MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Holding It Together (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

In October 1999, a 911 dispatcher in Austin, Texas was nearing the end of a long night shift when a strange call came in. The man said his guts had blown out of his stomach. The dispatcher asked him to explain what happened, but all the caller would say was that he just woke up and his guts were coming out. He was holding them in with his hand. And he needed an ambulance... now.   You can WATCH all new & exclusive MrBallen podcast episodes on my YouTube channel, just called "MrBallen" - https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallen If you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballen Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In October of 1999, a 911 dispatcher in Austin, Texas was nearing the end of a long night shift when a strange call came in. The caller was a man who just said his guts had been blown out of his stomach. The dispatcher asked him to explain what actually happened, but the caller wouldn't say. He just kept saying that he had woken up and his guts were hanging out, and now he's holding his guts in with his hand, and he needed an ambulance right now. But before we get into that story, If you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do. So, if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Fall of Button's house

and add hot sauce to the solution for their eye contacts. Okay, let's get into today's story. On the night of October 1st, 1999, a 75-year-old man named Steve Beard sat on the patio of his mansion in Austin, Texas, sipping on a cocktail. And it was a great night. Warm evening, the leaves rustling in the trees all around the... his property and behind his house there was this creek that was flowing along, and in the house, he could hear his wife Celeste washing the dishes. So Steve had met Celeste only about six years ago.

It was actually shortly after his first wife, Elise, had died of cancer. And Steve had been with his first wife for 45 years, and they'd raised three kids together. And he'd just been totally lost after she had passed away. And really, after she had died, he had spent a lot of nights just sitting alone at the Austin Country Club, where actually Celeste had been working as a waitress. Celeste was only 30 years old at the time, which meant she was almost 40 years younger than Steve, but there had been an immediate spark between them, and they got married just over a year later. Now, some of Steve's friends and family had immediately assumed that, you know, given this age gap, that Celeste was simply after Steve for his money.

Steve, after all, had made a fortune as a business owner and a TV station executive. and he was worth about $10 million. But Steve knew that money could not possibly be the only thing Celeste saw in him. I mean, he knew that he took great care of Celeste, and also he took great care of her twin teenage daughters. I mean, he really helped give Celeste and her girls the stability that they desperately needed. However, despite that stability, one thing that Celeste had always struggled with for much of her life was depression.

And in fact, earlier that year, it had gotten so bad that, Celeste had actually tried to end her own life. And, you know, she had failed. She'd lived. But as a result of that attempt, she'd spent a few weeks in a psychiatric hospital. Now, of course, that was a really traumatic and awful thing for the family. But from Steve's perspective, the upside of this was that Celeste was put on some new medication as a result of this hospital stay. She had made some good friends, actually, while she was at the hospital. And to Steve, it just seemed like, you know, maybe now, things were starting to maybe turn around for Celeste. And to Steve, the fact that Celeste appeared to be on the right path again was great timing,

because recently Steve had actually been dealing with health problems of his own. Twice in the past few months, Steve had passed out and actually had to be hospitalized himself. The doctors told him he had high blood pressure, sleep apnea, and he had some heart and kidney issues, but they actually couldn't quite figure out why he was fainting. They just knew he had, you know, several symptoms going on. Now, Steve thought it was very likely stress-related, and he just needed to relax. So, in fact, in two days from now, he was going to be taking Celeste on a three-week vacation around Europe. After everything Celeste had been through that year and also, you know, Steve had been through as well with his own medical issues,

he felt like they both could use some time away, just the two of them. But now, when Steve got up from his seat out on the patio of his home and he put the empty cocktail glass down on the table, and he turned and he opened the glass door that led into the bedroom, he saw that even though he'd already packed his suitcase for this European trip several days ago, Celeste's suitcase was still empty in the closet. And Steve couldn't help but feel like, it seems like Celeste might be getting cold feet about this European vacation. Like she should have been packed already and she's clearly putting it off.

So Steve left the bedroom and he went down the hallway and went into the kitchen where he found Celeste cleaning up. And when he got in there, as gently as he could, he told Celeste, hey, you know, when you get a chance, you really ought to pack. And she told him, oh, don't worry about it. You know, she's just been busy all week. She'd get to it. Steve nodded, but wasn't really convinced that she actually intended to pack soon. But he said, okay. And then he looked over at the clock.

And even though it was barely 9 p.m., he felt exhausted. So he told Celeste he was going to go to bed. And she told him that she actually intended to stay up for a bit longer. One of her daughters was having a sleepover at the family's lakehouse that night, and she said that she might go over there and just check on them later. Celeste told Steve that when she returned from doing that, she would sleep in a different room to avoid waking him up. Steve thanked her and gave her a kiss good night, and then he turned and walked back down the hallway, back into the bedroom. He got ready for bed, climbed into bed, and then he put on his oxygen mask because he had sleep apnea, and then he pulled the covers up and he drifted off to sleep. Hours later, around 3 a.m.

Steve woke up and immediately he felt this horrible pain in his stomach. And even though it was dark in his room, he looked down, you know, he's got the mask still on his face, and he could tell there was something on his stomach. And he reached down instinctively and he grabbed at his stomach and he felt something wet on his hands. And so in a panic, he ripped off his mask and he kind of sat up to look down at his abdomen. But as he did, just the pain he felt intensified so much just by trying to sit up that he fell back down. And so he reached over and he clicked on the light and he looked down and there was blood all over his stomach, like all over the sheets everywhere. And so he begins screaming out for Celeste.

And as he's screaming like the pain is only getting worse and worse. And Celeste is not coming in the room. She's not even responding. And so as he's looking down like completely panic-stricken, watching all this blood coming out of his gut, he has no idea how this is happening. He just reached over and grabbed the phone and he dialed 911. Just minutes later, a squad car from the Travis County Sheriff's Department pulled up outside of Steve's house with its lights flashing. Deputy Alan Howard climbed out of that car and he saw a fire captain and another pair of deputies on the front step pounding on the door. All Deputy Howard knew was that a man in this home had called in with some kind of medical emergency.

But the dispatcher had not quite understood what was wrong with him. And so Howard just ran over to the front door and there the other deputies told him that so far, far nobody was answering their knocks. Howard knew at this point, you know, time is of the essence. They had to get in and make sure this person was okay. And so he didn't want to just sit out here and wait any longer. So he left the front porch and he went along the side of the house to see if there was maybe another door that was unlocked somewhere else. And so as Howard went around to the side of the property, the other deputies followed him. And then Howard, he eventually found this flight of stairs that went up to a patio attached to a bedroom. And so up Howard went, the deputies followed,

they got up there and they looked into the house and they saw a light was on. And then through the glass door, they could all see there was an elderly man laying in bed with a telephone receiver in one hand and his other hand appeared to be just covered in blood. Howard walked up to the door and tried to open it, but it was locked. So he pulled out his heavy-duty flashlight and he broke the glass, reached in, unlocked it, and slid the door open. Then Howard ran into the bedroom and when he got right next to the bed, he looked at this man who was still conscious, but he had a gaping hole in his stomach,

like his intestines were literally spilling out. And that's why his other hand was so covered in blood. It was like he was trying to hold his intestines inside of himself. Howard asked the guy, what happened? And the old man just said he had no idea. He'd just woken up and his guts were coming out. At this point, the fire captain came into the room, and while he knelt down with his first aid kit to try to bandage up this man's wounds,

Howard began looking around the bedroom for any clue about what was going on here, and he noticed something that was round and yellow lying on the carpet. So he bent down to get a better look, and he saw that the round yellow thing was a shotgun shell. And so at this point, it seemed fairly obvious that this man has been shot in the stomach with a shotgun. But Howard's also realizing that whoever pulled the trigger might still be in the house. So at this point, Howard drew his own weapon, and he crept slowly out into the hallway. And as Howard began searching the rest of the house, he didn't find anybody, but what he did find is there were lots of other entry points into the home, lots of doors and windows.

And eventually, when he found his way into the living room, he saw there was another set of sliding glass doors. And he walked right up to it and he found they were unlocked. Howard also saw that a table lamp in this living room was overturned, suggesting that somebody might have knocked it over while coming in or out of the house. And so Howard continued searching the living room and then he found out of the house. found his way into the dining room and then the kitchen, and then he went down a hallway into another wing of the house. And there, he opened another door to a bedroom. And he found there was a woman inside, sleeping in her bed, totally sound asleep. At this point, Howard lowered the weapon, and he flipped on a light. And the woman immediately startled awake. And she was about to ask,

like, what's going on here? But Howard just stopped her. And he told her that he was with the sheriff's department, and they were here responding to a 911 call. And he told her that the man in the other room was very badly injured, and he had called 911. And so the woman, you know, as she's processing what she's being told, she began sobbing hysterically and then just begged Howard not to let her husband die. And then a second later, in the midst of all this chaos, this teenage girl comes running in the room and goes right to the woman. And she grabs her the way a child would grab their mother. And they're sort of like holding each other and Deputy Howard. Like he's looking for potentially a shooter in the house. But just from the looks of it, it appears,

very much like this is a woman who's very shocked, very shaken up by this. The girl, the teenager as well, appears equally shocked. But just to be sure, Howard asked this woman to identify herself. And through tears, she would say that her name was Celeste Beard and that very likely the victim here. The person you're talking about, the man, is her husband, Stephen Beard. And then she also said that the teenage girl was her daughter. And so now Howard feeling pretty confident that these are just victims, he told them to just stay put, that he was going to search the rest of the house and just make sure that the

house was safe. And so Howard, he leaves the room. He can still hear them crying behind him, and he searches the rest of the house, huge house, but he searches every room. And there's nobody there. And so it appeared that whoever had shot Steve was gone. Around 5.30 a.m. on October 2nd, 1999, so about two and a half hours after Steve Beard called 911. Sergeant Paul Knight walked through the waiting room at a hospital in Austin, Texas. Knight was a criminal investigator for the Travis County Sheriff's Department, and he'd been called in to lead the investigation into this shooting. Knight stopped at the front desk, and he spoke to a nurse, who told him that Steve Beard

was in critical condition, so questioning him would not be possible right now. Sergeant Knight nodded and gave the nurse's card and asked them to give him a call if Steve's condition ever stabilized. As Knight turned to leave, he quickly scanned the waiting room, and he saw in the corner there was a deputy speaking to a woman who appeared to be in her 30s, as well as a teenage girl. The deputy waved tonight and called him over, and so Knight went over, and he introduced himself. The woman told Knight that she was Steve's wife, Celeste, and the girl was her daughter, Christina. And Knight, you know, he said hello to them, but he knew that he had to do something that was going to come off is pretty insensitive, but he really had to do it as soon as possible.

So after just, you know, exchanging some pleasantries, he sat down and pulled out a gunpowder residue test kit. And then he asked Celeste and Christina if he could swab their hands before they began really getting into any sort of conversation here. And Celeste looked really surprised and asked if she was a suspect. And I'd explained that really at this point, everybody was a suspect. And so swabbing them for gumpowder would be the quickest way to rule them both out. So Celeste, who was still very clearly shaken up, she just put both their hands out, and Knight ran a test strip across both of them. And then after that, Christina put her hands out, and he tested her hands as well. And then he waited for the test strips to develop.

And about a minute later, he confirmed that they were both negative, meaning neither of them had fired a gun recently. And so with this test out of the way, Knight's entire demeanor sort of softened. And he asked Celeste to just walk him through what had happened that night. She told him that her husband, Steve, had gone to bed around 9 or 9.30. And shortly after that, she had left their home and driven over to the family's lakehouse to check on her other daughter, Jennifer, and her friends who were having a sleep over there. She said the lake house was about a half an hour away. And so by the time she finally came back after checking on Jennifer and the other girls,

she said it was about midnight. And, you know, she walked in the house and it was quiet. there was nothing unusual, and she said she went straight to bed. And she said she actually chose to sleep in a different room than Steve, because Steve had gone to bed earlier, and she had told him she didn't want to wake him up if she came home late. And so she was doing him a courtesy by sleeping in this other room. Knight asked Celeste if she knew anybody who might be mad at her husband or who might want to hurt him for any reason, and she said no. But she did say that the previous afternoon,

her husband had gone out and cashed a really big check. He was going to give some cash to her twin daughters, you know, while she and Steve were going to be in Europe. He wanted to give the kids some spending money while they were away, and it was quite a bit of money. And so she said, you know, maybe somebody at the bank saw him cashing that check, knew he had a bunch of money on him. Maybe they followed him home to rob him.

And so Knight and Celeste spoke for a little bit longer. And then when Knight was done questioning her, Celeste got up and said she was going to go outside and smoke a cigarette. And as she left, Knight turned to her daughter Christina and asked her about what she'd seen and heard from the previous night. Christina said she had been asleep all night until around 3.30 in the morning when she had woken up to police lights flashing outside her window. And as she continued to tell her story of what happened, Knight noticed that she was being really careful about what she was saying. Not like she was trying to remember some concocted story, but rather it was like she was literally trying her best to actually remember. Like she was struggling to remember just what amounted to a pretty traumatic and very, you know, chaotic night.

But before Knight could ask any more follow-up questions, another girl, another teenager, who looked exactly like Christina, ran into the waiting room, and immediately Christina got up to go over and hug her. And when the two girls pulled away from each other, Knight noticed that both of these girls were sobbing. And they really were just like identical. Christina introduced this new girl as her twin sister, Jennifer. And then just a few seconds after that, two teenage boys came through the hospital door, and they hurried over to join the group. And as they all sat down, Christina explained that the two boys were her and Jennifer's boyfriends.

After Christina briefly updated her sister Jennifer and the two boyfriends about the condition of her stepfather, Knight turned to Jennifer and just asked her to please walk him through where she had been, you know, the previous night. And Jennifer would say, you know, she had been at the family's lakehouse. She was there with her boyfriend and one other friend. she'd been there all night, and then when they had found out something had happened to Steve, they had all rushed here as soon as they could. And so Knight, he asked the girls if either of them knew anyone who might want to harm their stepfather. And as soon as he asked that, Knight noticed the two teenage girls, they shared this, this quick,

knowing look between themselves. At this point, Christina turned back to Knight and said, there was only one person she could think of who would do something like this. A woman named Tracy Tarleton. She explained that Tracy was a friend of her mother. and they'd met earlier that year at a psychiatric hospital where they had both been patients. But Christina said there was just something off about their friendship. Tracy seemed like really unstable, and Christina got the feeling that she was actually in love with their mom. And as soon as she said this, all four of the teens just sort of nodded knowingly.

Like this was something they definitely had talked about internally. And then they all began to agree out loud that Tracy very likely was the one who did this. And then a minute later, a fifth teenager came running into the hospital and they joined the group and Jennifer introduced her as another friend. Her name was Amy Cozart and she had been the other friends sleeping over at the lakehouse that night. And Amy, who literally had just joined and heard, you know, no context to this point about anything the other teenagers had said, you know, when she was asked pretty much right away by night, if she knew of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Steve, she didn't hesitate. She just said, oh, Tracy Tarleton. Later that afternoon, around 3 o'clock, Sergeant Knight knocked on the front door of Tracy

Tracy Tarleton's very unassuming ranch-style house in a working class part of Austin, Texas. While running a check on Tracy to confirm her address, he'd also discovered that she had a weapons permit for a 20-gauge shotgun, the same caliber as the casing that was found inside the crime scene. Tracy answered the door pretty much right away, as if she had been waiting for someone to come by. And Knight, after introducing himself, told her that Steve Beard had been shot. And when he said this, he didn't notice any shock on Tracy's face. Instead, Tracy actually looked scared. Night asked Tracy if she had any idea who might have shot Steve. And she said, no, but then she asked if she

needed a lawyer. And Knight said, well, that's up to you. And then before she could really react to that, he asked her if he could come inside. And Tracy just sort of turned and, you. And Tracy just sort of turned and led him into the living room. Night walked in, he sat down, and he just continued talking to Tracy. And so he asked her about her relationship with Celeste. And she said that, yes, they had met at a psychiatric hospital when they were both being treated earlier that year for suicide attempts. And then, sort of unannounced, she told the detective that at first when she had met Celeste, her feelings towards Celeste had not been platonic. They had been romantic. She had been interested in Celeste as a partner. But she then quickly clarified and said that was in the past and that now they really were just friends.

And so Knight took stock of this and didn't really ask too many follow-up questions on their relationship. And instead, he just said, okay, well, where were you the night before? And Tracy said she had been here at her house the whole time. She said that she had ordered pizza and she'd had a few beers and then had just gone to bed. Knight asked her if she owned a gun. And Tracy said, yes. But she only used it for skeet shooting. Knight asked if he could see her gun.

And so Tracy got up and she walked over and opened up a closet and she pulled out a shotgun in a zippered case. Knight asked her if he could take her gun down to the ballistics department. And Tracy definitely hesitated for a moment, but then she was like, sure. Later that same day, Sergeant Knight walked through the crime scene at the Beard Mansion, looking for any clues that the investigators might have missed during the initial search. Celeste's twin daughters, Christina and Jennifer had actually come with him to help point out anything that could be out of place that he wouldn't necessarily notice. Inside of Steve's bedroom,

Knight saw that some of the drawers and closets had been left open, as if they had been ransacked by a burglar. But something about the whole scene just didn't seem right. The drawers, they didn't appear to have been like ripped open as if somebody was in a rush. They had been pulled out really carefully. And inside the drawer, things were basically pretty neat. And so tonight, this didn't really appear to be a burglary. He suspected that someone might have staged the crime scene to appear to be a burglary to throw off the investigation.

However, just for good measure, he asked the twin girls to look through all of these open drawers and closets to see if you can identify anything that was missing. And so the girls began looking around and eventually Christina said that she couldn't find Stephen's watch or his sapphire ring. Now, on the one hand, this might give credit to the idea that this really was a burglary gone wrong, you know, that Steve was just sort of in the wrong place at the wrong time and got shot by the burglar. But tonight, this development that these two small items were gone actually only seemed to confirm the idea that this was not a burglary gone wrong. Because this whole house was chalk full of nice jewelry and antiques. There's so many other things in the house that could have been taken that were obvious, that were not taken. And so night, he left the bedroom, walked down the hallway, and went into the living room.

and there he's looking around at all this obviously very expensive furniture and vases and paintings and all this stuff that's super valuable all over the place, he began to consider another possibility that maybe somebody in the family had killed Steve for the inheritance. I mean, this guy clearly is loaded. Now, Knight didn't know what Steve's will said yet, but he knew that along with his two stepdaughters, he had three adult children from his first marriage, and all of them very likely stood to inherit millions of dollars when he died.

And then there was Steve's wife, Celeste, who was less than half his age. It was hard not to wonder if she'd simply married him for his money. And so it wasn't really a far cry to wonder if maybe she had been involved in the shooting. Because if he dies, maybe she'd get all of his money. And so Asnight was thinking about this and wandering back down the hallway, he noticed a trap door in the ceiling that led to an attic that he hadn't noticed before. So curious, he reached up and pulled open the door, and then he climbed up the ladder that came down, and before long he was in the attic.

And up in the attic, he saw there was a box lying on the floor just a few feet away. And, you know, where everything else in the attic had been totally covered in dust and cobwebs, this box was not. It was perfectly clean, as if it had only been put up here pretty recently. So he grabbed the box and he opened the lid up, and inside was a 20-gauge shotgun. Knight knew this could be extremely important to this case, so he immediately packaged up the box, picked it up, and he carried it down the ladder back down to the main floor. And when he got down there, he saw one of the twin girls, Jennifer, staring at him looking really nervous.

She rushed to explain that that shotgun, she had purchased as an anniversary gift for her boyfriend. And she was just keeping it up there out of sight until it was time to give it to him. She swore the gun had never been fired and she had not even taken it out of the box yet. Now, Knight heard what she said, but he held on to the box because he still was going to bring it back to the ballistics department right away to have it tested. I mean, it seemed very odd to him that Jennifer hadn't mentioned until now that there was a gun in the house and that it just happened to be the exact same gun, same caliber, as the weapon that was used to shoot Steve. Now, Jennifer did have an alibi. She had been at the lakehouse at that sleepover 30 miles away on the night of Steve's shooting. but her sister, Christina, had been home the whole night,

and Knight had to wonder if maybe the two sisters had plotted together to kill their stepfather, maybe for his money. After all, it just seemed weirdly convenient that Jennifer, Christina, their boyfriends, their other friend, Amy, had all, without any hesitation, named Tracy Tarleton as the suspect. It just seemed like something here was not quite adding up. That evening, Detective Knight went back to the hospital, and the nurse at the front desk told him that Steve was out of surgery and was stable enough to finally have visitors.

She gave him Steve's room number and then let him through. However, when he got down the hallway to Steve's room, he saw this handwritten sign taped to the door that said no law enforcement personnel allowed to interview patient except in the presence of his attorney. And as Knight was processing this pretty surprising sign, out of nowhere, Steve's wife, Celeste, came rushing down the hallway and looking down the hallway and, literally blocked him from going into the room. She said that, for one, she was not going to allow any further searches of her and Steve's house, and if police wanted to speak to her husband, they'd have to go through the family's lawyer. And Knight, I mean, he was stunned by this,

because in all his years on the force, he had never seen a victim hire a defense attorney. And then more than that, Knight wasn't even sure if Steve was the one who made this decision. I mean, Steve was stable now, but he really had no idea if he was actually conscious. you know, was it, was it Steve who decided to put up this roadblock? Or was it Celeste? So at this point, Knight really didn't know what he was legally allowed to do here. And so, you know, using an abundance of caution, he just turned around and left, at least for now. And as he, you know, walked out of the hospital, he tried to make sense of why Celeste was suddenly being so defensive. You know, even if she was not the one who made this decision, the way she had just treated him in the hallway

was just very aggressive. And then he began to wonder if maybe she had heard about the gun that he had found in their attic and was now trying to just protect her daughters. Or maybe she was trying to protect herself. On the afternoon of October 7th, so five days after Steve Beard was shot, Sergeant Paul Knight looked through a folder of interview notes at his desk. By this point, he'd spoken to all three of Steve's own children, his adult children. But they were all ruled out as suspects because they all lived hours away and had solved.

solid alibis. When Knight had asked one of Steve's sons if he knew who might have done this, he had told the detective to look into Celeste. I mean, after all, pretty much they all thought she was in this marriage for money to begin with. But, you know, Knight had tested Celeste for gunshot residue right after the shooting, so he knew she literally could not have been the one who pulled the trigger. And so at this point, tonight, it just sort of felt like the entire family was just pointing fingers at each other. But at the same time, Knight did feel like at least one family member on some side of the family, was likely involved in the shooting. There was just frankly too much money at stake here.

In particular, it was definitely suspicious that Celeste's daughter, Jennifer, had a 20-gauge shotgun in the attic. And on top of that, that she and her twin sister Christina and all of their friends had immediately pointed the finger at Tracy Tarleton. And then as for Tracy, I mean, she did have a pretty weak alibi and she did own a 20-gauge shotgun. But despite that, she had absolutely no history of doing anything violent like this. And she was remarkably cooperative and had even handed over her shotgun for analysis without really any fight at all. And so at this point, Knight knew he really just needed to speak directly to Steve.

But the family's attorney was preventing the police from seeing him. And Knight wasn't sure how stable his condition was or really how much longer he would even be alive for. So like, this was a very tenuous situation. But just then, Knight noticed something out of the corner of his eye. And he looked up and he saw there was another detective in the doorway of his office just sort of leaning there with a big smile on their face. Knight asked them what was going on and the detective walked over and handed him a Manila folder. And he told him this was a forensics report they had just gotten back. A piece of evidence that had been found at the crime scene may have just cracked the entire case. based on forensic evidence, confessions, and witness interviews.

This is what police believe happened to Steve Beard in the early morning hours of October 2, 1999. Around 2.30 a.m., the killer turned off their headlights as they drove toward the Beard Mansion. They parked at the back entrance to the property far away from the house so the noise of their engine wouldn't wake anybody up inside. They got out of the car, slung a shotgun over their shoulder, and began walking through the trees towards the mansion. And as the patio came into view, they stopped.

They felt sick, and they actually didn't want to go through with this. But they had made a promise. They had to do it. So they swallowed their fear and continued walking towards the mansion. And when they got right to the steps that would lead up to the patio, they went to the right and they walked to a separate door that led into the living room. That glass door was unlocked. So they opened it up, they stepped inside.

And then once inside, they navigated their way to the main bed. And when they went inside the main bedroom, they found Steve asleep in his bed. The killer walked to the foot of the bed and just stared at Steve for a second. And then when they were ready, they raised the shotgun in their shaking hands and they pulled the trigger. And the blast was deafening. Blood began pouring out of Steve's abdomen immediately. The killer reflexively racked the shotgun, ejecting the shotgun shell, getting ready to fire a second time if need be.

But then, you know, Steve, he began fumbling for the night. stand like he was maybe reaching for a weapon of his own. And the killer, at this point, they're reaching down on the ground trying to find the spent shotgun shell to take that with them. But they're so scared that Steve's about to shoot them. And so they just abandoned the shotgun shell. And then with their shotgun, the killer runs out of the bedroom, down the hallway, back out through the living room, back out the same door they came in, knocking that lamp over in the process. They shut the doors behind them and ran to their car. And from there, they drove to a safe location where they washed their hands, they threw their clothes into the washer, and then they

very thoroughly cleaned their shotgun. And then after it was pristine again, they put the shotgun back into storage. The killer was in fact Tracy Tarleton, Celeste's friend from the hospital who all the kids had said, she's the one who did this. Well, it was her. The shell that was found on Steve's floor came back from ballistics as an exact match for Tracy's shotgun. And so she was arrested on October 8th, less than a week after the shooting. And then after she was arrested, she confessed to the killing and said that ultimately she had killed Steve because she was in love with Celeste, and she wanted Celeste all to herself. However, a few months later, in January of 2000, Steve actually died from his injuries. And after that, a news story began to emerge.

It turned out that Tracy's love for Celeste was not one-sided. The two women had been having a full affair for months before the murder. In fact, Celeste had begun secretly slipping Everclear into Steve's cocktails, which is more than twice as strong as the vodka that Steve thought he was drinking. And so basically, Celeste would get Steve really, really drunk and get him to pass out. And then once he would pass out, Celeste would go sneak off and spend the night with Tracy. According to Tracy, Celeste had asked her to kill Steve so they could be together. And so for the first few months, Tracy's arrest, Tracy kept her mouth shut about Celeste's involvement. But then five months after Steve died, Celeste got remarried to a man that she had just met. And that's when Tracy realized

that Celeste was not really in love with her. She had been using her to get rid of Steve so she could inherit all his money. And so when this happened, Tracy was so hurt by what Celeste had done that she began telling the real truth with the authorities. And eventually, she agreed to testify against Celeste. And so based on Tracy's testimony, Celeste was arrested on March 28, 2002. She was eventually found guilty of Steve's murder and sentenced to life in prison. Tracy was also convicted of murder, but because of her cooperation, her sentence was reduced to just 20 years, and she was actually released on parole in 2011. A quick note about our stories. They are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fixed.

for dramatic purposes. by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner, theme song, Something Wicked, by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel

that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad free, you can subscribe to SeriousXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts, or visit SiriusXM.com slash podcast plus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support.

Until next time, see you.