On October 3, 1999, at 3:13 in the morning, a 75-year-old man named Steven Beard called 911 from his bed in West Lake Hills, Texas. He was disoriented and barely conscious. “My guts just jumped out of my stomach,” he told the operator. “They blew out. They’re lying on my stomach. I don’t know what happened. I’ve never had this happen before.” His wife, Celeste, was somewhere else in their 5,300-square-foot home.
She did not answer when the operator tried to reach her.The first responding officer received no answer at the front door. Walking to the back of the property, he saw Steven through a sliding glass door, lying badly injured in his bed. He broke through the glass. Near the bed, officers found a spent 20-gauge shotgun shell. What had arrived as a medical call was now a crime scene.Steven Beard survived that night. He would not survive the year.
The man behind the money
Steven Beard was born in 1924 and grew up in a poor Dallas family. After serving in the U.S. Navy and attending Texas Christian University and Southern Methodist University, he spent years working his way up through radio and advertising. By the late 1970s he was a top executive. In the early 1980s he co-founded KBVO, an Austin-based Fox Network affiliate. He built it into a success, sold his stake in October 1994, and retired with a net worth of approximately $12 million.He had been married for 45 years.
His wife, Elise, died of cancer in October 1993. Steven was 69, suddenly alone, and very wealthy.Within three weeks of Elise’s death, he began seeing a waitress at the Austin Country Club. Her name was Celeste Johnson. She was 30 years old, recently divorced for the third time, with 12-year-old twin daughters whose custody arrangements were unsettled. On February 18, 1995, Steven Beard married Celeste Johnson.
He was 70. She was 32. He adopted her daughters, Jennifer and Kristina, financed the custody dispute that secured them, and moved the family into a mansion in the hills above Austin.Under a prenuptial agreement, Celeste received a $500,000 cash payment outright. She spent it within six months. Over the next four years, she burned through more than $1 million on shopping, parties, and vacations. If Steven divorced her, she would receive nothing more. If he died, she stood to inherit $6 million.
What the spending concealed
Celeste’s appetite for money was not the only thing she kept from her husband. By the late 1990s she was leading a separate social life entirely, hosting parties Steven was not invited to, drinking heavily, and maintaining a string of affairs, including one with her most recent ex-husband. Friends described her as wildly unpredictable. Her daughters later testified that she had openly mocked Steven at home, referring to him in terms that made clear how little she thought of him.
When Steven finally moved toward divorce, Celeste escalated. She threatened suicide, holding an unloaded gun to her head in front of Kristina. She wrote Steven pleading letters. In early 1999, with the marriage deteriorating, he placed her in St. David’s Pavilion, a psychiatric treatment facility in Austin. She was admitted for depression.At St. David’s, Celeste met Tracey Tarlton.
A plot formed in a psychiatric ward
Tracey Tarlton was the manager of Austin’s largest independent bookstore. She had struggled with bipolar disorder for years and had spent time in and out of psychiatric care. She was, by most accounts, deeply lonely. Celeste was, by most accounts, very good at identifying people who could be used.Within weeks of meeting, the two women had formed an intense bond. After both were discharged, they spent nearly every day together.
Those around them, including Celeste’s daughters and Tarlton’s co-workers, described the relationship as romantic.Celeste later denied it. Tarlton did not.According to Tarlton’s subsequent testimony, Celeste told her that Steven was abusive and that she was trapped. Tarlton believed her.
She also testified that Celeste had, on multiple occasions, asked her to help end it. They had allegedly discussed poison. They had allegedly made prior attempts. None had succeeded. Steven, meanwhile, was preparing to take Celeste on a European trip, hoping distance might stabilize things.The trip never happened.
Shot in his bed
On October 3, 1999, Tracey Tarlton entered the Beard property through the garden at 3900 Toro Canyon Road, crossed the patio, and slid open a glass door to Steven’s bedroom. She pointed a Franchi 20-gauge shotgun at the sleeping man and fired. The shotgun had her name engraved on the stock. She left the shell casing where it fell and ran.
Steven Beard regained consciousness and called 911 himself. He was flown by helicopter to a hospital in critical condition. Celeste was tested for gunpowder residue. Her daughters were questioned. Nearly everyone who spoke to investigators that night named the same person unprompted. Tracey Tarlton was arrested five days later when police matched the shotgun to the shell casing at the scene.
Steven spent nearly four months in hospital. He was progressing toward recovery. Then he developed a blood clot, traced by prosecutors to his wound, and died on January 25, 2000. The charge against Tarlton was upgraded from assault to murder. Celeste was not yet charged with anything. In the six months following Steven’s death, she spent $670,000.
The daughters who testified against their mother
Tracey Tarlton refused to implicate Celeste for more than a year after her arrest. What changed her mind, according to later testimony, was a news report. While still in custody, she read that Celeste had remarried six months after Steven’s death. She concluded the relationship had been manufactured.Two days before her murder trial was set to begin, in March 2002, Tarlton struck a deal with prosecutors.
She agreed to testify that Celeste had persuaded her to shoot Steven by convincing her he was abusive and that she would drive Celeste to suicide otherwise. Tarlton received a 20-year sentence in exchange. She was released on parole in August 2011.Celeste was arrested on March 28, 2002, and charged with capital murder under the Texas law of parties, which allows prosecution of those who are a significant party to a crime even if they did not physically carry it out.
At trial, Celeste’s attorney, Dick DeGuerin, a prominent Texas defense lawyer known for high-profile clients, spent approximately half a million dollars of Steven’s estate money mounting her defense. He argued that Tarlton had acted alone out of obsession, and that Tarlton was too mentally unstable to be a credible witness. He attacked Celeste’s daughters, alleging they stood to gain financially from a conviction.Celeste did not take the stand.
Instead, prosecutors played a taped deposition in which she grew visibly agitated when confronted with evidence, and recordings Kristina had secretly made of phone calls in which Celeste threatened her.On March 19, 2003, after 23 hours of deliberation across four weeks of trial, the jury found Celeste Beard guilty of capital murder.
She received a mandatory life sentence. Under Texas law, she must serve at least 40 years before becoming eligible for parole, placing her first parole hearing on April 1, 2042, when she will be 79.She remains incarcerated at the Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville, Texas, and continues to maintain her innocence.Steven Beard is buried beside his first wife, Elise, who spent 45 years with him through the lean years and the long climb.
He had been retired for five years when Celeste Martinez walked into the Austin Country Club. He was trying, by all accounts, to enjoy what he had built. He was still trying when the light came on in his bedroom and someone raised a gun.
