Post Mortem |The Plot to Eliminate Alyssa Burkett
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Welcome back to Postmortem. I'm your host, Anne-Marie Green. And today we are discussing the case of Alyssa Burkett, who in 2020 was brutally murdered by Andrew Beard, her ex-boyfriend and also the father of her young daughter. Nearly three years after Alyssa's death, Andrew's fiance, Holly Elkins, was arrested in connection with the murder. And

So joining me now to unpack all the twists and turns of this case are 48 Hours correspondent Peter Van Sant, producer Liza Finley, and Gabby Demergen. Thank you so much, guys. Thanks, Anne-Marie. Thanks, Anne-Marie. Great to be here again, Anne-Marie. Okay, as per usual, everyone, remember, if you haven't listened to the 48 Hours episode yet, you can find the full audio just below this episode in your podcast feed. Go take a listen and then come back for this conversation. So here we go.

Alyssa Burkett was murdered in broad daylight outside of her workplace in Carrollton, Texas. This is just north of Dallas. There were witnesses. And even though Andrew Beard wore a disguise, he was really quickly identified as a suspect and surrendered to authorities just three days later.

But what I was really surprised by is he picked such a public place to attack her. Do you have any insight into why he would do it there in broad daylight? Well, first off, it's absolute madness that he did it where he did it. His own mother even said this was stupid. She wasn't involved in the murder, of course. But to have all those eyeballs there where he was spotted, his getaway vehicle was spotted, how he killed her was seen everywhere.

But authorities think it's all part of this enormous psychological pressure he was under from Holly that he had to act. That's the power that she had over him, that he would have done something this stupid, which put authorities right on top of him so quickly. And by the way, a quick side, I used to live in Carrollton, Texas when I was a reporter in Dallas and about a mile and a half from this site. So it's really something.

Carrollton's a great town, and I loved living there. And this is an extraordinary case for those folks. It was unbelievable. I mean, just to go back to how stupid it was, for instance, they made up this decision to have him appear as a white man, as an African-American man. So they got this makeup, you know, sort of the Java makeup, and he put this on like...

It was ridiculous. And then he put on a fake beard that was a Halloween costume. And he expected people to think that he was an African-American man. And a lot of the witnesses said, you know, something about him. I don't think he was. Really? Yeah. Yeah. And he wasn't fooling anybody. It was ludicrous. And you do wonder, I mean, one of the things we think about all the time is like,

How did he think that he was going to get away with this? There's no way. I mean, he had a history with this woman of of tormenting her and stalking her. And here he is in the nine o'clock in the morning doing this savage murder. You know, the thing about Andrew is that he was really willing to talk pretty openly with the FBI almost right away. Did you all reach out to him?

Yeah, so I had originally sent him an email. He's in prison, but there is a system where you can contact incarcerated people through, and that's how I was able to get my message to him. And so I'd sent him an email, and I said, hey, would you be willing to speak with me over the phone? And he was. He was very polite, answered all of my questions, and he was very willing to help. And he wanted to do an interview on camera, and he was trying to facilitate this with the prison.

Ultimately, they didn't let us in there. Wow. But he wanted to talk on camera. He was ready. Did he express regret?

Not to me. And I always find some people, they just want to talk because they also realize we're the last gasp of the real world from the horrible confinement in prison. And we're a relief to them. They sometimes seize on that and they want to talk to us because after that, it's just bars, horrible food, violence.

isolation, shame. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Of course, part of the reason that he was a suspect sort of early on is because Alyssa and Beard had had this contentious relationship, this custody battle over their daughter, Willow. But when Beard started dating Holly Elkins, Alyssa was actually hopeful that

That maybe this new woman would create sort of a new, more positive environment that all three of them can maybe work together to support Willow. And there were a series of text messages that we actually did see in the hour between Alyssa and Elkins from this period. And they seem quite amicable.

And then something changed drastically between the two of them. Do we know why? Holly Elkins was just acting. And she says they met for the first time. They all had a meal together and they were very friendly. And she wrote texts to Alyssa that said, I really want a super healthy relationship. And Alyssa's like, yes, thank goodness. And her mother was happy and her sister was happy and everything.

Finally, you know, somebody that's going to be able to calm Andrew down. But behind the scenes, let me tell you, behind the scenes, she was up to no good.

Talk about, you know, sort of a two-faced personality. Alyssa had no idea she had these evil designs to eliminate her and become Willow's mother. We have some other texts that didn't make it into the show. And this is an exchange about what Andrew was going through with Holly, how she put pressure on him. And

The murder took place in October of 2020. This is in June. And Holly is texting Andrew and she says some nasty things about Alyssa. She refers to her as BM, which is a baby mama. Here's some of that exchange. Holly writes, outside of not wanting some garbage...

mom pathetic hookup in my life. If I raise Willow with you and we don't work out, I lose a child. Do you get that? She's talking now to Andrew, the man she's manipulating to do this killing. Andrew said, I do. It would be unbearable. He was just so submissive to her, right? Then Holly writes,

If those things were important to you, you would have brought them up to baby mama on your own, Andrew. And Andrew writes back in his submissive style, I love how serious you were taking it and was just so wrapped up in how great it's been. I didn't give you any acknowledgement of that. And Holly writes back,

But you chose to be IDK. I don't know, for lack of a better term, submissive to her. Like, let me deal with some crazy ass courts, baby mama situation for the rest of my life to raise Willow, who I have no right to. And I lose if anything goes sideways. This was part of her plan.

badgering of Andrew. You're not a man unless you do this. You are to stand up and defend me. These are my desires, my wants. And he is very submissive. But you know, what's sort of interesting is we spoke to Holly's best friend growing up and in high school. And this is exactly how she treated boys growing up. She was the

the catch of the day. You know, everybody wanted Holly, all the guys. She had the fanciest clothes and the nicest pocketbooks, and she wound them around her little finger and got them to do things for her, like pick her up at midnight and take her to get a hamburger. Yeah, she really

She had it down. Gabby, in your correspondence with Andrew Beard, did he talk about how he felt about Elkins? No. Really? But he would refer to her as Elkins. And I thought that that was interesting. And he does that in his interview with the FBI. And he refers to Alyssa as Burkett as well.

which I thought is kind of cold. Yeah, yeah, that's a little odd. We saw in the hour that they had done this whole fake drug bust scheme to try and get Alyssa, I don't know, arrested. Maybe she would lose custody. But that wasn't the only thing they tried.

Andrew Beard said Holly was behind a lot of these schemes. She called 911 claiming to be a woman named Amber, for instance, and she wanted to report that there's a car that matched Alyssa's car with the same license plate, driving recklessly, flying drunk. And she was afraid. Holly was afraid. And they went and checked it out, and they didn't find any evidence that

Melissa was even on the road that night. And remember, they'd put a tracker on her car. We talked about this, where she'd be out at a club and Andrew would walk in. It was like, how did he know I was here? She had no idea that this incredible plot was unfolding where she was the target. And it was escalating. So I have to admit, Elkin's interview video that we saw, I fell for it. She looked...

She's truly distressed. She voluntarily speaks to police. She tells them that she knows nothing about Alyssa's murder. Some of the interview was in the hour, but we're going to actually play a clip that was not included in the hour. Like, I know what it's like to lose a mom. Anybody losing a mom is not okay with me by any means. And I don't care if I liked her, disliked her, or thought anything about her because that is not okay. I didn't always have the best relationship with my mom either, but losing a mom is not okay.

So one of the things I thought was interesting about what she says is, I know what it's like to lose a mother. I would never do anything like it. Did she lose her mother? Yeah.

Yes. So about two months before she met Andrew Beard, she lost her mother to suicide. It's very clear in this interview, she's trying to play on the sympathies of these cops. She wants them to feel badly for her. And knowing what we know now, it's honestly crazy that she had come up with a plan to kill Willow's mother, a baby that she'd come to love so much, knowing that she had also lost her mother so recently. Yeah.

She was masterful in that, I thought. The acting performance. Right? She could be nominated for an Oscar. Absolutely convincing. One thing the cops told us that she always thought she was the smartest person in the room. She thought she could outsmart everybody.

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Welcome back, everyone. So Elkins was actually arrested nearly three years after Alyssa's murder. What was she doing during that time? So we don't know much, but according to court documents, we learned that she had gotten married in February of 2023. We don't know to who, but she had also made 12 trips to the Dominican Republic.

So she was keeping busy. She's living large. Andrew was in the rearview mirror, left behind to deal with this situation she had helped create for him. And she was obviously not afraid of getting caught. I mean, this was an opportunity for her to go disappear somewhere in a remote region of the world and get away with murder. But I guess she didn't think she had anything to fear.

So what evidence did the FBI uncover that really pointed to Elkin's involvement in Alyssa's murder? Because as you point out, Liza, she was probably feeling like, well, I didn't do it. I don't know. Maybe she was thinking it's not illegal to bring up an idea. Right, right. Well, they had all these very damning texts, but they also had some real evidence that really put her smack in the middle of the plot.

They found that she had bought that makeup, that dark makeup, and ordered him, according to his FBI interview, to wear it and to be this persona. She was there when they bought the knife, when they brought the ammunition. I mean, really tangible stuff, you know. 48 Hours viewers know this. Every modern car has a GPS tracker. Authorities can see where you went on particular days. And if your car went to a Walmart parking lot,

They can then check that day on the cameras. If you use your credit card anywhere, they're going to find that purchase. And so they are able to trip them up on all of these things. And another thing is that there was evidence that Holly was with Andrew when he placed the GPS tracker on Alyssa's car in June of 2020. Interesting. And there was one search on her phone that said creepy stalking music.

And another search, something to the effect of, is it legal to track somebody? After the murder, she did some searches and she wrote...

can I not be brought into court if I have a psychiatrist note? She also wrote vulnerable patients going to court. She's looking into apparently mental illness. She also wrote contact psychiatrist in Dallas, suggesting she was mentally troubled with a bunch of question marks. What was that about? Prosecutors thought that Holly was trying to create a narrative about herself and

potentially for her own defense. So she was thinking of a way that she might be able to, I'm guessing, put the blame on Andrew that I was mentally damaged or mentally ill at the time and he manipulated me. That's just a theory. I have no idea, but that's a theory. And also what's so weird is that

If it was so obvious that Andrew did this and he was going to get caught for doing it, she would never get Willow. And she knew that. So really, what was the game? What was it? So the 48 Hours team was actually in the courtroom for Elkin's trial. This is April of 2024. What was it like in the courtroom?

So it was very sad. Andrew had pled, so he never got to go to trial. So this is the first and only trial that Alyssa's family was ever going to attend. And it was almost four years later after the murder. So they have to relive this whole thing with the anticipation leading up to it. The prosecution played Holly's interview in court as well. And

You know, it's very evident in some places where she's just overacting and lying. And, you know, knowing what we knew sitting in the courtroom, it was very intense being in there. So you're in the courtroom and you're hearing all this evidence, crazy evidence about the makeup. What did you learn? So...

her defense put on a makeup artist as their expert. And they used the same bottle of makeup that was found in Andrew Beard's car that investigators say he used to cover his face the morning of the murder. They took that bottle of makeup and they essentially did a makeover on Holly Elkins in front of the jury, a demonstration to show that this makeup could be used to contour her face.

It took about 20 minutes. The jury is looking at each other like, what is going on? Right. Everybody in the room is like, are they really just like giving Holly Elkins a makeover at her own trial? And the judge says something to the effect of like, I've been a judge for a very long time. This is definitely a first. What was her demeanor like in the courtroom? She very rarely throughout this seven day trial looked back.

into the gallery to see everybody. Do you know if there was anyone there on her behalf? There was a couple there. I didn't know if they were related to her, but like we said, she lost her mother and her dad did show up the very last day, I believe. Wow. Andrew's mom also attended Holly's trial and she was sitting in the same section with the victim's family and

And the judge actually ordered her to sit on the opposite end, away from Alyssa's family. Yikes. And Lizette, Andrew's mom, said to the judge, well, I'm not here in favor of the defense, making it very clear what her position was. Yeah. This is something that I think was kind of unique. Andrew's mother was not defending her son. I mean, she acknowledged that he did this horrible thing. She is heartbroken about it.

Was it difficult to convince her to talk, Lizette? Did she want to talk? She wanted to talk. She needed to talk. Sitting across from her

This was a very cathartic moment for her. She did want to communicate that my son had been a normal boy and he had dreams and I loved him and I never saw this kind of behavior before. And people think too, well, a personality like Andrew must have come from a bad seed somehow. I think she also wanted the world to know I'm a normal person.

which makes this ever more haunting of how this can happen. And looking in the depths of the human psyche, how her son could go from this terrific young man to a killer. And she just wanted to talk about it. I mean, she feels very tainted. You know, she feels that people look at her with disgust and blame her. And she wanted us to know that

She was a loving mother who had raised a good son in her mind. We meet a lot of families of people who commit murder. Very rarely do they admit that their loved one actually did it and take responsibility and feel terrible. And most of them, they just can't go there. They just can't. And she did. You know, I admire that. I wondered also about, did she talk about

her relationship with Holly Elkins. Because I thought it was interesting that little part of the interview where she's talking about how close they are. And she says, we vowed that we would never go any place without each other. And that actually made me think like, but that's not normal. Like that's a different kind of attachment, you know?

Well, they bonded over their belief, or Lisette thought that Holly believed it as well, that Andrew was innocent. So they had a really, you know, they had a cause. Right. Us against the world. Yeah. Lisette, you almost felt like she'd gone back in time and she was the same age, like they were dear friends. And that was a fascinating dynamic. But it's part of Holly's ability to manipulate. Yeah.

For Lisette, she felt as though Holly was a member of the family and she came to love her. Then Holly abandons Andrew and Lisette never hears from her again. Right. The minute he gets out on bond, she just disappears. The charge I thought was interesting because Elkins is ultimately found guilty of conspiracy to stalk and stalking using a dangerous weapon resulting in death.

But then she gets two life sentences. It just didn't seem like those charges would result in such a heavy penalty. Most murder cases are handled on the state and county level. On the federal side, they do have a murder charge, but it's rarely used. They use these other charges that sound convoluted, but they still pack a wallop in terms of a sentence. And you can be sentenced to life.

as a result of that charge. And she got two life sentences. I know. What about Willow? How is she doing? Willow is five years old now. And Alyssa's mother, Teresa, said she's a very loved little girl. It's very clear that they've made a lovely home for her. She has this beautiful princess bedroom, all pink. And I think...

You know, now that she's growing up, Teresa is worried about how she's going to have to explain what happened to Alyssa to her. Remember, Willow asks her grandmother, does mama have a cell phone in heaven? Can I call her? Yes. It's heartbreaking. I can't imagine, right? Who can imagine that?

And I have to say, Alyssa's mom, though, is just the most loving person. And so she'll be surrounded in that. And hopefully she can come through the other side of this disaster. Well, it sounds like she has an incredible support system. But this is, you know, this is something that will hang over her for the rest of her life.

It was a really fascinating hour, an incredible twist at the end. Peter, Liza, Gabby, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having us. Thanks for having us, Anne-Marie. Another fascinating talk. Thanks so much.

If you like this series, Postmortem, please rate and review 48 Hours on Apple Podcasts and follow 48 Hours wherever you get your podcasts. And you can also listen ad-free on Amazon Music, Wondery Plus, and the Wondery app, or with a 48 Hours Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. Thanks again for listening. ♪

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