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For those tempted beware a woman scorned

DANIEL BRODERICK III was reckoned to be one of the best lawyers in the San Diego area. He had started in medicine, qualified from Notre Dame in 1969, and decided to continue his studies. In 1975 he duly graduated with honors from Harvard Law School.

He met 17-year-old Freshman Betty (Elizabeth) Biscelgia at a college Football game at Notre Dame in 1965. They duly became lovers and married in 1969. Betty and Dan had four children together in the subsequent years. Their second son was named Rett, after Dan's idol from ‘Gone with the Wind', which perhaps says a lot about Dan. Times were hard in those early years of marriage but Dan was a workaholic and by 1979 he had his own law firm bringing in over one million dollars a year after tax.

The Broderick family home was now a five-bedroom mansion set in its own grounds in La Jolla, California. But the problem was that Betty's life did not consist of much besides bringing up the children. When before Dan spent all his time studying, he now spent it working, and became an expert in real estate (property) law. Betty was not yet a woman scorned, but she was feeling distinctly ignored, increasingly trapped by what amounted to the drudgery of single-parenthood.

In the summer of 1983 she alone took her children out camping, which happens in a lot of busy families when one partner can't get away from work. The trouble was that Dan was never at home and always ‘in a meeting' when she tried to call him. It was about this time that Dan took on a new legal assistant, the attractive 22-year-old Linda Kolkena.

Now Linda knew little about the law and couldn't even type, but she wore tight halter-tops and skimpy mini-skirts around the office, which became fragrant with her perfume. Betty quickly put two and two together and came up with the right answer. But when challenged directly about the cliché of an office affair, Dan insisted that he and Linda had only a ‘strictly professional' relationship.

Despite persistent rumors of the affair that Betty heard from several sources, she was determined to hold on to her marriage. On Dan's 39th birthday (11 November 1983) Betty thought she would surprise her husband at work with a celebratory bottle of champagne. The surprise was on Betty, however. She was told by office staff that Dan and Linda had already enjoyed a celebratory drink and were now away somewhere on an extended ‘lunch'. The lunch just happened to be in a motel room downtown.

Betty Broderick finally flipped. She smashed the bottle of champagne over Dan's work desk, and then drove home. Once there she emptied her husband's wardrobe of expensive tailor-made business suits, took them out into the yard, doused them in gasoline and lit a bonfire. All this was watched by startled neighbors.

During the latter part of 1984 the Broderick's moved out of the house in La Jolla whilst builders were putting in an extension, and took a short-term lease on another house. But by now Betty was wild with jealousy and the acrimony followed them. After weeks of blazing rows, Dan moved back to the family home. Betty followed him there soon after and indulged in an orgy of destruction whilst Dan was at work. She smashed glass and furniture and sprayed the walls with offensive graffiti.

In September 1985, Dan Broderick filed for divorce, and for the next five years the civil courts became a battleground for the Broderick's doomed marriage. When Dan wanted to sell the family home, Betty refused her consent. But Dan (an expert in real estate law remember?) sold it anyway, using an unusual legal maneuver involving getting a local judge to authorize the sale. The judge just happened to be an old golfing partner of Dan's.

Betty was certainly not left entirely destitute. In fact, Dan voluntarily awarded his wife alimony to the tune of 9,000 dollars a month (later increased to 16,000 a month) and bought her a new home with an ocean view at La Jolla for over 650,000 dollars.

But by now the relationship had devolved into a truly nasty case of a marriage broken beyond repair. As soon as the divorce papers came through, Dan Broderick married his former office mistress at a sumptuous front-lawn ceremony at his new luxury home in Marston Hills. Betty's name was notably absent from the guest list and one wag quipped that; aware of Betty's known viciousness, perhaps the bride and groom should get married in bulletproof vests! That turned out to be a sadly fateful joke.

Soon after this Betty sped her car across the lawn and rammed it straight into the front door of the house in Marston Hills. When he pried open the car door to pull his ex-wife out, Dan saw a large butcher's knife on the dashboard. Betty lashed out at him drunkenly and the incident turned into a nasty public brawl until local police arrived to break it up and warn Mrs. Broderick to keep the peace in future.

Betty Broderick was what Americans call ‘mad' and the English call ‘very angry'. From her viewpoint she had been deprived of everything she had ever worked for, including her children. And all because of Dan's obsessive desire for that “young tramp” who had stolen him away from her.

On the fateful morning of 5 November 1989 Betty Broderick awoke early and by 5.30m, before dawn, she took a loaded .38 Smith & Wesson snub-nosed revolver and got into her car. She later claimed that her intention was to drive to the beach for a solitary walk, but she instead found herself parked outside Dan and Linda's home. She insisted in a later statement that despite the early hour all she wanted was to discuss the custody issue with her ex-husband. And the only reason she was carrying a gun was that if Dan refused to co-operate, “I planned to put the gun to my head and splash my brains all over his goddamned new house.”

Rather unconventionally for a business visit at dawn, Betty let herself into the dark and silent house with a key borrowed from one of her daughters. Quietly she made her way upstairs to Dan and Linda's second-floor master bedroom. The door was unlocked and she walked in, took the handgun from the waistband of her jeans and started shooting at the couple sleeping in the double bed. Linda Broderick took one .38 caliber round in the neck and another in the chest and died almost immediately. Daniel Broderick was hit by a bullet that punctured his lung. He fell from the bed to the floor where he lay drowning in his own blood. Betty kept firing until all six chambers had been expended. Then, according to her later statement, she left the house and drove away in a daze: “I didn't have any idea if I had even hit them with those shots” she stated.

It was not until 9.30am the same morning that the bodies were found by friends of the Broderick's who had been unable to raise them by telephone. Less than an hour later police officers were at the crime scene, and shortly after that detectives were on the trail of Elizabeth Broderick.

Before long she was in custody in the Las Colinas Women's Detention Facility, taking every opportunity to give her side of the story to anybody prepared to listen, especially if they were from the media. “He traded me in for a young whore and stole my kids,” Betty lamented. “The bastard sued me to death.”

Betty Broderick's first trial opened in June 1990 and lasted for three months. Her attorney, Jack Earley, presented his client in a sympathetic light as a woman scorned, dragged down by a spiteful and insensitive husband. This had left Betty in a very depressed state, he said. “The anger was directed as much at herself as at others. She just couldn't get out from under the avalanche. She just could not escape her pain and anger.” After a lengthy adjournment the jury could not agree on a unanimous verdict. There was nothing for it but a retrial.

The People vs. Elizabeth Broderick trial number two took place in October 1991 before Superior Court Judge Thomas J Whelan. This one lasted until December that year. The attorneys were the same as for the previous trial, with Jack Earley retaining Betty's brief and prosecutor Kerry Wells presenting the case against her. By this time Betty had become a media cause celebre. Already two major books were awaiting a verdict and so was a CBS film on the case. The American Women's Movement had also adopted Mrs. Broderick as a perfect example of the wronged wife fighting for justice.

Judge Whelan felt obliged to present the other side of Betty Broderick. He reminded the jury of the evidence of Deputy Maria McCullough, who said that after the previous year's trial Betty had bragged to her about the impact of her evidence. “I had such a good day in court. I had that jury eating out of my hand,” she had said, adding, “I think my crying had a really good effect on those jurors. They just ate it up.”

The jury again had a difficult time making up their minds, but they did manage to agree unanimously in the end, and presented the judge with a verdict of second-degree murder. Early the following year, in February 1992, Judge Whelan sentenced Elizabeth Broderick to the maximum penalty of 32 years in prison; which means that she will not be eligible for parole until the year 2010.

In the meantime, Betty Broderick still enjoys considerable celebrity status, and in the wake of her sentence made a taped interview for broadcast on the top-rated ‘Oprah Winfrey Show'. The CBS film became a TV blockbuster, netting 28.4 million viewers and selling to 24 countries around the world. Many feminists still see Betty as a wronged victim, and the Alliance for Divorce and Marriage Reform group has used her case as an argument in its campaign for divorce laws that are fairer to women.

Not everyone agrees, of course. Prosecutor Kerry Wells, who presented the case that put Betty behind bars, is not sympathetic to this media image of a scorned wife. “I've just about had my fill of Elizabeth Broderick and her crocodile tears,” he told reporters. “She was NOT a battered woman. She was getting 16,000 dollars a month in alimony; she had a million-dollar house in La Jolla; an expensive sports car and a loyal boyfriend.

“This woman pulled off a brutal premeditated double homicide and then bleated that she had been deeply wronged. I see abused women every day with broken bones and smashed-in faces. Give me a break!”

(‘The encyclopedia of women killers' by Brian Lane, Headline Books, 1994;
crime library.com_Broderick).

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