Today’s post is about a double homicide that Betty Broderick committed in 1989.
Consider this scenario. A young woman works to put her husband through first medical school, then law school. Along the way, she gives birth to five children. Then, when he has established himself as a prominent attorney with a lucrative practice, he dumps his wife of sixteen years to marry his much younger legal assistant.
That is precisely the situation Betty Broderick found herself in in the spring of 1989. Tension and stress mounted through the summer and fall, until November, when Betty snapped and shot both her ex-husband and his new wife to death.
This is what happened.
Betty Broderick
Betty Broderick was born Elizabeth Anne Bisceglia in Brooklyn, New York, on November 7, 1947. She and Dan (born Daniel T. Broderick III) met at a dance at Notre Dame University, where he was a senior, while she was a student at the nearby College of St. Mary’s. Dan’s pursuit of Betty was relentless, bordering on obsession. Today, we would call it “love bombing.” Regardless, they married on April 12, 1969. Betty returned from their honeymoon pregnant with their first child, Kim.
Shortly after their daughter was born, Dan completed his medical degree at Cornell and enrolled in Harvard Law School. He graduated with his J.D. in 1973. Betty was the family’s main support while Dan was a student.
Once he graduated from law school, Dan moved the family to San Diego, California, to work for that city’s largest law firm. Five years later, he left to start his own firm, specializing in medical malpractice.
Betty Broderick is Dumped
The Broderick marriage deteriorated in the early 1980s. In the autumn of 1982, Dan hired Linda Kolkena, a former Delta Air Lines flight attendant, as his legal assistant. Although he initially denied it, Betty began to suspect that Dan and Linda were having an affair. After moving out of their house in February 1985, Dan eventually confessed that he and Linda had, in fact, been intimate. Dan filed for divorce later that year, beginning what became a contentious four-year court battle.
By this time, Dan owned a successful law firm and was president of the San Diego Bar Association. His prominence in the legal community made it difficult for Betty to find anyone to represent her in the divorce action. As the divorce case reached its endgame, Dan received sole custody of his and Betty’s children and sold their house against Betty’s wishes. Betty, naturally, believed he had used his influence in the legal community to achieve these results, as well as to deprive her of a rightful share of his income.
Betty Broderick Snaps
Being replaced by a younger woman broke Betty. While the divorce case dragged on in court, she started to exhibit erratic behavior. She left countless messages using sulphurous language on Dan’s answering machine, ignored restraining orders, and vandalized Dan’s home. Linda was so concerned that she urged Dan to wear a bulletproof vest at their wedding on April 22, 1989. He declined, but did arrange for security guards to patrol the venue. Betty did not attend.
On November 5, 1989, seven months after Dan and Linda’s wedding, Betty took a gun she had purchased six months earlier and drove to their house. Using a key she had taken from her daughter, Kim, Betty slipped into the house at 5:30 a.m. While the couple slept, she opened fire.
Two bullets struck Linda in the chest and head; she died instantly. One bullet hit Dan in the chest as he appeared to be reaching for the phone. Unknown to him, the phone was not there. Evidence introduced during her trial showed that Betty had removed the combination phone and answering machine to prevent anyone from calling for help.
After calling her daughter, Lee, and Lee’s boyfriend, Betty surrendered herself to the police. She never denied pulling the trigger, but insisted she never planned to kill the couple. Instead, she claimed she only wanted “to talk,” and that Linda screaming, “Call the police!” startled her, causing the gun to go off. However, it is worth noting that the gun “went off” five times, emptying the five-shot Smith & Wesson revolver.
Betty Broderick on Trial
Betty Broderick went on trial on October 22, 1990. Not surprisingly, the prosecution and defense painted two completely opposing versions of what happened on that November morning. Betty’s attorney, Jack Early, claimed that Betty was a battered wife, driven by years of physical, psychological, and mental abuse by her ex-husband. Prosecutor Kerry Wells, however, insisted that Betty was not a battered woman and that she had planned and schemed to kill Dan and Linda.
The trial ended in a hung jury. Two jurors held out for manslaughter, believing Betty had formed no intent to kill Dan and Linda. This forced Judge Thomas J. Whelan to declare a mistrial.
Since the prosecuting and defense attorneys were the same, it was no surprise that Betty’s second trial was mostly a rerun of the first. This time, however, prosecutor Wells secured a conviction on two counts of second-degree murder. Judge Whelan sentenced Betty to two terms of fifteen years to life to be served consecutively. He also sentenced her to two additional years for the illegal use of a firearm.
Epilogue
Betty Broderick has been in custody since the day of the murders and currently (2026) resides at the California Institution for Women in Chino. Denied parole in 2010 and 2017, her next parole hearing will be in January 2032, when she will be 84.
Numerous books cover the Betty Broderick case. For further reading, consider Forsaking All Others by Loretta Schwartz Nobel, Until the Twelfth of Never by Bella Stumbo, Betty Broderick, the Mother, the Murderer by Charles Dennis, or Bryna Taubman’s Hell Hath No Fury.
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