Good Riddance

I woke up this morning and read about the death of convicted double murderer Betty Broderick, 78, who died yesterday of undisclosed causes.   She gained international headlines back in the late 1980s-early 1990s because she was this rich, divorced socialite who got revenge on her ex-husband, prominent San Diego attorney Dan Broderick, and Broderick's second wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick, while the pair slept in their bed.  Betty had stolen a key from her daughter and let herself in Dan and Linda's house and shot them dead.  It was as cold-blooded a murder case as there has ever been.  She tore the phone cord from the wall when Dan tried to reach for it, but it was too late for him.  Later on, Betty turned herself in to police.

Broderick was one of the most undeserving-of-sympathy killers in modern American crime.  She never expressed remorse for killing her ex because he had dumped her several years prior in favor of  Linda Kolkena, who had once been a flight attendant and later worked as Dan's legal assistant.  They had an affair, so Dan and Betty's marriage was over with.  Cheating spouses are as common as flies to shit, but few jilted ex-spouses decide to retaliate by killing them and the third parties involved.  Worse still, Betty committed a crime against her children by robbing them of their father, who had custody of the four children at the time of the murders.  She didn't care what they thought.  Betty Broderick was a classic narcissist, a sociopath, who never once expressed remorse for what she did. It was always Dan and Linda's fault, never hers.

Broderick was tried twice.  The first trial ended with a hung jury, but she was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder in her second trial.  She was clearly a head case and was long before Linda Kolkena came into the picture.  Dan put up with a lot from her.  That doesn't justify the cheating or his use of the legal system and connections against Betty.  However, she was a lunatic.  Her narcissism gave her a tremendous sense of entitlement.  No matter if Dan wanted out, she felt entitled to the lavish lifestyle and "prestige" being married to a lawyer supposedly entailed.  (I worked for years around attorneys and know it isn't any great thing to be connected with.  In my experience,  I observed that almost the only marriages to lawyers that worked out were those where both spouses were lawyers.  Many attorneys, especially the men, were married several times.  It is a fairly miserable way of life despite the potential of making good money.  Many lawyers I knew hated their jobs but couldn't afford to get out.)  Back then, though, being married to a professional man, especially a rich one, carried lots of prestige. Women were making inroads as attorneys in their own right, but it was still "easier" to marry a lawyer than to be one.  Betty subscribed to the latter.  When Betty grew up and then married Dan in 1969, she was more than willing to work to put him through medical school at Cornell and law school at Harvard.  She naively thought his life would be her life, plus she had a total of four kids to raise.  She got to live an affluent lifestyle in the San Diego area, with skiing trips and vacations all over the place, with volunteer work in her community, and so forth.  Because of this, many women started believing the story put forward by Betty and her lawyers that Dan "stole" her best years, and, when the big money started rolling in (well over a million a year), dumped her for a younger version of herself.  Seemingly millions of women could see themselves in Betty's shoes and felt Dan and Linda deserved what they got.  It was a great con job by Betty and her legal team.  This notion still persists to this day.  These groupies as I call them are still very vocal in their continued misguided support.  

Reality was a bit different.  Betty literally dumped the kids at Dan's house trying to make a point, but it backfired when he ended up with custody.  She harassed Dan and Linda constantly with insane phone calls and voice mails, and, I believe at one point, she drove her vehicle into Dan's house.  Dan and Linda feared for their lives.  Dan's friends recommended he leave San Diego, but he felt that would have been pointless, for Betty would have found him.  Although the divorce was highly contentious, Betty did receive a very generous settlement by most standards.  She could well afford to live on $13,000 a month, 1989 dollars, had a career in real estate, and a new boyfriend, who stuck by her for years after the killings.  That wasn't enough.  Dan and Linda got married earlier in 1989, but Betty wasn't about to let Dan "win" by moving on with his life.  

That was what the murders were all about--getting in the last word and "winning."  It was all about revenge.  Dan and Linda didn't "make her do it."  That was bullshit by the defense team in order to try and get her sentence reduced or even have her walk free.  It didn't work.  Most people then and now saw through the ruse.

The California parole board rejected her claims time and again, noting she never showed any remorse over what she did.  

Justice did prevail in this case, unlike so many other high-profile murder cases.

Snip:

Born in 1947, Betty was raised in a strict Catholic home in Westchester County, just outside of New York City. She often took care of her four siblings and wrote in her 2015 memoir Telling On Myself that her parents had primed her to grow up to be a housewife. After trying her hand at modeling and working at a restaurant and a department store, she enrolled at the University of Mount Saint Vincent in 1965, where she studied English and early childhood education

Some Wednesday Reads

 There will be no Triple Crown winner this year.

It's understandable this year as in last year because the Belmont is run at a shorter distance, something not available to the previous 13 Triple Crown winners.

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Obituary:  Cable news pioneer and founder of the great channel Turner Classic Movies, Ted Turner, 87, has died after a lengthy battle with the dread Lewy Body Dementia.

He started WTBS in the 1970s before launching CNN in 1980. After he acquired the MGM film library, he started a great cable channel, Turner Classic Movies.  This channel is about the only thing I miss over no longer getting cable/dish television.

Turner had an "aw shucks" type of demeanor that fooled people into thinking he wasn't smart, but he was, shockingly so.

Snip:

Robert Edward Turner III was born Nov. 19, 1938, in Cincinnati. When he was 9, his family moved to Savannah, Georgia. After being expelled from Brown University for sneaking a female student into his room, Turner came to Atlanta to work for his father’s billboard company.

His ambitions at that point were broad, he later recalled: “I used to tell people I wanted to become the world’s greatest sailor, businessman and lover all at the same time.”

After his father’s 1963 suicide, Turner took over the company. In 1970, he bought an independent UHF station with a signal so weak it didn’t even cover Atlanta.

On Dec. 17, 1976, he began transmitting the station to cable systems across the country via satellite. It became TBS Superstation. “It was the start of something bigger than we ever imagined,” Turner said.

TBS’ collection of old movies and “The Andy Griffith Show” reruns was augmented by Turner’s acquisition of baseball’s Atlanta Braves, which slowly attracted fans across the nation and declared themselves “America’s team.”

Monday Reads

 What else is new?  The GOP are up to no good, as usual.

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Some MAGA cultists are upset because Trump can't admit he lost fair and square in the 2020 election.

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The antiabortion nutjobs aren't happy with Trump, either.

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Speaking of the issue, mifepristone, aka RU-486, is still legal in this country.

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Kentucky Derby 2026 Results

 Golden Tempo has won the 152nd Kentucky Derby.  Jose Ortiz is the jockey.  It is his first Derby win.   This race is historic, for the  first woman trainer has won the Kentucky Derby.   Her name is Cherie DeVaux.   She is the second woman to win a Triple Crown race.   Renegade was second, with Jose's brother Irad aboard.   2:02.27 was the time.  The Phipps family owns this son of Curlin.   The Phipps family has been in the sport for decades.  Actually, a century.  They were the family at least half responsible for Secretariat, thanks to having owned Bold Ruler, the sire of Secretariat and the greatest sire of all time as far as I am concerned.  They owned Discovery, Bold Ruler, Easy Goer, Personal Ensign, Buckpasser, and other greats too numerous to mention.

So much of what women in this game as jockeys and as trainers have to do deal with is connections. The Phipps family is about as good as it gets in horse racing.  If women can't form connections with owners and/or trainers, they won't get far in this sport.  There is still a lot of prejudice out there. 

As for Golden Tempo, he came from behind, actually dead last,  to win the race by a neck.  Ocelli was third.  

Great White had to be scratched at the last minute for rearing and going over backwards, throwing his jockey.  There was a delay in the running as a result.  Both horse and jockey seemed okay.

Jose Ortiz also won the Kentucky Oaks yesterday.

The race:

Kentucky Derby Day 2026

 Earlier:  Here is the current odds.  There were many scratches this year with the result of no clear favorite.  Renegade and Commandment are the favorites going into this year's race at 5-1, the 65th I have seen since I was six years old in 1961 and watched Carry Back.

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Earlier in the day:

American Turf Stakes:

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Churchill Downs Stakes, which had a stunning surprise:

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From yesterday, the Kentucky Oaks:

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Old Bourbon Turf Classic:

Some Thursday Reads

 Obit:  Country singer/songwriter David Allan Coe, 86, has died, his wife announced.

He was best known for the hit, "Take This Job and Shove It."

Snip:

He did concert tours with Willie Nelson, Kid Rock, Neil Young and others. He wrote “Take This Job and Shove It,” a hit by Johnny Paycheck in 1977, and “Would You Lay With Me (in a Field of Stone),” a hit by Tanya Tucker in 1974. He was also the first country singer to record “Tennessee Whiskey,” penned by Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove, that has since become a genre standard and hits for George Jones and Chris Stapleton.

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It has always been about the grift with these antifeminist hypocrites.

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Obit I missed from a month ago:  Chip Taylor, 86,  musician and songwriter best remembered for his song, "Wild Thing," which were notably recorded by both the Troggs and by Jimi Hendrix, passed away in late March of cancer.  His real name was James Voight, and he was the brother of the actor, Jon Voight.

Snip:

He was born James Wesley Voight in Yonkers, New York, the son of Elmer and his wife, Barbara, a teacher and swimming instructor. He had two older brothers, Barry Voight, later an eminent geologist, and the future Hollywood star Jon Voight. Chip would become uncle to Jon’s children, Angelina Jolie and James Haven, who both pursued acting careers.

He described how “we were brought up to think there was nothing we couldn’t do,” and recalled how he felt inspired to pursue music when his parents took him to see the Hollywood musical My Wild Irish Rose when he was about seven. “I was just mesmerised by the music,” he remembered. “I felt, that night, that something changed in me.” He began soaking up blues and country music from the radio, and briefly tried playing the violin before switching to ukulele, “which later would make it easier for me to learn guitar”.

Some Wednesday Reads

 Leave it to some antiabortion nutjob to lecture "the left" on what they should think and what they should say.

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USSC's right-wing hacks continue to fuck over voters.

The high court has had over 25 years of experience fucking over voters.

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Let's hope Idaho voters will vote for sanity and reject what these religious nutjobs are doing to their state.

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At the School Today

 A baby mourning dove and some sparrows are living at a local school near the office:

Monday Night on the Obituary Pages

Evangelist Marilyn Hickey, 94, a fixture on many religious talk shows as well as her own program and ministry, died Saturday.

Snip:

Born July 1, 1931, Hickey devoted more than six decades to preaching the Gospel, founding Marilyn Hickey Ministries with a vision to “cover the earth with the Word.” Her ministry spanned continents through television broadcasts, large-scale evangelistic meetings and teaching resources that emphasized salvation and divine healing.

Hickey’s international ministries included outreach to Islamic-majority nations. In 2016, she held a historic healing meeting in Karachi, Pakistan, that drew more than 1 million attendees, according to her ministry.

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 Nedra Talley Ross, the last surviving member of the 1960s girl group The Ronettes, has died at the age of 80.  With her cousins Ronnie Spector and Estelle Bennett, she formed the popular group in 1957, when they were literally kids.  Ronnie of course had been married to Phil Spector later on, and it wasn't a happy setup.  Nedra was married to Scott Ross, who was a fixture on Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network.  He had a background in music as well. They were married from 1967 until his death in 2023.  He was 83 or 84.  You can read his CBN obit here.

Hollywood Reporter:

Talley, who was born on Jan. 27, 1946, formed the girl group with her cousins — lead singer Veronica Bennett (who later was known as Ronnie Spector) and her older sister Estelle Bennett — with whom she’d been singing since they were in their teens. First known as the Darling Sisters, they signed with Colpix Records in 1961.

Two years later, the auditioned for Phil Spector, known for his big brass-and-drum style, which was called the “wall of sound.” He signed them to his Philles Records, which was when they changed their name to the Ronettes. After being signed, they sang backup for other acts. until Spector had the group record “Be My Baby” and “Baby, I Love You.”