'Till Death Do Us Part: Love, Marriage, and the Mind of the Killer Spouse (19 page)

We also take into account the impact of Vietnam. Although Michael Peterson saw little direct combat, any amount is bound to have a profound psychological and frightening affect. Michael Peterson also wrote about war, so it would not be unreasonable to suggest that his military experience affected him.
The Journal of Traumatic Stress
theorizes that war-zone stressors could increase the severity of later intimate-partner violence. The more threatened an individual felt in combat, the more likely he is to suffer from post-traumatic stress. Overall, the journal reported that a veteran’s background, including his history of trauma, and PTSD symptomatology, contribute significantly to the risk of initiating violence against his partner.

Interestingly, a veteran’s poor relationship with his mother, even more so than with his father, appears to be a major predictor of intimate-partner violence. Michael Peterson expected way too much from the women in his life, and in a moment of stress, when they disappointed and enraged him, he could not help but feel annihilated, threatened, and at war with them. The women in his life all became one and the same: his enemy. In an attempt to protect himself he went into a mode that left these women dead.

* * * * *

CELESTE BEARD
could not be pleased with the man in her life.

During the early morning hours of October 2, 1999, her husband Steven Beard, a Texas millionaire, was awakened by a sudden blow to his stomach followed by searing pain.

Unsure of what happened, he immediately called 911 and told emergency operators that his guts had “jumped out of my stomach.” When paramedics arrived at Beard’s estate in Austin, the doors were locked, so they broke through a sliding glass door. After they rushed to Steven’s upstairs bedroom, they were met with a ghastly sight: Beard, seventy-four, lying in a blood-soaked bed, his stomach blown apart. Nearby was a .20 gauge shotgun shell.

Beard was taken to the hospital, where he clung to life for four months before succumbing to his wound. He left behind an estate valued at $10 million. While in the hospital, police focused their investigation on Steven’s wife, Celeste, thirty-seven. The couple had met at a local country club, where Celeste worked as a waitress. She was a widow and the mother of twin teenage daughters. Her first husband had committed suicide.

When they met, Steven was a widower still trying to cope with the loss of his wife of forty-five years. He was a media mogul and part owner of a local television station, and he was immediately smitten with the younger Celeste. They began to date, and Steven showered Celeste with gifts, including fine jewelry. He eventually asked her to move in with him. For Celeste, whose life had been filled with hardship and debt, it was a dream come true.

They married in 1994, and three years later Steven officially adopted Celeste’s daughters. Celeste was living out a fairy tale, complete with exotic vacations, multiple homes, and, of course, plenty of money.

But just six days after the shooting, investigators made a startling arrest. Celeste had a friend, Tracey Tarlton, who owned a shotgun, and police matched the shell casing found in Steven’s bedroom to Tarlton’s gun.

Celeste and Tracey had known each other just a few months, meeting when both were patients at a psychiatric hospital in Austin. Celeste had been admitted suffering from severe depression, a condition she had battled for her entire life, having been raised in a deeply troubled home, where she claims to have been sexually abused. At one time, Celeste had tried to slit her wrists.

Tarlton, a bookstore manager, had her own mental issues. According to police she was bipolar and heard voices that implored her to commit suicide. She was dependent on drugs and also suffered from depression. The two women struck up a friendship and remained in touch after they were discharged from the hospital. They soon became lovers. Following her arrest, Tarlton initially protected her friend. But a year later she learned that Celeste had remarried, meeting her new husband at a bar and moving with him to Fort Worth. Tarlton realized that Celeste was moving on with her life. And it was Celeste, Tarlton reasoned, who had manipulated her into killing Steven Beard.

Just days before her own murder trial was scheduled to begin, Tarlton agreed to a plea deal. She would receive a jail term of twenty years and in return would implicate Celeste in the murder of her husband, claiming they were lesbian lovers and it was Celeste who was behind her husband’s murder, hoping to collect his $10 million estate. Tarlton claimed that Celeste had complained bitterly about her husband and his abusive ways and that they had tried on several occasions to kill Steven, once by suffocation.

Celeste vehemently denied the charges, but she was subsequently indicted.

During the sensational trial in 2004, prosecutors brought out witness after witness who testified to Celeste’s duplicity and desire to get rid of her aging husband. Included on the witness list were Celeste’s twin daughters, who testified that their mother wished Steven would just “die.” They also told of seeing their mother put sleeping pills in Steven’s food, then leaving the home to meet secretly with Tarlton, whom they believed to be a lesbian. Other witnesses told of the affection displayed between Celeste and Tarlton, and prosecutors claimed that Celeste used Tarlton’s emotions against her, manipulating her to kill Steven.

Tarlton provided the most telling testimony, stating that Celeste had been disgusted with her husband, from his appearance to his age, and maintained that she couldn’t take him anymore and would kill herself if she had to stay with him. Believing she was protecting her friend and lover, Tarlton shot Steven.

Celeste’s attorney, Dick DeGuerrin, sought to prove that Tarlton alone had devised the plan to kill Steven. But the jury was swayed by Tarlton’s testimony and the testimony of others, including Celeste’s daughters, and found Celeste guilty of murder. She was sentenced to life in prison.

* * * * *

U
NLIKE
Michael Peterson, who seemed to be more hopeful when he entered into his romantic relationships, Celeste Beard Johnson was too angry to be hopeful. She began relationships with a spirit of retaliation and a sadistic vengeance. She transferred her original set of hateful feelings toward both her parents onto her current relationships with the intimates in her life. Celeste Beard Johnson’s background shows how a disturbed childhood can contribute to murderous impulses and tendencies.

Celeste was adopted into a very dysfunctional family. Her parents, Edwin and Nancy Johnson, were not well matched; in fact, some people found them to be quite an odd mix. After six years of marriage and several miscarriages, the Johnsons adopted four children in under four years. Celeste was the oldest girl and second oldest of the four. She was curious about her birth parents and would often ask Nancy for her adoption papers, but Nancy refused to show them. When Celeste’s older brother Cole asked for the papers on his real family, Nancy declined and angrily told her son he was the offspring of a prostitute and wife beater who was born only because his birth mother was paid not to have an abortion. Nancy also told her adopted children that their “real” mothers didn’t want them and neither did she. Cole later described her as brutal when angry.

Life quickly deteriorated when Edwin lost his job and Nancy was hospitalized for depression in a local psychiatric ward. Cole remembered the children were often scared by their mother’s erratic and dangerous behavior, which included holding their heads under water. Later, Nancy said she thought she was washing away her children’s sins.

Celeste was described as playful and cute and the one child best able to charm her parents. But both her brothers also remembered her dark side. They describe her as frightening and calculating. One minute she would do anything for you and the next would be horribly mean and manipulative. She also instigated fights among her siblings. As the years went by, Celeste displayed signs of being deeply troubled. She suffered through nightmares so violent that they precluded her from getting braces because she clenched her teeth so tightly at night. After her adoptive father lost his job he became angry, disheveled, and bizarre, and the financial strain contributed to the obvious marital troubles.

Celeste had a particularly hard time coping, in part due to her friendship with a schoolmate. The friend lived in a nice home with a happy, well off, and loving family. The friend’s parents would often buy the young Celeste expensive gifts and take her on trips. Having money became associated in Celeste’s mind with being healthy, well taken care of, loved, and secure. She experienced the good life and wanted this kind of life for herself.

Celeste’s parents eventually divorced; it was bitter and brutal, and no family member was lucky enough to escape the venomous war that ensued. Cole described his father as crazy, referring to himself as Jedediah. And Nancy was especially vicious, brainwashing her daughters to hate their father. Celeste would later testify against her father, claiming he had sexually molested her. She also accused him of having tried to kill her. By the time Celeste turned fourteen, her intense rage and anger was already obvious to everyone who knew her. Her wild teens led her into an early chaotic marriage and she gave birth to her twin daughters at the young age of eighteen.

* * * * *

A person’s childhood experience of abuse or abandonment can be so horrifying that he or she experiences the normal response to emotional weakness as life-threatening. Needing and trusting can be hurtful and painful. When women feel this way, they are more likely to use violence to try to control and diminish their mates in order to feel safe with them. They will do anything to avoid feeling that they are the weaker of the pair. According to psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin in her book
The Bonds of Love,
the need to dominate is an attempt to deny dependency. Celeste went into her adult world vowing never to be the victim of the kind of abuse she had previously experienced.

Love gone wrong can shatter children and make them into damaged adults—fragile, hateful, and fearful. For people like Celeste Beard Johnson, who had been physically and psychologically wounded by “love,” the need to retaliate carried into her future relationships. In some circles transference is occasionally called shadowboxing. The ghosts of the past that one is reacting to are not the person who is currently standing before her. All of these ghosts get rolled into one person, who is experienced in the same way. Unfortunately, it is often the innocent person who pays with his life in this kind of romantic scenario. The attacker is attacking a symbolic target. The targets, in Celeste’s case, were both male and female.

In the case of
Texas
vs.
Celeste Beard Johnson,
Celeste had simultaneously attacked two of her lovers, Steven Beard and Tracey Tarlton. They both represented the original caretakers who’d failed her, first her birth parents and then later her adoptive parents. She was getting rid of people based on her rage against a remembered trauma, the trauma of being rejected and not taken care of properly. Taking Steven’s money and manipulating and pretending to love people when she did not was just another way to hurt people who failed her. Celeste’s symbolic targets were anyone who loved her and/or wanted something from her. It was all about her. At least that is the way she wanted it to be.

Celeste was a woman who was incapable of loving anyone. Women who have a disturbed early background are more likely to feel violent and act violent toward others because they have not been able to come to terms with adult situations such as maternal loss, parental violence, or a mother who is not able to meet their needs. This makes these women more likely to have an unplanned pregnancy in adolescence, to develop depression in adulthood, to be victimized in intimate relationships, and to be disadvantaged in terms of alternative or escape solutions from abusive relationships—since through their own experience in abusive relationships they have developed a learned helplessness.

For Celeste, her pain became other people’s pain. She reenacted what had been done to her: seduce, possess, and then reject and/or eliminate. Only then could she feel like she had some control in her life. And since she really hated all people she was incapable of human intimacy—due to her intolerant feelings of fear, love, vulnerability, and intense anger. Handling these emotions correctly is fundamental to experiencing true love and meaningful connection.

Celeste Beard Johnson was a con artist who had a talent for finding and seducing vulnerable people. She despised people who were weak because they reminded her on some level of who she could never be. She had an inclination to hate any person who reminded her that he was not like her. In some cases adopted children suffer significant problems even when they are adopted by loving parents, which was certainly not the case for Celeste. So much rejection had resulted in a permanently wounded psyche.

Children who are adopted, even if they are loved, can feel like they do not fit in or belong to the family and they may develop an ambiguous or tenuous sense of attachment. It’s not uncommon for them to feel that their birth parents have rejected them. Celeste experienced both, her birth parents as rejecting and her adopted parents as impaired, rejecting, and abusive. When this happens, it leads a person to see herself as damaged goods and to believe that she must have done something terrible in order to be sent away from her birth mother. There is often an accompanying feeling of shame that is interpreted by the child to mean that she was so bad that she had to be given away. The issue of control becomes crucial for such individuals because things have been done to them that they feel they had no choice in. They had no choice in ending up in the family that they did. Not knowing their birth family, they often struggle hard to find some sense of control in their lives.

Children who are adopted often feel overcontrolled by simple rules that are easily accepted by kids who are not adopted. Adoptees may displace rage toward the adopted parents that they really feel toward their birth parents. In Celeste’s case, she felt rage toward both sets of parents. Later this rage transferred to just about anyone and everyone. Any feeling of rejection experienced by Celeste triggered her murderous rage.