THE TWIN SISTERS WHOSE MOTHER WANTED THEM DΣAD: An American Gothic Nightmare of Betrayal, Mvrder, and the Chilling, Manic Laughter That Unraveled the Wealthy Socialite Who Tried to Buy Her Way Out of a Death Sentence—The Secret Audio Tapes That Blew the Lid Off the Most Shocking Crime in Texas High Society.

It started with a shotgun. A 20-gauge Franchi, engraved with a name that would later sear itself into the collective memory of Austin, Texas.

But on that night, October 3rd, 1999, all I knew was the sound—a muffled, sickening thud—that ripped through the stillness of our beautiful, sprawling home in the dark. It wasn’t the sound of an alarm or a car backfiring; it was the sound of a life changing forever.

My stepdad, Steven Beard, a man who had stepped into our chaotic lives and offered us stability and unconditional love, was shot.

The details that followed were a blur of flashing lights, hushed, urgent voices, and the sterile smell of the hospital. Detectives were immediately circling, their presence a heavy, unwelcome pall over our grief.

They needed answers, and frankly, so did we. Who would want to hurt Steve? He was a retired TV executive, a kind, wealthy man who simply wanted to enjoy his later years with his family. His only mistake, it seemed, was trusting the wrong people.

Days bled into agonizing weeks. The air in our house, usually filled with my twin sister Kristina and my own teenage drama, was now thick with an unspoken dread.

My mother, Celeste, Steven’s wife, was outwardly frantic, a whirlwind of manufactured tears and performative distress. Yet, there was a chilling disconnect in her eyes, a kind of manic energy that didn’t align with true sorrow.

Then the breakthrough came.

The police had arrested a woman named Tracey Tarlton, a friend—or so we thought—of Celeste’s from a psychiatric facility. The evidence was damning: the bullet that struck Steve was fired from a Franchi 20-gauge, and Tracey had one, her name etched right into the metal.

When the detective asked if they could see the weapon, Celeste thought for a few minutes before casually agreeing. “Okay, you can see it.” Just like that.

The casualness of the exchange—the giving up of a key piece of evidence without a fight—always sat wrong with me. It was too easy, too neat.

Tracey was charged with attempted murder, but the investigators knew what we felt in our guts: she hadn’t acted alone. The story was too thin, too convenient. Tracey refused to talk, stubbornly taking the fall, while the real puppet master, we feared, walked free.

Meanwhile, Steve was fighting. He was a fighter, and for a painful few months, he held on, with Kristina and me visiting his bedside, trying to be the strength he needed.

He had filled the void left by our biological father, giving us the safety and love we craved. Losing him was an unthinkable possibility.

But the unthinkable happened. Steve passed away from his injuries.

The devastation was absolute. We loved Steve. He was our rock. He just wanted us to be loved and enjoy our lives, never asking us to worry about a thing. Now, we were left with a crushing pain and more questions than ever.

In the midst of this profound grief, our mother’s behavior escalated from unsettling to truly bizarre. As we prepared for the funeral, Celeste insisted on taking Kristina and me to pick out a casket for Steve.

While we were there, consumed by tears and loss, she did something that froze the blood in my veins: she bought two pink caskets, one for each of us. “I’m gonna get these for you guys,” she said, a smile that was all wrong stretched across her face.

I was eighteen, and the confusing, chilling gesture made me recoil. Why would she do this? Why would she suggest this to two grieving teenagers? A terrifying, dark thought lodged itself in the back of my mind: Am I going in this casket soon?

The local news was buzzing. The community was scared, and the police were at a standstill. But for Kristina and me, the real terror was happening behind closed doors.

Celeste’s erratic behavior became a terrifying public spectacle. We were crying, heartbroken over Steve, and she was… laughing. A loud, jarring, inappropriate laugh.

She had these wild, “crazy eyes,” a kind of frenzied, manic energy. Her emotions were loud and over-the-top, yet they didn’t feel real. She was performing grief, poorly.

The breaking point arrived on February 16th, 2000. It was a day that no one, least of all two young twins, could ever have prepared for.

Celeste, in one of her fits, suddenly said, “Hey, why don’t we all kill ourselves?”

Before we could even process the words, she pulled out a knife.

She was holding it in a terrifying grip, a look of pure madness on her face. She lunged, and my heart stopped—but not at us. She stabbed herself in the leg. Blood gushed, a terrifying, visceral red staining the carpet, and we spiraled into a panic.

We called 911, begging for medical help, our voices shaking as paramedics rushed in to staunch the flow. She was whisked away to the hospital, leaving us alone in a house that had become a horror movie set.

The hospital stay did nothing to calm her. In the weeks that followed, Celeste continuously called both of us, her voice escalating from normal conversation to high-pitched, unhinged screaming. The swings were whiplash-inducing.

It was then that Kristina, brilliant and instinctively protective, had an idea.

“You know what?” she told me, a fierce resolve in her eyes. “I’m gonna start recording her conversations. I want to play them back to her. She’ll hear what I’m hearing and think, ‘Oh, that’s awful. I can’t believe I’d do that.’”

So, we started recording. It was difficult to listen to the tapes, the histrionic yelling, the way she spoke to us, her own children, like trash. But what happened next solidified our terror, turning our suspicion into a horrifying certainty.

Just as Kristina was about to stop a recording, Celeste let slip a crucial, chilling piece of evidence.

“I hired somebody to kϊll Tracey.”

I froze. That sentence, spoken so casually, made everything real. The pink coffins, the violent outbursts, Steve’s murder, and now a plot against the very woman she’d convinced to pull the trigger.

We were in danger. Our mother was a murderer and now a would-be second-time killer. We realized with stomach-turning clarity that we were next on her list.

Any shred of doubt I ever had about Celeste being involved in Steve’s death vanished. I was terrified.

And then, things got worse. Celeste was released from the hospital. The monster was out, and we were exposed. Jennifer and Kristina’s last chance to survive was to run.

We cleared out my bank account. We did everything with cash, stayed in cheap motels, and left no trace. Celeste was hunting for us every single day.

All I could replay in my head was, We are in danger. We are not coming home from this. It was a terrifying, desolate existence, living like fugitives from our own mother.

Armed with the taped conversations—proof of her threats and her murder plot—we went to the police. We were granted a family violence protective order, a thin legal shield against the woman who birthed us. But the truth about Steve could only be unlocked by one person: Tracey Tarlton.

Tracey, who was awaiting trial, had maintained a stubborn silence, claiming she acted alone. But in March 2002, she read the newspaper. She saw the story about the twin sisters who had to get a protective order against their own mother.

In that moment, something inside her broke. She realized the woman she thought she was protecting was trying to have her murdered, just as she had manipulated her into killing Steve.

Tracey finally cooperated with the investigators.

The confession was everything we needed, and everything the detectives had been waiting for. Tracey confirmed it: she didn’t kill Steve on her own. It was Celeste’s plan all along.

With Tracey’s crucial statement and our incriminating audio recordings, the police finally had enough. On March 28th, 2002, Celeste was arrested for capital murder.

But an arrest is not a conviction. The fear remained that she might somehow escape justice and walk free, leaving us to live underground forever. We worked tirelessly with the prosecutors and lawyers, even with Tracey, the woman who pulled the trigger, to ensure Celeste never saw the outside of a prison again.

The trial of Celeste Beard began on February 3rd, 2003.

It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Sitting on the stand, seeing Celeste staring back at me from the defense table, was agonizing. She was my mother, but I had to be strong, to stand firm and testify to everything I knew she did. My conflicting emotions were a war inside my chest, but the only goal was justice for Steve.

We described to the jury the trauma of our childhood, how her emotions were “all over the place,” the constant yelling, the nasty phone calls—behavior that seemed normal to us back then.

But the most damning revelation came from the motive. Celeste didn’t marry Steve for love. She married the 69-year-old multimillionaire for his vast inheritance.

“Did the defendant ever talk to you about her feelings about Steve Beard?” the prosecutor asked.

“Yeah,” I replied, my voice steady. “She said she married Steve for money.”

“Did she tell you about what would happen if Steve Beard died?”

“Yeah. She would get it all,” I said, the words heavy with the weight of her greed. “She would say, ‘Why won’t he die already?’”

The investigators detailed how Celeste had spent over $500,000 of Steve’s money in just six months on clothes, jewelry, and art. They revealed how she had repeatedly put sleeping pills in Steve’s food so she could sneak out. And they exposed the critical link: in February 1999, eight months before the murder, Celeste had a psychotic breakdown, threatening Kristina and pointing a gun at her own head, which led to her being forcibly checked into the St. David’s Psychiatric Mental Hospital.

It was there, in that facility, that she met Tracey Tarlton.

Celeste, the master manipulator, quickly developed a close, intimate relationship with Tracey, earning her trust. Tracey, who confessed she was attracted to Celeste, saw a woman she loved in a desperate situation, claiming that “Steve is abusive to me.” Celeste preyed on that devotion, painting Steve as a monster she needed to “survive,” even though Steve was the kindest, most non-abusive person we knew. She was willing to engage in a relationship she never truly desired just to get what she wanted: money.

Tracey, shattered by the realization of her manipulation, detailed the entire plan in front of a silent, horrified courtroom.

Celeste had stressed that she “cannot live any longer with this abusive husband,” and then told Tracey, “He’s an old man, he’s going to die soon. But not soon enough.”

Then came the roadmap for murder. Tracey described how Celeste showed her where to park, where to enter the house, how to approach the bedroom. “She had a plan,” Tracey admitted. “And she wanted me to shoot him with my shotgun.”

“And I walked into the building. I saw him, and I hold up, and I shot him. I shot him once.”

Celeste sat there, cold and utterly detached, occasionally shaking her head and even laughing. But her smile vanished when we, her daughters, walked back up to the front and played the audio tapes. The jury heard her threats, her screams, her venom, and her explicit plot to hire someone to kill Tracey. The tapes were histrionic, difficult to listen to, exposing the monster within our mother.

The trial lasted for weeks, a torturous, exhausting process that felt like we were reliving every nightmare. Then, on March 19th, 2003, after three long days of deliberation, the jurors came back. The moment felt surreal, the culmination of three years of fear, loss, and betrayal.

The judge asked for silence, a stark warning to anyone who might have an emotional outburst. Then, the verdict was read.

“We the jury, find the defendant, Celeste Beard Johnson, guilty of the offense of capital murder.”

A flood of emotion hit me. She was our mom, and she was going to jail for the rest of her life. The realization was heavy, but the sense of relief was profound. Justice for Steve.

To close the chapter, Kristina bravely took the stand once more, this time to speak directly to the woman who had caused so much destruction.

“What did I ever do to you except love you?” she asked, her voice cracking with raw emotion. “You say we turned on you when you turned on us. You turned on the whole Beard family.

He let you into his home, loved you, honored, obeyed you. And you violated him and murdered him. You are guilty. Shame on you.”

Celeste Beard was sentenced to two consecutive 40-year prison terms. She won’t be eligible for parole until she’s 79.

We could finally breathe. We didn’t have to hide anymore.

A sincere moment of forgiveness came after the court adjourned. Tracey Tarlton, the woman who pulled the trigger, asked to meet with us. It was not easy to sit in the room with her, but she was genuinely remorseful. She felt incredibly guilty and apologized for the pain she caused.

I could see in her eyes that she was a victim too. She thought she was agreeing to kill an evil man, only to realize too late she was a pawn in a far more twisted game. That moment of shared victimhood helped Kristina and me begin our long process of healing.

Twenty years later, the sisterly bond forged in fear and forged by betrayal is stronger than ever. We don’t live close, but we make every effort to visit. Kristina is my strength.

We are 42 now. Jennifer focuses on her mental health and a fulfilling job. Kristina is married and a loving mother of two children. She is proud to give her kids the life, attention, love, and nurturing she never received. She’s going to be the mom she always wanted. They get to do life like we wished we had.

Celeste never expected her downfall would come from her own daughters, the ones she threatened, the ones she tried to scare into submission. But our love for each other was stronger than her hatred.

Living our best lives, surrounded by loving families, is our best revenge. We are living proof that even after the deepest tragedy, there is a life worth living. We found safety, not in hiding, but in the truth.