Elizabeth “Betty” Broderick, a former La Jolla socialite who became a true-crime legend after killing her ex-husband and his younger new wife in 1989, has died at Chino Valley Medical Center, where she was transferred last month after becoming ill at the California Institution for Women in Chino. She was 78.
Broderick had been serving a life sentence following her 1991 conviction for the deaths of her ex-husband, prominent San Diego malpractice attorney Daniel T. Broderick III and the former office assistant he later married, 28-year-old Linda Kolkena Broderick.
Betty and Daniel Broderick had divorced in 1985 after 16 years of marriage and raising four children together.
Their youngest child, Rhett Broderick, told the San Diego Union- Tribune his mother had tripped several weeks ago, “broke some ribs,” and developed an infection that became sepsis.
“She passed away from natural causes with three of her children at her bedside, and the other was FaceTiming,” he told the newspaper. “We were all able to come and be with her.”
The double homicide shocked San Diego’s legal circles, where Daniel Broderick had served as president of the local bar association.
In subsequent years, the case would be used by advocates as a prime example of the dilemma faced by wives whose husbands “dump” them for younger women.
The Betty Broderick case would also go on to be depicted in a two-part 1992 TV movie, a 2018 TV series, multiple books and nearly 30 episodes of true crime TV shows and podcasts — including one from the Los Angeles Times in 2020-2024.
According to trial testimony, the New York native fired five shots from a .38-caliber revolver in the early morning hours of Nov. 5, 1989 — three of which struck her ex-husband and his wife as they slept in their Marston Hills home.
She had entered the home using a key taken weeks earlier from one of her daughters.
The couple had married in April 1989 although Broderick suspected the two had been having an affair while she was still married to the attorney.
During the trial, Broderick said she was driven to kill by her soon-to- be ex-husband’s abusive behavior during their divorce proceedings and a bitter custody battle.
Prosecutors maintained she was a cold and calculating killer who felt she was entitled “to act out in vicious and extreme ways just because she was angry.”
Broderick became eligible for parole in 2010 and 2017 but was denied both times after the Board of Parole determined she showed no signs of remorse.