Toxic couple plotted murder of mother in Texas custody battle

Alyssa Burkett was killed in broad daylight outside the Greentree Apartments leasing office in Carrollton, Texas, where the 24-year-old worked as an assistant office manager. Investigators said she was shot through the driver’s-side window and then stabbed 44 times on Oct. 2, 2020, a killing that began to look less like a lone attack and more like the end point of a carefully built conspiracy.

At the center of the case were Burkett’s ex-boyfriend, Andrew Charles Beard, and his fiancée, Holly Ann Elkins. Burkett and Beard shared a young daughter, Willow, and were locked in a bitter custody dispute. Prosecutors said the relationship between Elkins and Beard began in early April 2020, and by May they were shopping for engagement rings. By summer, prosecutors said, Elkins was working to discredit Burkett as a parent because she wanted a mother-child relationship with Beard’s daughter, turning a private breakup into a campaign of control.

That campaign, federal prosecutors said, included repeated harassment, false police reports, and even planting illegal drugs and a pistol in Burkett’s vehicle in an effort to get her arrested. The tactics fit a pattern familiar to domestic-violence experts: coercive behavior escalating into isolation, surveillance, and false allegations, all aimed at removing a mother from her child’s life. Prosecutors described the pair’s conduct as a “campaign of terror,” and said the case showed how stalking can evolve into lethal violence when warning signs are ignored or minimized.

Investigators initially believed Beard may have acted alone. But the case widened after they concluded his role was only half of the story. Burkett’s mother, Teresa Collard, identified Beard to investigators immediately after the scene was discovered. Elkins then sat down with detectives the day after Beard was charged, telling them she believed the wrong man had been accused and saying Beard had been home with her the morning Burkett was killed. That alibi did not hold.

Beard pleaded guilty in June 2022 to stalking using a dangerous weapon resulting in death and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, and was sentenced in May 2023 to 43 years in federal prison. Elkins was indicted in June 2023, convicted by a federal jury in Dallas on April 17, 2024, after seven days of trial and about 90 minutes of deliberation, and sentenced on Aug. 15, 2024, to two consecutive life sentences by U.S. District Judge Jane Boyle. For Burkett’s family, the verdict brought some measure of justice, but not relief from the loss that began with a custody fight and ended in murder.