She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [9]
Since the apartment had only two bedrooms, the girls’ cribs took up one room, and Gail shared a bed with Celeste in the second bedroom. “There was nothing going on. It just worked better that way,” says Gail.
Yet one morning she awoke to see Craig glaring down at them. “You’re a lesbian,” he said to Celeste. “That’s why you never want sex with me.”
Gail was horrified, but Celeste just laughed.
Soon Gail worried their friendship had taken an odd turn. Gradually, Celeste had become possessive, insisting Gail tell her where she went every moment of every day. “She got really strange. She treated me like a daughter or a boyfriend,” she says. “I felt smothered.” Seven months after she moved in with her, Gail wanted out. Hoping to avoid a confrontation, she packed her things in her car while Celeste worked. When Celeste arrived, Gail said she was going out. Celeste badgered her, insisting she say where. Gail refused. In a rage, Celeste cursed. As Gail walked to the door, something whizzed past her. When she looked, she saw a butcher knife embedded in the wall. Terrified, Gail ran.
At a friend’s house the following morning, Gail hoped the worst was over, but a friend phoned and told her Celeste had called, claiming police were looking for her. “Celeste had pressed charges, claiming I stole her purse with her welfare checks and food stamps,” says Gail.
Not knowing what to do, she called the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office. “Are you looking for me? Do I need to come in?” she asked.
“No,” the prosecutor said, explaining Celeste’s purse had been found along the side of a road. “She won’t bother you anymore. We’ll take care of it.”
“I don’t know why he said that, except they knew she was lying,” says Gail, who was so frightened of Celeste that she left the county and hid.
Later, Gail heard that after she moved out, Celeste abandoned the twins in a foster home. Over the years there would be a string of such periods, times when Celeste turned the girls over to others to raise. She’d later claim she couldn’t afford to support them; others would charge she was distracted by her latest man. “My first memories are of her leaving us with strangers,” says her daughter Jennifer. “We never knew if or when she’d come back.”
Later, Celeste moved back in with Craig and regained custody of the twins. Living in an apartment, they must have looked to the outside world like the perfect young family, a handsome dad, beautiful mom, and two identical little toddlers. It was then that Celeste’s father, Edwin, came to live with them. As she had with Gail, Celeste became demanding, insisting he report where he was and with whom. A few months after Edwin moved in, he spent a night with friends. He and Celeste argued, but he didn’t realize how angry she was until he was picked up by police the next day. In the past, Celeste had claimed to others that she’d been sexually abused, but she’d never confronted him. Now, she made the accusation to the police. “I told them that it never happened,” Edwin says. “I didn’t abuse my daughter. I would never do that.”
The deciding bit of information for Celeste’s oldest brother Cole came from a detective. The day in 1985 when Edwin was taken in for questioning, one of the officers told Cole that Edwin had been given a lie detector test. In it he denied Celeste’s charges. “The detective said Dad passed with flying colors. The police never pressed charges,” says Cole. “Celeste was lying. Celeste was always lying. She was mad at our dad, and she was out to