She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [175]
After the defense rested, both sides brought rebuttal witnesses to the stand, including battling psychologists. Yet, none opened up new territory. DeGuerin didn’t put Celeste on the stand. Instead, the final thing the jury heard was her videotaped deposition from the civil case. On the television screen, she dressed casually, in an orange sweater and jeans, her dyed blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. Wetzel wanted to play only a portion, but DeGuerin insisted the jury hear the entire three-hour deposition.
“Did you ever have any romantic involvement with Tracey Tarlton?” she was asked.
“No, I did not.”
“Why did you leave Meagan at the lake house that night?”
“Because Amy begged me to leave her.”
“How did it come about that Jennifer was at the lake house that night?”
“She had asked to stay there.”
“Did you talk to Tracey on October second?” The day of the shooting.
“She called me on my cell phone.”
“What did she say?”
“That the police had talked to her.”
“Did you ever ask Tracey Tarlton if she shot Steve?”
“I don’t believe so,” she said.
On the screen, Celeste contradicted points that DeGuerin had laboriously pushed during the seven weeks of testimony, including that Steve had ill feelings for Tracey. About one thing she held firm: “Tracey and I didn’t have a relationship. We had a friendship.”
Then, after more than one hundred witnesses, both sides finally rested. Judge Kocurek dismissed the two alternates and sent the jury home for the night. The following morning, closing arguments would begin.
Chapter
21
“It’s been a strange and weird trip, hasn’t it?” Gary Cobb began the following day, March 17, as he opened closing arguments. Agreement murmured through the overflowing room, spectators standing in the aisles for lack of seats.
The front rows behind the prosecution were filled with Steve Beard’s grown children and their families. They’d sat through painful testimony about their father’s last years. At the same time they abhorred what Tracey had done, they pulled for her. “We believed she’d been manipulated, like our dad was,” Paul says. “She was used by Celeste.”
Among them sat many of the witnesses, including the twins and their friends, who held hands in solidarity. Their protectors, Anita and Ellen Halbert, were with them. Both the twins were on edge. For weeks Jennifer had been having nightmares in which Celeste called out to her from the street in front of her house. If she went to meet her, she felt certain her mother would kill her.
More than anyone in the courtroom except their mother, the twins’ futures rested on the twelve jurors seated in the box. If Celeste were found not guilty, they were prepared to leave Austin and run, they believed for their very lives. Kristina feared they’d never be able to stop running, for she knew Celeste had a long and vengeful memory.
As they laid out their closing arguments, Cobb and Wetzel had split up tasks. Cobb would explain the law and how it pertained to this case. Then the defense had the floor for their closing, arguing the defense haiku: Celeste was better off with Steve alive; lifestyle was not proof of guilt; and Celeste did not kill her husband. Finally, Wetzel, the lead prosecutor, would close, summing up evidence she said proved Celeste Beard Johnson had committed murder.
“To judge the defendant is guilty of capital murder,” Cobb began. “You must find that she had her husband killed for remuneration. That’s easy, for the only motive for this murder was Steven Beard’s money.” Effortlessly, he moved from topic to topic, explaining the criteria for judging Celeste guilty of murder and injury to the elderly. Sizing up their star witness, he said: “Tracey Tarlton was a credible person on the stand, the same credible person people saw in September and October of 1999 … She’s not the first person to do something crazy for love.”
The defense said Steve didn’t die of the gunshot wound or anything related to it,