She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [159]
Wetzel and Cobb had carefully laid out their trial plan. Since the trial would be a long one, they wanted to keep the jury from losing interest. Interspersed among the financial and medical testimony, which could become tiresome, they planted the more interesting witnesses, including the teens. Every day, they wanted the jury to have something to spark their attention. They’d also made a decision not to begin with any of the Beard children. With their court battle over Steve’s estate, DeGuerin could suggest their interest was money not justice. Cozart and Jennifer’s old boyfriend, Christopher Doose, had no such exposure and no reason to lie.
At the same time, DeGuerin tried hard to bend each of the prosecution witnesses’ testimony to his view of the case. “You’re only recalling the bad times, aren’t you?” he asked Cozart, after which she admitted there were times when Celeste was affectionate toward Steve. From Tracey’s journals, he read her ramblings about her love for Celeste. That Celeste planned extended trips left Tracey feeling “short of breath and anxious,” adding details to back up his theory of a fatal attraction.
The trial continued with the prosecutors shoring up their case, laying the groundwork for the twins and Tracey to take the stand. Without a thick layer of corroboration to bolster the coming testimony, they worried that what their star witnesses had to say would be judged as just too strange to be true.
For days, they put those on the stand who’d crossed paths with Tracey and Celeste the summer before the shooting. Eight who’d attended the lake house party testified. Yes, they’d seen the women openly acting like a couple. More than one had walked in on them kissing. Some had seen them wander off to bed together. Yes, they believed the women were lovers. Cindy Light told how Celeste called her days after the shooting, wanting the photos from the party, including one in which she and Tracey kissed.
When it came to his cross exam, DeGuerin’s tactics began to suggest someone caught in the era of Leave It to Beaver when the rest of the world had moved on to Will & Grace. Though one of the jurors had answered on the pretrial questionnaire that he was gay, DeGuerin still talked of “predatory lesbians.” At times his questions seemed archaic, as when he suggested that in lesbian relationships one of the women played a masculine role. “That went out in the fifties,” scoffed a witness.
Rather than a romance, DeGuerin suggested the physical touching seen by witnesses and in the photographs of the Fashion Victim party was a product of impaired reasoning. On the overhead, he again displayed the photo of Celeste seated on Tracey’s lap with a brownie poised near her lips. DeGuerin insisted Tracey had used the marijuana it contained to break down Celeste’s defenses, despite the fact that Celeste, not Tracey, held the brownie and that the women were kissing before the drugged desserts arrived.
From the Studio 29 employees, the jurors heard about Celeste’s bizarre behavior, how she bragged about her disdain for Steve. As DeGuerin fought to make Celeste appear a victim, the prosecutors refined their portrait of the woman on trial. They wanted jurors to see her as cold and ruthless, a woman who cared for nothing more than money. The testimony of Kuperman and Steve’s other advisers backed them up as they detailed how she grabbed every cent she could— even taking Elise’s jewelry from Steve’s safety deposit box—and how quickly she spent it. The message came through clear: If Steve divorced Celeste, she got nothing beyond her half-interest in the houses and her personal possessions. If he died, she got millions more.
As it had been at the hearings on the civil case, Steve’s own actions raised doubt. “Didn’t Steve increase the amount of money Celeste was entitled to under the trust while he was in the hospital?” DeGuerin asked.
“Yes,” Kuperman answered.
“Did Steve want to divorce Celeste?”
“No. Steve didn’t want a divorce.”
Still, the image