I first bought this book twenty years ago in hardback and a year later in paperback, but downloaded it recently and read it all over again, reliving the riveting divorce/double murder case that stunned San Diego and millions of Americans between 1989-1992. It is the best true crime book that I have ever read. It even tops Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter and Anne Rule's The Stranger Beside Me. In the late Bella Stumbo's mezmerizing account (what a great writer!), Betty Broderick comes across as more a pathetic character than a sympathetic one. She was obviously a sociopath with serious psychological issues that had never been resolved from her earliest childhood. She had a good Catholic upbringing in a large, warm, Irish/Italian upper-middle-class home and strict schooling at a Catholic girls school, but yet she felt unloved and married young to escape the nest. Once she wed an Irish-American Notre Dame graduate named Dan Broderick (an equally staunch Catholic), she realized that marriage was not a fairytale and that it was a relationship that one had to work at. She became increasingly bitter and resentful, especially when her selfish husband found someone younger and more attractive to replace her after fifteen mostly unhappy years of marriage, four children, numerous fights, and Betty's constant nagging.
Betty later insisted that she had only stayed in the marriage because a divorce would disgrace the family and she wanted to reap the benefits from all of her years of hard work as a part-time clerk, saleswoman, etc., and full-time Mom. She made the personal decision to fashion herself after the Irish matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, but this ultimately proved fatal. Betty Broderick did not have the right personality to sustain a long-term healthy marriage and this proved to be her undoing.
Betty certainly had a right to have half of Dan's fortune, joint custody of the kids, and a luxurious lifestyle for the rest of her life, since she worked her tail off putting him through medical school and then Harvard law school. Dapper Dan was apparently a greedy bastard who decided to sue doctors for a living instead of becoming one. At the time of his death, he was the most hated and feared medical/malpractice attorney in the San Diego area. Many doctors in California and elsewhere were not sad that he was finally bumped off by his former spouse. He had offered her $16,000 per month, but this was not enough for her. Betty probably deserved more. To be honest, I would have let him go and kept spending his money. And I would have insisted that he raise the kids full time and put them all through boarding schools. But I hope I would have been in the frame of mind to not have resorted to harassment and murder.
Still, she was obsessed about being dumped for the other woman, refused to get therapy for her narcissistic personality disorder, and wanted to make life as miserable as possible for her former husband and their children. Between the time that Dan walked out in 1985 and the time of the murders on November 5, 1989, just seven months after their wedding, Betty had continually harassed him and his mistress/second wife Linda Kolkena Broderick with a barrage of countless obscene phone calls, many of which contained messages of her vicious threats to kill both of them. She didn't want Dan back because she loved him; she only wanted him back to save face, remain Mrs. Daniel T. Broderick III, and prevent him from being happy with someone else.
Betty took the low road and chose the wrong way out by murdering her ex-husband and his new bride as they lay asleep in the master bedroom of their multi-million dollar mansion, firing five fatal shots, leaving behind two corpses, a phone ripped out of the wall, and a king-sized mattress soaked in blood. It was a premeditated, cold-blooded crime. I personally believe that she should have received the death penalty since being in prison all these years hasn't improved her outlook on life. Even after all this time to reflect, her oldest son, the third of her four children, insists that his mother still doesn't believe to this day that she did anything wrong. She killed two people who may have prevoked her in a somewhat smug, meanspirited way, but she utterly destroyed the lives of her four children and three families: her own, Dan's, and the family of Linda Kolkena. Oprah herself said it best when she tried talking sense to the totally clueless, unfortunate Mrs. Broderick via satellite from prison on the second highest rated broadcast in the history of her show:"Betty, Betty, Betty."
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