She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [5]
In many ways, Celeste was an odd mix. She never dressed overtly sexually, instead preferring modest clothes. One friend teased her, saying that she looked like she’d raided her mother’s closet. But she seemed to know without question what men were looking for. “She flirted, in a taunting way,” says a classmate. “Then she’d come across as sweet and innocent. It was an amazing combination. It drove the guys in town crazy.”
Along with her beauty, Celeste had an untamed, wild streak that some found fascinating. When she got her driver’s license, she screamed down the streets in the family’s VW Beetle. At night she teased the neighborhood boys, parading down the street in her nightgown, often with nothing underneath. Cole chased away the clique of boys who catcalled at her. “Celeste laughed, having a good old time with it,” says Eddy.
One incident resonated for Cole; in high school, he had his first sexual experience. The girl then said something that shocked him: “I’ve already done it with Celeste.”
“I always thought Celeste hated men and leaned toward being a lesbian,” he says.
Still, men were attracted to Celeste and, from all appearances, she to them.
Decades later, Craig Bratcher told his family he met Celeste in a bar, when she nuzzled against him, then kissed him. Before long they were making out. Craig, then seventeen, was two years older than Celeste. With his parents divorced the house Craig lived in with his father and brothers was a magnet for the teenagers in the neighborhood, including Celeste. “There was something about Craig that I respected,” says a friend of Celeste’s. “He took things seriously.”
Many would say there was something special about Craig. He was muscular, with a slight paunch. Long brown hair combed to the side fell over his forehead and brushed the tops of thick eyebrows, over sad, dark eyes. He came from a family of four brothers and worked with his father for a big produce company that harvested the bounty of the neighboring valleys.
Perhaps Craig was already troubled when he met Celeste. More than one friend describes him as extraordinarily shy. “Craig had his ups and downs,” says his mom, Cherie Falke. “But he was young, just learning to get on in life, when he met Celeste. From the beginning, their relationship was a mistake.”
In Camarillo, Craig, his father, and brothers lived just blocks from the Johnsons’ home. Celeste skipped school and spent the days there with a batch of close friends, smoking pot and drinking. “We liked being with the older kids,” says one friend. “It made us feel cool.” By then Celeste’s dark blond hair was shoulder length and chopped into a layered Farah Fawcett hairdo. She was fun, with a quick wit and an easy laugh. Craig fell in love. Celeste seemed as taken, and spent every available moment with him. By sophomore year she rarely went to school. “All she wanted was Craig,” says Nancy.
From the onset their relationship was as troubled as Celeste’s family life. “She brought out the worst in him. She’d get him so riled up that he’d go crazy,” according to Craig’s younger brother, Jeff. “Craig believed the things she told him, and that was a mistake.”
After Celeste complained that her boss at a pizza restaurant sexually harassed her, Craig, Jeff, and their friends confronted the man.