Inheritance Was Motive in Burbank Slaying, Police Say

A Burbank teenager spent months plotting the slaying of her mother with a 21-year-old boyfriend, who shot and stabbed the mother to death Tuesday, because the daughter expected a six-figure inheritance, police said Wednesday.

Investigators in the killing of Warner Bros. Records executive Dixie Lee Hollier, 42, have found papers in the Burbank apartment of the boyfriend that indicate he and Hollier’s 18-year-old daughter talked about “how they were going to split up the money,” said Burbank Police Lt. Larry Koch.

He would not say where the money was to have come from.

Jeffrey Glenn Ayers, of Burbank, and Hollier’s daughter, high school senior Amber Merrie Bray, were arrested on suspicion of murder Tuesday after Hollier was repeatedly shot, stabbed and beaten.

Police allege that Bray let an armed Ayers into the family’s home on West Oak Street around 5 a.m. as her mother lay sleeping. Ayers shot Hollier in her bed and when the woman attempted to flee down a hallway, he shot her again and stabbed her with a knife from the home, Koch said.