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

by Bella Stumbo

  "Besides, I have to look at the bright side of this," she went on. "I was more scared of getting out than of staying in anyway. How does Betty Broderick build a life with nothing? I have no earning power. How was I going to get on my feet and have a life?" She paused, thought about what she had just said, then analyzed it herself. "I was so overprotected by my parents—I'm only just now realizing how sheltered I really was. I'm such a scaredy-cat. I always was. I never really got to spread my wings. So, yeah, I'm scared … But, who knows?" she added hopefully, with determined cheer, "Maybe I can do something really cool up in prison. Women have no rights there. What I told myself today was that this was an act of God. If I could go up there [to prison] and do something worthwhile, it will all be okay."

  Then, the quiet Betty was gone. Madcap, giggling, black-humored Crazy Betty was back: "Fuck, maybe I'll organize a Jewel Ball for the women in prison to raise money for more cosmetics and candy and stuff."

  For the next month, as she awaited her sentencing, she acted more like a woman packing for an exciting new trip to an even bigger, better health spa than a convicted murderess bound for state prison for many, many years.

  "Well, everything's relative," she once remarked cheerfully—and, having consulted with some of her old Colinas roommates who had gone on to state prison, she had learned, she said drolly, "that the service is supposed to be better there than in county jail. We get real coffee and there's dental. God, I have so much plaque!"

  She made giddy jokes, too, about the importance of Brad keeping her credit cards up to date. "I want those credit cards. I can still shop from prison, you know. I can still order from catalogs." Then, in mocking parody of her own public image, "N0000thing stops the La Jolla socialite from shopping! Hell, I still have $100,000 in credit lines I could blow in two days if I got the chance, no problem."

  Meantime, she still had the media to keep her busy. Reporters continued to swarm about, now wanting her reaction to the verdict. "What's this town gonna do without Betty Broderick?" she quipped.

  She had also heard that The Maury Povich Show was doing a program featuring Sharon Blanchet, Larry Broderick, Maggie Seats, and her daughter Kim. "Can you believe that little bitch?" she asked, not even angry. "I'm going to prison, and she's still trying to bury me!"

  But Betty would have the last word. In the most exciting news of the new year, Oprah Winfrey wanted to do a full show on her case at the end of the month, just prior to sentencing. Earley would fly to Chicago for a live appearance, along with Dr. Lusterman, and Betty would be interviewed by remote hookup from the jail. "And Jack says they promised it would be just our side, none of the other stuff …"

  Upcoming, too, was the TV movie about her case. Although she was still indignant that she hadn't even been consulted, she was nevertheless excited. Good or bad, it was, after all, a movie about her.

  Finally, she preoccupied herself worrying about where her two sons were going to wind up. Neither boy wanted to stay in Denver with Kathy Broderick and her three children. Betty wanted Danny to live with her brother Frank in Nashville, Rhett with her brother Girard in St. Louis. Both brothers were willing. Girard even hired a lawyer. Dan's eight surviving siblings, by contrast, were oddly silent about the fate of their brother's sons. Only one of his cousins eventually sought to legally replace Kathy Broderick as guardian. A custody hearing was set for two days before Betty's sentencing.

  For all her singsong bravado, however, January was not a good month for Betty. Both of her sons came to San Diego for the New Year's weekend. They stayed with Mike Reidy's family. Helen Pickard had a party for them. But neither boy made the thirty-minute drive to Colinas to visit their mother. Betty was bitterly undaunted, blaming it all on pressures from Kim, Pickard, and the Broderick clan. "Given a choice, my boys will always want to see me," she insisted. "They're still hostages!" Of all the things Betty Broderick may never be able to face, even privately, the impact of her own actions on her children's subsequent reactions toward her probably is number one.

  But, finally, she broke down. As usual, it was because of her parents. Her father had written her a letter, talking about "how hard all this has been on Mother" and saying that they were canceling their grand fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration because they were so devastated by the verdict.

  Then she got a letter from her mother. She began reading from it over the jail phone one afternoon, her tone initially sardonic: "My doctors say I will never get well until I put this out of my mind," Marita Bisceglia wrote. "But I just can't accept what has happened to our wonderful family. None of us will ever get over this until the day we die. Please pray I don't get a stroke … I don't want [your father] to have to take care of me."

  Betty's voice cracked under the strain, thick with unshed tears.

  "But not a word about me! I'm the one going to prison for who knows how long—thirty-two years maybe? And not a word that God will be with me, that they love me—nothing. Instead, she's worried about herself. At forty-four years old, I'd like to say it doesn't hurt, but it does." She fought to steady herself.

  "Well, I have to hand it to her—Mother is consistent. She's been like this since I was a kid … She's a control monster, just like Dan. I remember once in high school, she bought me a gray Belgian linen dress, embroidered. It was beautiful, but it wasn't me, so I never wore it. She got upset and tore it up! Literally tore it up!"

  With that, Betty Broderick began to cry helplessly. "As long as I was properly married to the doctor-lawyer-Indian chief, I was the favorite daughter, but when I failed at that, I turned into nothing but a disgrace to her!"

  And all the others, too. Old friends, relatives, Dan's family. After the divorce, "Everybody just abandoned me. They just took off. But why?" she asked shrilly through her tears. "What did I ever do to any of them?" Nobody was ever there for her except Brad. "And he never really understood what was going on with me. By the end, I was afraid of everything, I was afraid when it rained, I was afraid when the mailman came, I was afraid to go out socially. But everybody just said I was crazy!"

  She was crying so hard that she couldn't stand it anymore. "I gotta go, they're taking us in now," she said politely. "Bye."

  Two more unpleasantries finished out her month. First, the Oprah show turned out not to be the one-sided production Jack Earley had anticipated. Instead, it also included interviews with Larry Broderick, excerpts from the infamous Danny tape, and remarks from Kerry Wells. Earley barely got sixty seconds of airtime, and, worse, Winfrey herself seemed so concerned that her audience might think she was endorsing murder that she was almost hostile in her interview with Betty from jail. "She sounded like the DA!" Betty complained later, near tears. "Her whole approach was the same old shit—the woman scorned. She asked me at one point how I could be afraid of them when they were wearing bulletproof vests!" She had been so upset, she said, that she almost walked out at one point. "But I just couldn't. I can't be rude to anybody—much less on national TV."

  Even so, it turned out to be the second-highest-rated show in the program's history. Which meant that Winfrey would not only come back for more eight months later, but her tone would be much, much nicer—and Betty, of course, would docilely play ball again.

  At about the same time, the boys' custody hearing was also indefinitely delayed at the last minute, at the request of the Broderick attorneys—until well after Betty had been shipped to prison, far from San Diego. She was beside herself. Her hate surfaced as clearly as it had since the day she went to jail for murder.

  "How can I still be divorcing this fucker who's been dead for two and a half years??!!!" she screamed over the phone. "It is never over! It's the same shit! I still can't even talk to my own kids! Dan Broderick got his balls shot off for that!"

  And then the hour of sentencing was at hand. On February 7, 1992, Judge Thomas J. Whelan would at last do what two conflicted juries had been unable to do: He would crack down on Betty Broderick as harshly as the law allowed.

  The
little courtroom filled up fast, this time almost exclusively with family, close friends, and court staff. For the first time in two trials, members of Linda Kolkena's family—Maggie and a brother, Ray—were also in the courtroom.

  For once, Betty did not turn and smile at her friends. She looked almost scruffy, in wrinkled blue pants with an orange blouse and plaid Escada jacket. Her hair was flat, she wore no makeup. She looked pale and tired. Even when Lee entered the courtroom, she couldn't smile. She only turned a wan face to her daughter and lifted the fingers of one hand, laying on the desk, in a small gesture of hello.

  Earley entered his perfunctory motion for a new trial, which he knew would be denied, since no judge was likely to overrule himself. And he was right. At liberty at last to tell the world exactly what he had been thinking all this time from his bench, the benign Judge Thomas Whelan was no longer so benign.

  No defense witnesses had been unfairly excluded, declared Whelan—and especially not Daniel Sonkin, since, in Whelan's view, there was no evidence whatsoever that Betty Broderick had been either physically or sexually abused by her former husband. But, for the record, Whelan was careful to stress that he had never ruled "against evidence of battered-women syndrome … or emotional abuse." Instead, he had bent over backward in both trials, he said, to give Betty "wide latitude to speak … she had a full and complete hearing."

  Nevertheless, Whelan found that Betty Broderick really had no case at all. In his view, she was not a victim of legal abuse, any more than she had been a victim of sexual or physical abuse. "He [Dan] was not trying to drag her through the system." Instead, as Whelan saw it, Dan Broderick was "a man trying to bring this thing to a logical and speedy conclusion." In fact, Whelan thought Dan had been generous in his dealings with Betty. He cited two examples in support of his view:

  First, Judge Joseph had once chastised Dan for changing his mind at the last minute and asking that the court not jail Betty after all. And, secondly, Dan had advanced Betty about $40,000 beyond her half of the proceeds on the sale of the Coral Reef house. Whelan was evidently unimpressed by the fact that, in lieu of jail, Betty had been fined thousands of dollars instead, and that every dollar of the house advance was ultimately subtracted from her share of their community property in the divorce trial years later.

  In summary, it was the opinion of this San Diego Superior Court Judge that the San Diego judiciary had behaved in a consistently exemplary fashion, and so had the former president of the San Diego County Bar Association, Daniel T. Broderick III.

  Jack Earley's motion was therefore denied.

  Then came the sentencing.

  Kerry Wells was, as ever, concise. If Betty Broderick wasn't punished for two murders, rather than one, she said, the message that would go out to all potential killers was that, "Hey, if you're going to kill one, you might as well take out a couple of others, too." She also argued that "beyond her clever self-promotion," Betty was "a very disturbed woman" who might kill again "if she felt wronged."

  The saga of Betty Broderick had thus come full circle: from the crazy woman Dan Broderick had once defeated in divorce court so successfully that she had even been denied visitation rights with her own children, to the cold-blooded, premeditating killer of the district attorney's scenario who merely had a personality disorder and should go to prison for life. Betty Broderick was now, once more, a potential lunatic who might go on a murderous rampage again, if ever freed.

  Wells saved her last angry salvo for the media, which had, in her mind, turned a merciless killer into an unwarranted star: "I think it's time for everyone—including the press," she said, staring idly into the press gallery, "to give [Betty Broderick] what she so richly deserves: Ignore her! … She is not a martyr, she is a murderer!"

  It was a good speech—despite the fact that it was rife with hypocrisy. Not only did Wells later grant press interviews with nearly as much enthusiasm as Jack Earley did, recounting how she had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, but within weeks she even signed on as a paid consultant for a TV sequel to the upcoming TV movie of the week about the Broderick trial. Her fee was rumored to range anywhere from $50,000 to $75,000.

  It was then Earley's turn to speak. Jack Earley is not well suited to the role of beggar. But he tried. In a strained voice, he beseeched Tom Whelan to grant his client concurrent sentences, to show mercy "so that she will have some ability to die outside of prison … Elisabeth Broderick will probably spend virtually all her life in state prison … All I'm asking the court to remember is who she was before this … that she is a victim, as well as Dan and Linda Broderick and the children, and the families …"

  He then went on to insult the judge. Earley was an angry man that day. He reminded Whelan, again, that if Betty had killed "a plumber, a banker, or a newspaper writer," her crime would never have attracted such attention. Next, he bluntly urged Whelan to "resist the temptation" to either look "like a hero" in the eyes of the San Diego legal community, or to worry over the potential disparagement he might face if he rendered a verdict of leniency.

  "Jeez, was that stupid," investigator Bill Green whistled under his breath. But Jack Earley knew he had nothing to lose.

  Whelan sentenced Elisabeth Anne Broderick to two fifteen-years-to-life terms, running consecutively. These were separate acts of violence, in his view. She had aimed her gun deliberately at both victims. Whelan was struck, especially, by the "high degree of callousness" displayed by her ripping the phone out of the wall and departing when at least one of her victims was still alive.

  With 1,236 days of credit for time served, she would be eligible for parole in nineteen years.

  Betty didn't bat an eye. But, this time, she didn't smile her Madonna smile either.

  And so, at last it was over. Earley rose and, in the flat tone of a man asking for street directions, requested that Betty at least be assigned to the California Women's Institute at Frontera, about an hour north of San Diego, due to the superior psychological treatment available there. Whelan agreed. Court was in recess.

  Afterward, Whelan walked over to Frank Bisceglia and wished him good luck. The old man flushed with pleasure and thanked His Honor profusely for his time and attention in the matter of Betty Anne.

  * * *

  Betty's father, brothers, and Lee were allowed to remain in the cleared courtroom for a few minutes after the sentencing for a final visit. Lee rushed into her mother's arms, sobbing. It was the first time since November 5, 1989, that the system had looked the other way while the two women touched.

  Kim Broderick waited in the hallway outside. "I don't think I'd be welcome in there," she told a reporter, with a wan little smile.

  Later, she and Lee, who was still crying, went off together.

  The Broderick and Kolkena families and friends, meantime, departed to Reidy O'Neill's, where they were still celebrating hours later. Kerry Wells and Bill Green dropped by, to cheers and free drinks. Eventually, Kim came by too, without Lee.

  Tom Whelan was the hero of the hour. "Everybody was so happy with him," said Helen Pickard later, "that everyone was joking that they should rename the place Whelan's Bar."

  Chapter 42

  Prisoner W42477

  She was sent, not to Frontera, but to the Central California Women's Facility, a new prison with about two thousand inmates in the small central California town of Chowchilla—nearly an eight-hour drive from San Diego. Too far for Brad, Lee, or any of her La Jolla friends to visit on weekends.

  She had hoped for a job either in the library or teaching illiterate prisoners to read, write, and speak English. Instead she was first assigned to the prison laundry, sorting and dispensing clothes. Then she was reassigned to the yard detail, "raking rocks," as she put it. She refused on grounds that, unlike "these black and Mexican girls, my skin won't take the sun, and they don't even give you visors or sun screen here." Prison officials threatened to "write her up" for insubordination. They told her it wouldn't look good at her parole hearing. "In the y
ear 2011?" she hooted at them. "Who gives a fuck?"

  And so she was assigned to janitorial duties instead, cleaning cells and toilets daily. "Now I'm a housewife again," she reported cheerily. "The other girls go to work, I get up and have my coffee and chocolate, and then I clean house all day. Just like before. It's perfect for me."

  For the first few weeks, she seemed mainly intrigued "by all this serious prison shit. This is punitive," she remarked with surprise. "It's like a forced work camp in China. They don't want you to get well. I'm a political prisoner. I'm madder than hell." But she was still laughing, putting on her brightest face. "Because it's still fascinating. It's like someone sent me to the moon."

  She soon learned the prison barter system—"You'd be amazed what a pack of cigarettes can buy—extra rations of clean underwear, a double dessert …" She also quickly learned that, in prison, as elsewhere, there exists a social hierarchy. "There are a lot of rich bitches here. I heard that one woman has $3 million on her books [prison jargon for commissary credit]. I think she's in for killing her husband, too," she added lightly.

  The harshest reality immediately to confront her concerned the telephone. Unlike county jail inmates, state prisoners are strictly limited to a handful of fifteen-minute phone calls a day. "And you have to sign up for the phone in advance and stand in line, and if you try to talk longer, they yell at you," she complained—or, worse, "the next girl in line gets really pissed." In this one instance, the panic in her voice broke through her usual efforts at gay good cheer. Now, not only did she actually have to go to work each day, Betty Broderick had also suddenly lost her most vital source of jailhouse recreation and self-therapy. "Send me a carton of cigarettes," she once asked, her giggle piercing in its false nonchalance, "because I can swap them for extra phone time." She sounded scared.