Ayers Guilty of Murdering Girlfriend’s Mother

The day after his girlfriend was convicted of murder for the plot to kill her mother, a jury on Thursday found Jeffrey Glen Ayers guilty of “readily” carrying out the slaying.

Ayers, 23, of Burbank, showed no reaction after the jury found he entered Dixie Lee Hollier’s home in January 1996 and then shot, pistol whipped and repeatedly stabbed the 43-year-old Warner Bros. record executive.

“It had been planned since November,” said the jury foreman, who asked not to be identified, of the murder plot hatched with the help of Ayers’ girlfriend, Amber Merrie Bray, 20. “He readily went along with it.”

Along with murder and conspiracy convictions, the eight-man, four-woman jury found that Ayers planned to ambush and kill Hollier and Bray’s younger sister so that Bray would collect a $310,000 inheritance. Ayers faces life in state prison without parole and will be sentenced March 30 by Superior Court Judge Teri Schwartz.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Al McKenzie declined to comment until after sentencing. Ayers’ lawyer, Patricia Mulligan, was not available.

Mulligan argued during the trial that her client was a young man who believed his girlfriend would kill herself.

“He never intended to kill anyone,” Mulligan said, exhorting jurors to find the slaying to be manslaughter, a “crime of passion.”

But jurors rejected that reasoning and said there was ample evidence that pointed to a deliberate, well-thought-out plan to murder.

“There was a reasonable expectation that he would benefit financially” the jury foreman said. “It wasn’t hard to make the decision.”

Juror John Roy agreed. “We just listened to the information and followed the law.”

In addition to Ayers’ videotaped confession, prosecutors presented documents that pointed to a planned killing. One was a letter written to Ayers from Amber Bray two months before the killing.

In the note, titled “Someday in November,” she told Ayers the couple could use money from an unsolved murder of her mother to purchase a Riverside County home, a sports car, furniture and appliances. Weeks later, Ayers wrote Bray that he could study psychology while she modeled.

But the two would never get their wish because of what prosecutors called “a bumbling murder.”

On Jan. 16, 1996, at 5 a.m. Burbank police were called to Hollier’s home. When they arrived, they saw a man straddling a body and thrusting his hands downward.

When officers entered through the unlocked front door, Ayers put his hands in the air and asked to surrender, telling police: “I’m responsible for what happened,” according to testimony. “I’m fully aware of what I’ve done.”

In addition to a revolver that Ayers purchased from a friend the night before the killing, police recovered several kitchen knives, two of them damaged from the impact of the blows to the victim.

Prosecutors said Ayers slaughtered Hollier, that he awakened her, shot her twice in the head and arm, beat her with his handgun and finally stabbed her two dozen times.

Police said that by fighting for her life, Hollier probably saved her younger daughter, Amy.

“We didn’t get there soon enough to save Ms. Hollier but we did get there in time to save Amy,” said Burbank Police Det. Matthew Miranda.

Miranda called Ayers a “very nice guy” with no previous contacts with the law. Miranda said Ayers was love-struck.

“This was the first attractive young lady who paid attention to him in a romantic way,” the detective said.

“He fell head over heels. It was very obvious he was looking forward to benefiting from financial gain as result of the murder.”