Until the Twelfth of Never - Should Betty Broderick ever be free?

by Bella Stumbo

  She was taller than he, a slender, pretty, bubbly woman, with a decided overbite, which, from certain angles, gave her face a pouty, sexy look, of the sort you see in fashion magazines. And, in fact, she told them, she had once done some modeling in New York, back in her college days. She told them that she had a degree in child psychology from Mount Saint Vincent's. But, beyond that, she didn't say too much about herself. It was always Dan's career she talked about. And their children. She was pregnant most of the time. In 1976 she had a third child, another in 1979, with a miscarriage in between. Most memorable was her way with kids. She loved them and they loved her. To make a few extra dollars, she began baby-sitting during the day for other wives who wanted a few hours to themselves. She called her little backyard day-care center "Time Out" and charged $1 an hour. She was an instant hit. Word quickly spread all over La Jolla that Betty Broderick was not only the cheapest but the best baby-sitter in town. "Betty always had the latest in any toy that was educational," one mother, Ann Dick, remembers. Another recalls being hurt when her own child came home and demanded to know "why I wasn't more like Betty Broderick."

  "I remember going over there to try to take her shopping or to a movie or something," says Candy Westbrook, widow of an attorney, "and there would be Betty, standing in her kitchen, saying, 'Oops, no, not today, we're doing cookies, or biscuits, or fudge.' She always had half a dozen kids around her, splashing dough everywhere. The place was a mess, but she loved it. Kids were her whole life. She was a complete Mother Earth type. Once I went over and she was dressed like Miss Piggy. Betty would do anything to make a little kid laugh."

  "She was always just such a neat mom. I'd go over and find her popping popcorn in a roomful of two-year-olds, and then she'd take the lid off so it would spray all over the room," recalled Pickard, whose own children stayed with Betty frequently. "And they would just squeal with delight. I would've never done that, because I wouldn't want to clean up the mess. But Betty didn't care. She was always so impulsive. I always wished I could be more like her."

  "She was famous for her children's parties," Barbara Zobell remembered. "Once when we needed some party sticks [lights] for some charity event, and we couldn't find them anywhere in town, we called Betty—and she had a full supply in what she called her 'Kids' Closet.' She had everything imaginable in there for kids' parties—streamers, lights, crepe flyers, Halloween costumes. You name it, Betty had it."

  Like a Norman Rockwell painting, Betty Broderick's home was also filled with needlepoint and wall-plaque homilies to the family unit.

  "The most valuable thing to spend on your children is your time," said one sampler.

  Another read: "The best thing a father can do for his children is love their mother."

  And she herself was always a living storybook, ready to delight children with spontaneous tales of Freddy the Frog or Oscar the Chimney Sweep and a million others. Even today, her memory for these children's stories remains extraordinary.

  One day, two years after she was jailed for murder, she suddenly began reciting a favorite ditty, called "Cobwebs and Dust," over the phone. Her voice, normally so high-pitched and rapid, slowed and softened:

  Cobwebs and dust will be there tomorrow,

  But babies grow up, we've learned to our sorrow.

  So cobwebs be quiet! Dust go to sleep!

  I'm rocking my baby, 'cause babies don't keep.

  Chapter 3

  An American Family Album

  That Dan and Betty Broderick would wind up in La Jolla, once they had moved to the San Diego area, was practically inevitable. These two had been primed from the cradle to succeed in all the conventional ways.

  Their backgrounds were parallel in many respects. Both were products of large, devoutly Catholic, East Coast families, each affluent enough to send their many children to the best parochial schools from kindergarten through college.

  Dan grew up in Pittsburgh, the oldest of nine children, where his father, Daniel Broderick II, operated a successful lumber brokerage. His family was Irish American, with all the usual Irish traditions. St. Patrick's Day was nearly as venerable a holiday as Christmas and Easter; song-and-ale was a family recreation, at least for the males—and it was a given that Dan, as well as his four brothers, would attend Notre Dame in Great Bend, Indiana, as their father had before them. His sisters attended Catholic women's schools, including the Notre Dame affiliate, St. Mary's. Although Dan later drifted away from the church and never visited Ireland, being Irish Catholic was at the heart of his self-identity until the day he died.

  Betty was the third of six children, raised in Eastchester, New York, a forty-five-minute train ride from Manhattan. She graduated from Mount Saint Vincent, a small, prestigious Catholic women's college in Riverdale, New York, within driving distance of home. Her family was Irish on her mother's side, Italian on her father's. Her mother was part of a sprawling family of aunts and uncles studded with nuns and priests, many of them recent enough immigrants to still speak with an Irish brogue. Her father, Frank Bisceglia, the youngest of thirteen children of Italian immigrants, was a partner with his brothers in a second-generation family plastering business, and they chattered among themselves in Italian.

  In both families, the children were assiduously schooled in Roman Catholic gospel, from communions to confessions. Lent was observed as faithfully as Christmas, the Catechisms were as central to their upbringing as their ABCs. Every child owned a rosary and understood from infancy that among life's taboos were divorce, adultery, abortion, and contraception. Sex was for reproduction, not pleasure.

  Both the Broderick and Bisceglia families also placed a premium on higher education, self-discipline, and success. Success, as defined by both families, meant conformity to traditional values in every respect. You went to school, excelled, married, raised children, worked hard, and attended Mass—and, if you were truly successful, you would eventually wind up enjoying even more material luxuries than your parents did. Sex roles were clearly identified in both households: women were, first and foremost, wives and childbearers; men were the bread earners. And nobody in either family had ever, ever been divorced.

  There the similarities end.

  Although Dan's family, by all accounts, was somewhat wealthier, it was also stricter, thriftier, less concerned with the social amenities than Betty's. A stern, unsentimental man, Daniel T. Broderick II did not pamper his children, according to three of Dan's sisters, all now wives and mothers. Theirs was a no-frills upbringing—no new cars at age sixteen, no casual handouts for trips to the movies or ice cream parlors, no new dresses for every occasion. "Ours was a hand-me-down family," says Dan's sister Patti. "Our father had a very strong work ethic. We weren't raised to take money for granted, to spend frivolously." Instead, the Broderick children were expected to work for every penny of their allowances, which were always small. "We always had charts posted in the house, designating which one of us was supposed to rake the leaves, or mow the grass, or do the dishes. The boys did the outdoor work, we did the indoor things," says Dan's oldest sister, Kathleen.

  Nor were the Broderick children indulged with summer camps and travel, [even to nearby New York City]. Instead, their father bought a summer home in Madison, Ohio, on Lake Erie, which became the family's annual vacation retreat. Life in the summertime was simple and unaffected. The Broderick youngsters swam in the lake, played hide and seek in the yard, and devised their own fun. They also had horses. Dan loved horses. But when he was about fifteen, his favorite, Dancer, broke a leg. His sisters still remember how Dan held Dancer's head in his lap as the lethal injection was administered. That night, Kathleen recalls, "We all sat in the living room, listening to Danny cry upstairs. And we cried, too. It's the only time I can ever remember all of us sitting together, as a family, and crying … except for when Danny died …"

  It was also a rigidly patriarchal family. The senior Broderick was undisputed master of his domain, in control of everything from finances to dinner table pr
otocol. Among his various household rules, for example, dinner was to be served precisely at the same time each night, and once he sat down at the head of his table, "You did not get up, not until dinner was finished, not even to answer the telephone," says Dan's youngest sister, Christy. Their mother, Yolanda, who had left college early to marry, was by all accounts an exceedingly passive partner.

  It was not a household, in short, into which a pampered, pretty blond princess from New York was apt to find herself instantly at home. Years later, Betty would remember how the boys teased their sisters by calling them "Yuks—too wet to step on, too low to kick." Dan's sisters still remember it, too, with visible annoyance, although, says Kathleen, "They didn't mean anything hurtful by it—they just thought it was funny."

  Throughout his childhood, Dan was accorded all the benefits and burdens of being the oldest son and father's namesake. On the one hand, he was the golden boy who could do no wrong, adored by both parents. But at the same time, the pressure was heavy on him to succeed, to do his proud father even prouder—and Daniel T. Broderick II was, according to Christy, "tremendously success oriented, and he valued his real property immensely." He conditioned all his children from childhood "to become as successful as we could possibly be in life," says Patti. As the oldest son, Dan bore the brunt of that message. Likewise, he was also accustomed from an early age to taking a leadership role in the family. Dan Broderick's adult personality, in short, was forged by a conventional, predictable family dynamic—and the result was the usual double-edged sword: If he later became a workaholic overachiever in life, he was also imbued with the confidence from an early age that he could accomplish anything he chose simply because he was Daniel T. Broderick III. Unlike the woman he would marry, Dan Broderick never suffered any apparent personal insecurities about anything.

  Listening to the melancholy memories of Dan's sisters after his death, it's clear that they certainly saw their big brother as virtually perfect in every way. Sitting in a San Diego bar one day during trial, they recalled his personal quirks with tender amusement: What a candy junkie he was, always stealing the family car to make penny-candy runs. And such a clotheshorse, even as a child, that it was a family joke. When he went off to college, everyone waited with fond interest to see what the latest fad would be when he came home on vacation—suspenders, bow ties, bell bottoms. "Danny was always a trendsetter," says Kathleen. "And he always had some new word for the season, too. Once it was 'knave.' Everybody was a 'knave' for a couple of months. Another time it was 'succulent.' Everything was 'succulent' for months, especially the girls."

  His sisters also saw a lot of their father in Dan as he grew older. The senior Broderick, for example, was apparently just as proud of his possessions, including his lawn, as Dan later would be. Every week, the sisters say, the family lawn had to be mowed, clipped, and made perfect—and usually it was Dan who did it.

  As Dan grew into adulthood, those same personality traits he shared with his father led to occasional clashes between the two strong-minded men. Once, for instance, during the summer after he left Betty, Dan took Rhett to visit with his parents for a couple of weeks. His father jokingly threatened to shave Rhett's hair off as soon as Dan left—just as he had once done to Dan and his brothers in their childhood. Dan ordered him not to do it, but as soon as Dan left town, the elder Broderick had his way—he gave Rhett a crew cut straight out of the fifties. Years later, in the divorce trial, Dan's anger still showed. "I told him if he ever touched one of my kids again, he would never see them again," he testified.

  Betty's family was more preoccupied with social graces and civic participation. Her parents were active in numerous church and community organizations, from the Knights of Columbus and the Bronxville Women's Club to school boards. They also spent more freely on the trappings of the good life, everything from clothing and table wines to housekeepers—a basic difference in acculturation that would divide Betty and Dan until the end of their story. Whatever the family budget could afford, the Bisceglia children were allowed to explore—travel, summer camps, dance classes, tennis lessons, music teachers.

  Hers was also a warmer, more family-oriented upbringing. Betty's mother's sister, Kay, with four cousins, lived just across the Street, and each Sunday, relatives from all over the New York area converged on the Bisceglia household for dinner. Sunday dinners were a tradition, the highlight of the week, with a crowd of aunts, uncles, and cousins gathered at a table heaping with food, where Betty's jolly father exhorted everyone in Italian to eat more and more—"Mangia! Mangia!"—and, given the slightest opening, regaled them with tales of the Allied liberation of Italy, too, where he had proudly served in World War II.

  To this day, Betty's adoration of her father is powerfully clear—as is her equally strong resentment of her mother. "My dad was such a sentimentalist," she says. "He would cry over anything. He's just a complete sweetheart." But, she adds, "He's also a complete wimp, just like me—he would never do anything to upset my mother because she would take to her bed in her satin bed jacket with the vapors. I love my dad and my mom. They're both good people—but they've led such nice, peaceful lives that they simply can't face anything unpleasant. And so they don't face it. They go to Paris instead and sing tra-la-la-la, and just pretend nothing's happening."

  Betty's attitude toward her mother is the classic love-hate relationship between mothers and daughters, the age-old tug-of-war between two women so much alike that they are in constant competition and therefore loathe each other. At the same time, they must still love what they must see in the mirror reflection of each other's eyes, which is themselves. And Betty is a reflection of Marita Bisceglia in so many respects, from her fixation with "social awareness" to physical size—only Betty among the three Bisceglia daughters grew to her mother's imposing height, 5'10".

  "When I was in the middle of the divorce, the bitch wouldn't even listen to me, because it was too upsetting to her, and Mother can't bear anything upsetting," Betty said later with venomous sarcasm. Then, after the homicides, her mother was so devastated that she "took to her bed again … She would've rather I killed myself because it would've gone down better at the women's club." Her parents didn't visit her until more than a year after she had been jailed.

  At the same time, Betty openly admires her mother. To this day, nobody's opinion, nobody's approval, nobody's forgiveness matters to her more than Marita Bisceglia's. One of two daughters of a New York City policeman and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Hunter College, Mrs. Bisceglia was an elementary schoolteacher before she married. Thereafter, she worried over her children's training in everything from cooking and thank-you notes to the etiquette of addressing housekeepers and waiters.

  "She taught us how to do things right," Betty says proudly. "She was socially aware. She knew the right stationery, the right china, the right everything, and she always saw to it that we got the best of everything they could afford. From the time we were children, for instance, my sisters and I always got a piece of silver on every holiday. By the time we were in college, we had a complete set of quality silver to last a lifetime." Hers was also a family in which the girls were encouraged toward sentimentality—collections of stuffed animals, dolls, and other delicate things. In later years, Betty would still be complaining that, in the divorce, she had lost track of her collection of fragile demitasse cups, begun for her thirty years ago by her mother.

  Once, from jail, Betty summarized, in a single trenchant paragraph, the differences in parental role models she and Dan had grown up with. "Mr. Broderick had nothing to do with the kids. But my father probably did seventy percent of the kid stuff. Everything. My mother refused to even drive a car while we were all young. Therefore, there was never any discussion of whether Mrs. Bisceglia was going to be driving to the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the piano lessons, the dancing lessons. Daddy did it all. Daddy bought all the groceries, because Mother didn't drive. But, then, after we grew up, she drove. I have to hand it to her," Betty finished
with a chuckle, "she wasn't stupid."

  And so, just as Betty Broderick's view of the proper, loving father was based on her own, so was her notion of the woman's role in the home based on her mother's model: Mother was queen, the center of attention at all times. Mother ruled.

  Betty was also a physical novelty in her family. Besides being the only tall, rail-thin daughter in a family prone to overweight, she was also the only Bisceglia child born towheaded. When her blond hair began to turn mouse brown in high school, she kept it blond from a bottle. In time, she bore little resemblance to the rest of her family, except for her blue eyes, which Frank Bisceglia, Italian or no, bequeathed to all his children. She also inherited her mother's overbite, which she didn't correct until she and Dan had moved to La Jolla.

  Like Dan, she was always a top student. Unlike Dan, as the middle child in a big family, she was never as secure in herself. Years later, during the sentencing phase of her trial, her Aunt Kay wrote the judge, in a plea for leniency:

  "I remember Betty as the pretty little girl in the middle of a high-talent family, behind a supersmart older brother and a beautiful older sister, and followed by a winsome younger sister and brother[s]," wrote Kay Fenzel. "Betty always had to 'run very fast just to stay in place' … even with her own special good looks and intelligence … When Betty grew tall and willowy, no one acknowledged this as her own beauty asset. Downgraded in her own eyes, she adopted a frolicking, devil-may-care manner, which did not entirely conceal the lurking self-doubt in her eyes.

  "Yearning for love herself, Betty Anne BESTOWS love—on younger children, wounded birds, neighborhood cats and dogs, and her 'little cousins up the road.' Her creativity and intelligence found humor in life and she regularly led the fun. When I would stop by the Bisceglia home, Betty was the one I would see carrying the baby of the family on her hip while keeping up light patter and hijinks. Ever and again, nonetheless, there was that lonely, hangdog look, that eagerness to please. Insouciance covered up self-doubt …"