Betty Broderick Denied Parole for 1989 Double Homicide

by Alicia Cruz
The Black Urban Times

On a November morning in 1989, Betty Broderick, then 41, drove down interstate 5 headed to the home of her ex-husband, prominent San Diego lawyer, Dan Broderick.

Upon arriving, she used her daughter's key to enter his Marston Hills home where Dan and his new wife, Linda lie sleeping.

"Call the police," Linda is alleged to have said when she awoke to find Betty in her bedroom. Betty fired two shots, killing Linda instantly before turning the gun on Dan.

Click here to see how the bedroom,
once a bloody scene, has now been remodeled

If you believe the made for TV movie, "A woman scorned: The Betty Broderick story," Betty crept in, looked at her husband and his new wife, said nothing and callously pumped five bullets into them killing Linda instantly and gravely wounding Dan who eventually drowned in his own blood as Betty bashed his fingers with a telephone she ripped out of the wall after Dan reached for it to call for help.

Then she walked out of the room and went to a pay phone where she called someone and said, "I did it. I finally shot the son of a bitch."

Elizabeth Anne Bisceglia was born on November 7, 1947 in Eastchester, (Westchester County) New York to Marita and Frank Bisceglia. Frank, the owner of a plastering company he founded with his brothers was of Italian descent. Marita, was a devout Roman Catholic woman of Irish American descent. Together they raised six children. Betty was their third.

Above: Betty's First Holy Communion

The Bisceglia's did not fancy themselves as rich. They were devout Roman Catholics who worked hard and achieved their upper middle-class status through rich community ties and social graces.

Betty graduated from the College of Mount Saint Vincent, a small Catholic women's college in Riverdale, New York.

She met Dan Broderick, the eldest son of another large Catholic family, at a football game of the University of Notre Dame, where Dan was an undergrad student.

Members of Dan's family once said that what initially charmed them about Betty was her beauty, graciousness, and sophistication.

Betty and Dan on their wedding day in 1969

Betty and Dan became engaged while Dan was attending the Cornell University Medical School in New York City. They later married in April 1969 and welcomed their first child a year later.

By most accounts, their marriage appeared to be one made in heaven. Later, Betty would tell a much different story. One peppered with bouts of emotional and mental abuse. She would tell us how she labored, even while pregnant, to put her husband through law and medical schools only to be dropped like a bad habit for a younger woman her husband hired to work as his legal assistant after spotting her while attending an office party.

Dan, Betty said, used his legal wit and prominence within the California legal system to control, manipulate and abuse her during their rancorous divorce proceedings.
A process that relegated Betty to live off of a meager allowance, move to a small apartment overlooking a strip mall replete with neon lights, driving a rental car and seeing her children intermittently.

All a far cry from what she had grown accustomed to as the wife of one of southern California's most respected and powerful attorneys, a community socialite who lost many of her friends after her divorce and a dedicated mother who nurtured her babies through sporting events and school.
It was all of this, Betty said, that drove her to kill her ex-husband and his new bride, whom Betty often referred to as "the bitch."
Was she a woman scorned, a modern day Cruella De Ville or an emotionally pummeled wife dropkicked over the edge of sanity by an emotionally manipulative husband deftly skilled at psychological warfare who antagonized his wife of 16 years into murdering him?

Today, the once sophisticated, intelligent, wealthy socialite, is better known as Prisoner Number W42477 and her address is far from anything scenic or reminiscent of her days as devoted wife and mother in La Jolla, California. Now, she resides at the California Institution for Women in Corona, Ca where she's spent the past 21 years since her 1991 conviction.

Betty says her day goes from 8:00AM to 4:00PM. She is active in her "community" where she tutors other prisoners in the GED program while she prepared for her parole hearing.

Yesterday, Betty sat before a two-person panel dressed in a pink sweatshirt and navy blue pants and trying to convince them she was fit to be released on parole.
During her five-hour hearing, she held true to her original declaration that she never intended to kill her ex-husband or his new wife when she went to their home that morning in November 1989.

Her intent was to talk to Dan; to make him listen to her and if he didn't, she planned to use the gun to kill herself in front of him. But as she drove along Interstate 5, she began having violent thoughts and the plan ended up murder not suicide.

"I had one choice: to shoot them or myself," Broderick recalled thinking. "I couldn't let them win."

Betty went on to tell the board that her "whole world fell off its axis" when her Dan left her.
"I couldn't get a settlement, and I couldn't get the kids...I allowed the voices in my head to completely take over," said Betty.

It was all in vain as far as the board was concerned. After the hearing, the members said they felt that Betty remained "angry" and "unrepentant" over her crime.
Commissioner of the Board of Prison Terms, Robert Doyle, delivered the boards decision to Betty and added that he had never seen an inmate who had "made so little progress" in acknowledging what she had done.

"Your heart is still bitter, and you are still angry," said Doyle. "You show no significant progress in evolving. You are still back 20 years ago in that same mode. You've got to move on."

Betty's children, who have not visited her while in prison, attended the hearing. Two were for their mother remaining in prison.

Dan Broderick, now 33, said his mother was still "hung up" on justifying what she did.

"In my heart, I know my mother is a good person, but along the way she got lost. Releasing a lost person into society could be a dangerous mistake," said Dan Jr.,

One of Betty's daughters, Kathy, now 38, told the board that she wanted her mother to come live with her, even though she still misses her father.

"She should be able to live her life outside prison walls," said Kathy.

If Betty shows improvement, she can request another parole hearing in three years.

Editor's Commentary:
By Alicia Cruz

I don't know if Betty went to her ex-husband's home that morning with the intent to kill him and his wife or herself and the plan went awry.
I don't know because I wasn't there. There are only four people who know for sure and two of them are dead.

I struggle when I pause for a moment to reflect on Betty's story, the movie and the statements from others. I tried placing myself in her shoes and then I remembered what my Aunt Dometra has been telling me for years, "Don't ever say what you won't 'never' do until you been there. Because until then, you don't know anything."

But I digress.

I don't know what Betty's true intent was that morning in November 1989. The place her mind and soul were at that time is really what matters.
Depending on whom you ask, Betty was simply a cold-hearted narcissist. A sociopath.
A scorned woman hell bent on serving up that proverbial cold dish of revenge against the man who dumped her and the woman he chose.

Others say she was dragged over the edge of sanity by a man she loved, married and bore four children for. She stood by him ensuring his rise to the top only to be ditched, without warning, down the road for a newer model.

Then he poured salt in her wounds by taking her children and flaunting his new life, turning her friends against her and doling out a meager financial settlement of $28,000 for nearly 20 years of marriage and devotion (and excluding the fact that he had an affair).

He divorced her then had their marriage annulled so he could marry his mistress Catholic style ten days after the date he and Betty married 20 years earlier.
They say he annihilated the woman who first believed in him without much empathy and she simply lost it.

Truth be told, no matter how much one wants to empathize with Betty for suffering through what many of us have - the aftershocks of a man dumping you with little or no mercy - we cannot forget that she took two lives.

Was she dealt a raw and dirty deal? Yes.
Did she make it easy for him and others to feel disdain towards her at times? Perhaps.
Could she have handled it better? Perhaps.

But I dare not pass judgment because there but for the grace of God, go I.

I cringe when I recall less-than dignified moments involving matters of the heart during my youth...moments I would like to bury in the abyss of yesteryear.

But again, I digress.

Betty Broderick acted impulsively and deadly, but was Betty Broderick a menace to society or a danger to others aside from Dan and Linda?

Her prison sentence was about punishing her for the crime she committed.
The courts said she should be rehabilitated within 21 years and would be eligible for parole at that time if she were rehabilitated. Right?

OK. The parole board spoke and said they felt she was not remorseful, etc. And if she was quoted accurately and said what she did, then perhaps she may not be rehabilitated in the sense that society and the parole board members would like for her to be.

Perhaps in another three years, Betty will have graduated emotionally and will have earned her chance at life on the other side of the Chowchilla prison walls.

My closes sister-friend told me that the Kübler-Ross model of the grief cycle indicates that there are five stages of grief:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

Judging from the extensive, well-documented "Betty Chronicles" as I refer to the many news articles surrounding her life, the divorce and the aftermath, Betty has been through at least four of the five stages of grief except Acceptance.

For four years, she had been functioning off of adrenaline fueled by anger, venom, unfathomable pain, fear and humiliation.
Perhaps it was so deep-rooted that, yes, after 21 years in prison, she has not cycled through the grief and healing process in order to reach acceptance and remorse.
I can't imagine how she must feel not having seen or touched her children in 21 years and knowing that they are angry with her.

"How will I ever face them? Will or can they ever forgive me? How will I face the world?"

I believe Betty Broderick is a wounded soul too afraid to admit wrong and too proud to beg. But I if asked, I wouldn't say she was not fit to function in society.

She was never a danger to anyone but herself and Dan and Linda Broderick. She was not a menace terrorizing society at large. She wasn't a drug addict or zealot preying upon persons for ill gain.

She was a clinically depressed, deeply wounded woman who had lost her husband, children and her life, as she knew it in a span of four years. How many of us wouldn't be a little nutty or damn near close to our own edge of insanity?

No, perhaps we wouldn't have resorted to murder, but then, we don't know what we may do given the wrong moment coupled with ripe circumstances for a disaster.

I pray Betty is under the care of a psychiatrist, undergoing deep psychotherapy. After all, that's why she was sent to prison: to be rehabilitated for what caused her to resort to double homicide after her marriage ended.

Address the core issues, treat them and you may have a rehabilitated woman.

In three years, I'll update my story and perhaps the headline will read, "Betty Broderick: Rehabilitated and Free at Last." Who knows?

I advise each of you that thinks you are sane enough to "never" be antagonized or pushed to or over the edge of your sanity, to do some deep and non-judgmental self introspective thinking and ask, "God, what if that were really me?"

Be a wise woman/man and learn from the mistakes of others so you don't have to learn from your own.


If you are interested in writing Betty Broderick, please do so at:

California Institution for Women
Prison Address:
Betty Broderick # W42477
16756 Chino-Corona Road
Corona, CA 92880-9508

Review her prisoner life page here

Visit Betty's Facebook page to leave a word of support or review updates on her case