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

by Bella Stumbo

  Christmas came again—her fourth in jail. Her children did not visit. She sent out notes to friends bearing green and red tinsel decals in the shape of wreaths. "I shouldn't be in prison," she wrote to one. "I am not a murderer." From there, she then went on to blithely discuss an article she had just read in Vanity Fair on the death of Petra Kelly, founder of the Green Party in Germany. As ever, Betty still keeps abreast of the news.

  Now, she sleeps each night in a room with five other women—mostly young, mostly minorities. She listens to them snore, moan in their sleep, grind their teeth, cry, and cough. She really doesn't know their stories, partly because they come and go so fast; not many are there for nineteen years at the minimum—and, too, she says, laughing, "it's prison etiquette, that you don't ask people why they're in." Besides, she doesn't care. None of them have been through what she has. None of them faced down Daniel T. Broderick III.

  She reaches out at night and touches her mail. Never mind that she doesn't really even want out of prison, at least not now. How can they keep her here, when the whole world is on her side, when Oprah still features her on her show—even comes to the prison, for God's sake? When movies and books are being done about her? Her.

  Her mind is wild. Her appeal will fail, she knows, because it's still in Dan's town. But maybe Governor Pete Wilson will pardon her. She danced with him once, at the Blackstone Ball.

  And: "I want Barbara Bush to do a jacket blurb for your book," she said one day. "Because she and I are just alike. I love her! We have the same family values."

  She isn't up and down all night anymore. She's too tired after a day of "being a housewife." She sleeps straight through, until the jailers bark, until her roommates begin to stir. At least now, the toilets are private. But before she drifts off to sleep she thinks of many, many disjointed things.

  Danny. Growing up. Time for his first electric razor. She remembers when Kim had her first menstrual period. "Dan said it was the most depressing day of his life. He didn't want to be old enough to have a daughter with periods." Even from prison, she is still trying to be the perfect mother. Just that day, she wrote Danny a letter, advising him to buy a Norelco, just like his dad had. In fact, she wondered in her letter to him, where were Dan's things? Why couldn't Danny get Dan's razor? "Daddy always had the best of everything," she wrote.

  From there her mind floats, always, every night, in so many directions. Her wedding china … What did the cunt do with her china?

  "I want to know where it is," she said one day over the phone. "Which one of her bimbo girlfriends is eating off my wedding china? I hope they get botulism and die. You find out where that wedding china is, because I want to know. I've always wanted to know. It was just to hurt me. I want to know who's got it. I want it back. It's got bad karma on it and they're going to die. Really. They are. They're going to choke on a chip and die."

  She always prays at night, too, she says. "Me and God are old friends. He guided those bullets that night. He did. Do you seriously think I could have ever killed Dan Broderick by myself, without His help?" As usual, she didn't even mention Linda. Then, with an awed little pause, a hollow giggle: "You know, I still can't believe it—that just one little bullet could kill Dan Broderick."

  Observations by General Mike Neil

  Dan Broderick was, without question, the most civil, professional and friendly lawyer I have ever known. He was a paragon of virtue.

  I had every reason to have some resentment towards him as I went up against him in court and he took me to the cleaners a couple of times. In fact, the last case we fought—the last case Dan ever tried—was the only case in which I beat him.

  He was a wonderful father to his children and revered by his friends. Brian Monaghan, Dave Monahan, Ed Chapin, Leo Sullivan and I and others spent a lot of time with him. He was a prince among men.

  I had a case with him one time where he had an issue with what his client was telling him. We were taking depositions and he said: “Mike, if when I take your client’s deposition I believe him over my client, I will dismiss the case.” True to his word, after taking my client’s deposition, he told me he believed my client, and he dismissed the case.

  Linda, Dan and I went regularly to Dobson’s, where Dan proposed to Linda. We would have drinks and talk about Ireland (we were very interested in all things Irish), life in general and cases we were working on. A year after Dan and Linda died, I still had a reflex to go to Dobson’s to have a drink with them after work. It was a hard habit to break.

  Some people have suggested that Dan was ‘cold’ but I don’t know what they are referring to. He was certainly businesslike, but never cold from my observations of him. Nor was he a heavy drinker. Dan never overindulged himself and he never drank more than moderately in my opinion.

  Betty may once have been more loving and caring in their marriage but over time she seems to have deteriorated into a monster, a despicable human being. She did not just do terrible things to Dan and Linda, and to their respective families, but to his children too. I don’t know too much about how Betty behaved during their marriage because the strange thing is that Dan never said anything against her as a mother or as a wife. Any other man would have done that, but Dan didn’t say a word against her.

  I took a group of people to Mexico for my fortieth birthday and my wife said to me the next day: ‘What’s wrong with her?’ She was strange, very into herself, selfish, and very jealous of Dan and his friends. She seemed to live in a different world from the rest of us. Everything was all about her. And, no, I didn’t stick my tongue in her ear on that trip. First of all, I don’t ever do that kind of thing and, besides, it wasn’t that sort of occasion anyway; we were a group of friends sitting in a restaurant having dinner. If anything, I ignored her that night.

  Linda was absolutely the opposite to Betty. She was loving, sharing and warm—a real sweetheart. She never said a bad thing about anyone. She was always gracious and had an outgoing personality. She really complemented Dan. I doubt she had an enemy in the world, other than Betty. We were all so happy to see Dan so happy when he was with Linda.

  I have no knowledge that Dan and Linda were conducting an affair before he left Betty. As far as I am aware, they didn’t start dating until Dan and Betty were separated. Dan had one hell of a marriage to Betty and she drove him to leave her. If you ask me, Dan stayed with her far too long, but he was an Irish Catholic so he hung on as long as he could.

  Those things Betty accused Linda of doing, sending photos of her and Dan with ‘Eat your heart out’ written on them, sending anti-wrinkle cream to her anonymously etc., that was not at all consistent with the way Linda behaved. She never engaged in profane or obscene behavior. She just wanted to keep out of Betty’s way.

  Dan didn’t harass Betty in any way after they were separated. It was just the opposite. Betty dragged the divorce matter out over years, changing attorneys, making it a miserable, miserable process. Dan never used his legal skills to influence the courts. That was just not possible.

  And the idea that Dan was looking for a contract killer, that is total nonsense. I spoke to Dan two weeks before he was murdered. I tried to persuade him to take Betty’s threats seriously, to change the locks on his doors. I even told him to get a pistol and I would teach him how to use it at the range. He said he was not going to do anything of the sort. “She will never kill me,” he insisted. Maybe that is why she did kill him: he never took her threats seriously, he wasn’t afraid of her and she couldn’t destroy his relationship with Linda, try as she might. He wouldn’t let anything deter him from getting on with his life. How else could she get at him other than to kill him?

  Observations by Robert Vaage

  As background, let me tell you about my connection to Dan. I was a young lawyer working for Mike Neil, two years out from law school. Mike was a defense lawyer and Dan was a plaintiff lawyer. I wanted to do plaintiff work and Dan was apparently impressed by me, so Linda Kolkena, as she was then, approached me to
ask if I wanted to work with them. I didn’t want it to create problems so I talked to Mike and he gave me his blessing to go to join Dan, which I did for three years.

  My father, who recently died, was my best friend and then I worked for Mike Neil, who was another great man, but aside from my father, Dan was the other major father figure in my life. He was the most honorable individual I have ever met, outstanding, remarkable.

  Dan realized very quickly in their marriage that it wasn’t going to work, but he was a Catholic and he had children, so that played its part. After he decided to leave her, he did everything he could to set her up—paying her nearly £20,000 a month, which was a fortune in those days. Dan bent over backwards to accommodate her. It would never have crossed his mind to have done anything unjust to Betty, or ‘Bets’ as he called her.

  Dan was a game changer. He did Law at Harvard and Medical School at Cornell, he was handsome and had that ability only rare people have of when they walk into a room, making you feel the most important person there. He went way out his way for me. I still have a photograph of him on my desk. He was a great attorney and a great friend. A group of people—both lawyers and non-lawyers—still meet up regularly even now, twenty years later, and the only reason we know each other is because of Dan.

  As a trial lawyer he had the remarkable ability of making highly complex issues simple for a jury. He was only forty-four when he died. The loss to the community of San Diego from his death is incalculable.

  It is a tragedy that his reputation was besmirched after his death. The family made a mistake. We were asked not to talk to the press, so the only person who was heard out there was Betty because Dan was no longer around to defend himself.

  And Linda, who tends to be forgotten in this story, was a wonderful woman too, always upbeat, always bright, always articulate.

  If you have ever had a chance to listen to those tapes of Betty talking to her 9-10 year old son, you will know everything you need to know about her.

  The idea that Dan would try to hire a contract killer for her is totally ridiculous, comical, absurd. She was the one who drove her car through his front door, who pulled a knife on him. Dan was a hell of a lot more understanding of Betty than any of us. He could have had her thrown in jail at any time. All the threats, all the diatribes were one way – from Betty. Nobody did anything to her.

  Let’s deal with those allegations that Linda harassed Betty … We were a very small, hard-working group of people in our law office—Dan, Linda, me and a couple of other people. We worked long hours together and socialized together afterward. Linda was chatty by nature and if she had been doing anything like that, I would have heard about it, we worked so close together. Besides, she would never have done it because Dan would have been most unhappy if she had. The chances of her doing that were nil. Linda didn’t have a mean bone in her body. And Linda didn’t need to tell everyone that Betty was crazy—everyone knew.

  Nor am I aware that Dan and Linda were having any affair before Dan and Betty separated.

  When Dan proposed to Linda at Dobson’s, the event was covered in the local newspaper. The day the newspaper article came out, Betty called the office. I answered the phone. “This is Betty Broderick,” she said. “Is my husband in?” I told her he wasn’t. Could she leave a message, she asked. Sure, I said, knowing that it was likely to be something memorable. “You tell him,” she said, “that he was down on one knee at Dobson’s, but by the time I’ve finished with him, he’ll be down on both knees.”

  She felt like she owned him. She wasn’t going to let go of him. All her social status, her standing in the community, was tied up with being Mrs. Daniel Broderick III. She played every trick to hang on to him, including mis-signing her name on the divorce papers. She had a house in La Jolla, a substantial monthly allowance, but she wouldn’t let him go.

  Everyone knew Betty had a gun and was practicing on the range with it. One night Dan told me, “If she wants to kill me, it will be real easy for her. She only has to walk into my office and start shooting.” He was resigned to that. He understood that the threat was real but he was just going to carry on. We went out to dinner together, and I dropped them off at home the night they were murdered.

  I went to the parole hearing. There were three people on the board and they had a report from a psychiatrist basically saying that Betty didn’t constitute any significant risk to the community. They started asking Betty questions to find out whether she had any remorse for what she had done, and she absolutely wouldn’t go there. They asked her who she believed she had hurt. Every one of her children was there. Every one of Dan’s family was there. She hesitated for a moment and then said, “My parents.” Unbelievable. What does that tell you about her?

  I was talking to the DA afterward, asking what would happen to her. There were various options—they could grant parole, or they could call for another hearing in 1, 2, 5, 10 or 15 years. The DA thought she should wait another fifteen years but expected five. The parole board only took twenty minutes to make up its mind and said she needed another fifteen years to think about what she had done. Watching her reaction to that, I think the remaining members of Dan Broderick family are far better off with her remaining in prison.

  Original acknowledgments

  Now I understand why so many authors devote a couple of pages at the beginning of their books to those long lists of names that nobody reads, except for those named. The impulse is practically overpowering to thank all those who helped, in ways both large and small, to make the book possible—and, I have learned, they can number in the hundreds. How can I not, for example, thank court bailiff Rita Long, who always saved a seat for me throughout two trials, even on days when I was late? Or my friend, Los Angeles writer Paul Ciotti, who made house calls, sometimes almost daily, during my writing phase to help me understand and conquer the latest mysteries of my computer, without once yelling at me for being a technological nitwit?

  And there were so many, many others, in San Diego and around the country, who helped in the reporting and writing of this story. You know who you are, and I am indebted to you all.

  But a few names I must mention, since without them, this book either would not have been written at all or it would be an entirely different product:

  *Marion Pasas and Dian Black, both of whom helped in so many different ways, from research to lessons in organization. Both also provided loving moral support, then and now. Thank you, ladies.

  *Jack Earley, defense attorney, who allowed me as much access to defense thinking as discretion would allow. Also, assistant defense attorney Lisa Bowman.

  *Prosecution investigator William Green, who, although restricted in his media contacts until after the trials, later did his best to help me double-check myself. He served as a sounding board for my conclusions and theories, helping protect me from falling into an unwitting defense bias or committing just plain stupid errors of fact.

  *Many La Jolla women, past and present friends of Betty's, who spent hours helping me recreate a picture of her as she used to be. Among them: Helen Pickard, Ann Dick, Melanie Cohrs, Candy Westbrook, Wilma Engel, Vicki Currie, and Judy Courtemanche. Not least, my thanks to Maria Montez.

  *Friends of Dan and Linda, who were willing to set aside their initial distrust of anyone in daily contact with the killer to help me understand two people who could no longer speak for themselves. I am especially grateful for the generosity of spirit provided by Sharon Blanchet, Ann Marie (Stormy) Wetther, Brian Monaghan, Mike Reidy, and Steve Kelley, five people who consistently tried to be fair, despite their feelings about Betty. I also owe thanks to Laurel Summers, Kathleen Cuffaro, Mike Neil, Sylvia Cavins, and Linda David for the time they spent with me.

  Last but by no means least, my enduring gratitude and respect to Linda Kolkena's sister, Maggie Seats, who spent hours sharing the pain which any of us who have ever loved a sibling can understand. I am also thankful to three of Dan's sisters—Kathleen McCormack, Patti Cappelli, and
Christy Emmanuel—for entrusting a stranger with some of their most personal thoughts about their oldest brother.

  My gratitude, too, to Betty's parents, Marita and Frank Bisceglia, who finally were able to set aside their own suffering and shame to discuss their child during the second trial. I am also indebted to Betty's younger brother Mike, and her cousin Connie Lawler.

  *San Diego journalists, who literally made all the difference. No reporter can overstate the debt owed to professional peers willing to help. Unfortunately, journalists, like dogs hoarding their bones, are often a selfish pack when it comes to sharing information. One San Diego reporter even asked me, early on, for a $10,000 consulting fee for her list of phone numbers, most of them easily available in the telephone directory.

  But, for the most part, I was blessed in San Diego with some of the most supportive journalists I have ever met. The first person I called was Paul Krueger of the San Diego Reader, who, along with his colleague Jeanette DeWyze, had written the only story on the Broderick divorce before the homicides. I will never forget his immediate response, which was, in effect: "Here are all my contacts with phone numbers. Here are my opinions. . . . How else can I help you?" Next I met San Diego Union reporter John Gaines, now a columnist, whose reaction was exactly the same.

  Later on, I met other equally generous reporters: Mike Granberry of the Los Angeles Times; Jeffrey Rose of the Union; Jeanette DeWyze of the San Diego Reader; Laurie Mosier, then with United Press International; Cynthia Queen of the La Jolla Light; and Claude Wolbert of the San Diego Tribune. Not least, Dave Nelson, then society writer for the Los Angeles Times, and his friend (coincidentally Betty's too), Melanie Cohrs, spent night after delightful night helping me to learn my way around La Jolla, explaining to me the pecking order, always with great wry humor. I also want to thank Karl and Barbara Zobell, Jeannie Lawrence, Henry Hester, and Phyllis Pfeiffer for further advancing my La Jolla education.