This same very typical scenario plays out over and over again thousands of times each year in this state alone. The wife is slapped around, and very often the absolute hell is beat out of her. Police arrive. Evidence of the altercation is visible – almost always on the wife’s face. Police ask the wife at the scene what happened and she tells them. She is distraught, not able to think through all the consequences, and has no motive to lie. The lie comes later.
The wife - for all the various crazy or “practical” reasons women do it – later decides or is persuaded to recant her story so the husband can come home. Maybe he’s appreciative and can mask his behavior for a while and seem normal (instead of the narcissistic f**** up individual he is); or, in the case of the craziest ones, grits his teeth and is seething from the first day home, just waiting for a chance to get even for being arrested.
Did Beard choke her (which I guess is the fact that makes the situation a felony in TX) ? In this situation, I would look to the actual description & words used by the fiancé at the scene, not any legalese summary the police officer/prosecuting authority may have drafted (e.g., did it sound “kind of” like choking to the officer when it was instead holding a person from behind with one elbow around the chin/neck area). So, I don’t have enough information (and I haven’t actually tried to find any information except what you all post here) for me personally to feel confident as to whether he choked her or not. But you would have to be awful naïve or an apologist (why?) to believe that significant domestic violence of some type did not occur in the Beard case – AND that Beard has an issue (i.e., he fits the narcissistic f***** up mode all bullies have).