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

by Bella Stumbo

  Howatt cut her off before she could press the question further.

  Next she wanted to describe the frustrations of her search for a leading San Diego divorce lawyer to take on Dan Broderick. But Barry objected. Sustained. Irrelevant.

  By now, Betty was obviously beginning to wonder what was relevant. She couldn't talk about Linda, or Larry, or anything to do with "fault." Now she couldn't talk about the problems she perceived in finding a decent local lawyer either? All these arguments and delays over her attorney fees were "done purposely to delay and drag this case on to create all these Epsteins!" she told Howatt.

  No, he said. The history of her attorney search was not relevant to the property/custody issues at hand.

  "It's going to be relevant if I lose!" Betty snapped. "I have $80,000 expended in attorney fees, and here I sit without an attorney … Tell me, please," she asked Howatt, "how does it impact the whole Epstein mystery that this [divorce trial] is four years down the road? If I was successful in having Mr. Taffe come in with both feet on October, 1985, would there have been any such thing as a dollar of Epsteins?"

  "There may well have been," said Howatt. "There are a lot of cases, not yours alone, that take a substantial period of time to resolve." Although she might feel personally frustrated by the history of her case, he added, that had nothing to do with the issue of Epstein credits. "They either are or they aren't there. It is that simple," Howatt told her. "He either paid them or he didn't pay them. They are either legitimate Epstein credits or they are not."

  But wasn't it true, she persisted, that the years of delays in her trial had increased the Epsteins? "It's my simple understanding that if the property was separated … closer to the time of separation or filing for divorce, then this whole book worth of Epsteins wouldn't have existed. Isn't that correct?"

  Howatt finally agreed. "It is possible," he said, "that if the divorce was concluded earlier, these Epstein credits would not have accrued."

  She arrived in court on the third day of trial, her mind roiling. Custody. Epsteins. Where? How? What? She felt like hell. She was getting the flu. Or was she? She had felt lousy for so long. What should she ask first? Custody. That was the goal now. Concentrate.

  She was determined to make Dan admit that the issue of her mental health was simply his contrived, face-saving excuse for abandoning his family. Betty would never forgive him for calling her crazy.

  When exactly had he first told her children she was mentally ill? she demanded. Craftily, she tried to sneak around Howatt and the no-fault issue by avoiding any mention of Linda this time. "When I would confront you with questions about a certain other party, wasn't your answer that I was sick?"

  But Dan was craftier. Could she be more specific? "Were you seen at several parties around town with Linda Kolkena in 1983?" she blurted out. Objection. Sustained. No-fault.

  Poor, doomed Betty. Her frustration sizzles on the transcript pages.

  This wasn't an issue of fault, she protested again. It was a critical custody issue, because Dan's only grounds for trying to keep the kids was "that he is claiming my needing psychiatric help ... He has been using this big image of me as a mental case to establish custody since '83 … That's what he based his custody on … that 'You are sick.' I've never been accused of a single thing that I can rebut and disprove. Nothing. There is no basis that I can say, 'I'm not a drunk. I'm not a prostitute. I have never used drugs. I've never messed around. I have never smoked. I have no complaints.' I cannot rebut this custody. It's only based on my being a mental case. I'm trying to prove that I am not a mental case. I'm trying to establish by these questions why I might have been a little angry at certain things that had gone on in our marriage … why I have been forced to be so angry at the manipulations of Mr. Broderick from 1983 right up until today."

  Howatt was unmoved. Dan's "outside activities, shall we say, are not really assistive to your present ability to parent."

  "Do you consider that you have any health problems, Mr. Broderick?" she asked next. She had decided to turn the tables on him, expose Dan Broderick's own mental health problems.

  He had recurrent headaches and a heart murmur, he told her.

  "You don't consider that you have a drinking problem?" No, he didn't. And did he take drugs? No, he said—nothing stronger than Tylenol.

  "Have you never done dope?" she asked.

  He surrendered. She had the goods. "When I was in medical school, two or three times, in your presence, I smoked marijuana," he said. And "since I graduated from medical school in 1970, I have probably smoked marijuana—when I said 'smoked it,' I mean 'puffed it'—about three or four times, maybe a total of five times. The last time was seven or eight years ago. That's it."

  She pressed on. Did he do cocaine, too? Absolutely not, he told her. "I have never seen cocaine ... I know that's hard to believe, but I have never set eyes on it."

  This path was leading her nowhere, of course. But at least she had a good time embarrassing him.

  At the end of the day, Howatt pressured Betty to hurry up. How much more time would she be needing—"another thirty minutes on the figures that you are going through and two hours on custody, or what?"

  "I don't know. I don't know," she answered, flustered. "I don't even know what I'm going to ask him yet on custody. It just seems a pretty huge issue to me. Once I get Mr. Broderick off the stand, my case is over ... I don't really have any other witnesses to anything, except my children."

  The next day was all downhill for Betty. Her every effort only resulted in more opportunities for Dan to describe the struggle of a hardworking, single father trying to raise four children alone after their mother abandoned them.

  To support her argument that Dan was a negligent father, she had brought to court the same bag of evidence she had been hauling around for two years: ripped, dirty boys' tennis shoes with the soles flapping, girls' shoes with rundown heels, a swimming suit with the rear end ripped out, and other items of rag-tag clothes. Her evidence also included an ordinary tree stick, which she said was Rhett's Halloween costume a couple of years before.

  Howatt's impatience erupted as he eyed Betty's rag bag. He thought her assortment of scruffy children's clothing was worthless and told her so: "I accept the fact that the children have holes in their clothing. I am sure you did as a family. I am sure Mr. Broderick as a child did. I did as a child. I used to like to get my sneakers so they would pop when I walked … and it used to drive my parents nuts."

  The key thing, he continued, was who was best going to provide for the children's needs? Further, he said, "I grant you—and [Dan] has granted from the very outset—that, were it not for what he perceives to be your fixation to anger with him and the manner in which you use that in dealing with the children, that you would be far and away the better parent to have the custody ..."

  "Okay," said Betty passively.

  "Now," said Howatt, "let's deal with the stick. What is the story with the stick?" If there was sarcasm in his tone, it didn't show from Betty's eager response.

  "The stick is a Halloween costume. That is Rhett's Halloween costume for the parade at school in 1985 or '86! All the kids have costumes, and they parade around. And this is the saddest thing I have ever seen in my life, and this is not the kind of thing that my kids should be subject to. I am going to keep that forever."

  She then asked Howatt again when the boys could come talk to him. Howatt didn't see the necessity. They were so young. But Betty insisted. They, after all, were the real custody issue, "and they have been asking me on a daily if not hourly basis when they can come in here … and I think psychologically it is very important for them that they feel the least tiniest bit that they had something to say about their future." Barry didn't object, and so Howatt finally agreed. Then, in the rarest of moments in this trial, Dan and Betty Broderick briefly behaved like civilized adults concerned with the welfare of their children. In a polite exchange, they discussed when the boys should come.

  N
ot in the morning, said Dan, because Danny had two finals at school. After school, however, would be good.

  But be sure, Betty reminded him, not to "mention anything to Danny," lest he worry throughout his tests.

  "Sure," said Dan. "That is a good suggestion."

  She spent the rest of the day struggling with Epsteins. She accused Dan of deliberately dragging out payments and encumbering properties in order to increase her Epstein debt to him. Why else, for example, hadn't he paid off the Warner Springs unit? Even the piano still had a $900 debt. And why hadn't he paid off his Harvard loan of $157 per month sooner? Why did she owe him half of payments made on that loan for almost two years after he left her?

  Dan denied any preconceived plot. He made monthly payments on many bills, he said. He had been paying Harvard $157 a month since 1974, and had continued to do so simply out of habit. And the amount she owed him wasn't large—only around $2,000. Besides, he said, "I had never heard of Epstein credits until long after our separation."

  Betty tried to dispute him on grounds that his first attorney, Ashworth, is a well-known expert on Epsteins, but Howatt interrupted her. "You misunderstand the whole point," he told her.

  "I do?"

  Yes, said the judge. For instance, "It may have been of significant tax consequence in 1984 to have the interest deduction" on a $157 per month student loan payment "given the large amount of income" involved in this case. It was up to him to decide which Epstein credits Dan was claiming were legitimate and which were not. Meantime, "The most significant answer that you received so far from Mr. Broderick is … that he never heard of an Epstein credit at the time you separated, and didn't hear about them until afterward presumably … You are looking for skeletons where there are none."

  But then Betty found one.

  It came in the form of two financial statements Dan had not included in his seemingly exhaustive courtroom accountings.

  "Dan," she said innocently, "as I was looking over boxes and boxes of papers, I happened upon two bank withdrawals you made the month you left, one for $175,000 [on February 22, 1985—six days before he left her], virtually closing the account, and one from a different account for $80,000 [on February 5,1985], again virtually closing the account. Where did those monies go?"

  He fumbled. He shuffled through his papers. He couldn't tell her just now, he said, where that $255,000 had gone. But he knew that "if I go to my books, I can tell you exactly ... by two o'clock. I just don't know, looking right now, where this money went to, but I will have a paper trail where it went and what for."

  But she could see that the $175,000 was a wire transfer.

  "Dan, do you ever wire transfer money to your brother Larry?" Yes, he agreed. Sometimes.

  Betty knew where the money had gone.

  On the day he had wired that money—wherever it went—she continued, "Did you have any idea you were walking out on February 28?" No.

  "But, yet, you closed out an entire $175,000 bank account?"

  The account wasn't closed out, he said. When he left her, it still had $22,968 in it. What's more, he added, in a sudden moment of selective clarity, he was certain that on the same day he had transferred the $175,000, "There was also a deposit ... of $60,445." How he knew all this when he couldn't even remember where he had sent $175,000 was never clear.

  Betty pounced. Wasn't it possible, she asked, that if he had withdrawn this money to pay Larry for assorted Colorado debts, he had been raiding her community property, prior to the date of separation, and then double charging her later for the losses?

  Betty was never as stupid about finances as she pretended to be.

  Dan resisted. The Epsteins he was claiming, he said, "were all payments made after our separation, so this would not be involved in an Epstein credit claim."

  She was not persuaded. It struck her as unusual that so much money would disappear, she said, "just days before you walked out."

  Dan promised to find out where the money went and let her know after the lunch break. It was the only time in the entire trial that Betty had Dan Broderick on the run.

  After lunch, he reported that the $80,000 had been withdrawn to cover a tax obligation from 1984, and that the $175,000 had indeed been a loan to his brother Larry's company, Englewood Forest Products—but Larry had repaid the loan at 13 percent interest forty days later, he said.

  Betty wanted to know how that missing money affected the value of his law practice.

  It had not been included in the appraisal, Dan said—and it should have been. His figures would be immediately adjusted upward, thanks to her vigilance. "I totally forgot about the whole transaction until you asked me about it this morning," he said.

  (What he also forgot was a $450,000 loan he had made to his brother in 1988 from his pension fund—and which wouldn't be brought to light until long after he was dead, when the Broderick boys finally sued their uncle for their share of the unpaid balance.)

  In another of her more lucid moments in trial, Betty then asked Howatt at which point in time he would value Dan's law practice—at the time of separation or at the present time of trial, four years later?

  Howatt evaded the question. A community asset, such as Dan Broderick's law practice, "can be valued either at the date of separation, or at the date of trial," he told her.

  But how would he make this important determination? Betty persisted.

  Howatt would make that determination "at the end of the case," he told her, "based on the facts and circumstances that have been presented to me …"

  Betty was puzzled. So far, she pointed out, there was nothing in the record even evaluating the current worth of Dan's law practice. "That is true," said Howatt. He was volunteering nothing. "So that would be my responsibility to go get?" asked Betty. "Correct," said Howett.

  But just as it began to seem that Betty Broderick was perhaps about to turn into a tiger, clearly targeting her prey, she again reverted to a purring pussycat.

  Well, she simpered helplessly, "Do I have to go and get it through an expert—or do I just ask Mr. Broderick?"

  Reading through these trial transcripts today, it is easy to imagine the pregnant pause that must have followed that bombshell question.

  "Well, you ask him the question you want to ask him," said Howatt, "and to the extent he knows how to answer we will hear what he has to say."

  She tried. But she didn't know how. She asked Dan to explain why the value of his practice—"all the cases and hardware and computers and cars and pension and everything"—seemed to come out to less in value than what he made in a single year.

  Barry objected. Sustained. Argumentative.

  "Jeez," she hissed. And gave up.

  Court was then recessed so Judge Howatt could interview the two Broderick daughters in individual sessions. Betty beamed. She was counting on her children.

  Tall, skinny, pretty, nervous Lee, then seventeen, went first.

  What did she think about living with her dad? Howatt asked.

  "Me and my dad just don't get along," she said. "I think he is incredibly unreasonable, I can't deal with him at all, he drives me insane." She was especially angry because he hadn't invited her over for Christmas or on a trip to Hawaii the summer before.

  What else was on her mind, Howatt asked?

  Money. "I think I should get something. I feel like I've been cheated … I'm going skiing this afternoon and I had to work for three weeks every day, every night, to get enough money to go, and my dad is writing my sister a check …"

  Her father, she told Howatt, "doesn't think he owes me anything. He doesn't approve of the way I am living my life, and he doesn't want to give me anything if he doesn't have control over me, and he doesn't, because I am living with my mom."

  Generally speaking, Howatt asked, what did she fight with her father about?

  Well … she hadn't lived there in some time, Lee said, but their last argument was over a haircut. "I wanted to get a haircut and my mom wouldn't pay for it becau
se my dad has sole custody and she doesn't have enough money, and if I want my hair cut, go pay for it myself. And I was saving money for skiing, and I couldn't afford it. So I went to my dad's house and asked him very nicely if I could get my hair cut, and he said no. And I got really mad and said why not? He said, 'I don't think I should have to pay for your haircut, that is your responsibility and you take care of it yourself.'"

  She also thought her mom was being "ripped off" because she got no money for Lee's support. She liked her mom, she said, because "She doesn't have to control everything." Dan, by contrast, "thinks I am completely on drugs, but I am not. I think he is scared of me actually … He does not like to be around me. He gets nervous … like I am ... a crazy weirdo ... He just doesn't want to be bothered by me at all. He doesn't let me in his house …"

  Her brothers didn't like Dan either, she said. Why was that? asked Howatt.

  "Because they think he is mean, and they just don't like him ... I never really asked one of them why. I just think it is because he messed up the family and he wouldn't let them go see my mom. That is what they really want to do every weekend …"

  Did all the children blame Dan for the breakup?

  The boys did, she said. But not her or her sister. She and Kim understood, she said, that "there is nothing either one of them can do, if they fight all the time when they were married." And, she said, "They fought a lot." At the same time, she added wistfully, "I remember them being happy a lot, too, when I was really little. They didn't fight at all. But then they started to fight really bad, like all the time … They just like broke bottles and stuff, and yelling and screaming …"

  She sounded tired of the whole thing. "I want to just turn eighteen and get my own apartment and go to school and just have everybody leave me alone."