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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 & 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 in to the Follow Buttons house and add hot sauce to the solution for their eye contacts. Okay, let's get into today's story.
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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 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'd gotten 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 had lived. But as a result of that attempt, she had 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.