She Wanted It All: A True Story of Sex, Murder, and a Texas Millionaire

Very good reading. Kept my interest.

"She Wanted It All" is an extraordinary book and a "must read" for any true crime reader. I have read all of Ann Rule's books and, in my opinion, Kathryn Casey has put herself in that same league with this book. She grabs hold of the reader right from the very first page and never let's go. It's a fascinating story. I simply could not put this book down and finished it in two days. If you are a fan of true crime books, I HIGHLY recommend "She Wanted It All." I give it ten stars!

In this charming tale of Texans just having fun--all right, all right! I've read too many true crime tales from the state of Texas to be objective, I admit. Here are three good ones, just to prove my point: Poisoned Dreams: A True Story of Murder, Money, and Family Secrets (1993) by A. W. Gray; Final Justice: The True Story of the Richest Man Ever Tried for Murder (1993) by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith; and Open Secrets: a True Story of Love, Jealousy and Murder (1994) by Carlton Stowers. Kathryn Casey's She Wanted It All (2005) is an extraordinarily researched, incredibly detailed and amazingly well-organized story that is even better than any of that fine trio, and for once the Texas judicial system, despite some initial stupidities, gets the job done right, thanks mainly to prosecutor Allison Wetzel who bested famed defense attorney Dick DeGuerin in a case that could easily have been lost. The villain is blond, blue-eyed, sexy Celeste (née Johnson) Beard, a woman who found that life was always a case of "too much is never enough." She was actually raised in California, the adopted daughter of Edwin and Nancy Johnson. She claims to have been sexually abused by her adoptive father, but one can clearly see in Casey's mesmerizing narrative that it was the adoptive mother who was not only a psychological abuser, but something of negative role model for the kind of controlling, selfish, neurotic, abusive, sociopathic murderess that Celeste would become. The primary victim of the story is Steven Beard, a self-made Texas millionaire who in his seventies had recently lost his beloved wife of over forty years. (Of course, there were many victims of Celeste. As with most sociopaths, almost everybody who knew Celeste was victimized in one way or another.) He is the "old fool." He falls for her even though she is young enough to be his granddaughter; and like so many of her men, even though he begins to see (after it's too late) that she is evil, he can't let her go. Part of the reason is that he also fell in love with her identical twin daughters, Jennifer and Kristina, who helped to rejuvenate his life by giving him a purpose as their stepfather. One can only feel sorry for such a man, and think how ironic it is that before he lost his wife and met Celeste he was in charge of his life, a successful man who was well-liked and admired. But Celeste laid him low. Celeste is an interesting study, a kind of femme fatale on steroids. The portrait that Casey draws of her in these pages is that of an attractive and vital woman with a gift for persuasion, for acting, for bullying, and for the confidence game; a woman with a pathological need to control others and to acquire money and to spend it recklessly; a woman with a terrible need to be surrounded by people, but a woman with no love for anyone but herself. She was also a sexual predator who used and disposed of men at will, a woman as experienced in sex as a prostitute. Furthermo

No eloquent writing here... (from me, not Kathryn!) I just want to share! I have read LOTS of true crime and most of it is very poorly written. This book is an EXCELLENT read! Great depth to characters, very well written. An intriguing story and Kathryn is a master story-teller. Don't tell me about Ann Rule (and I have read most of her books) - Kathryn Casey stands on equal (if not higher) footing here. I highly recommend this book.