A Woman Scorned

Betty Broderick married Dan Broderick in 1969 and put him through medical school and then law school, raising four children while he built one of San Diego’s most profitable medical malpractice practices. In 1983 she became convinced he was involved with his young office assistant, Linda Kolkena. He denied it and moved out in February 1985.

The divorce ran for four years and left Betty certain she had been outmaneuvered by a man who knew every judge in the county. Dan and Linda married in April 1989. Before dawn on November 5, 1989, Betty let herself into their house on Cypress Avenue in the Marston Hills neighborhood with a key she had taken, crossed to the bedroom, and fired five shots from a .38-caliber revolver. Linda died at once. Dan, hit in the chest as he reached for the telephone, did not, and Betty pulled the phone beyond his reach before she left.

Her first trial, in 1990, ended with a hung jury. A second jury convicted her of two counts of second-degree murder in December 1991, and she received two consecutive terms of fifteen years to life, plus two years for the gun. Parole boards turned her down in 2010 and in 2017. She died in May 2026, at 78, of an infection that followed a fall in prison.