She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [169]
“Yes,” Miller agreed. At the defense table, DeGuerin frowned. Wetzel then began what would become a routine tactic throughout the trial: to prove Miller knew little about the real Celeste. She showed photos of Tracey and Celeste together on the overhead projector and listed many of the things the women had done together, from parties to kissing on the lips at social events, ending with the wedding ring. “If ten people saw them together [acting as a couple], would they be delusional?” she said.
“Tracey was delusional at the time she was at Timberlawn,” Miller said.
“Is it possible that their relationship changed after Timberlawn?”
“It may have,” Miller conceded.
“Dr. Miller, do people in relationships, whether mentally ill or not, want to believe the person they love?” asked Wetzel.
“Yes,” he said.
“Is it possible that the defendant encouraged Tracey to believe their relationship was closer than it was?”
“Yes.”
Over the weeks of the defense, DeGuerin had fought to tear apart the evidence the prosecutors had put before the jury, but made little progress. The prosecutors, meanwhile, insinuated doubt into the testimony of one defense witness after another. An attendant from St. David’s who insisted the women couldn’t have kissed while there found himself staring at photos taken on the hospital grounds, a place where cameras were forbidden. If the women broke one rule, what kept them from flouting others? When Dr. Michele Hauser, Celeste’s Austin psychiatrist, took the stand, DeGuerin worked on the twins’ remarks that Celeste went to St. David’s to prevent Steve from divorcing her, not because she was truly ill.
“Was she depressed?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
In some ways, Hauser’s testimony helped Celeste. She painted her patient not as a leader, but a follower, someone easily manipulated. Still, other points in her testimony hurt DeGuerin’s case. Yes, Steve was angry late that September, aware that Celeste was not including him in her plans. He discovered she’d used aliases to get credit cards. As she had with the others, on cross exam, Wetzel turned Hauser’s testimony to her advantage. Again, Celeste had hid much from Hauser. One thing came through loud and clear—an indication of Celeste’s personality. When Tracey overdosed before Celeste’s trip to Australia, Celeste told the therapist she was worried. “Celeste had concerns that Tracey would try to kill herself and that this would interrupt her vacation,” Hauser said.
More than one juror stared at Celeste, who glared at the therapist on the stand.
To Hauser, like Gotway, Celeste had said she “should hire a hit man to kill Tracey.”
“What did you tell her?” Wetzel asked.
“I told her that wasn’t good judgment, not a good way to handle things.”
On the stand, Jimmy Martinez smiled at the spectators and swiveled nervously from side to side in the chair. For two days he’d waited in the hall to be called. Now it appeared he’d rather be anywhere but testifying at his former wife’s capital murder trial. Seated next to DeGuerin, Celeste beamed. Later, one spectator would say she “lit up like a Roman candle with Martinez on the stand.” Another thought he actually detected flirting between the defendant and the witness.
Yes, Martinez testified, the alarm system in the Toro Canyon home was faulty, and he’d fixed it. He testified that Celeste loved the twins and would have done anything for them, and that his sexual liaison with her was more of a close friendship than an affair. Yes, he agreed with DeGuerin, Tracey “bird-dogged” Celeste at the graduation party. “Celeste told me to tell Tracey that she wasn’t a lesbian,” Martinez testified.
When Cobb took over, he concentrated on the money, mainly the check Celeste had written for Martinez’s work, inflated by tens of thousands of dollars, money Celeste pocketed.
“She gave you a lot, didn’t she?” Cobb asked.
“Yes,” said Martinez.
“You’d do anything for her?”
“Yes,” he said again.
Those first days of the defense, with DeGuerin and the prosecutors squaring off in front of the judge with