JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The mistress of a man charged with murder in the stabbing death of his wife in 2019 testified Thursday to her role in what prosecutors are calling a murder-for-hire plot.
Jerry Burns is charged with first-degree murder in the death of his wife Velvet Burns, who was stabbed 39 times while she slept on May 9, 2019, in the home she shared with Jerry Burns on Jacksonville’s Westside.
According to prosecutors, Jerry Burns worked with his mistress, Amanda Love, to hire someone to murder his wife. That someone happened to be Love’s longtime on-again, off-again partner, Stephen Hand.
When asked about her relationship with Jerry Burns, Love acknowledged she pretended to love him in order to get money, and that she would’ve married him “for the money.”
“I was a single mom with five kids and Stephen Hand at the time didn’t have a job,” Love testified Thursday.
During her testimony, Love referred to Jerry Burns as her “sugar daddy.”
Press play below to watch Love’s full testimony:
Hand and Love shared three children and had been in a “rocky” relationship for about 13 years.
Hand testified in court Wednesday that he was still in a relationship with Love when she was having an affair with Jerry Burns.
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“Amanda was pretty much in a relationship with Mr. Burns, and he kind of financed [us] from November through May,” Hand said. “He was unaware that I was present the whole time.”
Love testified that sometime in April of 2019, Jerry Burns approached her about killing his wife.
“I guess he went and met the divorce attorney again, and he said that ‘this wouldn’t cost a lot of money, and it would be cheaper if she was killed, and then you would have a life insurance policy,’” Love said.
Love said Jerry Burns paid her $30,000 to find his wife’s killer.
“I was kind of shocked. He asked me if I knew anybody that would commit murder for money, and I told him I didn’t know nobody at the top of my head, and he asked me to see if I could find anybody,” Love testified.
But Mizrahi said that did not happen and she spent the money on other things instead.
“It’s a murder-for-hire where a husband hires the woman he’s having an affair with, who happens to be a drug addict, to kill his wife because divorce is just too darn expensive,” Mizrahi said.
According to Mizrahi, Jerry Burns then told Love he would give her an extra $20,000 once the job was “done.”
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Two of Love’s daughters also testified Thursday, recounting their interactions with Jerry Burns.
They described meeting Jerry Burns when he came to fix a door on a home they were living in at the time and they saw him quite often.
Both sisters recalled their mom getting a large bag of money from Jerry Burns weeks before the murder.
One of them explained how Love and Hand had her clean the mats of the car they drove after the murder.
“They didn’t tell me why. They just told me to clean it off and not to say anything,” one of Love’s daughters said.
She added that she did not see any “visible blood,” but that the “cleaning solution made it phony.”
All three -- Jerry Burns, Love and Hand -- were arrested and charged with Velvet Burns’ murder, but Mizrahi said Jerry Burns was the mastermind behind it all.
“This was an especially violent, heinous, atrocious, cruel, bloody scene,” Prosecutor Alan Mizrahi said during opening statements Wednesday morning.
Hand pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison in 2022.
Love pleaded guilty to second-degree murder two months after Velvet Burns’ death and was sentenced to 40 years in prison and an additional 30 years for conspiracy to commit murder in April of this year.
“Amanda Love and Stephen Hand did what they were paid to do,” Mizrahi said.
On Wednesday, the defense argued that while Jerry Burns was “guilty” of not being a faithful husband, that does not make him guilty of murdering his wife.
“He had a problem, and that problem he did bring on himself. And that’s Amanda Love,” defense attorney Michael Bossen said.
In addition to first-degree murder, Jerry Burns is also charged with conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation to commit a capital felony.
The trial is expected to resume Friday.