It looked like the tragic death of a wealthy Texas businessman. But behind the million-dollar estate was a love triangle, a secret affair, and a murder plot so unbelievable it would divide a jury—and a family—for years.
How far would someone go for love… or for millions of dollars? In this episode, we unravel the shocking murder of Steven Beard, a case where greed, manipulation, and obsession collided with deadly consequences.
Steven Beard was born on November 27 1924 in Dallas, Texas. He attended college at Texas Christian University and Southern Methodist University. He also served in the US Navy.
Around 1948, Steven married his wife Elise and they had at least three children together.
Steven worked in radio and advertising in Dallas in the 1950’s and 60s. He started at the bottom and worked up the ladder. He switched to television in the 70’s.
Steven went on to become a television executive and co-owner of the KBVO television network – a Fox affiliate in the Austin area. This happened in 1981.
The station grew over the years and Steven sold his share for a small fortune.
He ended up obtaining a net worth of around $12 million.
Elise was said to be an avid golfer, while Steven preferred eating and drinking in the club house.
Before Elise’s death, she and Steven had been members of a local country club and they had frequented the restaurant there.
They remained married for 45 years until she passed away from cancer on October 13 1993.
Within three weeks of Elise’s death, Steven began dating a waitress from the country club, named Celeste. Celeste was 30 years old and had been married and divorced three times by this point.
As some background into Celeste, she was born on February 13, 1963. She was adopted by Edwin and Nancy Johnson and was raised in Ventura County, California. According to TruTv, Celeste was one of four children adopted by the couple.
Celeste would later tell people that she had been sexually abused by her father from age 4 until she turned 12. She later said “Do you know what it feels like when you’re 4 years old—you aren’t even in kindergarten? Do you know what that does to you?”
Nancy was said to be psychologically unstable and was institutionalised multiple times.
Celeste also said that she was sexually abused by an older adoptive brother.
She attempted to take her life during puberty.
Celeste got pregnant at age 17 and married another teenager named Craig Bratcher. She gave birth to twin girls – Kristina and Jennifer.
The marriage between Craig and Celeste was said to be tumultuous and included physical abuse and restraining orders.
By 1983, Celeste and Craig had divorced. Soon after, Celeste married Harald Wolf, an Air Force mechanic. They divorced in 1991. Celeste would say that her divorce lawyer paid for her to have a breast augmentation following this split.
Celeste moved to Arizona following this divorce and was struggling to make ends meet. She lied and reported a car as stolen, before burning the vehicle. She was convicted of insurance fraud and spent three months in jail.
Celeste’s third husband was Jimmy Martinez. Celeste’s nickname for him was BMW – Big Mexican Weiner.
That marriage did not last long and Celeste moved to Austin. This is where she got the job as the waitress at the Austin Country Club and where she would meet Steven in 1993.
For their first date, Steven took Celeste to an Italian restaurant called Mama Mia’s. He treated Celeste to a nightcap at his ‘mini-mansion’ and allowed her to drive his $50k Lexus sedan back to her home. (That would be $116k today).
Christmas 1993 fell around two months after Celeste and Steven first met. He gifted her a $16k diamond cocktail ring, a $3k watch and a new Ford Explorer.
He invited her to move in with him and she did so on January 1, 1994.
In their first year of the relationship, Steven paid a $20k restitution bill that Celeste had racked up for insurance fraud. He also funded Celeste’s custody battle for the twins against her first husband Craig. Steven would end up adopting Celeste’s daughters.
On February 8, 1995, he and Celeste signed a pre-nup. It stated that she would get $500,000 if they divorced and not a cent more. If she became his widow though, she would inherit much more – around $6m.
The couple married on February 18, 1995 at the country club in Austin where they met.
During the honeymoon, Celeste was said to have to administer a penis-stiffening drug to Steven via needles. She said she found it ‘kind of traumatizing.’
Steven was around 70 years old at this time. Celeste said the couple only had sex twice during their whole relationship – once on the day she moved in with him and once on their wedding day.
The marriage turned sour very quickly. Within four months, Steven had filed for divorce. The main issue in their relationship seemed to be sex – Celeste did not want to administer the ‘ sex needle’ to Steven. He ended up withdrawing the divorce petition after Celeste came up with the ‘oral sex solution.’
She reserved Sunday mornings for this. This info is from TruTv:
“I gotta go make some money,” she would tell her daughters—and anyone else within earshot—as she plodded dourly toward her husband’s den for his weekly sexual service.
She made certain there were no distractions—pets locked up, doors secured, phones disconnected—because she wanted Steven to reach his happy ending as quickly as possible, according to an account in Suzy Spencer’s book “The Fortune Hunter.” She loathed having to stop and begin again once she got started.
After they sorted out their sexual issues, money became their main source of tension.
Steven gave Celeste a $10k monthly allowance – $10,000 (1993) ≈ $23,200 (2026).
She had three walk-in closets with hundreds of pairs of shoes. Each pair had a matching purse.
She once spent $50k in a single shopping spree. They went on holiday to China in 1998 for a single month and spent $100k.
Celeste repeatedly bought up the $500k prenup as being an issue. Steven decided to just give her that cash. His thinking was that if she had her own money, she might spend less of his. The $500k was gone within six months.
In their first four years of marriage, Celeste spent well over $1m. Steven’s accountant looked at the finances and discovered that in 1998, Celeste had spent over $300,000 on holiday shopping and entertainment.
Article quote:
Beard’s accountant would later reveal that Celeste spent $321,000 during October and November 1999; an additional $249,000 by Dec. 10, and another $100,000 in the six weeks ending March 31, 2000.
Celeste became resentful of Steven. She called him ‘ the fat bastard’ or the ‘ old fool.’ People heard her say more than once ‘Why doesn’t he just die already?’
Celeste allegedly cheated on Steven with her previous husband – Jimmy BMW Martinez. She would leave the house when Steven went to bed at 9.30. She would sometimes spike her husband’s food or drinks with sleeping pills to get him to pass out quickly.
Steven told Celeste that he was going to take away her credit cards. She threatened to take her own life.
After that threat, Steven sent Celeste to St David’s Pavilion. Celeste’s daughter Kristin has said that the suicide threat was ‘play acting’ so that Celeste could get what she wanted.
While Celeste was at that facility, in March 1999, she met Tracey Tarlton.
As some background into Tracey, she graduated from Texas A&M in 1986 with a biology degree. She worked in a series of jobs before she found her preferred place – she became the manager of a bookstore in Austin named BookPeople. Tracey loved working there and would often work 60 hours per week. She felt that she worked and interacted with like minded people.
In February 1999 though, Tracey suffered a public breakdown at work. She yelled obscenities and threatened violence.
Tracey’s life had been troubled – she struggled with addiction, had attempted suicide and had documented psychological problems.
Her friends and family encouraged her to get help, and she also checked into St David’s Pavilion.
Tracey became interested in Celeste. She wrote her this note a few weeks after they met.
“Celeste, you are so beautiful. I think about your long, silky body and your incredible, long legs and I just can’t stand it. And then I think of your incredible face and I want to…stand outside your building and wail until I get arrested. We won’t even talk about what happens when I think about your sweet, tough, sexy voice.”
The two began a relationship. They were transferred together to Timberlawn, a mental health facility in Dallas. Tracey would tell CBS later “Celeste was extremely flirtatious with me from the beginning. And I responded in kind. Eventually, she came into my room and kissed me. She wanted to have a sexual relationship with me.”
Tracey said the women began a sexual relationship on March 20, 1999 and that it continued on until October 1 that year.
The women continued their relationship after they were released from treatment.
“Tracey wasn’t secretive,” Jeremy Ellis, who worked with Tarlton, told CBS. “Everyone in the store knew she was dating someone named Celeste. She spoke about her like she was her girlfriend. They were sort of physical, close with each other and I thought, ‘Well, good for Tracey.'”
Tarlton sent Celeste love letters, and Celeste sent Tarlton a birthday card addressed “To the One I Love.” They became regular customers at an Austin Red Roof Inn.
Celeste’s daughters caught the two women in bed multiple times. When her daughters asked what was going on, Celeste said “Tracey’s a lesbian, and she’s in love with me. Isn’t that funny?”
“My mother has acknowledged to me that she is involved in a romantic relationship with Tracey Tarlton, and that she and Tracey have had sexual relations together,” Kristina later stated in an affidavit. “Tracey Tarlton has openly admitted to me that she and my mother are lovers. In September of 1999, I witnessed Tracey and my mother kissing passionately.”
Celeste told Tracey that Steven was abusive. She said he emotionally and verbally abused her. She also said that she feared violence if she threatened to divorce him. She also said that her relationship with Steven had left her feeling suicidal.
Tracey could apparently not imagine a life without Celeste and they began to plot ways to get rid of Steven.
They tried to give him botulism by making him a spoiled chili dog. Steven ate the food and liked it.
According to TruTv, they spiked his drinks with 190-proof grain alcohol, then fastened a plastic bag around his head when he passed out. They dusted his food with sleeping pills and, on one occasion, 10 ecstasy tablets. He survived it all.
“He drank a lot of vodka, but she would take the vodka bottle and pour most of it out and fill it up with everclear, which is higher proof alcohol,” says Tracey. “Or she would take sleeping pills and grind them up and put them in his food.”
Steven witnessed Celeste and Tracey passionately kissing on September 29, 1999. He booted Tracey from the home.
Around this time, Steven and Celeste had scheduled a trip to Europe. Celeste convinced Tracey that her life was in danger. “She came over and was just hysterical, beside herself,” Tracey told CBS. “She said, ‘I’ll never survive this trip.’ I wanted to help her.”
The women came up with a plan. Tracey entered the home in the dark when Steven was asleep. She fired a shot from her shotgun and slipped out.
Steven woke up on October 2, 1999 and discovered he had been injured. He made a 911 call.
“I need an ambulance,” said Steven, “My guts just jumped out of my stomach. They blew out—yeah, they blew out of my stomach. They’re lying on my stomach.”
“OK,” said the 911 operator. “They’re laying on your stomach?”
“I’m in awful pain,” Steven said.
“How did this happen?”
“It just happened. I woke up. I just woke up.”
After another brief exchange, the operator said, “I’m having a hard time figuring out what happened.”
So was Steven.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I’ve never had this happen before.”
Steven believed that Celeste had been sleeping in another wing of the house and asked the dispatcher to call her. Celeste did not answer.
Rescuers had to break a patio door to get inside to help Steven.
Steven had previously had surgery for a hernia operation. When emergency services looked at his wound, they decided that it was likely that the operation had failed and the wound had essentially exploded.
As they lifted Steven onto a stretcher, a deputy discovered a shell casing from a 20-gauge shotgun and that was when the case turned from a medical emergency, into an attempted homicide.
Steven was flown by helicopter to Brackenridge Hospital in Austin.
Celeste and the twins were awake by this point and they followed Steven to the hospital in a police car. Christopher Doose, the boyfriend of one of the twins, also accompanied them.
Sheriff’s Investigator Paul Knight asked the family if they had any idea who would have done this to Steven. Christopher spoke up and said “How about that crazy Tracey?”
Many other people also came forward to suggest that Tracey was a possible suspect. With the notable exception of Celeste.
Detectives visited Tracey’s apartment two days after the shooting.
“We asked if she owned a 20-gauge shotgun, and she said yes, she did,” Detective Rick Wines told CBS’s “48 Hours.”
Tarlton was an avid skeet-shooter. Somewhat reluctantly, she agreed to hand over her shotgun for ballistic testing. The $1,000 Franchi, manufactured in Italy, was engraved with Tracey’s name. It had been a gift from her father.
A few days later, police had their results.
“The shotgun shell that we found at the scene came from the shotgun that we found in her house,” Wines said. “You know, two and two to me has always been four.”
On Oct. 8, six days after the shooting, Tarlton was arrested and charged with assault.
In terms of Steven’s injuries, he would spend four months in hospital. His condition stabilised after he underwent seven surgeries. He was considered to be at continued risk of infection due to the nature of the wound.
When the digestive tract is perforated, the leakage can cause infections through peritonitis or bacterial sepsis.
Steven was released from hospital on January 21, 2000. He died four days later from medical complications.
Tracey and Celeste remained in contact for the first nine months that Trace was in jail.
By the summer of 2000, they had broken up. “Celeste started going bananas, hysterical a lot of the time,” Tracey told CBS. “We both said, ‘We’re not going to do this anymore. You won’t see me again.'”
Tracey was distraught and tried to overdose on Valium. She had still not pointed fingers at Celeste by this point.
That was until Tracey read a newspaper article about Celeste. The article stated that Celeste had married for the fifth time – to a man named Cole Johnson. They were married on July 3, 2000 – a few days after Tracey and Celeste called off their relationship.
“She’s off at her honeymoon in Aspen,” she told CBS. “Even I couldn’t overlook that. It was like everything started unraveling very quickly for me after that article…I started realizing Celeste had been lying to me all along—that this man was not abusing her, that she had married him for his money, that she had been lying to me about our relationship. All of it was a farce.”
Cole was a bartender and musician in a bar band. He and Celeste married in Aspen, Colorado.
Tracey called a meeting with detectives and prosecutors and told them the whole story and plot that the women had derived. She told them ‘ I did it for Celeste.’
Celeste was arrested on March 28, 2002 and was charged with Steven’s murder.
Celeste’s bail was set at $8m, after the judge noted that she had earned $2m from the sale of the home that she and Steven had shared, just months after his death. Celeste’s lawyer said she had just over $7,000 left, 16 months later.
Tracey pleaded guilty and agreed to testify in exchange for a 20 year sentence.
Celeste’s trial began on February 3, 2003.
“She couldn’t stand Steve Beard,” prosecutor Allison Weitzel told jurors. “She talked to people about how she hated him. He disgusted her…What happened here is a simple case of a greedy, manipulative defendant who took advantage of a mentally ill woman who was in love with her. She told Tracey that with Steve gone, they could be together.”
Tracey testified on the stand for a total of 15 hours.
“I just saw this woman that I loved in a desperate situation trying to find a way to survive this man that was so awful,” Tracey said. “She had a plan. She wanted me to shoot him at Toro Canyon with my shotgun. I was willing to shoot him, and I went and did it.”
She added that she and Steven had been “betrayed by the same woman.”
Dick DeGuerin, Celeste’s prominent—and expensive—criminal defense attorney, dismissed this mountain of evidence as part of a fantasy of a “predatory, aggressive lesbian.” The defense strategy boiled down to three words: Tracey is crazy.
“This is a case of fatal attraction,” said DeGuerin. “Tracey Tarlton is psychotic. She’s been diagnosed as having delusions, as hearing voices that aren’t there, as seeing things that aren’t there.”
Celeste’s twin daughters testified against their mother.
“She said that she married Steve for his money,” testified Jennifer.
Kristina added, “She would sometimes make comments like, ‘Why doesn’t he just die already’…She would say that he disgusted her.”
No detail was spared, including the Sabbath sexual get-togethers.
“What was the ‘Sunday suck?'” asked prosecutor Weitzel.
“Celeste giving Steve a blow job,” replied Jennifer.
A recording that Kristina made of a conversation with her mother was played for jurors.
When the girl accused her mother of threatening suicide in February 1999 “get what you wanted,” Celeste screamed, “I was f—king depressed, you god-damned little bitch!”
At the end of testimony, prosecutor Weitzel summed up by saying, “Money is what this whole case is about.”
Jurors deliberated 23 hours over three days before voting to convict.
Prosecutors chose to not seek the death penalty and Celeste was given a mandatory life sentence.
At her sentencing, family members spoke and addressed Celeste.
“I hope you burn in hell,” said Beard’s namesake son, Steven Beard III.
Perhaps most punishing were the comments of Celeste’s daughter Kristina.
“You say we turned on you,” Kristina said. “Well, you turned on us. You turned on the whole Beard family. He let you into his home, loved you, honored, obeyed you, and you violated him and murdered him…Shame on you!”
According to Texas law, Celeste must serve at least 40 years in prison. She will be eligible for parole on April 1, 2043. She will then be 79 years old. Celeste continues to maintain her innocence.
Celeste has given interviews in which she has stated that she was victimised by her own daughters after Steven’s estate was split between his five children – his three with Elise and with Celeste’s twin daughters who he had adopted.
“I hate to admit it, but the only reason why they could have turned on me was for the money,” she told CBS. “They have two million reasons to lie.”
Tracey was released on parole in August 2011. She served 10 years of her 20 year sentence.
SOURCE LIST:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Steven_Beard
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/203841240/steven_franklin-beard
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/203841314/elise_helen-beard
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3900-Toro-Canyon-Rd-Austin-TX-78746/29343289_zpid
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/tx-court-of-appeals/1258722.html