February 13, 2024 • 65 mins
This episode is about the murder of Steve Beard…and Steve’s wife’s lover, who shot him.
The Greatest True Crime Stories is a production of Diversion Audio.
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This series is hosted by Mary Kay McBrayer. Check out more of her work at www.marykaymcbrayer.com.
This episode was written by Mary Kay McBrayer
Editorial Direction by Nora Batelle
Developed by Scott Waxman, Emma DeMuth and Jacob Bronstein
Produced and directed by Mark Francis and Antonio Enriquez
Theme Music by Tyler Cash
Executive Produced by Scott Waxman, Mark Francis, and Jacob Bronstein
Special Thanks:
The Fortune Hunter by Suzy Spencer
Lange, M. (2023, February 16). The case for chilling. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/style/sheila-liming-hanging-out-interview.html
NBCUniversal News Group. (2018, March 29). How to make friends as an adult. NBCNews.com. https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/how-make-friends-adult-ncna860971
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Diversion audio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
A note this episode contains mature content and descriptions of
violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. Please take
care in listening. Let's open on a meet cute. It's
(00:37):
nineteen ninety eight in Austin, Texas. Our setting is romantic
if grim. Celeste Beard is in her early thirties. She's
a tall, curvy, blonde mother of two. The type of
person who, when she turns her attention and charisma straight
on you, makes you feel like you are the most
(01:00):
important person to ever exist. The kind of person who
draws your attention with her energy rather than her beauty.
But Celeste also suffers from depression, and in fact, she
has just been admitted to Saint David's Pavilion, a local
psychiatric hospital in Austin, after attempting suicide. One of her
(01:25):
twin teenage daughters, Christina, is visiting her there, helping her
mother through her rehabilitation. In that sterile, whitewashed environment, Christina,
her daughter, notices another patient, Tracy Tarleton, with lobbed, lank hair.
Tracy is so dazed from sedatives that she can't put
(01:48):
on her own shoes. She doesn't have the mesmerizing high
beam gaze. Rather, Tracy just checked herself into Saint David's
after an explosive rerg episode in front of the queer
friendly bookstore she manages. Christina notices Tracy fumbling with her
shoes no laces, this is a psychiatric hospital, just the shoes.
(02:14):
When Christina notices, she says, oh, Mom, help her, and
Celeste does. She be friends Tracy in the hospital, and
both their spirits lift. After all, one of the best
ways to stop feeling helpless is to try and help
someone else. Depending on whom you ask, Celeste and Tracy
(02:37):
remained fast friends even after their respective discharges from the
mental hospital. In fact, depending on whom you ask, their
relationship was much more than friendly. They were in love. Normally,
this might be a really sweet story about finding love
in a hopeless place, but because this is a true
(03:00):
crime story, you know better. It wasn't long before Celeste
asked Tracy to do something no one, not even a lover,
should ask. Celeste asked Tracy to kill for her. Welcome
(03:30):
to the greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm Mary
Kay McBrayer. I'm a writer of true crime, which means
I live inside the research wormhole. I'm constantly reading about crime,
but I'm not necessarily interested in the headline grabbing elements,
the blood and the gore, all of that. I'm more
(03:51):
interested in the people behind these stories and what we
can learn by looking at their experiences. If you want
evidence of my obsession, you can read my book America's
First Female serial Killer, Jane Toppin and the Making of
a Monster. You can also meet me here every week
(04:13):
when I dig into crimes where a woman is not
just a victim. She might be the detective, the lawyer,
the witness, the coroner, the criminal, or any combination of
those roles. As you probably already know, women can do anything.
(04:36):
We're calling this episode people Don't Sleep in Bras. It's
about the murder of Steve Beard, and it's about Steve's
wife's lover who shot him. I had a roommate my
(05:32):
freshman year in college, and her favorite TV show was
Jerry Springer. Back then, I didn't watch TV, but I
already had a smart mouth. So one day, while the
live studio audience was chanting Jerry, I said, I don't
get how you enjoy this. It's so fake. She looked
(05:54):
at me like I was stupid and said people will
do crazy shit for people they love. I like to
think I didn't know that yet because I was too
young to have recognized the transactional nature of a lot
of toxic relationships, let alone been on the business end
of one or many. But that's where we are in
(06:17):
our story today, on the business end of a transactional
love affair. The relationship between Celeste Beard, Steve Beard, and
Tracy Tarleton is an obtuse angle. Basically, Steve and Tracy
loved Celeste independently, and Celeste required things of them in
(06:40):
exchange for her love. Their story is about how withholding
love is not actually love. When someone needs an outlandish
act in exchange for what passes as normal ass interaction
with a significant other, that's not love. It's not even
a relationship. Its manipulation, and that is very dangerous, especially
(07:05):
if you don't know how to recognize it. So let's
talk about another important meet cute of this story. We're
still in Austin, a city of many social classes, from
(07:27):
the CD to the country club, but we're going back
in time four years earlier, to nineteen ninety three. Celeste
Johnson wasn't from Austin, but she was there looking for
an opportunity. She waited tables at the elite Austin country club.
(07:49):
Steve Beard, a seventy soter multi millionaire media mogul, was
a member at the club. Steve pushed his wife Elise
in her wheelchairs, to their table number ninety nine in
the dining room. According to one of the most comprehensive
sources on the story, Susie Spencer's The Fortune Hunter, other
(08:11):
waitresses didn't want to wait their table. They thought Steve
was quote gruff, rude and demanding, and stay tuned for
more from Susie Spencer. At the end of the episode,
I'm so happy that I got the chance to speak
with the real expert on the case. She shares some
really fascinating insights on the whole wild cast of characters.
(08:34):
But first, back to the case. Celeste saw the media
mogul differently than the other waitresses. She noticed how he
cared for Elise, who suffered from cancer. He held her
scotch to her lips to help her drink it. She
thought this was a sweet, loyal man, one who cared
(08:55):
for the woman he loved with everything he had. Was right,
She learned from her coworkers and patrons that Elise had
been married to Steve for decades and they had three
adult children together. She'd helped him build his wealth, never overspending,
although she sometimes overindulged in alcohol and golf and cigarettes.
(09:21):
Steve begged her for years to quit smoking. She wouldn't.
Then came the illness and the attentive care from Steve
that Celeste clocked at the country club for six months
up to Elisa's death. Steve sat by her hospital bed.
He asked friends, what's going to happen to me after
(09:42):
she dies? He still showed up. It's a country club
for dinners, though, so Celeste observed this decline secondhand. At
(10:03):
least Beard died in October of nineteen ninety three. For
two weeks, Steve sat in his new loneliness. Then he
came to the country club and sought some companionship. He
asked Celeste to dinner. It could have been innocent enough
when I think about it. A new widower asking for
(10:25):
a meal with a married server who knew his wife
isn't all that untoward, Or at least it could be
a situation of we both know each other is married,
so it could be pretty innocuous. Plus the club was
the one place Steve frequented where he wasn't anyone's boss.
(10:47):
We all hear of business leaders taking advantage of their
power over hot employees, but that wasn't Steve. All Steve
did was asked for company, and his kids didn't live
in town anymore. The only thing I think that could
be interpreted as a little icky is the proximity to
his wife's death, And even then, I'm inclined to stick
(11:11):
up for Steve, even taking that into account, because who
knows really how long he'd been alone before at last died,
Plus people grieved differently. What Steve didn't know was that
Celeste had been planning to divorce her second husband, Jimmy Martinez,
and Celeste saw that opportunity she was looking for in Steve.
(11:43):
After Steve and Celeste had dinner at an Italian style villa,
Steve drove her to his house on Lake Austin, where
they spent the evening listening to music and drinking cocktails
in his hot tub. Then she drove herself home in
his Lexus. When Steve was back at work the next day,
(12:04):
his office door forever opened. He yelled out to his mentee,
Ray mckeachern, if you ever call the house at night
looking for me or anything, I have a new house manager, Celeste.
By New Year's Day nineteen ninety four, Celeste moved in
with Steve and quit her job at the Austin Country
(12:25):
Club because Steve was embarrassed that his girlfriend worked there.
Steve and Celeste got married a little over a year later,
on February eighteenth, nineteen ninety five. Steve's adult daughter, Becky,
said she was not happy about the relationship, but her
dad was really happy, though they never stated this outright.
(12:53):
At face value, Becky and her brothers had reason to
be concerned. Their dad was rich, he was marrying a
waitress thirty years younger than he was, and it all
happened pretty quickly. Plus it started when Steve was vulnerable,
just after his beloved wife finally died after a long illness.
(13:19):
At best, it seems like a crutch for Steve's pain.
At worst, Celeste was taking advantage of Steve for his money.
But Steve seemed happy, so his family was supportive, because
that's what you do for people you love, right, You
support their decisions, even when you don't agree with them
(13:42):
up to a point, of course. Steve lavished Celeste with gifts, money, clothes,
new homes to decorate in decadence, but his family's concerns
were realized within just a couple months of their marriage.
(14:02):
Steve never suspected a thing, nor saw any real concern
with Celeste's spending habits. It was actually his banker who
alerted him, and even then it wasn't on grounds of
a cash flow alarm. It was much worse, much more
personal than just spending his money. Celeste had been removing
(14:27):
jewelry from the safety deposit box he owned with his
first wife, Elise. Basically, Celeste had been stealing his stad
wife's jewelry and then it disappeared. By that, I mean
first she stole it and then she sold it. Just
to draw out how serious of an offense this is.
(14:49):
It's not really about the valuation of the jewelry, which
was still huge. It's the fact that she stole it,
the fact that she stole from her husband, the fact
that she stole from his first wife, the fact that,
if we draw out just a little bit more, Celeste
stole heirloom jewelry from Steve's children, so Steve filed for
(15:15):
a divorce. Then the couple reconciled almost immediately. He withdrew
the petition four years, almost to the day of their wedding.
I am not sure how Celeste managed to gain his forgiveness,
but whatever she did, it tells us one thing. Celeste
(15:37):
could be very convincing. A lot of people have talked
about Celeste as a real charmer. She had a sweet voice,
a slight lisp, and when she talked to someone, her
(15:58):
attention felt sort of like a halo. It made people
feel special to get that kind of attention. This all
really comes into play at Saint David's Pavilion, the psychiatric
hospital where Celeste was admitted in nineteen ninety eight after
attempting suicide. The level of intense attention patients received at
(16:21):
Saint David's can be especially appealing to people who aren't
used to it, people who have never had that kind
of attention, and sometimes that kind of attention can be
mistaken for a special bond, especially if the person giving
that kind of attention really knows how to wield it
(16:43):
like a weapon. Tracy Charlton was the kind of person
who's always looking for love, It's a very sympathetic desire.
Anyone who struggled with mental illness knows that your support
system is crucial, and Tracy didn't really have that, so
(17:08):
Lets sniffed out that desire and turned her high beams
on Tracy. It wasn't Tracy Tarleton's first time with psychological instability.
She had a history of emotional disturbance dating back to
her childhood. Tracy was a Longhorn camper, a summer camp
(17:29):
that hosted the children of wealthy Texans like President George W.
Bush and pop singer slash actress Hillary Duff. Tracy was
known for her strong swimming skills, her tomboy nature, and
helpful spirit. That disposition changed before her twelfth summer. Not
(17:50):
her helpful nature, though that was always there. What did
change is that she grew up. Her elder brother's bully
her during the school year, and she was expected to
act like them, defending herself and tolerating a childhood home
that had been classified all around as rough. By the
(18:13):
time she became a counselor at Camp Longhorn, she was
known for crude campfire jokes, profane language, and an explosive
rage problem that flared up. When she was challenged, her
initials were TNT, and she said that just about sums
me up TNT. Her early adulthood at the University of
(18:39):
Texas was pretty fraught too. She surprised everyone by rushing
and joining a sorority. She seemed to really crave the parties.
Tracy didn't come out as a lesbian until much later,
and by then she had already attempted suicide at least once,
experimented with substances, and checked in and out of rehabilitation
(19:01):
and psychiatric hospitals. She spent several years at the US
Fish and Wildlife Service, then worked for back Conservation International,
where she produced emergency protection for bat hibernation caves. By
nineteen ninety nine, Tracy was in her dream job. She
(19:21):
was the high profile general manager of Texas's largest independent bookstore,
the Queer Friendly Book People, and she had a girlfriend
whom she loved. That girlfriend was also married to a man.
This might be editorializing, it's definitely editorializing. But when people
(19:46):
are desperate for love and the love is reciprocated, even
just a little bit, they doubled down, they love hard.
That's truly the person you want to fight in your corner.
So when Tracy's girlfriend, Zan came home to find her
husband dead, Tracy was with Zan at the funeral. She
(20:10):
stood by Zan when Zan broke the news of his
suicide to her employees at her hair salon too. Not
long after that, though, Zan broke up with Tracy. Soon
after the breakup with Zan, Tracy blew up in a
rage in front of her employees at book People. That's
(20:30):
when she checked herself into Saint David's pavilion, and that's
where she met Celeste Beeard. Nurses on the suicide watch
confirmed Tracy's immediate closeness with Celeste. Every fifteen minutes they
(20:52):
did rounds. Once they found Tracy massaging Celeste's back while
Celeste was shirtless. The women claimed not to know the
rule that they weren't allowed to touch when the nurses
changed shifts, though they would not know again. Even after
(21:14):
they were discharged from the hospital. Celeste and Tracy maintained contact.
Celeste would visit the bookstore, sometimes bringing her daughters. She
invited Tracy to parties, and there are several photos of
the pair just hanging out unstructured. Chill time is the
foundation for many friendships and that is not just me
(21:37):
saying it. There's science to back that up. We'll link
to this in the show notes in case you're curious.
It's one reason why college friendships tend to last, that
time of doing nothing together. That's what it seems like.
Celeste and Tracy had. They bonded quick, but their relationship
(21:59):
grew as a result of the time they spent together.
And then there was the shooting. In the early morning
(22:44):
of October two, nineteen ninety nine, Tracy Charlton laced up
her black sneakers, packed her Frankie twenty gage shotgun, and
cranked her SUV. She drove from CD South Austin to
what residents referred to as Lexus Land, up the driveway
(23:06):
to the mansion where Celeste lived with her family, her
twin teenage daughters, and her husband, Steve. The alarm system
was off, the dogs were asleep in the kid's room
with Celeste and Christina, one of Celeste's daughters. Her other daughter, Jennifer,
(23:27):
was away at their vacation house at a lake with
her boyfriend. All of that was normal. The beards hardly
ever set the alarms. Celeste rarely slept in the same
bed as Steve because his sleep apney machine kept her awake,
and as Susie Spencer records in The Fortune Hunter, Celeste
(23:48):
called her dogs quote her babies, and they'd never once
slept in the custom dog bed that she had commissioned
to match the bed in the primary bedroom. Jennifer, meanwhile,
often spent the weekends at the lake with her boyfriend.
When Tracy pulled up, she seemed to know all of that.
(24:09):
She didn't seem afraid of the alarm or of running
into Celeste in Steve's bed. She just racked her shotgun
and walked into the house. She knew where she was going.
She moved toward the primary bedroom, nudged open the door,
and while he was fully asleep, Tracy blasted a hole
(24:31):
in Steve's abdomen. Then she walked back out of his room,
out of the house, and she left. Steve later said
it felt like his gut had exploded. He held in
his intestines with one hand, and with the other he
(24:52):
tried to trip the emergency alarm. It didn't go off.
Still conscious, Steve picked up the phone and died. Steve
always thought the crime was associated with an intruder, and
at first he didn't even realize he'd been trapped. When
the first responders arrived, they had to break the sliding
glass doors to get to Steve. One of them said
(25:15):
he was holding in his intestines that if he moved
his hand they'd fall out. Celeste and Christina woke up
in their room amid the chaos. Police Sergeant Greg Truett
heard Celeste say, this is perfect timing. We were supposed
to go to Europe tomorrow. That comment was odd. I
(25:40):
am of the mind that people grieve differently, for sure,
and that we can't really know how we'll act in
a situation like this. That doesn't make it not weird, though,
and the police officers took note. There was another oddity
that caught the profecttional's attention. Celeste and Christina went with
(26:03):
Steve to the hospital. Christina's boyfriend met them there. At
the hospital, Detective Holly Dillard told the Criminal Investigation Division
to look into Celeste as a suspect because Celeste was
wearing a bra. People don't sleep in Bras Sergeant Paul
(26:28):
Knight questioned Celeste about what happened earlier before the shooting,
Celeste said Steve went to bed between nine thirty and ten,
and then she left for about an hour to see
Jennifer and her boyfriend at the lake house. He asked
her all the normal questions, how long was the drive
(26:48):
out and back? Who was she with? When was the
last time she saw Steve. Celeste volunteered that she had
stopped for gas and the time on her receipt eat
would prove when. She also volunteered that she and Steve
were about to go on a trip and that she
had cash to check for the kids to live on
(27:09):
while they were gone. About a thousand dollars should be
in Steve's wallet. If it wasn't there, she said, then
it must have been a robbery. It was all just
a bit fishy like she was too prepared for the questions.
There were other developments though. In the waiting room, Celeste's daughter,
(27:33):
Jennifer and her boyfriend Christopher had arrived. Sergeant Knight asked
the group if they could think of anyone who would
have done this to Steve. They had no answer. Then
Christopher said, how about that crazy Tracy. No one bit
(27:54):
Night pressed, Christopher said she's in love with Sela. The
twins didn't say much, but their boyfriends reminded them of
the time when Christina took Tracy's guns from her Earlier
in the year. Tracy had been suicidal, so Christina went
to her house in South Austin, took her guns and
(28:17):
turned them into the police so she couldn't cause her
self harm. Knight went back to Celeste. He asked, who's Tracy.
Celeste said she's nobody and then just a friend. But
Knight wasn't convinced that this gun toting Tracy was nobody.
(28:39):
While the family was at the hospital, police officers back
at the Beard house had found a bright yellow Winchester
super Ex shotgun. Sheholl if that shell could be matched
to one of Tracy's firearms. Well, that got them somewhere.
The following morning, Sergeant Knight ran a police check on Tracy.
(29:02):
He found only a few things, the most recent of
which was a DWI, and he found her most recent address.
There was no time to waste. Knight and his detective
Wines visited Tracy at her house with no notice. She
lived in the part of Austin that was, depending on
(29:23):
whom you ask, either the only place to be or
a place to avoid completely. They asked if they could
talk to her, and she invited them inside. Do you
know Steve Beard? Tracy said, we're friends. They asked if
(29:44):
she had a shotgun. She said she did. They asked
to see it. She hesitated and then brought out her
freshly cleaned, franky twenty gage. The detectives asked Tracy if
she would come into the station so they could talk more.
They weren't arresting her, but they did seize her gun.
(30:09):
Two days later, the ballistics report came back the shell
fired into Steve Beard was fired from Tracy Tarlton's shotgun.
Police arrested Tracy for attempted murder on November fourth. Tracy
(30:36):
maintained her innocence, but when she was asked about Celeste,
she knew a lot about their relationship between Celeste and Steve,
and she blamed Celeste's depression on Steve. Steve meanwhile told
his friend that the doctors were optimistic without his huge belly,
though the shot would have obliterated him. He said, I
(31:00):
told you being fat was an asset. Steve underwent six
surgeries on his abdomen as a result of the shooting.
Each went well. After around four months of hospital care,
he was released back home If that was that, maybe
this story would have ended here, Tracy behind bars for
(31:23):
attempted murder. A few odd statements from Celeste buried somewhere
in the dusty police files. But if the murder attempt
on Steve was shocking, it was even more shocking when
Steve suddenly died. The cause of death was a blood clot,
(31:44):
a complication of the gunshot wound. In later interviews, Jennifer
tearfully says she often recalls Steve before that clot. He
was doing so well that he encouraged her to go
to Houston, saying, go have fun, and she never thought
(32:05):
it would be the last words he said to her. Weirdly,
Steve's death blew the case wide open. It was no
longer assault. Now Tracy would be tried for murder. Still,
Tracy was tight lipped about why she had committed the
crime and who might have helped her. That is until
(32:29):
six months later, when Celeste got remarried. Suddenly, Tracy had
a very different story to tell about what happened that
October night, and about the relationship between her and Celeste
that led up to it, about the things Celeste said
to make her do it. What's more, is that in
(32:53):
their devastation after Steve's death, Christina and Jennifer, Celeste's daughters,
had a change of heart too. After staying silent for months,
they were ready to talk. Any true crime follower knows
(33:33):
that beyond the victim themselves, there are a lot of
other casualties when there's a murder, particularly family members and
especially children. Celeste had her twin daughters, Jennifer and Christina,
with her first husband, Craig Butcher. By the time Steve
came into the picture, Jennifer and Christina were teenagers. As
(33:58):
a former teenager with divorced parents, I can't help with
sympathize with Jennifer and Christina on that level alone. First
of all, anytime something tragic happens to a young woman,
what's the first thing we want to do. We dye
our hair and then we rebel with our clothes. That's
pretty much a universal truth, and Jennifer at least exhibited
(34:22):
both those things. I don't want to speak for them,
but when parents split up, you kind of feel like
you have to choose a side, even if no one
is asking you to, even if people are telling you
not to. But no one was telling them not to
choose a side. When Celeste married Steve, Jennifer was living
(34:47):
with her father, Craig in Washington State. Christina was living
with her stepfather, Jimmy Martinez, Celes's second husband. In case
it's hard to keep up with her husban, here's a
quick review. At this point, Celeste was married three times,
first to Craig, with whom she had Jennifer and Christina,
(35:10):
then to Jimmy, and then to Steve. The twins were
getting ready to go to Disney World with Craig in
nineteen ninety six when they got some tragic news. Craig
had taken his own life with a shotgun. Jennifer called
her mother to tell her the news. Celeste flew out
(35:33):
to get the girls. She had been trying to get
custody of them for years. Anyway. When Celeste came back
to Austin with her daughters right after their father killed himself,
that was the first time Jennifer ever met Steve. Steve
took care of the girls, immediately setting them up with
(35:55):
clothes a home school in the most supportive but the
least invasive ways possible. In nineteen ninety eight, when the
twins were seventeen, Steve adopted them both. He also changed
his will to include them and ensured they'd be taken
care of for the future. He even added a provision
(36:18):
which I didn't know you could do, that anyone contesting
the will at its reading would be revoked from the
will themselves real quick. I want to remind y'all. Adopting
step children is a big deal. I don't want to
put too much of a capitalist spin on it, but
Steve had adult children from his first marriage to Elise
(36:41):
as well. For him to have adopted Jennifer and Christina
would ostensibly divide his children's inheritance among them all evenly.
I don't have the will in front of me or anything,
but that would be the standard. Plus, remember Steve was
a mogul. He rubbed elbows with guys like Rupert Murdoch.
(37:05):
That's a lot of money. Most of the time we
think of people that rich as well, kind of selfish assholes.
But Steve adopted more children Jennifer and Christina in his seventies.
On that action alone, he is a pretty good dude.
Not to mention, when he redrafted his will, he willed
(37:26):
more to Celeste too. It turned out that just like
Celeste had intuited from the moment she saw him help
his sick first wife drink her whiskey. Steve was a
really good man, but that's not what Celeste told Tracy.
(37:48):
When Celeste got remarried after Steve's death, while Tracy rotted
in jail for killing Steve, the whole illusion under which
Tracy had committed her crime fell a part in exchange
for a plea bargain of twenty years in prison. Tracy
was ready to tell the full story, which started back
(38:09):
at the psychiatric hospital where she and Celeste were roommates.
That's where the two women's relationship first became sexual. After
the staff learned about it, Tracy was moved to a
separate room, but at least according to the appellate court,
Celeste told Tracy that Steve was responsible for this separation.
(38:33):
From their first meeting, Celeste maintained to Tracy that her
marriage was abusive. She said she had married Steve to
gain custody of her children from their father, since the
marriage gave her more stability, and now she was trapped.
After they became outpatients, Tracy and Celeste met in motel rooms,
(38:54):
where their relationship became quote more intense. Celeste even spent
the night at Tracy's house several times a week. She
told Tracy, he's an old man. He's going to die soon,
but not soon enough, and I'm just going to help
him along wherever i can. Later in court, Tracy talked
(39:18):
about how Celeste put sleeping pills in Steve's food and
replaced his vodka with ever Clear, sometimes hoping that Steve
would pass out and Celeste could be free for the night.
On another occasion, Celeste tried to poison Steve with bachelin,
a deadly nerve tocsin. Once in nineteen ninety nine, Tracy
(39:42):
visited at Celeste's request, and when she got to the house,
Steve was unconscious at the dining room table. She helped
Celeste drag him to the floor and put a trash
bag over his head in an attempt to asphyxiate him.
I don't know how they came back from that, Evidently
(40:06):
they failed. After hearing Tracy's testimony, Prosecutor Bill Mange did
not need to ask any follow up questions. He realized
(40:26):
Celeste had put quote meticulous thought into the multiple ways
she tried to kill Steve. He also realized that Tracy
was acting out of love. Tracy said she quote believed
everything Celeste told me about what was going on, and
(40:47):
I just felt real bad for her, and from what
I knew, Steve was a terrible man and he wouldn't
let her up. Celeste also told Tracy about the trip
she and Steve were taking to Europe for three weeks.
She said she was scared of the trip that Steve's
emotional abuse would force her to kill herself. Then, just
(41:08):
a few days before they were scheduled to leave, Celeste
suddenly remembered that Tracy was a hunter and that she
owned a shotgun. That's when Celeste asked Tracy to kill Steve.
At first, Tracy refused, Then Celeste threatened to kill herself.
(41:31):
That's when Tracy caved and said she'd do it. Tracy
also said she asked Celeste to take care of three
things if she got arrested. One find homes for her pets,
(41:57):
two pay her legal fees, and three support her in jail.
Celeste agreed. She also suggested that Tracy should shoot Steve
in the stomach so that it would be quote less
messy if he didn't die immediately. Celeste said she'd wait
(42:19):
for Steve to bleed out and then call the police.
Tracy told Celeste that her shotgun would auto eject the
spent shell. Later, from her prison cell Tracy Tarlton said
that fucking bitch was supposed to pick up the shotgun shell.
(42:41):
Celeste was charged. She faced a life sentence, but still
the prosecutors needed more to make their case. In the
testimony at Celeste's trial, Tracy said to the jury that
she and Celeste were in a romantic relationship. She said,
I felt like I loved her, and I believed that
(43:03):
she loved me. She spent a lot of time letting
me know that she did. When asked, Celeste maintained that
they were quote just friends, but Christina remembered something different.
She remembered once at the lake House, Tracy told her,
(43:23):
your mom and I are dating. We're a couple. We're
in love, and we hope you're okay with that. Jennifer
remembered not really being okay with it. She said in
a later interview, I just remember being uncomfortable about it
because I did like Steve. But I'm a kid. What
(43:44):
do I do? What they did truly was saved the
day Steve's love for them was not manipulative. Theirs was
a real family love, and they realized what they had
with Steve was not with them had with their mother.
According to a recent interview with Celeste in twenty twenty two,
(44:06):
she said over the inmate telephone system, the last time
she spoke to her daughters was August fourth, two thousand,
when her daughter's testified against Celeste in court. She cut
them off completely. She said they were after Steve's money.
With her out of the picture, they'd stand to inherit
(44:27):
more of it now, she says, I love them, I've
always loved them. Everything I've done has been with their
best interest. In reality, Jennifer and Christina had long feared Celeste,
(44:54):
and they said so in the trial. There's a long
list of terrifying shit that happened in between Celeste and
her children. A few notable items I can mention asking
the twins and their boyfriends to kill themselves with her,
threatening a salon worker with a kitchen knife that Christina
(45:15):
had to take from her, and not without cutting both
Celeste and Christina in the process. Putting sleeping pills in
Steve's food while the twins watched telling Jennifer she could
physically kill her sister, Christina. Jennifer even recalled on the
(45:37):
stand that Celeste drugged her as a child so that
she became severely ill. She was diagnosed with grandma seizures
when she went to live with Craig, though they quote
mysteriously disappeared. The girls were so scared of Celeste that
they even jumped the gun on trying to convict her
(46:00):
when they presented evidence in court to support that Celeste
was a homicidal manipulator. They did it during a hearing
meant to settle payment of attorney fees. The defense tried
to object to her playing a tape on those grounds.
The twins lawyer asked, why do you want the judge
to hear this? Christina answered. Before the judge could rule
(46:23):
on the objection, Christina said, I am afraid of her
and what she might do to me. Christina had started
recording abusive phone calls from her mother. In one of them,
the one she played while she was on the stand,
Celeste told Christina I hired someone to kill Tracy. Everyone
(46:47):
listening in the courtroom was stunned as a result of
what they heard on this tape. Part of the court's
final ruling was a restraining order for Celeste. She couldn't see, contact,
or interact with her daughters in any way. The judge
clarified for the girls, not only can she not get
(47:12):
within two hundred yards of you, but she can't shoot
a spitball at you. She can't use a knife or
a gun. She just can't get anywhere near you or
touch you in any fashion. The ruling seemed to put
the twins at ease, even if it couldn't undo the damage.
(47:49):
Two and a half days after the murder trial's closing comments,
the jury found the least guilty of capital murder. The
following day, March nineteenth, two thousand and three, she was
sentenced to life in prison. Her two appeals have been
tried and denied. By the time she's eligible for parole,
(48:12):
Celeste will be eighty years old. Tracy Charleton was sentenced
to twenty years in twenty eleven. After serving a decade,
she was released on parole. She said, I don't wake
up one single day without feeling shamed for what I did,
(48:34):
and even though she has served her time. As of
that twenty eleven interview, Tracy's life continued to be difficult.
Her felon status followed her everywhere, from trying to get
a job to trying to run an apartment. She relied
heavily on the support from her new community in San Antonio.
(48:55):
Citizens held a fundraiser to help her get back on
her feet. In the last interview I could find with
Tracy from twenty eleven, she expressed her gratitude in addition
to the remorse she expressed earlier. She said, the people
who know me and know my story have been very,
(49:16):
very supportive of me, and I would not have been
able to make it without these people. Since then, Tracy
has kept a very low profile. Celeste, meanwhile, is still
in prison. She knows that Tracy was paroled, and she's
(49:36):
jealous through all of this. Up to even now, Celeste
still maintains her innocence. Another way of saying that, in
my opinion, is that she accepts no responsibility for any
of the atrocities she put into motion. In a prison
interview shortly after Tracy's parole, Celeste said, I I just
(50:00):
wish with all the new laws and everything coming out,
that somebody would come forward and help me. It's not
right that Tracy only did ten years. Even if they
do believe that I asked her to do it, it's
not right that I'm spending the rest of my life
in prison and she's doing ten years as the shooter.
I know we can't convict on subtext, but in my
(50:21):
literary experience, that shit is as good as a confession.
Celeste believes she doesn't deserve to be punished because she
didn't pull a trigger. She thinks that because she manipulated
someone else to do it, her hands are clean, and
that's bullshit. They're both culpable. The difference is that Tracy
(50:42):
has reformed, which is the whole purpose of incarceration. Celese
is still on her same homicidal nonsense. That's my opinion, obviously,
but I feel pretty grounded in that Steve's family was
also able to ultimately forgive Tracy for his death. It's
such a magnanimous, rare form of grace that it counts
(51:05):
a lot in Tracy's favor. It doesn't make her innocent
by any stretch, but it makes her something else. Former
Sheriff Margot Frasier said that Tracy's sentence was even discussed
with Steve's family before it was declared and they were
okay with it. I probably don't have to say this,
(51:28):
but Steve's family did not extend that same grace to Celeste.
One of Steve's sons told Celeste directly in the courtroom,
I hope you burn in hell. In fact, after Celeste
was declared guilty, Steve's eldest children, Becky, Stephen, and Paul
(51:50):
issued statements that thanked the jury, the twins, and even
Tracy for bringing Celeste to justice. The fact is, without Celesting,
none of this hurt would have ever happened. She has
ruined the lives of countless people and damaged many others irreparably.
(52:17):
Jennifer Beard said that she still has nightmares about that
period of her teenage years, that she tries not to
think about it and she tries to move on. At
the trial, Christina told her mother, you say we turned
on you, Well you turned on us. You turned on
the whole Beard family. He let you into his home,
(52:41):
loved you, honored, obeyed you, and you violated him and
murdered him. Shame on you. Power forwards. But before we go,
(53:06):
I want to bring you one more perspective on the case.
I'm so happy I got the chance to talk to
the wonderful Susie Spencer, who has personal ties to the
case in addition to all the on the ground research
she's done to bring this story to the public. That's
after the break, stay with us. We're here to talk
(53:42):
about Celeste Beard and Tracy Tarleton and the Fortune Hunter,
your glorious book. And I guess I wanted to start
by just asking what inspired you to write about this
case in particular.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
Well, the main thing is, one day I was having
lunch with a friend of mine and she said, I
know the book you should do next. And I said,
what is that? And she said Tracy Charlton. I said,
what are you talking about? And it ended up that
Tracy and my friend I was talking to went to
the same summer camp. Oh yes, and so even though
(54:17):
I had never met Tracy, I knew a lot of
her relatives. And then also my friend was one of
the mentors to Tracy. So when she told me to
do it, that just sort of like, Okay, I'm doing
this book.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
Well that sounds like a great reason to do it.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
It's funny because Celeste used to lie and say that
her kids went to the same summer camp so it
was just those weird kind of little things that kept
roping me into the book. Celeste would say to me,
I know you like Tracy Charlton, and she was. And
(55:00):
it wasn't just our summer camp experiences together. It was
out of all the murderers I have interviewed, Tracy was
the one person who took responsibility for her actions. And
when I would try to go into her background because
she had a really troubled childhood, Tracy would say, Uh,
(55:24):
don't go there, this is all on me. It's my fault,
where Celeste was the complete opposite, well not opposite in
that she didn't have a horrible childhood. It was horrendous.
But she will still blame things on her past or
(55:45):
anybody else but herself. She does not take responsibility. And
Celeste never could tell the truth. If she is being
caught in a lie, she will suddenly start crying, but
if you look at her, she's not really crying. She's
(56:06):
just put She's pulling down her eyelid and wiping a
tissue over her eye to make sure it gets red
so that she looks like she's crying.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
When I would ask the people around Celeste, what attracted
them to this lying, thieving, vindictive woman. I'd say, she
is so much fun. She is so funny, And even
with Tracy, I'm like, what did she see in her?
I just did not get it. I had watched her
(56:43):
testify and a hearing and where she'd do the fake
crying and the fake fainting to get out of trouble,
and you know, I just didn't get it until I
sat down with her in prison and interviewed her. And
she is charming, and she is funny, and she's a
(57:05):
little bit magnetic or whatever. And even though I could
spot the lies and knew what was going on, I
didn't want to leave the interview because I was having
so much fun with her.
Speaker 2 (57:19):
Oh that's spooky, that's fascinating. I get it, though, Like
when someone is super charismatic, we will overlook a lot
to just keep being around them and being part of
the narrative they're creating.
Speaker 1 (57:32):
I think that we all have done that at some
point in time, just not to that extent, because Tracy
Tarlton will say to this day, I cannot believe I
shot someone. I can't believe I did that. But she
was a lonely, mixed up yeah, mentally ill drug an
(57:57):
alcohol addicted person who desperately wanted to be loved and accepted.
And Celeste was good at faking people out and making
them believe what they wanted to believe.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
Right, I mean, Tracy is such a sympathetic character, even
though like she did this horrible thing. What I don't
really get is what motivates someone like Celeste, Like Tercy's
really sympathetic to me, Like, I get it, I don't
get Celeste, Like, what do you think motivates her?
Speaker 1 (58:31):
I think her childhood just screwed her up. Her father,
some people say, is an alcoholic or a drug addict.
I think mainly drug addict. I don't know if that's true,
but that's what I've been told. I have been told
(58:52):
by several people that he molested Celeste, and her mother
was literally insane. She went to one of her friend's
house and tried to stab her, and then she went
running down the streets niked banging on doors and stuff,
(59:13):
and she was hospitalized. And so Celeste never had any
role models to show her what sanity is like. And
I think that Celeste probably you know, is not exactly
right in the brain. Well, obviously if she wanted to
(59:34):
kill somebody, and you know, she told Tracy to be
sure and shoot Steve Beard in the gut and Tracy said, no,
I don't want to do that. He'll then linger and
she said, oh no, believe me. I know because I
read all these true crime books and I know what
(59:55):
will work. Well. Tracy grew up in Texas hunting and fishing, right, yeah,
so and he lingered, yeah, and it ended up costing
both of them, well, all three of them, and the
Beard family. It's just I don't know. I think about it,
(01:00:17):
and I just get so sad.
Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
So I just had like a two part question left.
So Celeste was interested in true crime, as are we,
as are our listeners. And I'm sure you get asked
this all the time. I know I do. But why
is it such a fascinating genre and why is it
especially fascinating to women? Do you think?
Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
Oh, g yeah, I think Celeste was interested in it
because she relates to her too much. But I think
a lot of people read it because they want to
know what makes people tick. And true crime writers have
a tendency to want to know what makes people and
(01:01:00):
how to prevent this from happening. Yeah, because One of
the things that I keep seeing over and over is
the mental health aspect of this. There is in a
lot of these cases, not just mental health, but sexual abuse,
(01:01:20):
alcohol abuse, drug abuse, emotional abuse. And I go back
in almost all of my true crime cases, I find
that there is some sort of abuse that has informed
the killer. And I think a lot of us are
(01:01:40):
trying to figure out why people do this because it's incomprehensible,
and I think that's kind of what we're searching for.
And unfortunately we can kind of relate to so much
of this. Yeah, Like when I was growing up, I
went on a church mission trip with my you know,
(01:02:03):
high school group, and I came back and I was
so mad at my mother because I said, everybody else
got letters from their family but not me. What didn't
you do this? And she said, let me tell you
what happened while you were gone. And it ended up
her best friend shot and killed her husband. Oh my gosh,
and you go, ah wow. To be honest with me,
(01:02:26):
I think, I'm I'm obsessed with death, be it natural
causes or what. So I'm kind of, I think, dealing
with death constantly to work through my issues, and I
kind of think sometimes that other people are too, like,
how did this woman or this man cope with this?
(01:02:50):
How did they come out on the other side?
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Aim into that. Thanks again so much to Susie for
coming and sharing her in on the case. Stay tuned
for more conversations with her in the future. Join me
(01:03:28):
next week on the greatest true crime stories ever told
for a case with a very different woman at its center.
Penny Farmer, sister to a brother who went missing in
the seventies, only to be found decades later through a
very unorthodox method, in no small part thanks to Penny herself.
I'd also like to shout out a few key sources
(01:03:49):
that made it possible for me to tell this week's story.
A big thank you to Susie Spencer for her book
The Fortune Hunter. The documentary show snapped ABC News in
many local Austin, Texas news sources, not all of which
were part of Steve Beard's empire. For more information about
this case and the others we cover on the show,
(01:04:11):
visit Diversion Audio dot com. Sign up for Diversion's newsletter
and be among the first to hear about our special
behind the scenes features with the hosts and actors from
diversions podcasts, more shows you'll love from Diversion and other
exclusive tidbits you can't get anywhere else. That's Diversion Audio
dot com to sign up for our newsletter. The Greatest
(01:04:32):
True Crime Stories Ever Told is a production of Diversion Audio.
I am your host, Mary Kay McBrier and I wrote
this episode. Our editorial director is Nora Battel. Our show
is produced and directed by Mark Francis and Antonio Enriquez.
Our development team is Emma Dmouth and Jacob Bronstein. Theme
(01:04:55):
music by Tyler Cash. Executive producers Jacob Bronstein, Mark Francis,
and Scott Waxman.
Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
Diversion Audio
Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
H
Diversion audio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
A note this episode contains mature content and descriptions of
violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. Please take
care in listening. Let's open on a meet cute. It's
(00:37):
nineteen ninety eight in Austin, Texas. Our setting is romantic
if grim. Celeste Beard is in her early thirties. She's
a tall, curvy, blonde mother of two. The type of
person who, when she turns her attention and charisma straight
on you, makes you feel like you are the most
(01:00):
important person to ever exist. The kind of person who
draws your attention with her energy rather than her beauty.
But Celeste also suffers from depression, and in fact, she
has just been admitted to Saint David's Pavilion, a local
psychiatric hospital in Austin, after attempting suicide. One of her
(01:25):
twin teenage daughters, Christina, is visiting her there, helping her
mother through her rehabilitation. In that sterile, whitewashed environment, Christina,
her daughter, notices another patient, Tracy Tarleton, with lobbed, lank hair.
Tracy is so dazed from sedatives that she can't put
(01:48):
on her own shoes. She doesn't have the mesmerizing high
beam gaze. Rather, Tracy just checked herself into Saint David's
after an explosive rerg episode in front of the queer
friendly bookstore she manages. Christina notices Tracy fumbling with her
shoes no laces, this is a psychiatric hospital, just the shoes.
(02:14):
When Christina notices, she says, oh, Mom, help her, and
Celeste does. She be friends Tracy in the hospital, and
both their spirits lift. After all, one of the best
ways to stop feeling helpless is to try and help
someone else. Depending on whom you ask, Celeste and Tracy
(02:37):
remained fast friends even after their respective discharges from the
mental hospital. In fact, depending on whom you ask, their
relationship was much more than friendly. They were in love. Normally,
this might be a really sweet story about finding love
in a hopeless place, but because this is a true
(03:00):
crime story, you know better. It wasn't long before Celeste
asked Tracy to do something no one, not even a lover,
should ask. Celeste asked Tracy to kill for her. Welcome
(03:30):
to the greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm Mary
Kay McBrayer. I'm a writer of true crime, which means
I live inside the research wormhole. I'm constantly reading about crime,
but I'm not necessarily interested in the headline grabbing elements,
the blood and the gore, all of that. I'm more
(03:51):
interested in the people behind these stories and what we
can learn by looking at their experiences. If you want
evidence of my obsession, you can read my book America's
First Female serial Killer, Jane Toppin and the Making of
a Monster. You can also meet me here every week
(04:13):
when I dig into crimes where a woman is not
just a victim. She might be the detective, the lawyer,
the witness, the coroner, the criminal, or any combination of
those roles. As you probably already know, women can do anything.
(04:36):
We're calling this episode people Don't Sleep in Bras. It's
about the murder of Steve Beard, and it's about Steve's
wife's lover who shot him. I had a roommate my
(05:32):
freshman year in college, and her favorite TV show was
Jerry Springer. Back then, I didn't watch TV, but I
already had a smart mouth. So one day, while the
live studio audience was chanting Jerry, I said, I don't
get how you enjoy this. It's so fake. She looked
(05:54):
at me like I was stupid and said people will
do crazy shit for people they love. I like to
think I didn't know that yet because I was too
young to have recognized the transactional nature of a lot
of toxic relationships, let alone been on the business end
of one or many. But that's where we are in
(06:17):
our story today, on the business end of a transactional
love affair. The relationship between Celeste Beard, Steve Beard, and
Tracy Tarleton is an obtuse angle. Basically, Steve and Tracy
loved Celeste independently, and Celeste required things of them in
(06:40):
exchange for her love. Their story is about how withholding
love is not actually love. When someone needs an outlandish
act in exchange for what passes as normal ass interaction
with a significant other, that's not love. It's not even
a relationship. Its manipulation, and that is very dangerous, especially
(07:05):
if you don't know how to recognize it. So let's
talk about another important meet cute of this story. We're
still in Austin, a city of many social classes, from
(07:27):
the CD to the country club, but we're going back
in time four years earlier, to nineteen ninety three. Celeste
Johnson wasn't from Austin, but she was there looking for
an opportunity. She waited tables at the elite Austin country club.
(07:49):
Steve Beard, a seventy soter multi millionaire media mogul, was
a member at the club. Steve pushed his wife Elise
in her wheelchairs, to their table number ninety nine in
the dining room. According to one of the most comprehensive
sources on the story, Susie Spencer's The Fortune Hunter, other
(08:11):
waitresses didn't want to wait their table. They thought Steve
was quote gruff, rude and demanding, and stay tuned for
more from Susie Spencer. At the end of the episode,
I'm so happy that I got the chance to speak
with the real expert on the case. She shares some
really fascinating insights on the whole wild cast of characters.
(08:34):
But first, back to the case. Celeste saw the media
mogul differently than the other waitresses. She noticed how he
cared for Elise, who suffered from cancer. He held her
scotch to her lips to help her drink it. She
thought this was a sweet, loyal man, one who cared
(08:55):
for the woman he loved with everything he had. Was right,
She learned from her coworkers and patrons that Elise had
been married to Steve for decades and they had three
adult children together. She'd helped him build his wealth, never overspending,
although she sometimes overindulged in alcohol and golf and cigarettes.
(09:21):
Steve begged her for years to quit smoking. She wouldn't.
Then came the illness and the attentive care from Steve
that Celeste clocked at the country club for six months
up to Elisa's death. Steve sat by her hospital bed.
He asked friends, what's going to happen to me after
(09:42):
she dies? He still showed up. It's a country club
for dinners, though, so Celeste observed this decline secondhand. At
(10:03):
least Beard died in October of nineteen ninety three. For
two weeks, Steve sat in his new loneliness. Then he
came to the country club and sought some companionship. He
asked Celeste to dinner. It could have been innocent enough
when I think about it. A new widower asking for
(10:25):
a meal with a married server who knew his wife
isn't all that untoward, Or at least it could be
a situation of we both know each other is married,
so it could be pretty innocuous. Plus the club was
the one place Steve frequented where he wasn't anyone's boss.
(10:47):
We all hear of business leaders taking advantage of their
power over hot employees, but that wasn't Steve. All Steve
did was asked for company, and his kids didn't live
in town anymore. The only thing I think that could
be interpreted as a little icky is the proximity to
his wife's death, And even then, I'm inclined to stick
(11:11):
up for Steve, even taking that into account, because who
knows really how long he'd been alone before at last died,
Plus people grieved differently. What Steve didn't know was that
Celeste had been planning to divorce her second husband, Jimmy Martinez,
and Celeste saw that opportunity she was looking for in Steve.
(11:43):
After Steve and Celeste had dinner at an Italian style villa,
Steve drove her to his house on Lake Austin, where
they spent the evening listening to music and drinking cocktails
in his hot tub. Then she drove herself home in
his Lexus. When Steve was back at work the next day,
(12:04):
his office door forever opened. He yelled out to his mentee,
Ray mckeachern, if you ever call the house at night
looking for me or anything, I have a new house manager, Celeste.
By New Year's Day nineteen ninety four, Celeste moved in
with Steve and quit her job at the Austin Country
(12:25):
Club because Steve was embarrassed that his girlfriend worked there.
Steve and Celeste got married a little over a year later,
on February eighteenth, nineteen ninety five. Steve's adult daughter, Becky,
said she was not happy about the relationship, but her
dad was really happy, though they never stated this outright.
(12:53):
At face value, Becky and her brothers had reason to
be concerned. Their dad was rich, he was marrying a
waitress thirty years younger than he was, and it all
happened pretty quickly. Plus it started when Steve was vulnerable,
just after his beloved wife finally died after a long illness.
(13:19):
At best, it seems like a crutch for Steve's pain.
At worst, Celeste was taking advantage of Steve for his money.
But Steve seemed happy, so his family was supportive, because
that's what you do for people you love, right, You
support their decisions, even when you don't agree with them
(13:42):
up to a point, of course. Steve lavished Celeste with gifts, money, clothes,
new homes to decorate in decadence, but his family's concerns
were realized within just a couple months of their marriage.
(14:02):
Steve never suspected a thing, nor saw any real concern
with Celeste's spending habits. It was actually his banker who
alerted him, and even then it wasn't on grounds of
a cash flow alarm. It was much worse, much more
personal than just spending his money. Celeste had been removing
(14:27):
jewelry from the safety deposit box he owned with his
first wife, Elise. Basically, Celeste had been stealing his stad
wife's jewelry and then it disappeared. By that, I mean
first she stole it and then she sold it. Just
to draw out how serious of an offense this is.
(14:49):
It's not really about the valuation of the jewelry, which
was still huge. It's the fact that she stole it,
the fact that she stole from her husband, the fact
that she stole from his first wife, the fact that,
if we draw out just a little bit more, Celeste
stole heirloom jewelry from Steve's children, so Steve filed for
(15:15):
a divorce. Then the couple reconciled almost immediately. He withdrew
the petition four years, almost to the day of their wedding.
I am not sure how Celeste managed to gain his forgiveness,
but whatever she did, it tells us one thing. Celeste
(15:37):
could be very convincing. A lot of people have talked
about Celeste as a real charmer. She had a sweet voice,
a slight lisp, and when she talked to someone, her
(15:58):
attention felt sort of like a halo. It made people
feel special to get that kind of attention. This all
really comes into play at Saint David's Pavilion, the psychiatric
hospital where Celeste was admitted in nineteen ninety eight after
attempting suicide. The level of intense attention patients received at
(16:21):
Saint David's can be especially appealing to people who aren't
used to it, people who have never had that kind
of attention, and sometimes that kind of attention can be
mistaken for a special bond, especially if the person giving
that kind of attention really knows how to wield it
(16:43):
like a weapon. Tracy Charlton was the kind of person
who's always looking for love, It's a very sympathetic desire.
Anyone who struggled with mental illness knows that your support
system is crucial, and Tracy didn't really have that, so
(17:08):
Lets sniffed out that desire and turned her high beams
on Tracy. It wasn't Tracy Tarleton's first time with psychological instability.
She had a history of emotional disturbance dating back to
her childhood. Tracy was a Longhorn camper, a summer camp
(17:29):
that hosted the children of wealthy Texans like President George W.
Bush and pop singer slash actress Hillary Duff. Tracy was
known for her strong swimming skills, her tomboy nature, and
helpful spirit. That disposition changed before her twelfth summer. Not
(17:50):
her helpful nature, though that was always there. What did
change is that she grew up. Her elder brother's bully
her during the school year, and she was expected to
act like them, defending herself and tolerating a childhood home
that had been classified all around as rough. By the
(18:13):
time she became a counselor at Camp Longhorn, she was
known for crude campfire jokes, profane language, and an explosive
rage problem that flared up. When she was challenged, her
initials were TNT, and she said that just about sums
me up TNT. Her early adulthood at the University of
(18:39):
Texas was pretty fraught too. She surprised everyone by rushing
and joining a sorority. She seemed to really crave the parties.
Tracy didn't come out as a lesbian until much later,
and by then she had already attempted suicide at least once,
experimented with substances, and checked in and out of rehabilitation
(19:01):
and psychiatric hospitals. She spent several years at the US
Fish and Wildlife Service, then worked for back Conservation International,
where she produced emergency protection for bat hibernation caves. By
nineteen ninety nine, Tracy was in her dream job. She
(19:21):
was the high profile general manager of Texas's largest independent bookstore,
the Queer Friendly Book People, and she had a girlfriend
whom she loved. That girlfriend was also married to a man.
This might be editorializing, it's definitely editorializing. But when people
(19:46):
are desperate for love and the love is reciprocated, even
just a little bit, they doubled down, they love hard.
That's truly the person you want to fight in your corner.
So when Tracy's girlfriend, Zan came home to find her
husband dead, Tracy was with Zan at the funeral. She
(20:10):
stood by Zan when Zan broke the news of his
suicide to her employees at her hair salon too. Not
long after that, though, Zan broke up with Tracy. Soon
after the breakup with Zan, Tracy blew up in a
rage in front of her employees at book People. That's
(20:30):
when she checked herself into Saint David's pavilion, and that's
where she met Celeste Beeard. Nurses on the suicide watch
confirmed Tracy's immediate closeness with Celeste. Every fifteen minutes they
(20:52):
did rounds. Once they found Tracy massaging Celeste's back while
Celeste was shirtless. The women claimed not to know the
rule that they weren't allowed to touch when the nurses
changed shifts, though they would not know again. Even after
(21:14):
they were discharged from the hospital. Celeste and Tracy maintained contact.
Celeste would visit the bookstore, sometimes bringing her daughters. She
invited Tracy to parties, and there are several photos of
the pair just hanging out unstructured. Chill time is the
foundation for many friendships and that is not just me
(21:37):
saying it. There's science to back that up. We'll link
to this in the show notes in case you're curious.
It's one reason why college friendships tend to last, that
time of doing nothing together. That's what it seems like.
Celeste and Tracy had. They bonded quick, but their relationship
(21:59):
grew as a result of the time they spent together.
And then there was the shooting. In the early morning
(22:44):
of October two, nineteen ninety nine, Tracy Charlton laced up
her black sneakers, packed her Frankie twenty gage shotgun, and
cranked her SUV. She drove from CD South Austin to
what residents referred to as Lexus Land, up the driveway
(23:06):
to the mansion where Celeste lived with her family, her
twin teenage daughters, and her husband, Steve. The alarm system
was off, the dogs were asleep in the kid's room
with Celeste and Christina, one of Celeste's daughters. Her other daughter, Jennifer,
(23:27):
was away at their vacation house at a lake with
her boyfriend. All of that was normal. The beards hardly
ever set the alarms. Celeste rarely slept in the same
bed as Steve because his sleep apney machine kept her awake,
and as Susie Spencer records in The Fortune Hunter, Celeste
(23:48):
called her dogs quote her babies, and they'd never once
slept in the custom dog bed that she had commissioned
to match the bed in the primary bedroom. Jennifer, meanwhile,
often spent the weekends at the lake with her boyfriend.
When Tracy pulled up, she seemed to know all of that.
(24:09):
She didn't seem afraid of the alarm or of running
into Celeste in Steve's bed. She just racked her shotgun
and walked into the house. She knew where she was going.
She moved toward the primary bedroom, nudged open the door,
and while he was fully asleep, Tracy blasted a hole
(24:31):
in Steve's abdomen. Then she walked back out of his room,
out of the house, and she left. Steve later said
it felt like his gut had exploded. He held in
his intestines with one hand, and with the other he
(24:52):
tried to trip the emergency alarm. It didn't go off.
Still conscious, Steve picked up the phone and died. Steve
always thought the crime was associated with an intruder, and
at first he didn't even realize he'd been trapped. When
the first responders arrived, they had to break the sliding
glass doors to get to Steve. One of them said
(25:15):
he was holding in his intestines that if he moved
his hand they'd fall out. Celeste and Christina woke up
in their room amid the chaos. Police Sergeant Greg Truett
heard Celeste say, this is perfect timing. We were supposed
to go to Europe tomorrow. That comment was odd. I
(25:40):
am of the mind that people grieve differently, for sure,
and that we can't really know how we'll act in
a situation like this. That doesn't make it not weird, though,
and the police officers took note. There was another oddity
that caught the profecttional's attention. Celeste and Christina went with
(26:03):
Steve to the hospital. Christina's boyfriend met them there. At
the hospital, Detective Holly Dillard told the Criminal Investigation Division
to look into Celeste as a suspect because Celeste was
wearing a bra. People don't sleep in Bras Sergeant Paul
(26:28):
Knight questioned Celeste about what happened earlier before the shooting,
Celeste said Steve went to bed between nine thirty and ten,
and then she left for about an hour to see
Jennifer and her boyfriend at the lake house. He asked
her all the normal questions, how long was the drive
(26:48):
out and back? Who was she with? When was the
last time she saw Steve. Celeste volunteered that she had
stopped for gas and the time on her receipt eat
would prove when. She also volunteered that she and Steve
were about to go on a trip and that she
had cash to check for the kids to live on
(27:09):
while they were gone. About a thousand dollars should be
in Steve's wallet. If it wasn't there, she said, then
it must have been a robbery. It was all just
a bit fishy like she was too prepared for the questions.
There were other developments though. In the waiting room, Celeste's daughter,
(27:33):
Jennifer and her boyfriend Christopher had arrived. Sergeant Knight asked
the group if they could think of anyone who would
have done this to Steve. They had no answer. Then
Christopher said, how about that crazy Tracy. No one bit
(27:54):
Night pressed, Christopher said she's in love with Sela. The
twins didn't say much, but their boyfriends reminded them of
the time when Christina took Tracy's guns from her Earlier
in the year. Tracy had been suicidal, so Christina went
to her house in South Austin, took her guns and
(28:17):
turned them into the police so she couldn't cause her
self harm. Knight went back to Celeste. He asked, who's Tracy.
Celeste said she's nobody and then just a friend. But
Knight wasn't convinced that this gun toting Tracy was nobody.
(28:39):
While the family was at the hospital, police officers back
at the Beard house had found a bright yellow Winchester
super Ex shotgun. Sheholl if that shell could be matched
to one of Tracy's firearms. Well, that got them somewhere.
The following morning, Sergeant Knight ran a police check on Tracy.
(29:02):
He found only a few things, the most recent of
which was a DWI, and he found her most recent address.
There was no time to waste. Knight and his detective
Wines visited Tracy at her house with no notice. She
lived in the part of Austin that was, depending on
(29:23):
whom you ask, either the only place to be or
a place to avoid completely. They asked if they could
talk to her, and she invited them inside. Do you
know Steve Beard? Tracy said, we're friends. They asked if
(29:44):
she had a shotgun. She said she did. They asked
to see it. She hesitated and then brought out her
freshly cleaned, franky twenty gage. The detectives asked Tracy if
she would come into the station so they could talk more.
They weren't arresting her, but they did seize her gun.
(30:09):
Two days later, the ballistics report came back the shell
fired into Steve Beard was fired from Tracy Tarlton's shotgun.
Police arrested Tracy for attempted murder on November fourth. Tracy
(30:36):
maintained her innocence, but when she was asked about Celeste,
she knew a lot about their relationship between Celeste and Steve,
and she blamed Celeste's depression on Steve. Steve meanwhile told
his friend that the doctors were optimistic without his huge belly,
though the shot would have obliterated him. He said, I
(31:00):
told you being fat was an asset. Steve underwent six
surgeries on his abdomen as a result of the shooting.
Each went well. After around four months of hospital care,
he was released back home If that was that, maybe
this story would have ended here, Tracy behind bars for
(31:23):
attempted murder. A few odd statements from Celeste buried somewhere
in the dusty police files. But if the murder attempt
on Steve was shocking, it was even more shocking when
Steve suddenly died. The cause of death was a blood clot,
(31:44):
a complication of the gunshot wound. In later interviews, Jennifer
tearfully says she often recalls Steve before that clot. He
was doing so well that he encouraged her to go
to Houston, saying, go have fun, and she never thought
(32:05):
it would be the last words he said to her. Weirdly,
Steve's death blew the case wide open. It was no
longer assault. Now Tracy would be tried for murder. Still,
Tracy was tight lipped about why she had committed the
crime and who might have helped her. That is until
(32:29):
six months later, when Celeste got remarried. Suddenly, Tracy had
a very different story to tell about what happened that
October night, and about the relationship between her and Celeste
that led up to it, about the things Celeste said
to make her do it. What's more, is that in
(32:53):
their devastation after Steve's death, Christina and Jennifer, Celeste's daughters,
had a change of heart too. After staying silent for months,
they were ready to talk. Any true crime follower knows
(33:33):
that beyond the victim themselves, there are a lot of
other casualties when there's a murder, particularly family members and
especially children. Celeste had her twin daughters, Jennifer and Christina,
with her first husband, Craig Butcher. By the time Steve
came into the picture, Jennifer and Christina were teenagers. As
(33:58):
a former teenager with divorced parents, I can't help with
sympathize with Jennifer and Christina on that level alone. First
of all, anytime something tragic happens to a young woman,
what's the first thing we want to do. We dye
our hair and then we rebel with our clothes. That's
pretty much a universal truth, and Jennifer at least exhibited
(34:22):
both those things. I don't want to speak for them,
but when parents split up, you kind of feel like
you have to choose a side, even if no one
is asking you to, even if people are telling you
not to. But no one was telling them not to
choose a side. When Celeste married Steve, Jennifer was living
(34:47):
with her father, Craig in Washington State. Christina was living
with her stepfather, Jimmy Martinez, Celes's second husband. In case
it's hard to keep up with her husban, here's a
quick review. At this point, Celeste was married three times,
first to Craig, with whom she had Jennifer and Christina,
(35:10):
then to Jimmy, and then to Steve. The twins were
getting ready to go to Disney World with Craig in
nineteen ninety six when they got some tragic news. Craig
had taken his own life with a shotgun. Jennifer called
her mother to tell her the news. Celeste flew out
(35:33):
to get the girls. She had been trying to get
custody of them for years. Anyway. When Celeste came back
to Austin with her daughters right after their father killed himself,
that was the first time Jennifer ever met Steve. Steve
took care of the girls, immediately setting them up with
(35:55):
clothes a home school in the most supportive but the
least invasive ways possible. In nineteen ninety eight, when the
twins were seventeen, Steve adopted them both. He also changed
his will to include them and ensured they'd be taken
care of for the future. He even added a provision
(36:18):
which I didn't know you could do, that anyone contesting
the will at its reading would be revoked from the
will themselves real quick. I want to remind y'all. Adopting
step children is a big deal. I don't want to
put too much of a capitalist spin on it, but
Steve had adult children from his first marriage to Elise
(36:41):
as well. For him to have adopted Jennifer and Christina
would ostensibly divide his children's inheritance among them all evenly.
I don't have the will in front of me or anything,
but that would be the standard. Plus, remember Steve was
a mogul. He rubbed elbows with guys like Rupert Murdoch.
(37:05):
That's a lot of money. Most of the time we
think of people that rich as well, kind of selfish assholes.
But Steve adopted more children Jennifer and Christina in his seventies.
On that action alone, he is a pretty good dude.
Not to mention, when he redrafted his will, he willed
(37:26):
more to Celeste too. It turned out that just like
Celeste had intuited from the moment she saw him help
his sick first wife drink her whiskey. Steve was a
really good man, but that's not what Celeste told Tracy.
(37:48):
When Celeste got remarried after Steve's death, while Tracy rotted
in jail for killing Steve, the whole illusion under which
Tracy had committed her crime fell a part in exchange
for a plea bargain of twenty years in prison. Tracy
was ready to tell the full story, which started back
(38:09):
at the psychiatric hospital where she and Celeste were roommates.
That's where the two women's relationship first became sexual. After
the staff learned about it, Tracy was moved to a
separate room, but at least according to the appellate court,
Celeste told Tracy that Steve was responsible for this separation.
(38:33):
From their first meeting, Celeste maintained to Tracy that her
marriage was abusive. She said she had married Steve to
gain custody of her children from their father, since the
marriage gave her more stability, and now she was trapped.
After they became outpatients, Tracy and Celeste met in motel rooms,
(38:54):
where their relationship became quote more intense. Celeste even spent
the night at Tracy's house several times a week. She
told Tracy, he's an old man. He's going to die soon,
but not soon enough, and I'm just going to help
him along wherever i can. Later in court, Tracy talked
(39:18):
about how Celeste put sleeping pills in Steve's food and
replaced his vodka with ever Clear, sometimes hoping that Steve
would pass out and Celeste could be free for the night.
On another occasion, Celeste tried to poison Steve with bachelin,
a deadly nerve tocsin. Once in nineteen ninety nine, Tracy
(39:42):
visited at Celeste's request, and when she got to the house,
Steve was unconscious at the dining room table. She helped
Celeste drag him to the floor and put a trash
bag over his head in an attempt to asphyxiate him.
I don't know how they came back from that, Evidently
(40:06):
they failed. After hearing Tracy's testimony, Prosecutor Bill Mange did
not need to ask any follow up questions. He realized
(40:26):
Celeste had put quote meticulous thought into the multiple ways
she tried to kill Steve. He also realized that Tracy
was acting out of love. Tracy said she quote believed
everything Celeste told me about what was going on, and
(40:47):
I just felt real bad for her, and from what
I knew, Steve was a terrible man and he wouldn't
let her up. Celeste also told Tracy about the trip
she and Steve were taking to Europe for three weeks.
She said she was scared of the trip that Steve's
emotional abuse would force her to kill herself. Then, just
(41:08):
a few days before they were scheduled to leave, Celeste
suddenly remembered that Tracy was a hunter and that she
owned a shotgun. That's when Celeste asked Tracy to kill Steve.
At first, Tracy refused, Then Celeste threatened to kill herself.
(41:31):
That's when Tracy caved and said she'd do it. Tracy
also said she asked Celeste to take care of three
things if she got arrested. One find homes for her pets,
(41:57):
two pay her legal fees, and three support her in jail.
Celeste agreed. She also suggested that Tracy should shoot Steve
in the stomach so that it would be quote less
messy if he didn't die immediately. Celeste said she'd wait
(42:19):
for Steve to bleed out and then call the police.
Tracy told Celeste that her shotgun would auto eject the
spent shell. Later, from her prison cell Tracy Tarlton said
that fucking bitch was supposed to pick up the shotgun shell.
(42:41):
Celeste was charged. She faced a life sentence, but still
the prosecutors needed more to make their case. In the
testimony at Celeste's trial, Tracy said to the jury that
she and Celeste were in a romantic relationship. She said,
I felt like I loved her, and I believed that
(43:03):
she loved me. She spent a lot of time letting
me know that she did. When asked, Celeste maintained that
they were quote just friends, but Christina remembered something different.
She remembered once at the lake House, Tracy told her,
(43:23):
your mom and I are dating. We're a couple. We're
in love, and we hope you're okay with that. Jennifer
remembered not really being okay with it. She said in
a later interview, I just remember being uncomfortable about it
because I did like Steve. But I'm a kid. What
(43:44):
do I do? What they did truly was saved the
day Steve's love for them was not manipulative. Theirs was
a real family love, and they realized what they had
with Steve was not with them had with their mother.
According to a recent interview with Celeste in twenty twenty two,
(44:06):
she said over the inmate telephone system, the last time
she spoke to her daughters was August fourth, two thousand,
when her daughter's testified against Celeste in court. She cut
them off completely. She said they were after Steve's money.
With her out of the picture, they'd stand to inherit
(44:27):
more of it now, she says, I love them, I've
always loved them. Everything I've done has been with their
best interest. In reality, Jennifer and Christina had long feared Celeste,
(44:54):
and they said so in the trial. There's a long
list of terrifying shit that happened in between Celeste and
her children. A few notable items I can mention asking
the twins and their boyfriends to kill themselves with her,
threatening a salon worker with a kitchen knife that Christina
(45:15):
had to take from her, and not without cutting both
Celeste and Christina in the process. Putting sleeping pills in
Steve's food while the twins watched telling Jennifer she could
physically kill her sister, Christina. Jennifer even recalled on the
(45:37):
stand that Celeste drugged her as a child so that
she became severely ill. She was diagnosed with grandma seizures
when she went to live with Craig, though they quote
mysteriously disappeared. The girls were so scared of Celeste that
they even jumped the gun on trying to convict her
(46:00):
when they presented evidence in court to support that Celeste
was a homicidal manipulator. They did it during a hearing
meant to settle payment of attorney fees. The defense tried
to object to her playing a tape on those grounds.
The twins lawyer asked, why do you want the judge
to hear this? Christina answered. Before the judge could rule
(46:23):
on the objection, Christina said, I am afraid of her
and what she might do to me. Christina had started
recording abusive phone calls from her mother. In one of them,
the one she played while she was on the stand,
Celeste told Christina I hired someone to kill Tracy. Everyone
(46:47):
listening in the courtroom was stunned as a result of
what they heard on this tape. Part of the court's
final ruling was a restraining order for Celeste. She couldn't see, contact,
or interact with her daughters in any way. The judge
clarified for the girls, not only can she not get
(47:12):
within two hundred yards of you, but she can't shoot
a spitball at you. She can't use a knife or
a gun. She just can't get anywhere near you or
touch you in any fashion. The ruling seemed to put
the twins at ease, even if it couldn't undo the damage.
(47:49):
Two and a half days after the murder trial's closing comments,
the jury found the least guilty of capital murder. The
following day, March nineteenth, two thousand and three, she was
sentenced to life in prison. Her two appeals have been
tried and denied. By the time she's eligible for parole,
(48:12):
Celeste will be eighty years old. Tracy Charleton was sentenced
to twenty years in twenty eleven. After serving a decade,
she was released on parole. She said, I don't wake
up one single day without feeling shamed for what I did,
(48:34):
and even though she has served her time. As of
that twenty eleven interview, Tracy's life continued to be difficult.
Her felon status followed her everywhere, from trying to get
a job to trying to run an apartment. She relied
heavily on the support from her new community in San Antonio.
(48:55):
Citizens held a fundraiser to help her get back on
her feet. In the last interview I could find with
Tracy from twenty eleven, she expressed her gratitude in addition
to the remorse she expressed earlier. She said, the people
who know me and know my story have been very,
(49:16):
very supportive of me, and I would not have been
able to make it without these people. Since then, Tracy
has kept a very low profile. Celeste, meanwhile, is still
in prison. She knows that Tracy was paroled, and she's
(49:36):
jealous through all of this. Up to even now, Celeste
still maintains her innocence. Another way of saying that, in
my opinion, is that she accepts no responsibility for any
of the atrocities she put into motion. In a prison
interview shortly after Tracy's parole, Celeste said, I I just
(50:00):
wish with all the new laws and everything coming out,
that somebody would come forward and help me. It's not
right that Tracy only did ten years. Even if they
do believe that I asked her to do it, it's
not right that I'm spending the rest of my life
in prison and she's doing ten years as the shooter.
I know we can't convict on subtext, but in my
(50:21):
literary experience, that shit is as good as a confession.
Celeste believes she doesn't deserve to be punished because she
didn't pull a trigger. She thinks that because she manipulated
someone else to do it, her hands are clean, and
that's bullshit. They're both culpable. The difference is that Tracy
(50:42):
has reformed, which is the whole purpose of incarceration. Celese
is still on her same homicidal nonsense. That's my opinion, obviously,
but I feel pretty grounded in that Steve's family was
also able to ultimately forgive Tracy for his death. It's
such a magnanimous, rare form of grace that it counts
(51:05):
a lot in Tracy's favor. It doesn't make her innocent
by any stretch, but it makes her something else. Former
Sheriff Margot Frasier said that Tracy's sentence was even discussed
with Steve's family before it was declared and they were
okay with it. I probably don't have to say this,
(51:28):
but Steve's family did not extend that same grace to Celeste.
One of Steve's sons told Celeste directly in the courtroom,
I hope you burn in hell. In fact, after Celeste
was declared guilty, Steve's eldest children, Becky, Stephen, and Paul
(51:50):
issued statements that thanked the jury, the twins, and even
Tracy for bringing Celeste to justice. The fact is, without Celesting,
none of this hurt would have ever happened. She has
ruined the lives of countless people and damaged many others irreparably.
(52:17):
Jennifer Beard said that she still has nightmares about that
period of her teenage years, that she tries not to
think about it and she tries to move on. At
the trial, Christina told her mother, you say we turned
on you, Well you turned on us. You turned on
the whole Beard family. He let you into his home,
(52:41):
loved you, honored, obeyed you, and you violated him and
murdered him. Shame on you. Power forwards. But before we go,
(53:06):
I want to bring you one more perspective on the case.
I'm so happy I got the chance to talk to
the wonderful Susie Spencer, who has personal ties to the
case in addition to all the on the ground research
she's done to bring this story to the public. That's
after the break, stay with us. We're here to talk
(53:42):
about Celeste Beard and Tracy Tarleton and the Fortune Hunter,
your glorious book. And I guess I wanted to start
by just asking what inspired you to write about this
case in particular.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
Well, the main thing is, one day I was having
lunch with a friend of mine and she said, I
know the book you should do next. And I said,
what is that? And she said Tracy Charlton. I said,
what are you talking about? And it ended up that
Tracy and my friend I was talking to went to
the same summer camp. Oh yes, and so even though
(54:17):
I had never met Tracy, I knew a lot of
her relatives. And then also my friend was one of
the mentors to Tracy. So when she told me to
do it, that just sort of like, Okay, I'm doing
this book.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
Well that sounds like a great reason to do it.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
It's funny because Celeste used to lie and say that
her kids went to the same summer camp so it
was just those weird kind of little things that kept
roping me into the book. Celeste would say to me,
I know you like Tracy Charlton, and she was. And
(55:00):
it wasn't just our summer camp experiences together. It was
out of all the murderers I have interviewed, Tracy was
the one person who took responsibility for her actions. And
when I would try to go into her background because
she had a really troubled childhood, Tracy would say, Uh,
(55:24):
don't go there, this is all on me. It's my fault,
where Celeste was the complete opposite, well not opposite in
that she didn't have a horrible childhood. It was horrendous.
But she will still blame things on her past or
(55:45):
anybody else but herself. She does not take responsibility. And
Celeste never could tell the truth. If she is being
caught in a lie, she will suddenly start crying, but
if you look at her, she's not really crying. She's
(56:06):
just put She's pulling down her eyelid and wiping a
tissue over her eye to make sure it gets red
so that she looks like she's crying.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
When I would ask the people around Celeste, what attracted
them to this lying, thieving, vindictive woman. I'd say, she
is so much fun. She is so funny, And even
with Tracy, I'm like, what did she see in her?
I just did not get it. I had watched her
(56:43):
testify and a hearing and where she'd do the fake
crying and the fake fainting to get out of trouble,
and you know, I just didn't get it until I
sat down with her in prison and interviewed her. And
she is charming, and she is funny, and she's a
(57:05):
little bit magnetic or whatever. And even though I could
spot the lies and knew what was going on, I
didn't want to leave the interview because I was having
so much fun with her.
Speaker 2 (57:19):
Oh that's spooky, that's fascinating. I get it, though, Like
when someone is super charismatic, we will overlook a lot
to just keep being around them and being part of
the narrative they're creating.
Speaker 1 (57:32):
I think that we all have done that at some
point in time, just not to that extent, because Tracy
Tarlton will say to this day, I cannot believe I
shot someone. I can't believe I did that. But she
was a lonely, mixed up yeah, mentally ill drug an
(57:57):
alcohol addicted person who desperately wanted to be loved and accepted.
And Celeste was good at faking people out and making
them believe what they wanted to believe.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
Right, I mean, Tracy is such a sympathetic character, even
though like she did this horrible thing. What I don't
really get is what motivates someone like Celeste, Like Tercy's
really sympathetic to me, Like, I get it, I don't
get Celeste, Like, what do you think motivates her?
Speaker 1 (58:31):
I think her childhood just screwed her up. Her father,
some people say, is an alcoholic or a drug addict.
I think mainly drug addict. I don't know if that's true,
but that's what I've been told. I have been told
(58:52):
by several people that he molested Celeste, and her mother
was literally insane. She went to one of her friend's
house and tried to stab her, and then she went
running down the streets niked banging on doors and stuff,
(59:13):
and she was hospitalized. And so Celeste never had any
role models to show her what sanity is like. And
I think that Celeste probably you know, is not exactly
right in the brain. Well, obviously if she wanted to
(59:34):
kill somebody, and you know, she told Tracy to be
sure and shoot Steve Beard in the gut and Tracy said, no,
I don't want to do that. He'll then linger and
she said, oh no, believe me. I know because I
read all these true crime books and I know what
(59:55):
will work. Well. Tracy grew up in Texas hunting and fishing, right, yeah,
so and he lingered, yeah, and it ended up costing
both of them, well, all three of them, and the
Beard family. It's just I don't know. I think about it,
(01:00:17):
and I just get so sad.
Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
So I just had like a two part question left.
So Celeste was interested in true crime, as are we,
as are our listeners. And I'm sure you get asked
this all the time. I know I do. But why
is it such a fascinating genre and why is it
especially fascinating to women? Do you think?
Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
Oh, g yeah, I think Celeste was interested in it
because she relates to her too much. But I think
a lot of people read it because they want to
know what makes people tick. And true crime writers have
a tendency to want to know what makes people and
(01:01:00):
how to prevent this from happening. Yeah, because One of
the things that I keep seeing over and over is
the mental health aspect of this. There is in a
lot of these cases, not just mental health, but sexual abuse,
(01:01:20):
alcohol abuse, drug abuse, emotional abuse. And I go back
in almost all of my true crime cases, I find
that there is some sort of abuse that has informed
the killer. And I think a lot of us are
(01:01:40):
trying to figure out why people do this because it's incomprehensible,
and I think that's kind of what we're searching for.
And unfortunately we can kind of relate to so much
of this. Yeah, Like when I was growing up, I
went on a church mission trip with my you know,
(01:02:03):
high school group, and I came back and I was
so mad at my mother because I said, everybody else
got letters from their family but not me. What didn't
you do this? And she said, let me tell you
what happened while you were gone. And it ended up
her best friend shot and killed her husband. Oh my gosh,
and you go, ah wow. To be honest with me,
(01:02:26):
I think, I'm I'm obsessed with death, be it natural
causes or what. So I'm kind of, I think, dealing
with death constantly to work through my issues, and I
kind of think sometimes that other people are too, like,
how did this woman or this man cope with this?
(01:02:50):
How did they come out on the other side?
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Aim into that. Thanks again so much to Susie for
coming and sharing her in on the case. Stay tuned
for more conversations with her in the future. Join me
(01:03:28):
next week on the greatest true crime stories ever told
for a case with a very different woman at its center.
Penny Farmer, sister to a brother who went missing in
the seventies, only to be found decades later through a
very unorthodox method, in no small part thanks to Penny herself.
I'd also like to shout out a few key sources
(01:03:49):
that made it possible for me to tell this week's story.
A big thank you to Susie Spencer for her book
The Fortune Hunter. The documentary show snapped ABC News in
many local Austin, Texas news sources, not all of which
were part of Steve Beard's empire. For more information about
this case and the others we cover on the show,
(01:04:11):
visit Diversion Audio dot com. Sign up for Diversion's newsletter
and be among the first to hear about our special
behind the scenes features with the hosts and actors from
diversions podcasts, more shows you'll love from Diversion and other
exclusive tidbits you can't get anywhere else. That's Diversion Audio
dot com to sign up for our newsletter. The Greatest
(01:04:32):
True Crime Stories Ever Told is a production of Diversion Audio.
I am your host, Mary Kay McBrier and I wrote
this episode. Our editorial director is Nora Battel. Our show
is produced and directed by Mark Francis and Antonio Enriquez.
Our development team is Emma Dmouth and Jacob Bronstein. Theme
(01:04:55):
music by Tyler Cash. Executive producers Jacob Bronstein, Mark Francis,
and Scott Waxman.
Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
Diversion Audio
Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
H
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