eventually sending a text that prosecutors believe led Burke to plot her death.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will tell my dad so many f\u2014 lies about u dead ass i will end ur career and ur life I will damage anything,\u201d she wrote in a text sent on April 22, 2025.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors believe Burke killed Hernandez the next day. His debut album \u201cWithered,\u201d the first record on a four-album deal that would have seen Interscope Records pay Burke up to $19 million, was set to release on April 25.<\/p>\n
What did Hernandez\u2019s family know about D4vd?<\/p>\n
The text messages shown in court revealed Burke and Hernandez\u2019s relationship was no secret to their families. <\/p>\n
Hernandez\u2019s parents signed a travel waiver to allow their teenage daughter to travel to London with Burke, according to Farell. When Hernandez lived with her aunt in Los Angeles, Burke would frequently pick her up for dates, joined Hernandez\u2019s family for church services and took a trip with them to Six Flags Magic Mountain, the detective testified.<\/p>\n
Hernandez also visited Burke\u2019s family home in Houston and sat with his relatives in a VIP box during an L.A. concert, according to evidence shown in court. <\/p>\n
Patrick Steinfeld, an attorney for the family, declined to answer questions about what Hernandez\u2019s parents knew about their daughter\u2019s relationship to the singer. <\/p>\n
What remains a mystery?<\/p>\n
The exact nature of Hernandez\u2019s death seems to be beyond the reach of investigators. <\/p>\n
Through five days of testimony, prosecutors were never able to describe the actual murder. Under cross-examination, Farrel and a deputy medical examiner admitted they couldn\u2019t identify the type of weapon used to kill the teen or describe the circumstances of the slaying. <\/p>\n
It appears no one actually witnessed Hernandez die. No witnesses were called that could say they saw Burke or Hernandez between 10:10 and 10:31 p.m. on April 23, 2025, the window of time when prosecutors believe the killing occurred. <\/p>\n
Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, said \u201cthe evidence for the murder is circumstantial,\u201d but noted that Silverman is an experienced prosecutor who has won homicide convictions before in cases where police had not recovered a body.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy comparison, this is a cake walk,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Police did not recover a murder weapon in the case either, and none of the chainsaws they recovered during a search of Burke\u2019s home tested positive for blood or DNA. While there is evidence that Hernandez\u2019s blood was spilled in Burke\u2019s garage, it seems police never found the actual tool used to cut up her body. <\/p>\n
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said Monday prosecutors only presented a \u201csmall fraction\u201d of the evidence they\u2019d collected. But Dmitry Gorin, a former L.A. County prosecutor, warned that the lack of witnesses to the actual murder will give the defense an avenue to raise reasonable doubt at trial.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe defense will drive a big hole through the prosecution case as it stands,\u201d Gorin said. \u201cThe government has to have additional evidence because D4vd has no history of violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
What are D4vd\u2019s possible defenses?<\/p>\n
During cross-examination of L.A. County Deputy Medical Examiner Grant Ho, who conducted Hernandez\u2019s autopsy, defense attorney Marilyn Bednarski suggested the teen harmed herself the night of the killing. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t rule that out that she would have been holding the instrument that caused either of those wounds?\u201d Bednarski asked last week.<\/p>\n
Ho said it was unlikely Hernandez harmed herself but he could not rule it out. <\/p>\n
While cross-examining Farell, defense attorney Blair Berk also raised the idea that Hernandez had previously committed domestic violence against Burke and had mental health issues. <\/p>\n
Although neither would justify a homicide, experts believe the defense could be laying the foundation for a self-defense or crime-of-passion argument that could lessen the murder charge to manslaughter.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next in the case?<\/p>\n
Burke is due back in court Aug. 31 for a post-preliminary-hearing arraignment. He could elect to go to trial within 90 days of that date, but that seems unlikely given the massive amount of evidence in the case. <\/p>\n
Prosecutors must also decide whether to seek the death penalty in the case. Since Burke is charged with murder with special circumstances, he can only be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole or capital punishment if convicted. <\/p>\n
When he was elected in 2024, Hochman said he would only seek the death penalty in limited cases, including \u201ccold blooded assassinations\u201d of police officers and mass shootings. He has yet to pursue a death verdict during his roughly 18 months in office.<\/p>\n
While the death penalty remains legal in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom placed a moratorium on its use in 2019, meaning that even with a conviction Burke likely would be spared execution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Los Angeles Superior Court judge found Monday that enough evidence exists for the singer D4vd to stand…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":966566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[44234,39440,1582,276,6517,385083,4446,262,25175,246,91894,2961,224,5337,9620,7207,6617,7544,4063,12433],"class_list":["post-966565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-april","tag-burke","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-case","tag-corey-farell","tag-death","tag-defense","tag-evidence","tag-family","tag-hernandez","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-murder","tag-police","tag-prosecutor","tag-relationship","tag-text","tag-trial"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=966565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/966566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=966565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=966565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=966565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}