Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Gold Digger is in BIG Trouble // The Celeste Beard Murder Story

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

Celeste Beard Johnson is a Texas woman convicted of orchestrating the 1999 murder of her wealthy, 74-year-old multimillionaire husband, Steven Beard. After marrying Steven in 1995, Celeste embraced a lavish lifestyle, but the marriage grew strained as he threatened to curtail her extravagant spending. While receiving treatment at a psychiatric facility, Celeste met Tracey Tarlton, whom she allegedly manipulated into murdering Steven.

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free of charge. BetMGEMGEMP operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. So this gold digger is in big trouble. Now the woman's name is Celeste, and Celeste is 32 when the story starts and she's living in Austin, Texas. Now, Celeste really wants to live a luxurious life. Like she wants lots of jewelry and expensive cars and nice houses and all that stuff. Problem is, she can't afford all that. Because she works as a waitress at a local country club, so she doesn't have a lot of money.

And she needs to find a rich man who, can give her all that. And in 1993, she finally finds one. Because one day, she's at work, and Celeste notices a customer. This guy, Beard. And Beard, he's around 69 years old, and he's very rich. He used to own a local TV station, so he's worth between $10 and $15 million. Not only that, but his wife just passed away from cancer two weeks before. So, he's single. And so one day he's at the country club and he meets Celeste. And he thinks Celeste is foin, and she thinks he is rich. And even though he's 37 years older than her, they hit it off and they start dating,

and pretty quickly they get married. And this marriage is great for her. I mean, Beard gives her everything she wants, lots of jewelry, multiple high-end vehicles, a million-dollar house to live in, and a second lake house. He takes her on expensive vacations around the world. he gives her an allowance of $35,000 a month to spend. $35,000 a month. So now she's living the life that she's always wanted,

and she's wealthy enough to join the same country club that she used to work at now as a member. There's no bigger come up than that. Now, before they got married, Beard had set up a trust fund of $500,000 for her. And this is her money. She can spend it how she wants. Well, within six months, she blows through this $500,000, just shopping and buying stupid shit. So now he's not giving her much more, because she already spent so much. But despite that, she still wants more money to spend.

So she gets access to his safety deposit box, and she goes to the bank and starts stealing money from it. And she steals jewelry and heirloom silver, all that belong to his previous wife, the one who died of cancer. And pretty quickly, Beard finds out about this, and he gets super pissed off. Not only did she blow through the money he gave her, but now she's stealing his dead wife's heirlooms. That's fucked up. So he kicks her out, and he files for divorce. Good for him. But then, later, I guess he gets lonely, and so they reconcile, and they get back together, and things are going okay enough. and about four years pass, and we're now in 1999 at this point.

And Celeste, she hasn't changed. I mean, she's been blowing through all his money again, going on these crazy shopping sprees. And one night, they're at home, and they get into a big fight. And Beard, he threatens to freeze her credit cards and cut off all her funds. And Celeste, she doesn't like this at all. So she grabs a fireplace poker, and she threatens to unalive herself. then police have to come out and intervene and ultimately she gets checked into a psychiatric hospital for treatment.

So now Celeste is living at this psychiatric hospital temporarily and they got her participating in these group therapy sessions and in those therapy sessions she meets this woman, Tracy. Tracy is also a patient there. And pretty quickly the two become friends and they spend some time together in the hospital and they keep each other company and after a while Tracy starts thinking Celeste is kind of fine

and Celeste too is thinking Tracy got a fine and these two start hooking up and smashing and they eventually fall in love and a few months go by and Celeste is released from the hospital and she goes and she reconciles with Beard and she continues on with their marriage but on the side

she continues to see Tracy and they continue to be in love Now Beard, he knows his wife has been hanging out with this new woman, but he just thinks that they're close friends. But once he starts to catch on, this story gets dark. So one day, Celeste throws a massive barbecue party at their luxury summer lakehouse, and she invites a bunch of people, including Tracy. And during this party, Beard walks in at the wrong moment, and he catches Celeste and Tracy kissing. And he gets really upset. And of course, this creates even more tension in their marriage.

Because now, Beard knows that Celeste has been cheating on him. So he threatens to kick her out and divorce her. Now, Celeste, she's not about to let that happen. I mean, she's been kicked out before, and she didn't like it, and she doesn't want to give up on this luxury lifestyle that he's given her. And with all this tension, and Celeste becoming more and more dissatisfied with the marriage, she finally decides that she's had enough. and she decides the best way out of this situation is for Beard to die.

That way, she has access to his wealth without having to stay married to him. Now, she's not going to go kill Beard herself. No, no, that's not her style. She's going to manipulate Tracy into doing it. And so, she starts telling Tracy all sorts of lies about Beard. She tells her that Beard is abusive, physically and emotionally, and that he's always putting hands on her. And this works.

Tracy gets super upset and she agrees to sneak into Beard's house in the middle of the night and murder him. So one night, Beard is at home asleep in his bed and Tracy goes to the house. And Celeste had left the alarm disabled and a door unlocked. So Tracy's able to get inside and she walks up to his bedroom. And there she points a shotgun at him and blam! Blam! she shoots him. Then she flees the scene. Now, Beard doesn't actually die in this moment, but he is rushed to the hospital.

But eventually, he does die from the complications due to the gunshot wound. And so pretty quickly, police start investigating the shooting, and they learned that his wife Celeste was really close to this woman, Tracy. So they go and they question Tracy. And during the questioning, they discover that she owns a shotgun. So they test the gun, and it matches the exact weapon used to. in the shooting. And so, bam, Tracy is arrested. Here's her mugshot. But here's the thing about her. She's apparently a very loyal person, and she refuses to snitch on Celeste. Even though she's facing

life in prison, she will not flip. I guess she really loves her. And so police believe that she acted alone and that no one else was involved. And so she sits in jail waiting on her trial while Celeste gets away with everything. Twizzlers keep the fun going. Yeah, I know. I just stopped whatever you were listening to to tell you that Twizzlers keep the fun going. Well, irony isn't my forte.

But twisty, chewy, yummy Twizzler sure is. So think of Twizzlers as a little pallet cleanser for whatever's queued up, which, by the way, should be coming very soon. Like any second now. Okay, Twizzlers, time to keep the fun going. On to. Until about a year and a half goes by, and Celeste still hasn't been busted.

In fact, by this point, she's moved on. She's got access to hundreds of thousands of dollars to Beards' money, and she has spent it all on herself, and she even got remarried to a brand new guy. Now, eventually, word of all this reaches Tracy, and this pisses her off. I mean, she's sitting in jail protecting Celeste while Celeste moves on and marries a new man? Oh, hell no.

So she decides to cooperate with prosecution and she flips on Celeste and she tells them everything. She tells them she murdered Beard, but it was all Celeste's idea and that Celeste had planned it all out and that she was the one who gave her instructions on how to carry out the whole thing. And so, bam, police arrest Celeste. Here's her mugshot. And ultimately, she goes to trial and she's found guilty and she gets sentenced to life in prison. and as for Tracy, because of her cooperation, she only gets sentenced to 20 years in prison.