Case File: Betty Broderick

Elisabeth “Betty” Broderick was born in the suburbs of New York City and, like her future husband Daniel Broderick, she was raised in a large, strict Catholic family, which stressed the importance of a wife’s role in supporting her husband. She met Dan while she was in college, on a trip to visit a friend at Notre Dame University, where Dan was a pre-med major. The couple married in 1969 and faced financial difficulties in their early marriage, with Betty working multiple jobs to support the couple while Dan finished school. After medical school, Dan decided to also obtain a law degree, which meant Betty was once again responsible for supporting the family, which had now grown to include daughters Kim and Lee. Betty would later claim in her memoirs that after their marriage, Dan had become increasingly controlling, assuming almost total control over the couple’s finances.

By the mid-1970s, the family had moved west after Dan took a job as an attorney for a prominent law firm specializing in medical malpractice. Following years of financial struggles, the Brodericks were soon on the rise, settling into the affluent La Jolla neighborhood, joining country clubs and becoming regulars on the city’s social scene. 

To outsiders, the family, which welcomed two young sons, Danny and Rhett, appeared to be a wealthy, happy and contentful brood. But Betty had grown increasingly unhappy, angry that Dan spent little time with his family, alleging that he had to continue to work long hours to ensure his professional success. Betty would later claim that Dan had also begun disparaging both her looks and the family’s home, leading Betty to worry that he’d become despondent in the marriage. Her fears soon grew, and by 1983, she suspected Dan was having an affair with Linda Kolkena, a beautiful woman in her early 20s who Dan had hired to work as his assistant. Dan denied it, but eventually admitted to the affair and moved out of the family home in 1985. 

The Brodericks’ subsequent divorce was stormy and bitter. Betty felt angry, convinced she had spent her early years supporting her husband and growing family while Dan finished school, only to be discarded for a younger woman once he’d achieved financial success. She seemed unable to let her husband go and began acting erratically, with the couple’s four children caught in the crossfire. 

Betty alleged that Dan’s powerful position in San Diego's legal community meant she could not obtain proper legal representation. Dan eventually received full custody of the children, with Betty left to rely on his financial support after their breakup. She continued to lash out, leaving threatening voicemails for Dan and Linda, vandalizing their home and even driving her car into Dan and Linda’s new house. Dan obtained a series of restraining orders, and when he and Linda eventually married in April 1989, Dan, at the advice of worried friends and family, hired additional security and reportedly wore a bulletproof vest at the nuptials.

Seven months after their wedding, in the early morning hours of November 4, Betty took one of her daughter’s keys to Dan and Linda’s house, entered through a side door and crept upstairs to the bedroom. She fired five shots, killing Linda instantly, with Dan dying soon after. Before she left the scene, Betty pulled the bedroom phone from the wall, so that the couple could not call for help. Betty fled the scene and called her daughter Lee, claiming she had gone to the house to confront the couple and had planned to commit suicide if they wouldn’t listen to her demands, but that she had been startled when Linda woke up and spotted her, so she shot them both in a panic. 

The gruesome crime shocked San Diego, but those who knew the Brodericks weren’t surprised. Soon after her confession to her daughter, Betty turned herself in, and investigators began piecing together evidence. They learned that Betty had recently purchased a .38 caliber revolver (matching bullet casings found at the murder scene) and taken shooting classes at a local club. 

Betty admitted she had received a legal notice from Dan’s attorney the day before the murders that she found humiliating, warning her of harsh repercussions, including preventing her from seeing her children, if she continued her harassment of Dan and Linda. Betty told law enforcement she viewed the letter as another example of the years of emotional abuse and provocation that Dan had subjected her to, and that it had prompted her to make that fateful visit to their home. 

Betty was charged with two counts of second-degree murder. During her first trial in fall 1990, Betty took the stand in her own defense, painting herself as the long-term sufferer of emotional and psychological abuse, accounts that were supported by her daughter Lee’s testimony. Her other daughter, Kim, discounted that defense, stating that Betty had shown signs of anger and instability long before the murders and that she believed the shootings were intentional. The jury was unable to reach a verdict, resulting in a mistrial. 

The following year, Betty was tried again, with prosecutors painting a picture of a calculated and vengeful woman who had executed her ex-husband and his new wife in cold blood. Betty once again took the stand, and additional defense witnesses claimed Betty suffered from diminished psychological capacity as a result of emotional trauma. The jury rejected this claim, and in December 1991, they found Betty guilty of both counts of second-degree murder. She was sentenced to 32 years to life in prison. 

The Broderick case remains one of the most controversial and debated true crime stories in modern American history. While the killings were clearly unjustified, many expressed sympathy with Betty’s emotional state amid the fallout of her brutal divorce. The case also raised questions surrounding the role of mental health awareness in contentious divorce proceedings, with many arguing that too many people ignored the clear signs of Betty’s psychological deterioration until it was too late. 

The Broderick murders were front-page news from the moment the victims were discovered. The trials were widely covered in newspapers and magazines, and Oprah Winfrey famously conducted a jailhouse interview with Betty shortly after her conviction. In the years since, the story has been featured in books, documentaries and inspired the 2020 TV series Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story. More than 30 years later, the Broderick murders continue to resonate as both a cautionary tale and a window into the darker sides of domestic strife, privilege, mental health and gender roles.