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After Texas woman’s murder, detectives learn killer was “only half of the story”
Three days after 24-year-old Alyssa Burkett was shot and then stabbed to death outside her office in Carrollton, Texas, Andrew Beard – with whom Burkett shared a 1-year-old daughter – was charged with her murder. The following day, Beard’s fiancée Holly Elkins voluntarily sat down with two detectives at the Carrollton Police Department.
“I wanted to use her as a witness in this. And if she had information that could put her in that witness column and not in the suspect column, I was gonna listen to her,” Det. Jeremy Chevallier told correspondent Peter Van Sant in “The Plot to Eliminate Alyssa Burkett,” an all-new “48 Hours” airing Saturday, Nov. 16 at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
Lizette Bowers/Stephen Green
Elkins told Chevallier and Sgt. Michael Harding she was convinced they had the wrong man. “I can’t believe my fiancé would do something like that to a woman, or to anybody …” she said.
And Elkins also said she was willing to help if she could: “I just feel bad to not help something that I think is very sad that happened … I feel conflicted morally because I want to help, but I don’t have anything …”
But there was one thing Elkins was adamant about – Beard was home with her the morning Burkett was killed. “… if I had any reasonable reason to believe that Andrew left that house and did it, I would give it to you. I would, I would, I promise,” Elkins told detectives.
“At first it seemed like an open-and-shut case,” Chevallier told “48 Hours.” He would later discover “Andrew Beard was only half of the story.”
On the morning of Oct. 2, 2020, Burkett parked outside the Greentree Apartments leasing office when a man in a black Ford Expedition pulled into the spot next to her. He got out of his SUV and shot Burkett through the driver’s side window.
Assuming she was dead, the shooter began driving away, but Burkett was still alive. As she got out of her car and ran towards her office, the assailant — who several eyewitnesses described as a Black man — got back out of his car and chased Burkett with a hunting knife. He stabbed and slashed her 44 times before he fled for good. When Burkett’s mother, Teresa Collard, arrived at the scene, she immediately gave investigators a name: Andrew Beard.
Alyssa Burkett
In the months leading up to her death, Burkett and Beard, who was 33 at the time, had been involved in a bitter custody battle over their daughter, Willow. After Willow was born in July 2019, Beard filed for primary custody of the baby. “Andrew, he made more money than [Alyssa] … She was afraid that … he wanted Willow, and he was gonna get her,” Burkett’s younger sister Madison Grimes told Van Sant.
Finally, in the spring of 2020, things between Burkett and Beard seemed to calm down after they came to an agreement on visitation with Willow and child support. Beard had also started dating Holly Elkins, and Burkett’s family said she was happy that Beard had found someone new.
But the peace between Beard and Burkett would be disrupted when he started demanding primary custody of Willow again. Burkett also couldn’t shake this uneasy feeling that she was being watched, and she told her family that Beard always seemed to know where she was. “Every day you feel like you’re having to watch over your shoulder … That’s how I felt she lived,” Collard told “48 Hours.”
Within hours of Burkett’s murder, police pulled Beard over in his F-150 pickup truck with Elkins and Willow inside. Police seized his truck and told Beard and Elkins that they could leave, but they couldn’t return home. Later that night, police searched Beard’s home and found GPS tracker batteries and charging stations that matched a tracking device detectives discovered under Burkett’s car earlier that day.
The next day, police searched Beard’s F-150 pickup and uncovered two bottles of dark foundation — makeup investigators believed Beard used to disguise himself as a Black man on the morning of the murder. Later that night, police located that black Ford SUV the assailant drove to the scene. It was found abandoned less than a mile from Beard’s house.
On Oct. 5, 2020, Beard surrendered at the Carrollton Police Department and was charged with murder. He spent two weeks behind bars before he was released on bond. Chevallier said he was worried about baby Willow’s safety, so he reached out to the federal government to take the case under federal firearm laws.
Because an unregistered silencer was found during the search of Beard’s home, the federal government agreed to take the case. Eight days after he bonded out, Beard was rearrested and ultimately charged with cyberstalking using a dangerous weapon resulting in death.
In June 2022, Beard pleaded guilty. One month later, he spoke with the FBI as part of a plea deal, and he had a lot to say — especially when it came to Elkins’ role in the plot to kill Burkett. “… It was …’this is how you’re gonna do this,’ it was, ‘… you’re gonna wear this dark makeup …’ That was her plan … that’s how it’s gonna be done,” Beard told the FBI.
Investigators soon realized that the Holly Elkins who told detectives, “I want to help, I really do. But I don’t have any answers …” just four days after Burkett’s murder, had given the performance of her life. “She was the one running the show … she was telling him what he was gonna do …” Chevallier told “48 Hours.”
Investigators dug back into text messages between Elkins and Beard, which revealed Elkins’ true feelings about Burkett. “She hated Alyssa with a burning passion,” Harding told Van Sant.
One week before the murder, Elkins texted Beard while she was away on a trip in Mexico and wrote, “I hope you handle it I’m not coming home to b***s***.” Beard responded, “That’s my goal.”
During his interview, Beard explained to investigators: “I just basically said, ‘OK’ and became submissive to whatever she wanted me to do, that’s the task I did.”
After speaking with Beard, the FBI spent about a year building a compelling case against Elkins. And in the eyes of the investigators, Elkins was just as culpable for Burkett’s death as Beard. “I 100% believe that if Holly and Andrew had never met that Alyssa Burkett would be alive today,” Harding told “48 Hours.”
In May 2023, Beard was sentenced to 43 years in federal prison. Investigators believed Elkins thought the case was over. “I think she believed that the further she got away from this, the less involved she was gonna be,” Chevallier said. “But it didn’t work out for her.”
Two months after Beard was sentenced, Elkins was arrested by federal agents at the Miami airport after returning from a trip to the Dominican Republic. She was charged with conspiracy to stalk and stalking using a dangerous weapon resulting in death. Elkins pleaded not guilty.
In April 2024, Elkins went on trial as a co-conspirator where one of the federal prosecutors put it like this: “Andrew Beard was a monster, but he was Holly Elkins’ monster,” Harding told “48 Hours.” After a one-week trial, the case went to the jury. Jurors deliberated for about 90 minutes and returned a verdict of guilty on all counts. Three months later, she was sentenced to two life terms — much longer than Beard’s sentence.
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Head of Russia’s nuclear defense forces killed in Moscow blast triggered by device hidden in scooter, officials say
Moscow — The head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, Lt. General Igor Kirillov, was killed along with his deputy early Tuesday in an explosion in Moscow, Russia’s Investigative Committee said.
An explosive device hidden in an electronic scooter went off outside a residential building as the two men left the structure, Agence France-Presse cites investigators as saying.
ALEXANDER NEMENOV / AFP via Getty Images
“Investigators, forensic experts and operational services are working at the scene,” committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement. “Investigative and search activities are being carried out to establish all the circumstances around this crime.”
ALEXANDER NEMENOV / AFP via Getty Images
The committee carries out responsible major investigations in Russia.
Kirillov was sentenced in absentia by a Ukrainian court on Dec. 16 for the use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine during Russia’s military operation in Ukraine that started in Feb. 2022.
AFPTV / AFP via Getty Images
Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, said it had recorded more than 4,800 uses of chemical weapons on the battlefield since February 2022, particularly K-1 combat grenades.
During the almost 3-year operation, Russia has made small but steady territorial gains to the nearly one-fifth of Ukraine it already controls.
Kirillov had been in his post since 2017, AFP notes.
A powerful earthquake hit the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu Tuesday, smashing buildings in the capital, Port Vila, including one housing the embassies of the U.S. and other nations. A witness told Agence France-Presse of bodies seen in the city.
Dan McGarry, a journalist with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project based in Vanuatu, told the Reuters news agency in an interview that police said at least one person had been killed and injured people had been taken to hospital.
“It was the most violent earthquake I’ve experienced in my 21 years living in Vanuatu and in the Pacific Islands. I’ve seen a lot of large earthquakes, never one like this,” he said.
The 7.3-magnitude quake struck at a depth of 35 miles, off the coast of Efate, Vanuatu’s main island, at 12:47 p.m. local time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The ground floor of a building housing the U.S, French and other embassies had been crushed under higher floors, resident Michael Thompson told AFP by satellite phone after posting images of the destruction on social media.
“That no longer exists. It is just completely flat. The top three floors are still holding but they have dropped,” Thompson said.
“If there was anyone in there at the time, then they’re gone.”
Thompson said the ground floor housed the U.S. embassy, but that couldn’t be immediately confirmed.
A photo showed significant damage to the building:
STR / AFP via Getty Images
The United States has closed the embassy until further notice, citing “considerable damage” to the mission, the U.S. embassy in Papua New Guinea said in a message on social media. “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this earthquake,” the embassy said.
The New Zealand High Commission, housed in the same building, suffered “significant damage,” a statement from Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ office said, adding that, “New Zealand is deeply concerned about the significant earthquake in Vanuatu, and the damage it has caused.”
Thompson, who runs a zipline adventure business in Vanuatu, said, “There’s people in the buildings in town. There were bodies there when we walked past.”
A landslide on one road had covered a bus, he said, “so there’s obviously some deaths there.”
The quake also collapsed at least two bridges, and most mobile networks were cut off, Thompson said.
“They’re just cracking on with a rescue operation. The support we need from overseas is medical evacuation and skilled rescue, (the) kind(s) of people that can operate in earthquakes,” he said.
STR / AFP via Getty Images
Video footage posted by Thompson and verified by AFP showed uniformed rescuers and emergency vehicles working on a building where an external roof had collapsed onto a number of parked cars and trucks.
The streets of the city were strewn with broken glass and other debris from damaged buildings, the footage showed.
Nibhay Nand, a Sydney-based pharmacist with businesses across the South Pacific, said he had spoken to staff in Port Vila who said most of the store there had been “destroyed” and that other buildings nearby had “collapsed.”
“We are waiting for everyone to get online to know how devastating and traumatic this will be,” Nand told AFP.
A tsunami warning was issued after the quake, with waves of up to three feet forecast for some areas of Vanuatu, but it was soon lifted by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.
Earthquakes are common in Vanuatu, a low-lying archipelago of 320,000 people that straddles the seismic Ring of Fire, an arc of intense tectonic activity that stretches through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific Basin.
Vanuatu is ranked as one of the countries most susceptible to natural disasters such as earthquakes, storm damage, flooding and tsunamis, according to the annual World Risk Report.
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