Black Widow Betty Broderick

By Amy Clauson

A True Crime anthology focused on the black widows of society. At first, the marriage seemed to be fitting of a storybook fairy tale, but relationship troubles pushed both man and woman to the edge of sanity. Unfortunately for Elisabeth Anne "Betty" Broderick's former husband and new wife, it ended in murder.In the early morning hours of November 5, 1989, the calm of a seemingly typical Sunday morning was shattered by the ringing of gunfire. The shooting occurred in the home of one of Marston Hill's most prominent medical malpractice attorneys, Daniel Broderick III. By the time police respondents arrived at the scene of the crime, there appeared to be no evidence of forced entry. However, what waited for them in the bedroom would be something that would be etched in their minds forever.The 44-year-old lawyer was lying in a pool of blood on the floor with a bullet hole in his back. His new wife, 28-year-old Linda Kolkena-Broderick, was found spread on top of the couple's bed with wounds in her head and chest, the bedsheets and pillows drenched in her blood.There was only one suspect, Daniel's ex-wife Betty Broderick.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jun 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201193324

Book preview

BLACK WIDOW BETTY BRODERICK

AMY CLAUSON

table of contents

BETTY BRODERICK

DENA THOMPSON

VIRGINIA LARZELERE

BETTY LOU BEETS

JANIE LOU GIBBS

JUDY BUENOANO

KRISTIN ROSSUM

LYDA TRUEBLOOD

MARGARET RUDIN

MICHELLE REYNOLDS

MICHELLE HALL

At first, the marriage seemed to be fitting of a storybook fairy tale, but relationship troubles pushed her to the edge of sanity. Unfortunately for Elisabeth Anne Betty Broderick’s former husband and new wife, it ended in murder.

In the early morning hours of November 5, 1989, the calm of a seemingly typical Sunday morning was shattered by the ringing of gunfire. The shooting occurred in the home of one of Marston Hill’s most prominent medical malpractice attorneys, Daniel Broderick III. By the time police respondents arrived at the scene of the crime, there appeared to be no evidence of forced entry. However, what waited for them in the bedroom would be something that would be etched in their minds forever.

The 44-year-old lawyer was lying in a pool of blood on the floor with a bullet hole in his back. His new wife, 28-year-old Linda Kolkena-Broderick, was found spread on top of the couple’s bed with wounds in her head and chest, the bedsheets and pillows drenched in her blood.

There was only one suspect, Daniel’s ex-wife Betty Broderick.

David Cohen, a spokesperson for the San Diego Police Department, announced the search for Betty soon after police were informed of the newlywed’s deaths. Investigators believed that the ex-wife of one of the murdered had important information regarding her former lover’s death.

Not long after police announced their suspicion and search for her, Betty turned herself in. The then-41-year-old mother of four was charged with two counts of second-degree murder. Even before she turned herself in, people speculated that Betty pulled the trigger on both her ex-husband and his wife. Before and during her trial, the question that the public and persecutors wanted to know was why she did it? What was her motivation for slaying the father of her children?

Initially, people wondered why Betty would, out of the blue, slaughter the man she once built a home with. However, close family friends of Betty and Dan knew that she was fuming from the inside, and it was only a matter of time before she blew her lid and released a buildup years’ worth of hatred and rage. I knew immediately that she had done it, Mike Neil, a close friend of Dan, told reporters in an interview in 1999. I was not completely surprised – shocked, yes, that it actually happened. Totally surprised? No, I wasn’t.

During the early years of their marriage, Dan and Betty appeared to be the perfect example of a storybook romance. Betty Bisceglia was just a college freshman when she first laid eyes on her future husband in 1965. At an after-party following a Notre Dame football match, a skinny senior introduced himself to the young Betty by writing his name on a napkin and slipping it to her. He jokingly wrote his name as Daniel T. Broderick, MDA where his title stood for medical doctor, almost. At their first encounter, Dan had just been accepted into Cornell Medical School in New York City. Jack Earley, Betty’s defense attorney at her initial trial, said that Dan was instantly attracted to Betty. [Betty] was a model, she was very bright, very successful. And Dan is, as the story was told by many people, when he first met her, he determined that that was going to be his wife.

Only four years after he introduced himself through a napkin and corny joke, Dan and Betty were married in April 1969. At their wedding, both husband and wife vowed to stay married together for at least half a century. Betty gave birth to their first child just nine months after their honeymoon. The family of three eventually grew to become a family of six, including two sons and two daughters.

Dan began his impressive career by working his way through medical school in New York City and then found his way into Harvard Law. In the meantime, Betty took care of the home, children, and even found time to work and provide most of the household’s earnings. She didn’t complain once about the hardships she personally had to endure in order to provide for the growing family since she felt she was upholding her half of their marriage contract.

In 1973, it seemed that Betty’s hard work and patience was finally paying off when Dan accepted a position at the esteemed San Diego law firm, Gray Cary. He was an overnight success at the firm due to his high-level intelligence, work ethics, and keen insight into people and business. His coworkers and senior partners at the firm naturally gravitated to him. However, after five years working at Gray Cary, Betty urged him to make a name for himself and establish his own law firm. Because of his expert business acumen, he was soon pocketing tremendous amounts of money from medical malpractice suits that he specialized in handling.

The success of his law firm allowed Betty to quit end her career, and she began focusing on what mattered to her the most: being a mother to her four children and a wife to a successful attorney. She was popular in her community for her past career as a supermodel. Both the parents and children in her environment were genuinely drawn to her personality. It seemed like Betty had a perfect life – a home in the coastal suburb of La Jolla in San Diego, acceptance into an exclusive country club, and an infinite shopping budget – but their seemingly trouble-free lifestyle was concealing a deep, dark secret that was slowly consuming their relationship.

I don’t believe that there was ever a time where either one of them thought that their marriage was a marriage made in heaven, said Sharon Blanchet, another family friend, told reporters in 1999. Betty spoke of how the seed of her contempt toward her husband began to sprout when she, a virgin at the altar, alleged that Dan had raped her on their wedding night. Over the next decade, Betty had to endure the loss of a child shortly after giving birth, as well as miscarrying twice. She hated how, in the early stages of their marriage, she had to raise her children, take care of the household, and work a number of jobs to provide for the family while Dan spent most of his nights hitting the bars with his colleagues. When she brought it up, he merely considered it a networking investment, a necessary step to climb up the corporate ladder in order to stand on his own two feet.

As the years went by, and as Dan became even more successful, their marriage became even more strained. They became distant from each other, and friends frequently commented on how there was an increasing lack of warmth in their relationship. Inside the comfort of their own home, they would constantly argue, and sometimes their arguments would escalate into violent tantrums. In one case following an extremely nasty argument, Betty threw a glass bottle at Dan. Another time, Dan angrily tossed a fish aquarium from their second-floor balcony.

Even though Betty repeatedly mentioned the idea of separation, she knew that she would get the shorter end of the stick from a divorce. After quitting her job, she became more and more dependent on her husband for money, friends, and even her identity in their community. By the early 1980s, the couple had the life they had once dreamed to have, but their constant bickering and growing disdain for one another was casting a dark cloud over what they had built together.

Despite the increasing tension between two people who were viewed by their peers as the ideal couple, Dan and Betty mutually decided to continue their relationship. Both of them grew up in traditional Catholic homes and viewed their wedding vows as unbreakable. However, in 1983, when Dan hired the beautiful 22-year-old Linda Kolkena as his personal assistant, Betty correctly began to suspect that her husband of almost 14 years was cheating on her. After their divorce, Dan confirmed Betty’s suspicions and told her that he had been cheating on her during the last few years of their marriage with Linda. This would drive Betty to a murderous rage several years later.

On November 22, 1983, Betty arrived at her husband’s office with champagne and red roses to celebrate his 39th birthday. She hoped that her surprise would ultimately save their marriage from falling apart. Instead, what she found at the office confirmed every wife’s nightmare. The floor of Dan’s office was littered with birthday decorations, an empty wine bottle, two glasses, and the remains of a chocolate birthday cake were sitting on his desk. Betty asked an office secretary what had happened in the office, and she informed Betty that Dan left the building around 12 p.m. with his personal assistant. The heartbroken Betty remained in the office and patiently waited for the return of her husband and assistant, but they never came back. En route back to the home they shared together, she became blind with rage. As soon as she got home, she took all of Dan’s clothes and set them on fire as an expression of her understandable fury.

I had started seeing [Dan and Linda] together after work and perhaps for a drink or at a social event, Mike Neil told reporters in 1999. It wasn’t like anything obvious, or sneaking around, or anything like that at all. It was just something that evolved. Betty’s suspicion of the young blonde grew as time passed. She told her husband to fire his personal assistant or leave their home. In the beginning, Dan denied any wrongdoing, rejecting the notion that he was cheating on his wife, and even called her crazy for even thinking that he was having an affair. Even after the failed attempt at romance on his 39th birthday, he persisted that he and Linda were not in a sexual relationship. At the same time, he grew evermore condescending to his wife. She alleged that, on numerous occasions, he would verbally assault her and that the abuse was part of an elaborate plot to drive her insane.

Jack Earley told reporters that Dan had extremely honed psychological tactics. What you need to realize is that Dan made his money by showing the psychological effects of trauma on his clients. He was a doctor. He was trained on how these types of things would psychologically destroy people. Betty’s behavior became gradually more unpredictable, but she tried desperately to salvage her marriage. In February 1985, things went from bad to worse when Dan left the house, leaving Betty behind with their four children. This was the tipping point for Betty and she became emotionally unstable.

Betty began plotting ways to earn Dan’s respect. One of her plans involved dropping their children at Dan’s new residence, hoping that he would once again become reliant on her to raise them. This was a mistake that Betty would regret. Dan just hired babysitters, but now he realized he had an advantage, Earley said in an interview in 1999. And so when she realized that it wasn’t going to work and wanted the children back, he wasn’t going to give the children back to her.

On September 23rd, after 16 years of ups and downs, Dan filed for divorce. A month later, he informed his wife that she was right in suspecting him having an affair with Linda all along. Their sexual relationship developed into a loving one, and this is what caused him to willingly leave her. Soon after the divorce, he told Betty that the home they built together in La Jolla had been sold. Her anger drove her to the Marston Hills mansion he shared with Linda and their four children. After pounding on the door, Dan refused to speak to her, causing her to ram her Chevrolet Suburban into his front door. A violent scuffle ensued, and Dan alerted the police of his ex-wife’s mischief at his home. Police took Betty away in a straight jacket, and she spent the following three days locked up in a mental institution.

Dan’s friends warned him that Betty was becoming increasingly unstable. I didn’t know if Betty’s problem could be dealt with so I would discuss with Dan and Linda their moving away, Blanchet said in an interview in 1999. And that’s when Dan told me that if Betty really wanted to kill him, she would kill him wherever he was.

Betty’s wrath stemmed from her sacrificing her youth in order to see Dan become a success. When Linda came into the picture, Betty felt discarded and replaced with a young version of herself. She lashed out at the new couple, referring to Linda as a home wrecker and a whore, and leaving profanity-filled messages on their answering machine.

In July 1986, their divorce was finalized, and after proving to the judge that Betty was mentally and emotionally unfit, Dan was granted sole custody of their four kids. Until the final settlements were worked out, Dan volunteered to provide Betty with financial support. He threatened in a letter made to Betty that the money would stop unless she stopped leaving harassing messages to him and Linda. From now on, he wrote, if you leave a phone message or call and use any vulgar or obscene language, you will be fined $100 per offensive word. These fines will be withheld from your support checks. As time went by, other fines were added as punishment for unannounced visits and trespassing. At one point, she found herself $1,300 in debt to Dan after the fines were applied to her monthly support check. Dan’s personality was such that he didn’t react very well to people who were hysterical, Blanchet said in a 1999 interview. "And so I think the more she