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

by Bella Stumbo

  In fairness to Earley, however, Wells was vigilant as a hawk, on her feet objecting to even the most harmless questions as irrelevant. And Earley's blitzkrieg strategy probably had an emotional impact on the jurors, because, seeing Betty again for the first time in a year as they took the witness stand, most of her friends smiled at her across the courtroom with enough spontaneous warmth to convince any observer that, whatever she had become, Betty Broderick must have once been a very different person to draw so many respectable women into court to help her.

  Before Wells cut her off, Cohrs testified that Betty was, in the last days, so paranoid, so confused, and so obsessed by the litigation that she had lost all capacity to even understand the legal documents in her mailbox. Once, Cohrs said, she had dropped by to find Betty hysterical about some new legal paper she had received. Cohrs read it—only to discover that it was not a threat at all, but, instead, something routine about scheduling. By then, however, said Cohrs, the mere sight of a legal letterhead was enough to reduce Betty to hysteria. "When I told her what the letter actually said," Cohrs said later, "she just couldn't absorb it."

  Cohrs had more to say, particularly about the tears she had seen Betty shed when Dan canceled the children's visits at the last minute. But Earley didn't ask. And, certainly, Wells gave Cohrs no openings for extemporaneous commentary in her cross-exam, which lasted only seconds. All Kerry Wells wanted was for these women in their suede suits and patent leather flats to disappear.

  None of the others got much further. Wilma Engel barely got seated before her testimony was over. Ann Dick managed to lob in a couple of minor barbs on cross-exam, when Wells asked her if Betty was preoccupied with money. "No more than I was," retorted Dick, "having put a husband through law school, too. There's a certain amount of gain we are all interested in." Further, said Dick, it was unfair to focus only on Betty's spending. "You can say that about both of them …" Dan, she recalled, was always outside on weekends polishing his new sports cars.

  Two more women came strictly to testify that they had seen Betty with a black eye—on different occasions. One sweet-faced matron, married to an attorney at Gray, Cary, testified in a nervous voice that she had seen Betty with a black eye back in 1978, on the afternoon of the Blackstone Ball, when Betty, then the decorations chairman, had arrived to help arrange the orchids. Another La Jolla mother whose children Betty had once baby-sat, recalled a separate incident, when Betty had heavy makeup over what looked to her like a black eye. Betty told her she had stumbled and fallen.

  Other women came to testify to Betty's spirituality, and to her soccer coaching days. Candace McCarty met Betty in 1984, when Betty joined a Bible study class at the local Presbyterian Church which McCarty was leading. And, at the end of every Bible class, said McCarty, "Betty individually blessed her children, and her marriage, and her husband ... "I always thought she was a very spiritual person."

  Beverly Jean Morris, a no-nonsense third-grade teacher and soccer coach—and the only non-La Jollan of the lot—strode briskly to the witness stand in a purple jogging suit and tennis shoes, where she curtly announced that "Coach Broderick" was a real pro, despite the fact that her own son, Rhett, was often absent from practice and games. At times, said Morris, Coach Broderick would arrive for duty "close to tears—but she always maintained her composure in front of the children." As Morris marched out of the courtroom, she flashed Betty two thumbs up, along with a solemn nod of salute. Except for Wells, nearly everybody in the courtroom laughed, including the judge.

  And so it went. More women followed. Judy Backhaus, another of Betty's old friends, remembered once catching her eating raw cupcake batter. By then, Betty was already exceedingly overweight. Littering the kitchen were dozens of loaves of bread. "I said, 'My God, are the Marines coming?'" Backhaus remembered. "Betty said she couldn't remember anymore what kind of bread the kids liked, and they were coming [for the weekend] so she had bought a loaf of every kind, just in case."

  Marilyn Olsen, wife of a La Jolla developer, seemed angrier than most about Betty's legal problems. To her, Betty had been victimized by the legal system, thanks to the clout carried by Dan Broderick—and Wells couldn't cut her off.

  "Well, that's the whole story, isn't it?" Olsen challenged Wells sharply during cross-exam. Olsen then delivered a quick, efficient little speech about the failings of the American legal system, which leaves women and children to survive divorce as best they can. In the end, Olsen thought, given her treatment by Dan, Betty had behaved predictably, "like a rat in a maze—panic and attack."

  By midafternoon, the jurors looked numbed. It had been a dizzying day of revolving-door witnesses—so many that even reporters were bickering over their head counts.

  But none of it had added up to much, beyond the sad portrait of a formerly beautiful, energetic, likable, bright woman who had collapsed into crazy behavior, lost her children, and finally killed. No real motivation was established, beyond the fact that Dan Broderick, like millions of other men abroad on this earth, had cheated, lied, and finally left his wife for another younger, prettier woman. Beyond that, there was little amid this blizzard of well-meaning testimony from her friends to set Betty Broderick apart from any other rejected, deceived wife in the same boat who did not kill.

  Next came Lee Broderick, not yet twenty years old, looking nervous and scared, as before, to testify this time for the defense. She was here today to do what she could to help balance the picture her sister, Kim, had presented.

  Jack Earley began with a question about what life was like at home before the separation.

  "Well, we had lots of friends, parties, good times … everybody liked to come over to our house," Lee said. "I thought we had a happy family."

  And what about Kim, Earley demanded. Wouldn't she get very upset over money? Lee smiled uncertainly, her eyes flickering across the courtroom, lighting first on her mother's expectant face, then on her sister, who smiled back with understanding.

  "Well, Kim gets very emotional very easily," Lee agreed with a bashful smile. And, yes, Kim complained about money problems a lot.

  Lee went on to say that she had heard both Dan and Linda refer to her mother, as "Fat, disgusting, beastly, the Beast, the Monster ... on the rampage, on the warpath." But, she said, neither of them used obscenities, like her mother did.

  As many a wise man has observed, it is never the big things in life, like death and divorce, that get to us—in the end, it's always the small stuff, adding up. And for the duration of the Broderick trial, Jack Earley subscribed with deepest passion to this notion. Thus, he turned next to still more domestic trivia. Furniture, for example.

  Lee agreed that "My mom would ask my dad for furniture and stuff, but he wouldn't give it to her." She recalled in particular a certain table Betty had wanted from the garage—but her father said no, "because he had files stored on it." Betty was "real mad" about that, Lee said.

  Likewise, she said, Linda refused to return her mother's wedding china, because "She said Mom didn't get it in court, so she wasn't going to get it … she hid it."

  How about Dan's drinking? Earley asked.

  "Yes, he would drink with his friends on weekends," said Lee. And "sometimes he would come home drunk." Earley pressed in vain to get her to also say that, on at least one occasion, she had to drive Dan and Linda home, even before she got her driver's license, because they were both too drunk to drive. Lee had told Earley and Pasas that in earlier interviews. But in court now she wouldn't say it. Lee Broderick wasn't going to go the extra mile to disgrace her dead father.

  She did agree, however, that Dan had a violent, unpredictable temper. "Nobody wanted to disobey him or make him mad when he was home from work," she said. Period. Earley looked ready to leap across the room and strangle her. Only weeks before, Lee had told him in detail how Dan had gone on angry rampages, once even ripping the seat out of their boat. But now, when it most counted, she would volunteer no colorful details at all to further damage Dan.


  And how about her own treatment by her father, Earley asked next, sourly, tauntingly. Hadn't Dan treated her poorly? Written her out of his will?

  Lee only looked sad. Yes, she agreed, she and her father had not gotten along at all. He wouldn't even give her a key to his house, she said, because she moved so often between his house and Betty's. "He was afraid that my mom might copy it," she added. It was another damning little detail Earley didn't need.

  In the end, Lee failed Earley entirely. She provided no vivid details of emotional abuse, Dan's violence, her mother's despair, or her sister's duplicitous ways. She wouldn't even criticize Linda.

  But instead of revising his approach, instead of swapping his hammer blows for a powder puff, Earley spent a few more minutes trying to force Lee Broderick to tell the court what she had told him in private. He failed. The girl only withdrew more and more.

  Finally, with a flounce of almost childish pique, Earley sat down. Sensitivity was never his strong suit.

  Kerry Wells was almost smiling as she rose for cross-exam.

  Wasn't it true, she asked, that Lee's father was afraid of Betty?

  Oh, yes, Lee instantly agreed, looking surprised at the question. Dan would want to know "if he needed protection," she told Wells. He would frequently ask Lee if her mother was in a bad mood. If she was, "We'd tell him, and he'd get armed guards."

  In fact, Lee added, the only reason she had learned her mother had a gun was because her father had asked her to find out; so she had asked Betty, who had then shown it to her. She reported back to her dad that the gun was no joke. It was real.

  Lee also agreed with Wells that, despite her dad's temper, she had never seen him hit any of the children—and the only time she ever saw him strike her mother was on the night Betty had run her car into his front door.

  On the other hand, Lee refused to agree with Wells that her mother sometimes rejected her sons on weekends, merely to disrupt whatever plans Dan and Linda might have. No, said Lee, firmly. That was never true. "My mom would always rather be with my brothers than mess up their plans."

  Wasn't it true, Wells next asked, that the only reason Lee was having problems with her father—the reason Dan Broderick had been angry enough to write her out of his will—was because she was in fact seriously messing up with school and drugs and had even run away from home? Lee agreed, with a shamed smile, that, yes, she had been a rebel child "for a significant period of time." If Jack Earley had tried to lay guilt on Kim for inciting Betty to murderous rage with her complaints about Dan's mistreatment of her, Kerry Wells was matching him step by step in her exploitation of Lee's guilt for displeasing her dead dad.

  It only got worse for the defense.

  In her coup de grace, Wells then asked Lee if it wasn't true that she had begun a rapprochement with her father during the last months of his life, after she had gotten her high school equivalency certificate and otherwise begun to stabilize.

  Lee Broderick paused for several seconds before answering. When she did, her voice was unsteady, but her smile was one of pathetic puppy-dog happiness. Yes, she told Wells, flushing, "One of the last conversations I had with my dad, I told him I had passed my general education exam … and he was gonna put me back in … [the will]." She looked ready to cry. So did half the jury. So did a couple of reporters.

  And, asked Wells, in the gentlest voice she had used during the entire trial, wasn't it also true that her dad had "been kind of bragging about you to his brothers and sisters … about how well you were doing? Right?"

  Yes, said Lee, no longer able to raise her eyes above her lap.

  Satisfied, Wells turned the floor back to Earley, who did not grace it. He was in fact steaming.

  But wasn't it equally true, he asked Lee, that a lot of what she had heard about her father's alleged forgiveness, his supposed plans to reinstate her in his will, had surfaced only lately, after the killings? Wasn't it furthermore true, he demanded, that, even as late as summertime 1990, she wasn't even permitted to have her brothers' telephone number?

  Lee meekly agreed that, true, she hadn't been allowed to have her brothers' phone number. Beyond that, she said, mumbling now, she really didn't know anything more about anything.

  At recess, Wells walked up to Lee, who was standing in the corridor wiping her eyes, and congratulated her. "Good job!" she said, with one of her rare, tight little smiles.

  Then, before Lee even had time to absorb the meaning of Kerry Wells's applause, Marion Pasas, white with anger, walked up and, in a moment of meanness which still shames her, accused Lee of "stabbing your mother in the back." Lee fled the courthouse, to the street corner outside, where she stood alone, sobbing. It was Jack Earley, whose temper fits seldom seem to last more than five minutes, who shambled after her to say that it was all okay. He even patted the anguished girl on the shoulder, which is, for Earley, an awkward thing to do.

  Then along came Kim. The two Broderick sisters stood on the street corner, clinging to each other and crying. They then left together, before the morning session was done, to go wherever two sisters go when their mother is on trial for two murders.

  That was November 7—Betty's forty-third birthday. Earlier that day, Kim had passed her mother a card in court:

  "… Too bad it's not a good birthday this year, too bad we can't sing in court. Next year will be much better," the card read in part. Kim told her mother again that she loved her and missed her and couldn't wait until she got out of jail. "Remember when I was a little girl and at all my birthday parties I used to cry?" she added, in a final note, "I guess I was hysterical even then …"

  Weeks later, Betty was still puzzling over that card. Her feelings were as confused as her daughter's, just as ambivalent. If Kim wanted to testify against her mother, but still be forgiven, the mother was angry but willing. That has not changed to this day.

  Even after the first verdict, Betty still sat in her tiny, hermetically sealed jail cell, studying that birthday card, trying to understand. One evening, from the jail phone, she read it aloud, again.

  "… Now, this is a person who's been told that if she testified against me, I'd get at least fifteen years, and maybe life without parole, and she's giving me a birthday card saying next year it's going to be much better?'" She then laughed gaily, as she always does when she is hiding pain.

  Three weeks after her murder trial had begun, and more than one year after the killings, her parents finally came to visit their daughter.

  But only her father came to court. It was near the end of an afternoon session when the old man stepped off the elevator with two of his sons. A small, trim man with wavy silver hair and brilliant blue eyes ("He looks just like Paul Newman," Betty always brags), neatly dressed in a camel blazer and gray slacks, Frank Bisceglia, nearly 80, looked shy, uncertain, and, like all the Bisceglia family, so sadly shamed as he blinked into the crowd milling in the corridor. Some faces he recognized—especially Gail and Brian Forbes. He had spent many friendly evenings sitting around his daughter's dinner table with them in La Jolla.

  What happened next verged on the obscene. These people, whose only purpose in court that day was to help convict his daughter, rushed to greet him. They offered their handshakes, they welcomed him, they inquired into his health, and his wife's. It would take Frank Bisceglia another year before he gathered his wits and anger enough to tell them all to go to hell.

  But now, bewildered and overwhelmed by the whole situation, he only murmured politely to everyone, while his two sons moved their big, solid bodies between him and the reporters, who were creeping in fast with elephant ears.

  His wife could not face coming to court, he said, although he did not put it so bluntly. Like his daughter, Frank Bisceglia always tries to put the best face on things. "Mother is having lunch at the hotel," he explained vaguely. And, he added, "All my children told me not to come today, too, but ..." He shrugged. He wanted to see Betty Anne.

  "Things will all work out for the best," he said to those
gathered about him. "Betty Anne is a good girl. I'd like to give her a spanking when this is over."

  It was one of life's small, poignant scenes when Betty turned to discover her father sitting in the front row behind her. Her smile was instant and absolutely radiant. She looked both shocked and thrilled. But, in the next second she flushed, and suddenly, shyly, turned away, returning with great, exaggerated purpose to her busy scribblings on her legal pads.

  Her father sat quietly for the next two hours, with watering eyes, listening to one witness after another, including Gail Forbes, denounce his child.