20/20 - Ride or Die

Episode Date: December 20, 2025

After a mom is killed outside her workplace, real-time surveillance video helps detectives uncover clues leading to a suspect whose own confession suggests a possible mastermind still at large. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An all-new 2020 starts right now. Good morning, everyone. It's Friday with our temperature today, a high of about 78. The morning of October 2nd, 2020. We were at a diner here in Carrollton, having a little meeting breakfast with our sergeants. This was on a Friday, so that was one of our regular days off.

off. I occasionally will work off-duty jobs. I happen to be working at a bank that morning. I had my very first mammogram ever that morning. You have to put everything in a locker and lock your things up. It was during that meeting that we got a radio that there was a shooting at the Green Tree apartments in Carrollton, Texas. I was just down the street from Green Tree. Get a call for my sergeant. He asked me to come help. My phone went off. It was a The Facebook notification and the exact words were, is it true? I just heard about Alyssa, what happened? 9-1-1, what is the address of the emergency?

It's 11,000 to drive. I need an ambulance to be able to get some help headed that way. Now tell me exactly what happened. Someone came up and just stopped my assistant manager. I need someone here immediately. Don't touch anything, okay? This is an active crime scene, okay? Who was in here?

Just me and my coworker were we just getting our day started. Okay. I came in at 9 o'clock. I was in the computer working and then Tony comes in around 906. When suddenly we heard like a car like really close to the parking lot. And we're like, what the hell is he parking like that? And then we just heard a booming sound. You were watering the plants, and then what?

And then what? And then what? You know what? I saw that he got a car, and then another more car, right? The man was going to go out, but he could go and he came, boom, pung. This is a crime scene, now we gotta tape it off. And when the chop, you know, the chop,

and I say, I look and what happened. Do you hear one shot? Only one shot, yeah. Is she awake? She's awake. Okay, how old is she? She's 24 years old. Do you know who she is?

Yes, she's my sister manager. Okay. The first day. Growing up, she was very headstrong, but she also had like the heart of gold. We had our times, right? Like mothers and daughters do. But I can say she's the one who, anytime I needed anything, she was there. I am Alyssa sister.

We're six years apart, I believe. She was always the cooler, older sister that I always looked up to. For my 18th birthday, my mother did this huge party, and she actually got Alyssa to make a video. Hey Taylor, happy birthday, 18. Now that you're getting into adulthood, we're going to become best friends, and we're going to make lots of new memories. We can do everything together now that you're older, and so that was like really awesome for me. for me at that time. Me and Alyssa became friends in the sixth grade.

I was kind of getting bullied. And she asked me to ride the bus home with her, and we were inseparable ever since. She's always been like a mama bird, and she was bold and strong and had to teach me kind of how to stand on my two feet. She gave me my braveness. There was not a room that she could walk in,

that her presence wouldn't be known. Whenever she got pregnant, It was very out of the blue. She was very scared, but determined she was going to go through with it. As soon as her baby came, she was all mom mode. I think that the most beautiful part of Alyssa's life was when she became a mother to Willow. We support her for changing her whole lifestyle for that kid. You have this beautiful 24-year-old mom who is trying to make a life

and just was one of the absolute best mom. Best moms. Shortly before 9 a.m. on October 2nd, Alyssa Burkett pulled into the parking lot of the Green Tree Apartments, where she worked as an assistant office manager. She was likely sitting in her car when an assailant dressed in all black approached her car from the driver's side.

The assailant, he pulled right here, and he got out, and he shot her through the driver's side window. window, and he got back in, started to back out, thinking that he had done his job. I heard that pop. I turned around and I knew it was a gunshot. Okay. So I turned around, I peaked out the window, I see a Ford Explorer. It's like a black, navy blue, something like that.

There is a video that is inside that shows the leasing office and it shows the two co-workers that were here. We dig down, me and Tony, we got down, and then we ran to the other window to the other window to take a close look of the truck and I noticed it was a black one and he was dressed everything in black like everything the bastard came out he was trying to pull away when i saw him he knew that i saw him so he tried to run off after he popped there okay they hear the gunshot and then and then they're trying to figure out what to do me told you we ran i was like he's gonna try to do something to us so i ran and i told him to call the

cops he tried to go into his car he was pulling out but he noticed that she stepped out so she was still trying to live. She was shot and then she comes out of her vehicle? He realized that Alyssa had gotten out. She was fighting to get into the leasing office where she knew her coworkers were. He stopped Caesar, comes back, runs out with a knife. The suspect got out of his vehicle, followed her up here along this path. drops the sheath over here on the sidewalk and then catches up to her on the stoop of the leasing office

where he proceeded to stab her multiple times. Hey guys, I'm going to start taping stuff off. Did you see him holding the knife? Yeah, in the hen. You saw him holding the night? Yeah, uh-huh. We couldn't help her, obviously. He strapped, what the hell am I going to do?

Okay. So then I wanted to call the police. Where is the shooter? He's gone. He left in his car. Okay, how long ago did he leave? He literally left a second ago. Okay, what did he leave in a vehicle?

Yes, he left in a vehicle. What's the color and type of vehicle, do you know? It's just a black grenade one. I didn't get a good look at it. Was she shot in the chest or in her arm? I can't tell. It's not all over the place. How badly was she wounded?

She was a lot of blood. A lot of blood? Much of, she. She was still breathing. Is she still breathing? or has she gone completely unconscious at this point? She looks unconscious because she's fighting. As I'm coming back out to get my things,

my phone is just ringing nonstop. And I'm like, what is going on? It was my supervisor calling. She's like, I'm calling about Alyssa, and you need to go to Green Tree. According to the witnesses, nobody actually saw it happen. They just heard the pop.

It was just call after call after call. I got a phone call. It was my friend, and all she said was he stabbed her. I said, who? What's going on? And then I remember her saying she was shot. You went that one? It was really just a scramble of trying to figure out what happened and who did it.

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Get tickets now. On October 2nd. Unfortunately, it is a day that I replay a lot. The whole world was spinning. I felt my heartbreak that day. I remember pulling up. I see all of the. the ambulance, the police.

And I remember asking, she didn't make it, did she? And he was like, no, she didn't. And then I remember just losing it from that food on. Oh my God! I just didn't want it to be true that Alyssa had died and that they didn't know where Willow was. We're in the parking lot of the Green Tree apartment. The Green Tree Apartments, this is where we were for the murder investigation of Alyssa Burkett.

When I arrived, it was the most brutal scene I think I'd ever been to. You could just see the rage and the hate that was in the killer's mind and heart. Don't touch anything. It was an active crime scene. We knew we had a lot of evidence. We had Alyssa's car. That was a crime scene in and of itself. We also collected the knife sheath that was here on the sidewalk.

that the suspect had dropped. We heard, we heard a pop. We want to talk to everybody that's on scene. Y'all come with me, please. Were you here when everything happened? All the witnesses had very similar descriptions. He came out right there and he was a get a black part, like an SUV car.

Black S and he backed up and stop. The one consistent thing that I remember is them describing him as an African-American male with a beard. It was a look like a black guy. I see the face, black guy. Alyssa had this feeling that someone was watching her. After Alyssa's murdered and the police are examining her car,

they find a tracker. It seemed like there was something else that we were missing pretty early on. And we were. It's kind of murder 101. I mean, you always start with the closest circle to that victim. Then you work out. Alyssa had told me that she had met someone, and they had been dating them.

dating a little bit. When we met, I just thought, you know, oh, okay, he seems like he's this nice guy, and okay, we're good to go. Alyssa and Andrew met online in 2018. He was 10 years older than her. And he told me on the phone that at the time they met, he was well established. He owned his own house. He had a great job selling power tools, and he even owned his own airplane.

She seemed like a very caring, funny, loving person. Andrew wanted eventually to settle down and have children. He was this warm, giving, loving man that put others first. I knew that she was seeing someone and it wasn't like anything serious and then she, you know, found out that she was pregnant with Willow. I just asked her straight up, okay, well, do you want to go look at a place and move in? And she looked like she was very relieved for that. Well, I said, okay, well, let's do that.

They found a beautiful home on the lake in a suburb of Dallas. He envisioned that they would raise their daughter there. I know she felt very uncomfortable about it. I was like, well, are you going to move in there with him? And she was like, well, the deal was. Because he was going to help her, like, go to school and all of these things. Everything had to be on his terms and his way. And she was just like, no, this is not the deal for me.

And I don't want to do that. Which is why she moved out, like, two weeks later. later. When Willow was born, he was at the hospital. Holding Willow was probably one of the most fulfilling moments. From the beginning, we absolutely had the full understanding that we're just going to be co-parenting. She wanted it to be fair. She wanted him to have time with Willow, a relationship with him. So that's what she agreed to. She was always team co-parent, and if we can be civil, that's in the best interest of Willow. After they had come to this agreement and mediation, everything was fine. And then Holly came into the picture. Willow, get your fishies. That's when everything went

south. I've loved two women in my life, and Holly was one of them. Holly is a big personality, exudes energy and passion. A turtle. Their relationship was really intense because it was COVID, and they were spending 24-7 together from the moment they met. She was jumping into almost like a stepmother role. It seemed like right off the bat. Andrew and Holly met with Alyssa and her guy, and it was all very amiable and very, gosh, we should, you know, why wouldn't we just get along?

Let's do that. Andrew seemed to like some of the things he was hearing, but Holly didn't. She really took that as her launching point, to tell Andrew, look, you've got to be a man about this, almost belittling him on a routine basis. What started off as an amicable co-parenting scenario quickly turned into a bitter custody battle.

I always tell people that Alyssa used to have a really bright light, and then all of a sudden her light was gone. Something was wrong. I had worked a case a month before for an anonymous drug tip that involved Alyssa. The drug tip came from, here at Green Tree. 911, when it's location of your emergency?

I'd like to report someone selling drugs in my apartment complex, also doing them. The call seemed very unusual to me. This was very specific. It was Alyssa Burkett. It was marijuana. It was hand-to-hand transactions. Where they did find drugs in the truck of her car.

Just a box with some marijuana, a little bit of money, and a gun. Miss Burkett insisted that she had never seen that before. Shockingly, there's no fingerprints whatsoever. The pistol, the serial number was etched out. It was always something not right with this call. She's scared to death at this point.

It's like, what is next? One month after that 911 call, Alyssa would be dead. I was there when we get word that Teresa was on scene. and she's in so much pain and she's so angry. She knew about the anonymous drug tip a month prior. I knew that it was him when the drugs didn't work in the car for him to get the baby, 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! She was in there screaming at Sandra. Knowing that from the witnesses' accounts that it was a black male that we're looking for, In the back of my mind, it wasn't really adding up.

While police are talking to Alyssa's mother, they find out that Andrew had custody of baby Willow that day. I want my great baby away from him. Do you know what kind of guard you drive? He has like a whiteboard truck. My brother, something's happened, so there are people right now they would like to talk to. Like, freaking out, what is going on?

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My Thoughts is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers Terms apply That wasn't my call If it was my call, terms would not apply, but it's not my call. Terms apply. Andrew and Holly lived together at the Flamingo address in Rowlett. So we had Relat PD out here to survey the house while we had our own resources in route and Detective John Meyer and Matt Burnham.

The call we got, they said they saw Andrew and Holly leaving and possibly had luggage with them. We happened to be pulling onto the street at the exact same time that Andrew's truck was coming head on to us. So Matt hit the lights on his truck. We were in an unmarked copper vehicle. Andrew came to a stop. We had them exit the vehicle separately. All right, take a seat. Sit right there. So I'll talk to you about what's going on here in one second. My brother, something's happened right now. That's my rigor.

I can't limit the details on what it is, but it's pretty significant. So there are people right now that they would like to talk to you. Would you mind going to feel like, I'm running a poor, but I'm going to be freaking out. To be honest, I need an attorney for this or what is going on? When the police pull over, Andrew, they don't tell him that Alyssa's been murdered. And the body cams are rolling and he doesn't seem too surprised but also doesn't seem too edgy. Hey Mark, um, do they have a kid? I knew that he had just gotten willow from Alyssa and I'm thinking she is in danger and we need to go get her. We all knew

he had an airplane. That was like a huge concern is that he was going to take off on that airplane. We'd never see the baby ever again. So after we got Holly and Andrew out of the car and I observed that Willow, the daughter was in her car seat, in the backseat of the pickup. Yes, the daughter's in a car seat in the back seat. The AC is on and everything? Yeah, I can go double check now. She has her bottle, she should be okay.

Andrew and Holly had said they've been at the house who were relaxing on morning. We're just going to brunch, TLC on the lake. Okay. We'll have any work. Holly was overly cooperative, too. I asked for consent to search her purse because she wanted some stuff out of it.

I just need my small... Just the small? Okay. And she was like, oh yeah, yeah, go ahead. Can we leave your passport in the truck? Is that cool? Because obviously you're not going out of the country today. No, no, no, I just got back from Mexico a couple days ago, actually.

I'm not leaving the country, so as long as I can have it back in the near... Yeah, you'll get it back in the truck. We're not taking it. I was in Granite Bay, in California, and I get a call from Holly. And she goes, Andrew and I got pulled over. And, you know, it was horrible. It was horrible. They pulled guns and I was like, what?

I'm taking your phone and her phone right now. But I will allow you to call the October 5. Take it. And then if you can leave here and just go straight to the Carrollton Police Department and they'll bond. They were just trying to do everything they could to try to get them back to the PD for an interview so that we can get them in room and talk to them, kind of figure out what they knew, kind of see if there's anything that would lead us down to assess.

to a suspect. We asked for consent to search the vehicle at the scene, and Andrew told us we couldn't search the truck, but we had enough developments coming from the crime scene to get a search warrant for the truck. How about going to the railroad place, I would rather just wait at my home than my lady say,

you're not going in your house, okay, but you tell me I'm not allowed in my house. Because we're about to run the search warrant. We told them that they weren't allowed to go back to the house. They wanted to keep it where no one came in and no one went out. The decision was made, he's not leaving with the truck. If he wants to go, they can go to the police department. So we see Andrew and Holly leaving with Willow, carrying her in her car seat,

and they go to get an Uber because they can't go home. The order was given to us, like, they stay with Andrew, like make sure that they don't throw anything out of the car. And as we're traveling, they take an exit that we weren't expecting. expecting. It was at that point the attorney was on the phone. So I don't know if something serious is going on. And they said that we have to go careful for the police station. They say I can't go home. Yes, ma'am.

I think that's going on. Yeah, I mean, I can guess what's going on. He's baby mama is mad and she's now made some false complaints against him again. I'll be completely honest with you. Baby mama was murdered this morning at her work. Had our work. Oh my God. Oh my God.

Andrew and Holly had originally agreed to come to the police department to speak to us. And somewhere along the way, he decided he wasn't going to do that anymore. They never went to the police station. They went to an Airbnb. They had nothing. They had no change of clothes or anything for Willow. We knew where they were, when you were, Willow was. but we couldn't take Willow.

I feel like that was a dangerous person, and they knew it at that point, and why would they have left her? Yeah, I was upset. And our next goal now is we still have the house. So we write up a search warrant, which ultimately gets signed by a judge. That same night, officers go inside Andrew and Holly's house.

County Police Department Church, Warren, if you're in there, come out with your hands up. We probably have no less than six detectives there. And we go through the house room by room by room. I got up top, clear. There's a hallway to the right there. One of the first things that we do find was a Diamond's Direct envelope that had like a receipt for an engagement ring that I presume was for a holiday. But on the back of that envelope was basically the script for the drug tip.

Written on that envelope, all the details the caller needed to make that false accusation against Alyssa. There's Alyssa's license plates on here, the address for the green tree, and other information that was needed to make that call. Once we saw that, it was like, okay, we're on the right path. The room that was a spare bedroom that was full of junk, had heat flows on the bed, all kinds of stuff. One of us found a box for a tracker inside that room. These are the tracker boxes and charging stations that we found in one of the bedrooms at Andrew Beard's house.

These were identical to the ones that we were able to find under the cars. We didn't find the gun that we were looking for. Right. But what we did find was what came to be a homemade silencer. We started getting the puzzle pieces together. After police are done searching Andrew's home, they start canvassing the area, and they find this black Ford expedition

that looks a lot like the vehicle that the killer was driving. We all rushed over to this area, and that's when we found the black expedition parked along the side. of the road up here. Witnesses reported seeing a black man driving away in that type of vehicle, but things aren't always what they see. When we search that vehicle, that was the mother load of evidence. And we found a nice bunch of Easter eggs in Andrew's vehicle. We found Willow's diaper bag.

Inside were several trash bags, and each one were boots that had been cut up, and then doused with bleach. The other things we found in that bag were these dark Java-colored makeup vials. And inside that abandoned black SUV, they find one last piece of the puzzle. This is the beard that we found in the vehicle. This also had DNA from Andrew as well as Alyssa on it. And you can actually still see that discoloration from the makeup on the beard. I immediately thought, well, there's our African-American male.

I'd never seen someone go to that length to try to paint themselves to look like another race. I would say between the truck and the expedition and the treasure trove that was found there, it was overwhelming. It was just small pieces of that puzzle that came together. All along, it was Andrew in disguise, wearing dark makeup and a beard. The ham-hadness of some of the things that they did is just so buffoonish. The judge signed the warrant for Andrew's arrest for the murder of Alyssa Burkett. We arranged for Andrew to surrender here at the Carrollton Police Department, and he did that mid-afternoon, I think.

How you're doing? You're Andrew. Yes, sir. I just knew, okay, well, the police are going to give me any minute. In my mind, this isn't real. My son would not do this. And I remember one of the female law enforcement lady saying, you don't know your son.

And it turns out that there's a chunk in there that I couldn't possibly have known. He thought he could beat this up until the day that he decided, I can't beat this. And I think that's why Holly came in. The day or so after Andrew's arrest, she was using that opportunity to come and get what we had on Andrew. I believe that he told you something and then told you don't tell the police that I was gone for a few hours this morning. He did not. We have video all over the neighborhood and all over the neighborhood to the north.

And why can't you show me? Because I'm not going to show you all that. It's our investigation. It's our case. We would talk to her about her relationship with Andrew and she's very adamantious. Andrew would never do this. he's not that type of person i don't believe andrew's capable of murdering someone and i'm offering you i will i will walk you down the road and show you the photos of why i know he's a murderer i don't want to see violent then you then you then you don't care then you don't care to know

the truth i do want to know you you don't if you're if you're shutting this out it's only because i am prone to anxiety and panic attacks and things like that so i if i get in a certain frantic way I'm just concerned about my own actual condition. With Holly not providing much information, and police worried that Andrew might be a flight risk, they set his bail at $1 million. So while Andrew is locked up in jail, Holly and Andrew's mom become super close.

In fact, the two of them are living together at this point. Holly and I were linked arms, we're never leaving each other's side. This is terrible. you know, I was genuinely afraid. So Holly is living with Andrew's mother for, you know, a short period of time. And then she decides to pack up

and go back home to Michigan. I said, Holly, Andrew's coming here tomorrow. You know, don't you want to be here? And she said, my dad really needs me. She left and never came back. And that told me so much. When Andrew bonded out, it surprised me, but it also concerned us because he's got the means and ability to get out of town if he had to. So the police contact the FBI, because when they searched Andrew's home, they found this unregistered silencer.

And the FBI says, you know what, that's something that we can charge on federally. That gave me some hope that we were going to be able to get him back into custody. Police discovered that those GPS trackers found in Alyssa's car, technically they'd been operating across state lines. So prosecutors pursue the federal charge of cyber-stalking resulting in death and discharging a firearm. You think, well, yeah, he put a tracker on a car, right? But did they ever leave Texas?

Luckily for, I guess I'd say luckily for us, bad for them, is that the company, by-bought, was based out of Florida. And so servers and all that stuff was out of Florida. With Andrew's case now turned over to the feds, he's re-arrested on those charges, ensuring that he cannot bond out again. The state murder charge is dropped. And as for Holly Elkins, she's no longer the supportive fiancé. It was a bit expected because when she was asking for money for some house project,

while I'm in the midst of this, that's when I realize you're not really worrying about what I got going on right now. I spoke to Andrew Beard from behind bars. This is the first time he's speaking out about the case. Your mother supported you the whole time. When you decide to plead guilty and you had to call her, what was that conversation like? I called my mom with the plea agreement in front of me, and I told her that, you know, I'm guilty, and I am guilty,

and she didn't even comprehend that. It seemed surreal. And he said the reason that he held out so. long was because he didn't want to disappoint me and he just he had such regret and not as you would think regret for being caught he had regret about doing what he did to the mother of his child and to his child your mother thought that if you'd seen her the weekend before this happened, you would not have gone through with it. Oh, hands down. There's no way it would have happened. But I hate telling her that because then

she feels like she has some responsibility that if only she had just come for her normal visit like usual. He was wanting to do a plea deal. And I was in shock because I just thought he would take this to his grave. With Andrew pleading guilty to all charges, there would be no trial. He received a sentence of 43 years. I'll be dead. Everybody tries to tell me he'll never walk out of there, but he might. I mean, I won't be here, but Willow will be. I don't want her to have to worry about that.

But it's not case closed. Andrew then reveals to investigators that there's a whole lot more to this story. Oh crap, he flipped. So I guess he's going to flip the script and spill all the tea. The NBA is happening Christmas Day. Five games, one unforgettable lineup. That's what Christmas is all about. Buckets for breakfast, breakaways for dessert.

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This call is from a federal prison. This call is from... Andrew Beard. Hello, Andrew. Yes, sir. It's John Cignonas from 2020. How are you doing, sir? I'm good, I'm good.

How are you doing? I'm in prison, so I'm doing as good as you can for that, I guess. You have a specific reason to talk to us, and thank you. to us, and thank you for doing that. But what is that reason? For me, it was really just for obvious reasons. I've never spoken to the media or the news. And so the story just kind of went completely one direction. I've taken full responsibility and just wanted to basically say, hey, look, this has started from custody issues. Andrew, this was quite the leap from I want custody of my daughter to I'm going to kill her mother.

John, it's because I feel you need to know the whole story. I'm not trying to attempt to disparage Alyssa's memory, but yeah, I had growing concerns from my daughter's well-being and whereabouts. Did you initially have concerns about committing this crime, killing her? Oh, absolutely. It goes against the laws of God, nature, and man. Tell me about that morning. What happened? For a while, that morning was very hazy, basically just going to go. complete this final thing that needed to get done and everything would be better.

That was just, that was the thought in my mind. In my conversation with Andrew, he was vague about what drove him to kill Alyssa. But as part of his plea deal, he detailed to prosecutors what he says led up to Alyssa's death. You say he didn't plan on shooting, but, I mean, they would, no, again, I know what you're saying, man, don't get me wrong. Every plan was eventually, yeah, you're going to think. at this crime. And he gave a full accounting of everything from the beginning until the very

end. Holly was the driver in my mind. We talked about the joking sprinkled in of it would be so much easier if you just offer kind of situation. And then it was, well, you know, we're going to plant these drugs. And then now all this thing happened. What was Holly's role in all of this? She was basically the mastermind behind it all. She clearly was leading me down. the path. Anytime I would try to pull back from that path, she would make sure I stayed on it. The end goal was custody and to just be a family. You tried to conceal your identity by using dark makeup. You think that was a good plan?

No, no. I thought the whole plan was ridiculous. But you did it? Yeah, I did. I know I did. I did. So the plan that was made was to dark makeup and make me look not white and just actually commit the crime and that way, quote unquote, in her words, even if they see you, it would be somebody else. He explained how he and Holly got involved. He walked us through the details about how they devised this plan to smear Alyssa. And with that didn't work, the plan was hatched to actually murder her. I saw a growing need from Holly that she wanted.

wanted Willow to, you know, basically be her child. And that's all well and good, except there's a loving mother involved. One text I found that I forgot to tell you guys about was she had specifically told me on the 25th, I hope you handled it, I'm not coming home to BS right now. And she said this will be a whole different conversation if you're right or die, if you prove that your ride or die situation. And your interpretation of ride or die was what? Well, right or die, 100% meant that I'd be willing to commit a crime for her.

Andrew points the finger at Holly, but the FBI needs to corroborate that what he's saying is true. So they need to look at the digital footprint of the communications between Holly and Andrew. They need to look at emails, text messages, and where their phones were pinging. There was a ton of digital evidence. Not only did we had computers from Andrew and Holly, we also had their cell phones. That's where the majority of the digital evidence came from that was used in the investigation. Investigators say they later uncovered archived search histories on Holly's computer, including queries for spy store and GPS tracker.

Three years after Alyssa's death, authorities finally charged. charged Holly Elkins. They arrested her at the Miami airport while she was returning home from vacation. The arrest of Holly Elkins came as a shock. It's a bittersweet. You know, it brings up all the hurt of the loss, but we're glad that she's being held accountable for it.

Count one, she was charged with stalking. Count two, conspiracy to stalk. Holly Elkins pled not getting guilty to all charges. We always knew that Holly had something to do with it. It was awesome that they finally got her and that they had, you know, gotten all the evidence that they did have against her.

She was not hiding. She was carrying on her life by traveling and doing everything that she wanted to do. I think she thought that this had passed and that she wasn't real concerned about it. I like to think that there was that little part in the back of her mind that kept butt hugging her about, man, I wonder if they're, I wonder if they're going to come after me.

I wonder if they're going to find me. While in prison, you come forward to police about Holly. Yes, sir. Why did you do that? It was the right thing to do. I actually had a conversation with my attorney, and he had told me something that hit home pretty hard. What about the next guy, Andrew? But, you know, this is, you take this fall, but the next one would be on you.

And now, Holly Elkins. Heads to trial. Elkin says she was aware that Beard and Burkette were in a bitter custody battle over their child, but denies helping him. I just couldn't believe some of the things that I had heard, you know. Prosecutors used phone records and online purchase history to link Holly Elgin. Elkins to the 2020 shooting and stabbing death of Alyssa Burkett. The prosecution in this case had everything at their disposal. They had every tool in the shed and they used them all.

Elkins says she was aware that Beard and Burkett were in a bitter custody battle over their child, but denies helping him. Holly Elkins' defense was this was a custody fight, and it wasn't her that did this. It wasn't her who pushed him and prodded him. Elkins' attorneys disputed that she was part of the drug planting on Alyssa's vehicle or that she had anything to do with the GPS tracking devices found on the car. They rejected the argument that Holly was the mastermind in Alyssa's killing. The woman who plotted the attack was convicted after brief jury deliberations.

I was so relieved, even though I felt like we were going to get the guilty verdict. I just was worried about the jury putting it all together because it's so much. I do feel like in a way justice was served. I mean, he got 43 years and, you know, Holly got wife. I'm happy with it. You have a message for Alyssa's family? I do. I'm so sorry for my despicable and downright evil actions.

This was an inspiring young woman. She deserves so much more from life. I forgive myself for taking that away from you. And I know there's nothing I can say. I don't think it was genuine. I think if you're going to take someone's life, you'll never truly be sorry for anything. You can say to me as many sorries as you want,

it's never going to be enough or remorseful to me. There's been times where I'm like, okay, yeah, I'll forgive him one day, but then in my heart, do I really? And you have to, I guess, just to be able to move forward. It will never be okay what they did. But just for my own self and soul, I have to forgive that and let that go. Your message to your daughter? Willow, my sweet baby girl, you incidentally became our world.

Sorry for letting you down the way I did. If one day you can forgive me for that, but I love you with every inch of my heart. I truly do. Andrew has not had any contact with his daughter, Willow. However, when she turns 18, she will be given the choice, the opportunity to reach out to him if she wants to. So Willow is now my daughter. The adoption is finalized.

They are a spitting image of each other. Even the way Willow walks, when she turns around and walks off, I see Alyssa walking off. Like, it is just, they're that identical. We're going to become best friends, and we're going to make lots of new memories. And I love you.

Now that I'm a mother myself, I look at myself all the time and think, what would Alyssa tell me to do about this situation? And Alyssa is watching us. Alyssa gave me this baby. She told me I'm ready to be a mom just like she was. That's our program for tonight.

Thanks for watching. I'm Deborah Roberts. And I'm David Muir from all of us at 2020 and ABC News. Good night. Now streaming, go behind the scenes with Taylor Swift. Disney Plus invites you to experience a streaming event for the eras. I wanted to give something to the fans that they didn't expect.

and we're going to do everything in our power to blow your mind. Don't miss the exclusive six-episode docu-series. This is the biggest challenge we've ever done. Tonight, we complete that challenge. The end of Anera. First two episodes now streaming, only on Disney Plus.