The investigation into Alana Sims’ killing moved from an isolated New Tampa roadway to phone records, messages and conflicting accounts.
TAMPA, Fla. — When Alana Sims was found beside her SUV on an unfinished New Tampa road in January 2023, her young son was still unharmed in the vehicle and Sims was about five months pregnant. More than three years later, prosecutors used a trail of messages, surveillance evidence and changing statements to win convictions against Billy Adams III.
The case reached its latest major stage in September 2026, when a Hillsborough County jury found Adams, 28, guilty of first-degree murder in the death of the 22-year-old mother and of killing her unborn child by injury to the mother. The following day, the panel voted 8-4 to recommend the death penalty on the unborn-child count but chose life imprisonment for Sims’ murder. The death vote was a recommendation rather than a final sentence. Florida law gives the judge the ultimate decision between life and death after a qualifying jury recommendation.
The investigation began the night of Jan. 30, 2023, in the Easton Park subdivision, where portions of the neighborhood were still under construction. Sims had driven there in a Ford EcoSport. Her toddler son was strapped into a car seat in the back. Sims was found outside the vehicle after being shot behind the head. The child was not physically harmed. The location and circumstances immediately raised questions about why Sims, who was pregnant and accompanied by her son, had gone to the unfinished roadway late that night.
Prosecutors eventually supplied their answer through the messages exchanged before the meeting. They said Adams had been involved sexually with Sims and believed the unborn child was his. At the same time, he wanted to continue a relationship with another woman. The state argued that the pregnancy threatened the future Adams envisioned with that woman. Investigators later learned Adams was not the unborn child’s biological father, but prosecutors said Adams did not know that before Sims’ death and acted on his mistaken belief that he would be responsible for the baby.
The communications introduced in the case allowed prosecutors to present the meeting as a planned encounter rather than a chance event. Trial reporting showed that Adams sent Sims messages in which he expressed affection and discussed a possible future together. He indicated that he wanted to see her and talked about finding a place where they could live. Prosecutors told jurors those statements were deceptive. They argued Adams was telling Sims what she wanted to hear so that she would agree to meet him away from other people in the unfinished section of the subdivision.
Other communications pointed in a sharply different direction. According to evidence described in court and investigative records, Adams sent his other girlfriend a message the day before the killing indicating that the situation involving Sims would soon be over. Investigators also recovered searches concerning probable cause for an arrest in Florida and whether gloves could keep gunpowder residue off a person’s hands. Prosecutors relied on the timing and content of those communications as part of their proof that the shooting was considered in advance rather than arising spontaneously after Sims arrived.
Adams’ statements to investigators became another major part of the case. He initially denied being with Sims on the night she was killed, according to the arrest affidavit and trial reporting. Authorities examined an alibi video that Adams said placed him with friends and concluded that its time information had been altered. Surveillance footage and cellphone information instead placed him in the area where Sims was killed, prosecutors said. The evidence forced investigators to confront the difference between the account Adams gave them and the movements reflected in electronic records.
Adams then offered a different explanation. He said the shooting occurred during a struggle involving a gun, reports of the investigation said. Prosecutors rejected that account and pointed jurors to the physical evidence, the location of Sims’ wound and the communications leading up to the meeting. Their trial theory was that Adams had already resolved to kill Sims, drew her to a place where few people were likely to see what happened and then tried to distance himself from the scene afterward. Jurors ultimately accepted the state’s case beyond a reasonable doubt, deliberating for about five hours before returning their guilty verdicts Sept. 1.
The penalty phase the next day shifted the question from what happened to what punishment Adams should receive. Prosecutors focused on the unborn child Sims had planned to name Leilani. They argued that Adams knowingly killed Sims while she was pregnant and that the death of the child occurred as part of a calculated killing. The state presented testimony from a Hillsborough County medical examiner who had performed the autopsies and discussed the pregnancy and fetal development. Prosecutors asked the jury to treat the unborn child’s death as independently serious under Florida law rather than merely as a consequence folded into Sims’ murder.
The defense presented a different kind of record. Instead of revisiting the guilt verdict, Adams’ lawyers sought to show jurors the parts of his life that could weigh against a death recommendation. Family members described him as a strong student who had grown up in a supportive household, graduated from Wharton High School and completed a business degree at the University of South Florida. His stepmother described raising him from childhood and told the jury that his family continued to love him despite the conviction. The defense emphasized that a life-without-parole sentence would mean Adams would never return to society.
The result was a divided punishment decision. Eight jurors voted to recommend death for the unborn-child offense, the minimum number required for a death recommendation under Florida’s current capital-sentencing statute. Four voted against it. On Sims’ first-degree murder conviction, the jury recommended life without parole. Florida law gives the trial court discretion to impose life rather than death after an eight-vote death recommendation, but a life recommendation must be followed. The judge must also consider the aggravating circumstances established in the penalty proceeding and the mitigation offered for Adams before entering the appropriate sentencing order.
Sims’ family spoke during the penalty proceedings about a loss that extended well beyond the evidence jurors had heard during the guilt phase. Her sister, CarliAnna Robinson, described Sims as a mother whose life and children mattered and said the family would continue to carry the effects of her death. The son who was found unharmed inside Sims’ SUV had not yet reached his second birthday when his mother was killed. By the time jurors heard the case in 2026, relatives said he was in kindergarten, with the consequences of Sims’ death continuing as he grew older.
The timing of the homicide added another remarkable chapter to the investigation, though it was not evidence of Adams’ guilt in the Sims case. Three days before Sims died, Adams had been acquitted in an unrelated trial over the 2020 shooting deaths of two men at a Lutz recording studio. He had acknowledged firing in that earlier case but testified that he acted in self-defense because he believed a robbery was occurring. That jury found him not guilty. The jurors who later decided the Sims case were not asked to treat the earlier acquittal as proof of anything about the 2023 killing.
That separation matters as the case proceeds through the capital-sentencing process. The September verdicts established Adams’ criminal responsibility for Sims’ death and the death of her unborn child based on evidence specific to the New Tampa killing. The penalty jury then made separate recommendations based on evidence presented for punishment. Despite early reports describing Adams as already sentenced to death, the 8-4 vote was the jury’s recommendation to the court. The latest reliable material reviewed does not confirm that a judge has since entered a final death sentence.
Adams stands convicted with life-without-parole punishment required for Sims’ first-degree murder and a death recommendation awaiting the court’s final treatment on the unborn-child count. The investigation that began beside a parked SUV in an unfinished subdivision ultimately turned on a record spread across phones, surveillance footage, messages, interviews and testimony, evidence jurors found sufficient to reject Adams’ changing explanations for how Sims died.
Author note: Last updated October 19, 2026.