She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [4]
As the years passed, signs that the Johnsons’ second child was troubled mounted. Nancy would later describe taking Celeste to UCLA dental school for braces at the age of nine, only to have doctors remove them because she violently clenched her teeth. From an early age, she had horrific nightmares. When Nancy tried to awaken her, Celeste thrashed at her. “It was terrible,” says Nancy. “I didn’t know what was wrong.”
At first the Johnsons were able to hide the turmoil within their home; that ended in the early seventies, when a financial setback sent the family reeling. When Celeste was eleven, Edwin’s business failed. Rather than work, he went to college on the GI bill, attending Moorpark College then Pepperdine University, where he majored in speech. “Things changed,” says Eddy. “Mom went to work as a cake decorator, and Dad put on airs, used big words, tried to impress people. Everything seemed strange.”
With Edwin not working, the problem of finances escalated. The Johnson siblings later recalled violent arguments and their father’s actions turning increasingly odd. At times he chased Cole, threatening to beat him. A neighbor saw Edwin, boiling over with anger, push a lawn mower into the front steps and scream, “There, take that.”
“Edwin just got bizarre,” says a neighbor, “while Nancy worked harder and harder to support the kids. Nobody could understand what was going on in that house.”
Without money for tuition, the children were enrolled in public schools. At home, Celeste acted out. “She was hell on wheels when she turned thirteen,” says Nancy. “I didn’t know why. I was struggling just to keep food on the table. I left early in the morning and came home late at night.”
Perhaps making the situation even more painful for Celeste than the changes in her father and the absence of both her parents was the contrast between her family and that of Nancy’s wealthy friend Louise, who went to the same church as the Johnsons. Celeste and Louise’s daughter were friends, and Louise’s parents bought Celeste expensive presents and took her on trips. “Celeste liked the money,” says Cole. “She saw what it could buy.”
The tension at the Johnson house escalated. Edwin was a different man than the one Nancy married, scruffy, unshaven, and he called himself by a biblical name, Jedediah.
On Christmas Eve 1977, Nancy ordered him from the house.
For the next three years they waged a divorce that had such venom no one escaped its poison. They fought over money, Edwin’s shop tools, and the children. “Dad was crazy,” says Cole. “But Mom was vindictive. She brainwashed the girls to hate our dad.”
“Celeste changed in junior high school,” says Caresse. “She got in trouble, and she was angry all the time. She was a different person after my mom kicked my dad out.”
By the time Celeste turned fourteen, everyone within the Johnson household agreed that she was out of control. She had fights with siblings that her youngest brother, Eddy, compares in violence to a Mike Tyson match. “We couldn’t be together. She’d beat me up, and someone in the neighborhood would call the police,” he says. “The cops were always there, making her stop.”
One day, Cole arrived home to find Celeste pounding on their mother’s back, screaming at her. “She had so much anger,” he says. “It was awful.”
Another day, Nancy woke her for school and a screaming match ensued that ended with Celeste putting her fist through a front-door window. Someone called the police, and the house was surrounded. “They took Celeste in, and the judge ordered her to do community service and go to counseling,” says Nancy. “But by then I was already taking her to psychiatrists. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her.”
Once, when Nancy asked Celeste why she was so angry, the teenager simply said, “I’m just trying to get your attention.”
At Camarillo High School, where the teams are known as the Scorpions,