\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div> \t\t\t\t\tBurke with fan Caden Alvarez at a pop-up event in April 2025. Alvarez describes him as a \u201cticking time bomb.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Caden Alvarez<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tBurke and Rivas Hernandez met online, either through a Discord server or on Instagram, as Burke himself told sheriff\u2019s deputies when they visited his West Hollywood home in February 2024, after her parents first reported her missing. Prosecutors recovered chats dating back to 2022. Rivas Hernandez was 11 then, a girl with big brown eyes who loved to sing and dance and lived with her parents<\/a> and two older siblings in a modest stucco house in Lake Elsinore, a working-class exurb about 70 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Burke was five years older and also lived with his parents, in a middle-class Houston suburb. A terminally online teenager, he was earning money from Fortnite<\/em> gameplay montages he posted on YouTube and making his first forays into music.<\/p>\n \n\tOnce Burke moved to Los Angeles around the end of 2023, he and Rivas Hernandez met up in person, and the relationship turned physical, prosecutors say. They allege he first sexually abused Rivas Hernandez in November 2023, when she was 13 and he was 18. By then, he was a rising star with a major-label deal who\u2019d opened for SZA on her SOS<\/em> tour. A trove of messages from that time, some of which were read in court during a preliminary hearing in the case, show Burke alternating between affection, playfulness, control, and cruelty in their interactions.<\/p>\n \n\tOn Valentine\u2019s Day 2024, Burke allegedly texted Rivas Hernandez that he would pick her up in Lake Elsinore that night. The two planned to move in together, and Burke told her it would be the \u201cmost important day of ur life next to the wedding day,\u201d according to texts read in court. They called the plan \u201cOperation Awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe next day, Rivas Hernandez\u2019s parents phoned the Riverside County Sheriff\u2019s Department to report that their daughter had run away, call logs reviewed by Rolling Stone<\/em> confirm. Her mother, Mercedes Mart\u00ednez, posted a flyer on Facebook<\/a>. \u201cMissing!!!\u201d it read in bold red letters. \u201cI\u2019m distressed,\u201d she wrote in Spanish in the caption. \u201cI\u2019ve already filed a report with the police. If you know anything, call me.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t<\/p>\n \u201cEverything happened so fast, I feel like he lost himself. his spirit and whole appearance changed. He became a new person.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n\tOfficials from both Riverside and L.A. County contacted Burke after finding his number in Rivas Hernandez\u2019s phone records. In bodycam footage of the L.A. deputies\u2019 visit to his home, revealed in court, they told Burke that Rivas Hernandez was a 13-year-old runaway. He claimed he had no idea she was a minor, insisting they\u2019d only met once in person, the previous November.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tOn a recent Twitch stream, Aysia Collins, one of Burke\u2019s closest friends and a stylist on his Withered<\/em> tour, recalled seeing the missing-person flyer. She said she texted the person who posted it and told them the photo was of her friend\u2019s girlfriend. When the person replied that the girl was 13, Collins said, she wrote back, \u201cWhat the fuck.\u201d She claimed she immediately confronted Burke, who told her Rivas Hernandez was 19, while producing some kind of \u201cproof.\u201d (Collins declined on the stream to say what he showed her and declined to comment for this article.)<\/p>\n \n\tWhen Rivas Hernandez returned home later that month, her parents confiscated her phone. Burke then allegedly visited Lake Elsinore and paid one of her classmates $1,000 to slip her a secret phone. In April, Rivas Hernandez\u2019s parents reported her missing again. Over the course of the year, she and Burke allegedly spent significant time together, even traveling to Las Vegas, London, and Texas. (Burke\u2019s lawyers established through pretrial testimony that Rivas Hernandez\u2019s parents knew about some of the travel and had signed a notarized consent form allowing her to fly to London with him.)<\/p>\n \n\tProsecutors say the extent of the relationship became clear only after Rivas Hernandez\u2019s death, when investigators recovered an old iPhone at Burke\u2019s residence and gained access to his digital accounts. They found dozens of photographs showing Burke sexually abusing Rivas Hernandez, often at his home. One photo shown in court depicted Rivas Hernandez wearing what looked like a diamond engagement ring on her left ring finger, which had been tattooed in red cursive with the name \u201cDavid.\u201d Prosecutors say Burke later amputated that finger when he allegedly dismembered Rivas Hernandez\u2019s body.<\/p>\n \n\tBurke and Rivas Hernandez \u201cbroke up\u201d in November 2024, but the sexual abuse continued, prosecutors say. By March 2025, she appeared increasingly frustrated. \u201cAll we do is have sex and just hang out man I want more than that for myself,\u201d she texted Burke. On April 22, prosecutors say, Burke and Rivas Hernandez got into a lengthy argument over text, in which she expressed jealousy over his relationship with Collins. During the exchange, Rivas Hernandez threatened to reveal their illicit relationship and destroy his career. She said she wanted to see him, and he agreed to send a car.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhat prosecutors say happened next reads like a horror script: At around 10:10 p.m. on April 23, Rivas Hernandez arrived at Burke\u2019s house, where he allegedly stabbed her to death and watched her bleed out. Prosecutors claim Burke then texted and called Rivas Hernandez\u2019s phone multiple times as he drove to a remote area of Santa Barbara County, purportedly to dispose of evidence. They say the messages were part of a \u201cpremeditated plan to cover up the murder.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tA portrait of Rivas Hernandez on display as authorities announced murder charges in the case in April.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFrederic J. Brown\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThe next day, Burke did a radio interview and attended his album-release party before flying to New York and Texas for Withered<\/em> events. In early May, he allegedly ordered two chain saws from Amazon and a third from Home Depot, and later dismembered Rivas Hernandez\u2019s body in a blue inflatable pool<\/a> inside his three-car garage. After that, prosecutors allege, he placed her remains in a black cadaver bag and a garbage bag and stacked them in the Tesla, which he loaded up with at least 11 air fresheners<\/a>. Burke then parked the car around the corner from his house and left in late July for the North American leg of his Withered<\/em> tour, which was scheduled to stretch into September.<\/p>\n \n\tAt his San Francisco tour opener and other stops, Burke went all in on a funeral theme. He had a black hearse deliver a white coffin<\/a>, ostensibly marking the symbolic death of a musical era. That first night, he wore a pink Hello Kitty sweatshirt onstage, an eerie echo of the Hello Kitty sandals Rivas Hernandez was said to have been wearing when she allegedly ran away to be with him.<\/p>\n \n\tHe\u2019d been gone 38 days and played 24 shows before the Tesla was tagged and towed on Sept. 5. Three days later, the tow-yard manager called police, saying the Tesla was \u201cemanating a foul odor and attracting flies.\u201d After news broke of the grisly discovery, Alvarez, like many fans, refused to believe Burke was involved. Now, he says, he feels sickened: \u201cIt\u2019s fascinating how a person can deceive you.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBurke\u2019s friends and acquaintances who spoke with Rolling Ston<\/em>e were similarly disturbed. Some theorized that he was unable to navigate the whiplash of going, almost overnight, from a deeply religious childhood home in Texas to the unsupervised playground of Los Angeles, with all the excesses afforded by his newfound fame and wealth.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cEverything happened so fast, I feel like he lost himself,\u201d says Santiago Pascoe, who knew Burke back in Texas. \u201cHe was real big on Christianity, and then that dissolved. His spirit and his whole appearance changed. He became a new person.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn an interview one month after the alleged murder, Burke insisted the transition was \u201csuper smooth.\u201d When he left home and started going on tour, he said, \u201cI just treated everybody like they were behind the screen. I was able to kind of put the shyness and the anxiety aside and be like, \u2018OK, real life is just Fortnite<\/em>, even. Treat everybody like a video game. This is Fortnite<\/em> right now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBurke was born in New York City and raised in Houston. But when a reporter once asked where he was from, he said, \u201cThe internet.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tColleen, his mother, was a teacher, and his father, Dawud, did litigation support for law firms. By all accounts, they raised Burke and his two younger siblings in a strict but supportive household. Colleen encouraged her kids to find creative outlets and pursue their passions, while Dawud stressed the importance of discipline and hard work. The Burkes were also very religious, with Dawud occasionally serving as a Pentecostal preacher. The only music allowed in the home was classical and gospel. Ore-Oluwa Oyinloye, a close childhood friend, remembers once trying to talk to Burke about Lil Wayne. Burke replied, \u201cI don\u2019t know who that is.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOnly after hearing someone play Lil Pump\u2019s \u201cGucci Gang\u201d on the school bus in seventh grade did Burke seek out other music. He got on SoundCloud and developed an appetite for 2010s internet rappers like XXXTentacion and pop-punk bands like Paramore.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBut two secular exceptions had been made in Burke\u2019s cultural diet: video games and anime. Dawud was a devotee of both. He maintained a collection of video-game consoles and let Burke stay up past his bedtime to watch Dragon Ball Z<\/em>. In fifth grade, Burke started reading manga, which inspired him to start writing his own stories and poems.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tOyinloye remembers Burke as a \u201cnerdy type.\u201d Another former classmate, who requested anonymity, still recalls the sting of Burke loudly calling them a \u201closer\u201d unprovoked in a full classroom. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t super outgoing and talented,\u201d the classmate says, remembering the classroom outburst as a surprise act of bullying.<\/p>\n \n\tBurke, who spoke extensively about his upbringing in interviews, once claimed that he struggled to focus and racked up bad grades, leading his parents to homeschool him after seventh grade. He hated it at first, and asserted that after leaving middle school he never heard from his supposed friends again. (Oyinloye disputes this version of events, saying he reached out to Burke but never heard back.) But Burke eventually came to see his isolation as a blessing: There was more time for video games and the internet.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tBurke in 7th Grade<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAnthony Middle School<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tWhile Burke learned parkour at a local gym, his social life migrated online. He lived vicariously through the people he befriended through multiplayer games like Fortnite<\/em> and Call of Duty<\/em>. \u201cEverybody I met online was older \u2014 it was like these adults and teenagers and people going through different situations, and they would just vent to you on the game,\u201d Burke said in 2023. \u201cAnd I\u2019m like 15, 14, so I don\u2019t know how to be a therapist! But I\u2019m taking this information from all these different people talking to me about problems and situations. I\u2019m like, \u2018Wow, this is really what humans are like.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHoping to become a professional gamer, Burke began uploading Fortnite<\/em> videos in 2018. He hid it from his parents until he\u2019d garnered enough attention, and some money, to assure them his hobby wasn\u2019t frivolous.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tMaking music, however, didn\u2019t interest Burke until it made him a star. Growing up, he sang in the church choir but quit because he got bored. Same with piano lessons and playing flute in the middle school band. \u201cEvery single opportunity I had to be a musical kid, it never clicked,\u201d he said in 2025. It only clicked in a moment of desperation. After copyright strikes hit the popular songs he used to soundtrack his Fortnite<\/em> montages, his mom offered a solution: Make your own music.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tUsing a free beat, the entry-level recording app BandLab, and his sister\u2019s closet as a makeshift booth, Burke recorded his first song, \u201cRun Away,\u201d<\/a> in late 2021. It got a few thousand streams on SoundCloud, so he made another, \u201cYou and I.\u201d<\/a> That track gained traction through a gaming montage Burke gave the clicky title \u201cFirst Fortnite<\/em> player to use his own song in a video.\u201d Other players started using it, too, because it was royalty-free.<\/p>\n\n\t\tA Missing Girl<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/d4vd-embed-celeste.jpg\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\t\tLife\u2019s a Game<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/d4vd-embed-yearbook.jpg?w=232\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>