Jurors weighed competing accounts of Alana Sims’ death before finding the Tampa rapper guilty in the closely watched 2023 case.
TAMPA, Fla. — Electronic messages, police interviews and testimony about alleged jailhouse letters formed key parts of the prosecution case that ended Tuesday with Billy Adams III convicted of murdering 22-year-old Alana Sims while she was five months pregnant.
The Hillsborough County jury found Adams guilty of first-degree murder in Sims’ death and of causing the death of her unborn child after roughly five hours of deliberations Sept. 1. The verdict followed days of testimony aimed at answering a central dispute: whether Sims’ killing was planned, as prosecutors maintained, or followed the type of armed confrontation Adams later described to investigators.
Prosecutors said Adams arranged to meet Sims on Jan. 30, 2023, and directed her to an unfinished part of the Easton Park neighborhood in New Tampa. The state portrayed the location as significant because Sims was given directions that did not lead to a specific residence. Prosecutors argued that Adams used messages expressing affection and discussing a future with Sims to bring her to an isolated location where he intended to kill her.
Communications involving Adams and Lakenya Brantley, another woman with whom he had a relationship, were used by prosecutors to give jurors context about events before the shooting. Brantley testified during the trial and read messages concerning Sims and her pregnancy. Prosecutors argued the exchanges helped establish their theory that Adams wanted Sims out of his life. During cross-examination, however, Brantley said Sims’ pregnancy would not necessarily have destroyed her relationship with Adams, giving the defense a basis to challenge the state’s motive theory.
The prosecution also relied on evidence gathered after Sims was found dead. Earlier reports based on police and court records described surveillance video, doorbell-camera footage and ammunition recovered from Adams’ vehicle as pieces of the investigation. Adams’ explanation changed as detectives questioned him, according to those reports. He eventually said he had shot Sims but maintained that he acted in self-defense after she pulled a gun and that he wrestled the weapon away from her.
Jurors then heard from Bryan Boggs, an inmate who encountered Adams in the Hillsborough County Jail. Boggs testified that Adams discussed possible defense strategies and prepared letters for several women connected with the investigation. Prosecutors contended that the letters were intended to influence accounts given to investigators and help construct an alibi. Boggs said he copied letters in his own handwriting as part of the effort.
Adams’ lawyers attacked Boggs’ reliability and urged jurors to consider his criminal history and possible reasons for cooperating with authorities. The defense rested Monday without presenting its own witnesses. In its closing argument, the defense emphasized the burden on prosecutors to prove the charges and asked jurors to carefully evaluate the consistency, memory and possible biases of the witnesses they had heard.
The trial carried an unusual piece of legal history. Sims was killed only three days after Adams was acquitted in an unrelated case involving the shooting deaths of two men at a Tampa recording studio. In the earlier trial, Adams testified that he fired after believing a robbery was underway and argued that he acted in self-defense. Jurors in that case found him not guilty. The earlier acquittal was legally separate from the Sims case, and the new jury’s verdict rested on the evidence presented in the prosecution over her death.
Sims’ young child was found unharmed in a vehicle near where she was killed. Sims herself was five months pregnant. The state maintained during the case that Adams believed he was the father of the unborn child at the time of the killing, although evidence later indicated he was not. Prosecutors sought to connect that belief, Adams’ relationships and the communications immediately before the shooting to their allegation of premeditation.
The verdict now shifts the case away from the factual question of guilt and toward punishment. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, and the same jury was scheduled to return Wednesday for a separate penalty proceeding. Jurors may hear further evidence before making a sentencing recommendation between life imprisonment and death. A penalty recommendation had not been reported in the reviewed sources at the time of publication.
Author note: Last updated September 2, 2026.