Betty Broderick

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It's a story that captivated a nation.

There was gavel-to-gavel coverage.

We all did the Oprah Winfrey show.

It just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

A media spectacle from which people simply could not look away.

The breakup of a marriage, a new marriage, and then a murder.

All of the ingredients of enticing dirty laundry.

It begins with the high society divorce of a beautiful socialite and her handsome attorney husband.

He wanted to move on.

He was remarried.

She had her own boyfriend.

She had a beautiful home.

But that all changes in the wake of a horrifying crime.

The female was laying face down.

The male was half underneath the bed.

In the quest for answers, investigators unearth a couple's sordid past.

His friends convinced him to wear a bulletproof vest because it was an outdoor wedding.

She drove the car through the front door.

She feels completely overwhelmed.

People were calling in about how this was justified.

I almost drove off the road.

It was very upsetting.

He took this and said, your family is not going to be protected.

And he smashed that family apart.

And then that just made her act on what she had been dreaming about for a long time.

San Diego, California.

The upscale neighborhood of Hillcrest is home to some of the city's most prestigious residents.

It was a beautiful area, a place of privilege, you know, the dream of a lifetime.

But just before 7:30 a.m.

on November 5th, 1989, the San Diego Police Department receives a rare summons to this normally tranquil part of town.

A frantic call comes in from Brad, Brad Wright.

He says, oh my God, something terrible has happened.

The dispatcher sends units immediately.

We're responding to the call on a house on Cypress Way.

The caller, Brad Wright, tells the dispatcher that the home in question belongs to prominent attorney Dan Broderick and his new wife, Linda, and the couple needs help fast.

Officer Dominic Valley is the first to arrive.

I speak to the gentleman out front, and he tells me he's been inside and he found what he believes is two dead bodies up in the master bedroom.

And they've both been shot.

In the bedroom, there were two bodies, a female and a male.

The two victims at the scene were Dan and Linda Broderick.

I checked for signs of life, and they're both deceased.

The female was laying face down with an obvious gunshot wound to the back of her head.

The male was kind of half underneath the bed, had a gunshot wound to his chest.

This is a crime-free neighborhood neighborhood where everything is perfect.

It's a neighborhood where you would never expect to see a double homicide.

Dan Broderick's story began far from the posh neighborhoods of San Diego.

He grew up in Pittsburgh, the oldest of nine in a large Catholic family.

From early on, Dan was focused on his future.

Certainly, Dan was extremely ambitious and highly driven.

He was actually, in my view, a little shy.

He was very focused, very serious.

When it came time for college, Dan chose prestigious Notre Dame, enrolling as a pre-med major.

In 1965, during his junior year, Dan ran into 17-year-old Betty Besheglia, a striking blonde co-ed from New York City who happened to be visiting a friend in South Bend.

Betty came from New York and she was in school.

She was successful.

She was a model.

She worked all the time while she was going through school.

Betty was a very intelligent person.

She was amazingly quick.

She was funny.

Betty grew up in Eastchester, New York.

and like Dan, also hailed from a large Catholic family.

Her parents are very wealthy and went to good schools.

When Betty met Dan, she was majoring in child psychology at Mount St.

Vincent College in New York City.

Her brazen personality is charming at first and fun, and he was this quiet kind of introvert, hardworking, studious guy, and he saw that as almost a compliment to his personality.

Betty had an image of her life, which meant that she would also want to be with somebody who was very goal-oriented, very successful.

Still, Betty turned down Dan's first request for a date.

In 1966, Dan graduated from Notre Dame and enrolled in med school at New York's Weill Cornell Medical College.

He telegrammed Betty and asked her on a date in the city.

This time, Betty said yes.

The second time she met him, she fell head over heels in love with him.

It was an absolute lightning connection.

Betty and Dan married on a beautiful spring day in 1969.

Having graduated, Betty took a teaching job to pay the rent so Dan could focus on med school.

She really took over at home so he could do the studying.

She looked at her role as making sure he got through school, doing all the things that were necessary, taking all the pressure off of him.

After medical school, Dan went to Harvard Law School and Betty sold Avon and Tupperware to support their growing family.

She had a daughter, then she had another one.

They didn't have a lot of money.

They struggled a lot in those early years, and she did the best she could.

By 1973, Dan had earned both medical and law degrees and became an attractive candidate for any number of well-paying positions.

Obviously, someone who has a dual degree in medicine and in law is going to be something that is going to be very marketable for law firms, especially for medical malpractice.

So he got recruited to San Diego to a large law firm.

With Dan now earning a hefty six-figure income, Betty happily took on the role of stay-at-home mom.

By 1980, she had given birth to two sons to go along with their two daughters.

Once the money starts flowing, then they join a couple of country clubs, the best in San Diego.

They go on vacations, they

spend a lot of money on clothes, on their children, and generally

start living it up.

In Betty's eyes, it was the golden years.

It was the best time.

The money continued to roll in, but not without consequence.

Dan would come home irritable.

He'd come home late.

There were many, many nights where she, you know, was pretty much on her own.

Life got harder.

I'm sure Dan cared greatly for his wife.

I feel that they probably just grew apart.

It was just not a good match.

Betty wasn't getting what she wanted and Dan wasn't either.

In 1989, Dan and Betty ended their marriage.

The divorce was a blow, but Betty had a lot to be thankful for.

She had a beautiful home in La Jolla even post-divorce with getting $16,000 a month and alimony child support.

She needed to move on with her own life.

There are so many women who are divorced that move on and find joy and happiness.

As for Dan, now 41, he found happiness right outside his office door in the form of his 25-year-old paralegal, Linda Colkina.

Linda was delightful.

A very delightful person.

Very smart, very funny, and

very caring.

Every time you saw her, she was smiling.

She was just a sweet, sweet person.

After dating for three years, Dan and Linda married in April of 1989 in an intimate backyard ceremony at the home they just purchased in Hillcrest.

Dan was very handsome that day, and Linda was a beautiful bride.

It was a gorgeous, gorgeous day.

Dan wanted to move on with his life and that's just the way it is sometimes.

Eventually, Betty also started dating.

At 41, she began seeing 36-year-old Brad Wright, a man who was nothing like her ex-husband.

He's from San Diego, had a fencing company.

I mean, just if you met him, he's a very supportive person that was there, and that was something that she needed.

Brad was also there to comfort Betty when she and Dan butted heads over the kids.

Brad was a stabilizing force in her life.

She confided in him about what was going on.

She was with Brad and she introduced me to him and he seemed very nice.

She seemed happy.

By the time Betty and Dan were divorced, the two girls were no longer living at home.

The two boys were still kids, living at first with both parents.

By the fall of 1989, it appeared that everyone had settled into a new normal.

But then, on November 5th, an early morning call to 911 reveals all is far from normal at Linda and Dan's sprawling Hillcrest home.

Obviously, there was foul play involved.

At that point, it becomes a homicide scene.

Investigators need to know who killed Dan and Linda Broderick and why.

There's no justification for walking into somebody's bedroom in the early morning and snuffing out two lives.

Coming up, as detectives dig in, they uncover some strange details about the case.

Why is Betty's current boyfriend at this house?

And police unearth one stunning secret after another.

She just drove the car through the front door.

After successful San Diego couple Dan and Betty Broderick divorced, Betty started dating a younger man, Brad Wright, and Dan married his former paralegal, Linda Colquina.

On the surface, it looked like Betty and Dan had both found new loves, and

they should have both been happy with their lives.

They should have been ready to move on.

but everything comes crashing down on the morning of november 5th 1989 when dan and linda are found shot to death in the bedroom of their hillcrest mansion linda was shot in the chest and in the back of the head

there's no question that head wounds are instant you get shot in the head you're pretty much gone

the same can't be said for dan who suffered a single gunshot wound to his chest.

I noticed there was white froth coming out of the wound.

And if you get shot in the lung, you don't die right away.

Basically, you bleed to death, and it blocks your ear.

He was alive.

The medical examiner estimated around 20 minutes.

Based on the position of the bodies, authorities try to piece together what happened.

The first shots were fired, as the police understand it, into Linda Broderick.

It was clear that Dan obviously heard the shots, so he started rolling off the bed.

Dan was shot through the lung, through the back.

There were two bullets in Linda.

There's one bullet in Dan.

There's one bullet in the wall behind them.

There's one bullet in the nightstand next to them.

It's a total of five shots.

And since no shell casings have been left behind, investigators believe the murder weapon was likely a revolver.

The caliber weapon used to murder Dan Linda was a.38 caliber.

Aside from the two bodies, authorities find only one other disturbance in the bedroom.

We found some ripped wires from the wall, telephone lines.

And I walked in the hallway and there was the telephone.

It looked like it had been taken from the nightstand

and out of Dan Broderick's reach.

This person ripped the phone out of the wall,

took it out into the hallway and dropped it.

That would have obviously prevented him from calling for help.

Investigators note that the rest of the house appears to be in perfect order.

There was nothing missing as far as they could see.

It just looked like someone had come into the house, climbed the stairs, fired the gun, taken the phone out of the wall, and then left.

Who killed Dan and Linda Broderick?

And how did they get inside the home?

Seeking answers, detectives move outside to question the original 911 caller, Brad Wright.

The gentleman was Betty's boyfriend, Brad.

He's at the scene.

So, yeah, that was a

red flag.

Why is Betty's current boyfriend boyfriend at this house?

Brad explains that he spent the previous night at Betty's.

He was at Betty's house in La Jolla with her kids.

Brad tells police that around 7 a.m., he was awakened when Betty's home phone started ringing off the hook.

And no one answered it.

Brad's first thought was that, oh, Betty must have gone to the beach.

So Brad got up and he answered the phone.

There was a friend of Betty's on the phone who was extremely upset.

The woman on the phone did not give Brad a lot of detail.

Just something happened at Dan's house, so she was worried and she wanted Brad to go check.

Brad explains that once he made sure Betty's 10 and 13 year old sons were safe and sound upstairs, he headed to Dan and Linda's house to investigate.

Brad made it over to the house,

Tried going in the front door, which was locked.

Tried ringing the doorbell.

No answer.

Brad tells detectives that's when he made a fateful decision.

Went through a side door, broke the glass, reached in and opened a door, and then went up and discovered the bodies.

It was at that point that they first called 911.

According to Brad, he hasn't heard from Betty all morning and has no idea where she is now.

Then, Brad reveals a crucial detail.

I asked him, was the door locked when he got there and he said yes.

So obviously a person who came in had to have a key.

Police probably wondered maybe this guy has something to do with the murder.

Brad is visibly shaken and insists he is innocent.

Detectives are inclined to believe him.

If you're going to commit a crime, why would you call 911 to report it?

And plus, going back and checking the alibis, everything matched up so we could rule out Brad.

Detective Terry DeGelder checks in with the officers who responded to the 911 call.

I spoke to the patrol officers in the front that were guarding the scene.

Because a lot of times those patrol cops cops know exactly what happened, but nobody asked them.

The effort pays off.

One of the officers that was at the scene had responded to this house before on another domestic violence dispute.

According to the responding officer, the incident didn't involve Dan and Linda.

Rather, Dan's ex-wife, Betty Broderick, was the instigator.

About a month and a half before, Betty took her Chevy Suburban and smashed into the front doors of the house.

Betty just drove the car through the front door.

That night, the police got there and she fought with the police officers.

And they took her to County Mental Health because she was acting so bizarre.

They took her for a three-day evaluation, 72-hour hold.

So Dan Broderick got a restraining order out on her.

After learning of the restraining order against Betty, investigators seek out more details surrounding her and Dan's divorce.

Court records indicate it had been tumultuous from the moment it was finalized.

There was a lot of problems with her not respecting the divorce, respecting his space, coming over to his house, crashing into the home, calling at all hours and feeling she had the right to do this.

Different arrangements had been tried to try to calm Betty down, to stop the phone calls, to stop her showing up unannounced, and also to protect the children.

After the SUV incident, Dan filed for primary custody of the boys, aged 10 and 13.

By then, their daughters were grown and off on their own.

In court, he was given temporary custody of the children with very little visitation from Betty.

And now, Dan's dead.

Betty's missing.

This is a huge red flag.

So Betty became a suspect pretty quick.

Coming up, detectives head to the home of Betty Broderick.

But both Betty and the truth will prove to be elusive.

Betty never returned home from her walk on the beach.

And a paper trail reveals disturbing evidence.

She asked the store clerk for bullets that do the most damage to a person's body.

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Take two.

San Diego police are investigating the brutal double murder of prominent attorney Dan Broderick and his wife, Linda.

Detectives are now eager to track down Dan's ex-wife, Betty.

Betty Broderick was looked at as a suspect because of their history with their problems and their divorce and with their child custody issues.

I wanted to talk to her.

I wanted to see what was in her her head to see if she did this.

Investigators went to Betty's house to check for Betty, but she was not at her house.

Is Betty on the run, or is she also a casualty of this heinous crime?

Is it a murder-suicide?

Or did she go over there to kill them and then kill herself?

What they're looking for is all kinds of different theories.

We want to find her to get her side of the story.

So we put out in all units for her car in order to locate her.

We're looking for a big shabby suburban.

As the search for Betty ramps up, word of Dan and Linda's murders spreads through family, friends, and the media.

Because he was a prominent San Diego attorney,

I think that helped make it newsworthy.

It was very upsetting, stunning to hear.

They were so recently married.

They're starting a new life.

You know, everybody has a right to start a new life.

They're literally in the honeymoon phase of their life.

When I found out, I was so brokenhearted, I started crying, and I couldn't stop crying.

And it just was so sad.

You know, I immediately thought of the children as well.

My adult daughter, who had babysit for Dan and Betty's kids, told me that Dan and Linda had been killed.

You don't believe it.

And then it started to penetrate that this was true.

And then there were all these people calling, and Betty hadn't been found yet.

And people were afraid, and the police were out looking for her.

And the rest of the day is now a blur.

As the news ripples throughout San Diego, detectives return to Betty's house armed with a search warrant.

We just

looked for anything that tied a person into the crime scene.

And during a search of her house, they found a case for a handgun.

She had a Smith ⁇ Wesson five-shot chief special.

It was a

.38.

It's the same caliber weapon used to kill the newlyweds.

When they get into her house, they actually find not the gun, but some extra rounds of ammunition.

We're searching through stuff, and I find its transcript.

And the title of the book was

What's a Nice Girl to Do?

The Manifesto's author, Betty Broderick.

And it was basically an outline of their breakup before their divorce, you know, and

the things that he said and what she did and their court experiences.

Every argument that they had, anything that happened, it was all Dan's fault.

She was an innocent victim.

And

everything bad that happened happened to her because of Dan.

The last line was kind of interesting.

They said, the only impact I'm going to have on this man is to kill him.

Investigators now believe Betty followed through on those fateful final words.

But was her ex-husband truly the monster described in her manifesto?

I just wanted to find out if Dan was a criminal or he was doing horrible things.

I didn't know anything about either one of them.

There were a lot of police out looking for Betty because there were a lot of people who were afraid that she was loose with a gun and didn't have any boundaries.

Then, detectives receive a tip that Betty's vehicle has been spotted at her daughter's house.

They rush to the home.

They find her car at her daughter's house.

They go inside the daughter's house.

Betty isn't there.

They don't know where Betty is.

Along with the SUV, Betty apparently left behind some other personal belongings.

Inside Betty's daughter's house, Betty had left her purse, and inside the purse was a.38 caliber handgun.

The odds that the.38 caliber shells found at the scene would match the.38 caliber handgun found in her purse were pretty good.

What remains unclear is why would Betty kill the man she depended on to maintain her affluent lifestyle?

Betty was being paid by Dan $16,000 a month in alimony child support and she's got her home in La Jollo.

It would have been odd that Betty would do something like that, knowing that she would lose all her monthly support from her ex-husband.

Now they know that they've got the evidence they need to arrest Betty for the murder of Dan and Linda Broderick.

They get a warrant for first-degree murder.

They have no idea where she is.

They don't know whether she's gotten on a plane to leave the country.

They don't know whether she's committed suicide.

They don't know whether she's in hiding somewhere.

They don't have a clue.

What began as a sensational local news story quickly goes national.

It seems people are fascinated by successful, well-to-do people who have failure.

You know, I don't know.

That seems to be the American way for whatever reason.

With their search for Betty now squarely in the spotlight, detectives are feeling the pressure.

But apparently, so is Betty.

Police are out searching for Betty.

And she walks into the police station with an attorney

immediately he told the officers she's not talking usually you know we will interview the suspect but she

uh flat refused to talk to us police are convinced betty's silence is part of a calculated strategy betty and her lawyer were coming up with a plan betty was charged with first-degree premeditated double homicide

with Betty not cooperating, detectives decide to take a closer look at her.38 caliber handgun.

With the serial number of the gun, we were able to trace where it was purchased from.

So we interviewed the clerk at the gun store.

We found out that she had bought the gun in April of that year and asked the store clerk for ammunition bullets that do the most damage to a person's body.

He sold her bullets called Black Talons,

which is a bullet that expands

when it hits you.

Detectives also discover that after Betty bought the weapon, she got serious about learning how to use it.

She went to the San Diego Police Department pistol range.

On Saturday morning, they have a course where civilians teach them how to shoot.

She had gone to the gun range and done quite a bit of practicing.

She was a pretty good shot and knew what she was doing.

Coming up, as the investigation continues, tales of fear and violence begin to emerge.

All of a sudden, Betty would lose it and something would happen.

And the media coverage of the case grows even more frenzied.

The media was able to find us, find where we lived.

My children were kind of scared.

After the double murders of Dan and Linda Broderick, Dan's ex-wife, Betty, has appeared at the San Diego Police Department.

She turns herself in, but she refuses to speak.

So

they know that she has some kind of a plan that she's probably created with the attorney,

but they don't know what that plan is.

We needed to show the district attorney that this was deliberate to help him build his case.

I've seen a lot of evidence, including buying the bullets, buying a gun, going to the range, writing a book.

And speaking to Betty's friends, investigators discover that her frustrations with her marriage began in 1983.

when during a law firm function, she realized Dan was attracted to his new paralegal, Linda Colkina.

Betty first saw Linda at a cocktail party and she hears Dan say, wow, she's really beautiful.

And Betty thinks to herself, he never says that.

Dan's never said that any woman was pretty.

Then he wasn't coming home.

He was staying late at work.

He was, you know, getting phone calls.

you know, things like that.

The friends give detectives an interesting bit of context.

Linda looked an awful lot like Betty

when Betty was younger.

Very, very similar.

It could have been sisters.

Linda and the young Betty.

I mean, just amazing how close they looked.

According to the friends, when Betty made a surprise visit to Dan's law office, her fears were confirmed.

One day, on his birthday, she had dressed up very nice, came in with all kinds of stuff for his birthday.

And it was late in the afternoon, and she was going to take him out to dinner, and it was going to do all this stuff.

And she came in, and Dan was with Linda

for her.

It was, you know, a complete betrayal.

That's when she lit up the barbecue,

put his top hat and his tuxtail in there

and set him on fire.

Friends explain that shortly after that, Dan filed for divorce.

Betty complained to everyone that she would never get a fair shake in court against her powerful lawyer husband.

They went in for a hearing, and when Dan walked in, the judge looked up, didn't know Betty, but knew Dan, and said, what kind of honor do I have to see you in my courtroom, Mr.

Proderick?

She claimed she interviewed 60 to 100 attorneys in San Diego, but ultimately, she did not have a lawyer at the divorce trial.

Betty represented herself at the January 1989 trial.

She was awarded $16,000 in monthly child support and alimony, but was dissatisfied.

Making matters worse, Betty believed Dan was purposefully mistreating mistreating her.

Dan would do things like she would go over to pick up the kids for the soccer game for practice, and Dan wouldn't let him go.

And so that was humiliating to her.

It would evoke a response from her.

All of a sudden, Betty would lose it, and something would happen.

So there's the time she drove through the front door of the house.

She was calling his home and leaving these extremely obscene, extremely abusive telephone messages on the answering machine.

They were very upsetting phone messages at Dan's house when the children were there.

At dinner one night, we were talking to Dan, and well, why don't you move?

Because you need to be safe.

Three months after the divorce was finalized, when it came time for Dan and Linda's wedding, their friends begged them to be careful.

His friends convinced him to wear a bulletproof vest because it was an outdoor outdoor wedding.

They were so convinced that Betty is going to come by and do a drive-by shooting on him.

So reluctantly, he did.

There were security guards, and I do remember hearing somebody say if there was even a backfire to a car, that everybody was going to hit the deck because they thought it was Betty shooting at them.

Could you imagine on your wedding day having to think about hitting the deck because there may be gunfire?

Unbelievable.

Friends explained to detectives that after months of ongoing threats, Dan ultimately decided to seek full custody of the boys.

The night before this occurred, Betty received a letter from Dan.

The letter that came was a letter from his office that basically said, we're going to court to deal with the issues of the boys, which basically was saying to her, you're not getting the boys back.

This war is not over.

Was this letter the spark that ignited a murderous rage in Betty Broderick?

As prosecutors prepare for trial, media attention surrounding the case has become a nationwide frenzy.

People are captivated by other people's dirty laundry.

The breakup of a marriage, and then a new marriage, and then a murder.

So you have all all of the ingredients of enticing dirty laundry.

Oprah Winfrey had called and we all did the Oprah Winfrey show.

She flew us out to Chicago.

It just got bigger and bigger at the expense of two wonderful people who are dead.

In the court of public opinion, Betty isn't always painted as an evil villain.

I remember driving to work one day and there was a radio show and people were calling in about how this was justified and look what they had done to her and I almost drove off the road.

It was very upsetting.

There was a movement going on at the time about women going through divorce.

People saying that the courts don't treat them fairly and they don't recognize the sacrifice that women make through their life so that men can be successful.

Betty went through this period of time where they lived dirt poor and struggling.

He finally became successful in Edumpser.

So there was a lot of women saying, well, good, he deserved it.

Prosecutors begin to wonder, will a jury feel the same way?

Coming up, Betty testifies that she was the real victim.

Whenever I said something he didn't like, he'd grab me by the neck and pull my face up into his face and say, what did you say?

What did you say?

And a surprise at the trial puts the entire case into jeopardy.

It was very, very concerning, but she could get off.

San Diego, California, October 1990.

Betty Broderick's trial is about to begin.

Charged with two counts of first-degree murder, Betty pleads not guilty.

She admits she shot and killed her ex-husband, Dan, and his new wife, Linda, but Betty is adamant there was no premeditation.

The first trial ended with a hung jury after

they could not reach a decision about sentencing.

We expected that this was going to be a conviction.

And so when it wasn't, it was really upsetting.

It was very, very concerning that she could get off.

Betty remains in custody as prosecutors regroup for a retrial.

One year later, the second trial begins.

The media was able to find us,

find where we lived.

My children were kind of scared seeing all these trucks show up with satellite dishes on top, and there's a lot of things happening in front of your home as opposed to the courthouse.

This time, prosecutors charge Betty with second-degree murder.

The evidence is going to show without question, she did shoot and kill two people that she hated with a vengeance.

At the second trial, the couple's adult daughters, Lee and Kim, are also put in the difficult position of choosing sides.

Lee was very supportive of her mom, and

Kim was not.

Kim testified for the prosecution.

Lee testified for the defense.

We clearly saw the impact it had on the children.

It divided their family.

Prosecutors argue that the letter from Dan advising Betty of his intentions to seek full custody of their sons pushed her already reckless behavior to a whole new level.

You wanted to get custody of the children.

And maybe that's why she snapped.

And then that just made her act on what she had been dreaming about for a long time.

Prosecutors tell the jury what they believe Betty did after reading that letter.

Betty wakes up real early in the morning and takes the daughter's keys out of the daughter's purse and then goes and enters the house right at the crack of dawn.

She knew that they were going to be home.

She knew that the kids weren't going to be there.

She walks upstairs to the bedroom,

opens the door.

She aims and kills them both.

Shoots and kills them.

Betty ripped the phone from the wall so her ex couldn't call for help.

With the nation glued to their television screens, Betty's defense team counters with a dramatic attack on Dan's character.

And so what Dan did is when he took this family and when he left without telling her that there was going to be a divorce, he took this and said, glass is not going to protect this picture.

Your family is not going to be protected.

And he smashed that family apart.

After these powerful opening remarks, the defense calls Betty to the stand.

Under oath, she claims Dan was abusive.

Whenever I said something he didn't like, he'd grab me by the neck and pull my face up into his face and say, What did you say?

What did you say?

Betty testifies that she went to Dan and Linda's home that morning armed with a plan and a revolver.

She told me she was going there to try to convince Dan to let her have the kids to stop the fighting.

And she was going to threaten to kill herself if Dan just told her, it's over.

You're not getting the kids back.

What happened when he went into the door?

It looked like Linda moved and

she went toward Dan and Dan went toward the phone.

They moved and I moved and it was over.

The defense attorney emphasized that Dan had over time repeatedly harassed her and abused her mentally to the point where she just exploded.

She had snapped.

Ultimately, she's the one who pulled the trigger.

She's the one who killed two people.

She did it when she didn't have to.

I think this woman had planned it, thought it out, wrote a book about it.

I've had a lot of homicides.

I've never encountered one where the person had so much time to change their mind about what they're going to do and didn't.

The jury convenes to deliberate.

We broke up and we walked around.

And when we came back, everyone felt they could support a murder in the second degree verdict.

On December 10th, 1991, Betty Broderick is found guilty on two counts of second degree murder.

It was a huge relief when the verdict was a guilty verdict because it meant that there would be some consequence to her actions.

And there was a tremendous amount of sadness because they didn't bring them back and

now we had four children without

a parent.

In February 1992, Betty is sentenced to 32 years to life, the maximum sentence.

It was so tragic dan and betty were both good-looking smart and well-educated and they had this great situation in life and beautiful children and they ripped each other to shreds

dan was certainly not perfect however who is perfect and who deserved to be murdered nobody should have died Betty Broderick should have just simply moved on with her own life and just accepted that her marriage didn't go as she thought it would.

Dan was just this honorable, respected attorney, and Linda was a dynamic, fun, smart young lady.

And they didn't deserve what happened.

Anyone who had the pleasure of knowing them remembers them with a lot of love and fondness when missing them.

Betty Broderick was last denied parole in 2017 at the age of 69.

She will not be eligible for parole again until 2032.

She will be 84 years old.

For more information on Snapped, go to oxygen.com.

It's all a light-hearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid.

We're your hosts, I'm Alina Urquhart, and I'm Ash Kelly.

And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy.

The The stories we cover are well researched.

Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group.

With a touch of humor.

Shout out to her.

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There's been like eight of them.

A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing.

That motherfuck is not real.

And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the Wayback Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast, Morbid.

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