(Court TV) — Seventy-five-year-old Steven Beard woke up in the early morning on Oct. 2, 1999, and called 911. The millionaire had been shot in the stomach while he slept.

When the retired TV station owner died a few months later, authorities had already determined that his killer was Tracey Tarlton, a 42-year-old woman with a history of mental illness and who was found with the shotgun that police linked to the crime. But the case turned out to be more sordid still.

Tracey Tarlton admits firing the shot that killed Steven Beard.

Prosecutors would later claim that Tarlton had been set up by her lesbian lover — the victim's wife, Celeste Beard, then 36. Prosecutors said that Celeste Beard Johnson (she married Cole Johnson, her fifth husband, in July 2000) had Tarlton kill Steven Beard for the $6 million she would inherit from his estate. If the couple had divorced, she would have gotten $500,000 or less, under terms of a prenuptial agreement, prosecutors claimed.

Tarlton, a book store manager, admitted that she had shot Steven Beard but said she did so because Celeste Beard threatened to kill herself otherwise. Tarlton had fallen in love with the younger woman while the two were being treated for suicidal tendencies at live-in psychiatric facilities. Celeste Beard had allegedly convinced her that Steven Beard was a monster who was driving her insane.

According to Tarlton, the killing was Celeste's idea. She left the alarm off, showed Tarlton how and when to enter and exit the house, and even suggested that Steven Beard be shot in the stomach so as to avoid blood spatter because "she had no plans to redecorate."

Tarlton said she thought Celeste Beard would take care of her and pay for her lawyer fees, but over time Tarlton felt betrayed by her lover, particularly when Celeste Beard remarried. Tarlton negotiated a plea agreement in March 2002 in which she agreed to testify against Celeste Beard in exchange for 20 years in prison.

Her testimony was the prosecution's strongest proof that Celeste Beard had murdered her husband, since no direct evidence linked her to the crime.

Tarlton was also their Achilles heel.

The defense attacked Tarlton's credibility, saying that she was a mentally ill, delusional woman who was so obsessed with Celeste Beard that she killed her husband in a jealous rage.  

The meeting

Celeste and Steven Beard had a troubled marriage. Steven Beard filed for divorce four months after he married the former waitress and housekeeper only to drop the petition a few months later.

Yet he showed no misgivings about Celeste's twin daughters, Kristina and Jennifer, and adopted them in 1998. Both women, now 22, loved their adoptive father — so much, perhaps, that they became witnesses for the prosecution and testified against their own mother.

The daughters and other witnesses testified that Celeste Beard cheated on Steven Beard with one of her former husbands, Jimmy Martinez. They also told the court that she would frequently spike Steven Beard's food and drink with sleeping pills and 100-proof alcohol to ensure that he passed out early, leaving her free to pursue the affair.

Her daughters knew about the affair, they said, but followed their mother's lead in hiding it from Steven Beard.

But in 1999, the twins said, Steven Beard found out about his wife's cheating. He also learned that she had spent $300,000 of his money on entertainment and shopping. After being confronted, Celeste Beard threatened to commit suicide and was sent to St. David's Pavilion, a psychiatric facility.

There she met Tarlton, who was also being treated for suicidal tendencies. The two began a romantic friendship, according to Tarlton. The romance deepened when the two became roommates at another psychiatric facility designed for longer-term care. They were separated, however, when an attendant walked into the room to find Tarlton giving a half-naked Celeste a back massage.

After both women left the facility in the spring, Tarlton became an accepted Beard family friend, visiting the house many times and attending family gatherings, including the twins' high school graduation.

Throughout this period, the two women were trying to engineer Steven' Beard's death, Tarlton testified. She recounted a number of failed murder attempts so outrageous a jury might not believe them if Tarlton had not eventually succeeded in killing him. Tarlton claimed, for example, that the two tried to concoct botulism, then seasoned a chili dog with it, but Steven Beard failed to get sick from the substance.

A simple plan

In the early morning of Oct. 2, a day before the Beards planned to leave on an extended European vacation that Celeste Beard was allegedly dreading, Tarlton, a skeet shooter, fired her shotgun into Steven Beard's stomach.

She knew the gun would discharge a shell that she'd be unable to recover in the darkness, but Celeste Beard allegedly promised her that she would recover the shell and not call 911 until Beard was dead. Neither suspected the elderly man would have the strength to call 911 himself, Tarlton said.

Medical crews and police responded quickly to the call. Although Tarlton got away, one officer found the spent shell underneath some emergency equipment.

With this clue, police began their investigation.

The Verdict