True Crime News
Brutal murder of young Carrollton mother to be featured on 48 Hours
Alyssa Burkett
A murder that took place in Carrollton in 2020 will be the subject of an episode of CBS TV show 48 Hours. Called "The Plot to Eliminate Alyssa Burkett,” it will be broadcast on Saturday, November 16 at 9 pm on CBS and stream on Paramount+.
The episode tracks the tragic murder of 24-year-old Alyssa Ann Burkett, who was in the middle of a bitter custody dispute with Andrew Beard, the father of her one-year-old daughter.
48 Hours correspondent Peter Van Sant takes viewers inside the tragic and harrowing case, uncovering a story of jealousy, obsession, and murder.
The murder took place on October 2, 2020. Alyssa's mother Teresa Collard received a call urging her to rush to her daughter's workplace. Collard can be heard on police body cam video recalling something her daughter said about Beard: "…She even said, ‘I think he’s the kind of person that’s gonna try to kill me,’ and he did. And he did. Oh my God."
The all-new episode explores how the investigation quickly zeroed in on Beard. Carrollton Police Detective Jeremy Chevallier recalls that the case took a clear direction from the start. “Within an hour of getting to the crime scene, we knew that we had needed to look for Andrew Beard,” he says. But as it turned out, Beard was only the beginning of this complex story.
Over the course of the investigation, detectives uncovered a twisted plot involving Beard’s fiancée Holly Elkins. Police came to conclude she was the mastermind who helped Beard shoot and stab his ex-girlfriend to death.
Elkins and Beard began a relationship in April 2020. By May, they were shopping for engagement rings, but Elkins grew frustrated with Beard’s continuing association with Burkett, and began a campaign to harass Burkett that included placing a GPS tracker on Burkett’s vehicle, making a fake 911 call claiming Burkett was driving erratically on the interstate, and falsely reporting to police that Burkett’s mother had attacked her, including creating scratches on her chest to support the lie.
Elkins and Beard also hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on Burkett and her new boyfriend. Elkins helped Beard plant drugs and a gun in Burkett’s vehicle, then called the police and claimed Burkett was selling drugs to black men out of her car.
On October 2, 2020, Beard dressed in a black rainsuit and disguised as a Black man then shot Burkett in the head with a shotgun while she sat behind the wheel of her car in her work parking lot. As she staggered out of the car, he grabbed her and stabbed and slashed her 44 times.
Beard was sentenced to 43 years in federal prison.
At Elkins' trial, Burkett’s new boyfriend testified that he believed Elkins was the “puppet master” behind the murder. In April, Elkins was convicted of conspiracy to stalk, stalking using a dangerous weapon resulting in death, and brandishing a firearm in relation to a crime of violence. In August, she was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.
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