Betty Broderick at a preliminary hearing in San Diego in 1990.
Howard Lipin/San Diego Union-Tribune via Getty ImagesBetty Broderick, one of California’s most infamous female killers, died Friday. Broderick, 78, was serving a prison sentence of 32 years to life for gunning down her ex-husband and his new wife in 1989, a shocking double homicide that spawned countless TV shows, movies and podcasts.
Betty Bisceglia met Dan Broderick at a dance held at Notre Dame in 1965; four years later, they married. Broderick, already a medical doctor, attended Harvard Law. The Brodericks moved to La Jolla after his graduation, and Betty raised their four children while Dan specialized in medical malpractice.
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In 1982, Dan Broderick made the fateful decision to hire former flight attendant Linda Kolkena as one of his legal assistants. The pair began an affair, and the Brodericks were soon embroiled in a vicious yearslong divorce. As proceedings dragged on, Betty’s behavior became more alarming. She left hundreds of threatening messages on Dan’s answering machine, blew through restraining orders that banned her from seeing him and once even drove her car into his house despite their children being at home.
In 1989, the divorce was finally over, and Dan Broderick and Kolkena married. Seven months after the wedding, Betty Broderick used her daughter’s house key to get into their San Diego residence. She crept into their bedroom and shot them both dead while they were asleep in bed.
Broderick turned herself in to police but claimed her actions weren’t premeditated. She was eventually convicted of two counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to 32 years to life in prison.
The salacious story became tabloid and TV fodder. “A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story” aired in 1992, earning star Meredith Baxter a Primetime Emmy nomination. And more recently, the second season of “Dirty John” retold the case with Amanda Peet and Christian Slater in the starring roles.
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Broderick was incarcerated at the California Institute for Women in Chino, but after a fall in April, she was taken to a hospital for treatment. Her son, Daniel Broderick, told TMZ that she became septic and unresponsive; she died on Friday in the hospital.
Katie Dowd is the SFGATE managing editor. She started her career at SFGATE in 2011 shortly after graduating from UC Berkeley. She was born and raised in the Bay Area.
