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
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