A Texas Woman's Boyfriend Killed Her for Not Wanting to Have His Baby

On April 1, 2023, 23-year-old Adam Byrd walked into a store in San Antonio brandishing a handgun. According to his arrest affidavit, Byrd demanded that store employees empty out the cash registers while he waved the gun in their faces. 

It would not be the most violent thing Byrd would do that week.

Four days later, Byrd met up with his girlfriend, 22-year-old Jade Alyssa Alvarez, in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of San Antonio. He shot her three times—once in the abdomen and twice more in the back of the head—leaving her body in the streets to be discovered by a San Antonio patrolman in the early morning hours of the following day.

And yet, as cold-blooded as her murder was, the motive would prove even more shocking.

Per Byrd’s arrest affidavit, Byrd killed Alvarez for refusing to have a baby with him. Although that kind of motivation might seem outrageous, it is hardly unique, says Jesenia Pizarro, a professor in the School of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Arizona State University and a leading expert in Intimate Partner Homicide.

“‘Reproductive coercion’ is a type of intimate partner violence where one partner forces the other to have a baby, or to have an abortion, or go on birth control, or to go off it,” Pizarro tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “A lot of this stems from the idea of control.”

According to Pizarro, that type of coercive control can often be found in intimate partner homicide. More unusual, Pizarro says, is the relative youth of both Byrd and Alvarez. Pizarro shares that intimate partner homicide tends to be perpetrated later in life than other forms of violence (e.g., gang violence) because “you’re older when you get into more committed relationships.”

Tragically, Alvarez left behind a 3-year-old son. This, too, can be a factor in intimate partner homicide, Pizarro says, with one study suggesting that if a woman has children from a previous relationship, it doubles the odds that her partner will kill her.

Pizarro names prior abuse as the biggest risk factor when it comes to partner homicide. Court records show that Byrd was charged with domestic violence in February 2021.

“If he hits you once, don’t take him back,” Pizarro says.

For Alvarez’s murder, Byrd pleaded guilty and received 40 years in prison, well short of the maximum 99 years admissible by Texas law. Two lesser charges of aggravated robbery carried 15-year sentences, which run concurrently with the homicide.

At sentencing, Alvarez’s grandmother Rita Camacho delivered a victim impact statement in which she said, “Forty years may be the punishment that was handed down, but to us, it’s a slap in the face… It could never truly reflect the magnitude of our loss.”

Although Texas has the death penalty, the circumstances around Alvarez’s murder would not have met the criteria for prosecutors to seek capital punishment.

Kevin Collins, a San Antonio-based criminal lawyer who has prosecuted and defended over a dozen homicide cases in Texas, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that Camacho’s response may be more reflective of familial grief than anything else.

“The thing is, nothing is going to bring a loved one back,” Collins says. “So when a family realizes that [the perpetrator] is going to get out someday and their loved one is gone forever, that’s hurtful.”

Byrd will get his first chance at parole after half his sentence (20 years) is served. He will be 43 years old at that time.

From the outside looking in, the prosecution’s case against Byrd was open and shut. A witness who dropped Alvarez off on the night of her murder identified Byrd as the man Alvarez met up with. And Byrd confessed to the murder, even telling police that the weapon he used in his armed robbery was the same gun with which he’d killed Alvarez.

Still, Collins tells A&E Crime + Investigation that there are several reasons for a prosecutor to be incentivized to cut a deal and avoid trial, as the prosecution in San Antonio did.

“Maybe there are witness issues,” Collins says. Or because the case was centered on domestic violence, the defense might’ve persuasively argued a “defense of sudden passion,” which could’ve convinced a jury to convict on a less severe charge. 

Furthermore, Collins notes that Texas is one of the few states that has “jury sentencing,” where a defendant can decide at the start of trial to task the jury with deciding his punishment, should he be convicted.

“In Texas, a jury can give you as little as five years on a murder conviction. They used to be able to give probation–and I’ve seen that happen,” he says. “You have to get 12 people to agree on a punishment, and that’s difficult. A lot of times they’ll compromise and say, ‘You know what, we’ll just give this guy 15 years and get out of here and go to the Yankees baseball game or whatever.’” 

As for the chance that someone like Byrd might do something like this again once he’s free, Pizarro is of two minds.

“Homicide offenders in general are less likely to recidivate because when they come out of prison, they are old men,” she says. “However, when we just look at domestic batterers, we know that individuals who were batterers once are more likely to be batterers again.”