Bittersweet Infamy - #6 - Betty and Dan Broderick

Episode Date: January 10, 2021

Josie tells Taylor about San Diego's gnarliest divorce. Plus: Hilaria Baldwin's disappearing, reappearing accent.

Hello, and welcome to Bitter Sweden for me, the podcast about infamous people, places, and things. I'm Taylor Basso. I'm Josie Mitchell. My friend Josie is going to tell me a story. I don't know what it'll be. The only rule? The subject matter must be infamous.

Happy New Year, my friend. Happy New Year! Doot, doot, doot. Do you think that this year everything will have magically been solved? Yes. That's the goal, hey? Yes. It won't be Jan 1.

I know that. I know that. Right. So as a proviso, we're actually taping this on December 30th. So if anything like catastrophically world ending has happened between January 1st and January 7th, or whenever we're releasing this, we don't know it. But we're not being cruel, we're not being ignorant. We just don't know that it's happened yet.

Should we have this as a disclaimer on all our episodes? If in the time between our recording this and our releasing this, something truly earth shaking has happened, and they seem to be coming fast and furious. Oh yeah, no, this is totally, totally within the realm. Speaking of earth shaking, earth shattering things, have you heard this stuff about Hilaria Baldwin? I have. My friend Chelsea told me that she was faking being Latina?

Not even she's faking being Latinx. She's faking being Spanish specifically. That's right. Why? Why would she fake that? Yeah. Which is very, when I told my mother, who is herself, Anna Maria, you know, came over on the boat from Spain, I told her and she said, I quote, that's so useless, like, it's

such a weird thing to me. Did you see the details about her wedding? No, no, I did not. This is breaking news. This is breaking news. She wore a mantilla instead of yes. They said see. What?

There were flamenco dancers and fans, and she said that her family could not pronounce her new surname, Baldwin. Baldwin. That's a hard one. I've spent a lot of my time around Spanish speakers. They could all do Baldwin, I feel like. Yeah, yeah, they could do the whole name. Alec Baldwin.

They're fine. Fuck. And she faked her. She's been faking her accent. That seems to be the case. She denies it. She says it's one of those, you know, to quote Derrick Kemsley from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, when you've traveled the world, you can speak in any accent you like.

She's claiming it's one of those situations, but everyone else is like, yo, you're from, people are coming out being like, I knew her when she was Hillary from Boston, and she was loved. No one has a bad thing to say about her, except that she's not Spanish. How did that come out? Break this news further. Apparently, she had some sort of online beef with Amy Schumer, because Amy Schumer made a swipe at one of her pregnancy photos or something.

I don't know. But, yeah, no, as with all good breaking news stories, Waco, Heaven's Gate, et cetera, it started with a brush with Amy Schumer. And then- It's her bath. Exactly. She's the- The Kevin Bacon of disaster.

She's the Kevin Bacon of disaster. She's the mother. You know how Kombucha has the mother? She's the mother. But so, Hillary makes this kind of does a video where she's in a heightened state, and I guess when she was in a heightened state, she didn't bother faking the accent or did so poorly, and then on Twitter, someone started a thread about it, and then on Instagram, someone else started a thread about it.

And now, here we are, she's doing- I saw today that she was doing an interview with ET Canada, which sounds exciting. Dang, yeah, she's got a lot of cleanup, I guess, or denying to do. To bring it back around, I'm looking forward to my new year, where Hillary and I both will comer las uvas. 12, one for each month. One for each month that both she and I were in Spain, absolutely. Man, yeah, no, it's just, it is kind of wild.

It's like, I have to agree with Andrea to what end. She also told me that her monthia was nicer than Hilaria's. Oh, well good. But- Hilaria didn't know what she was looking for, that's why. She can't be the real shit. She's that lived experience. My mom knows-

Yeah. My mom knows a monthia from a tortilla, and I don't know if Hilaria is the same. I love it. Well, here's to a new year, where Hilaria reckons with her identity. And in the spirit of, that was a little amuse-bouche, that was a mini-infamous thing. A mini. Why don't you- A min-famous?

Mini- Just workshop that, I would say. I think there's something there, min-famous, no, you know what, that's fine. Mini-infamous. No, you had it. You had it. Okay. Let's go with min-famous.

But we need the max-famous thing, and I think you're the woman for the job. Oh, thank you, because you were right. Boom! So, I need to ask you, your relationship to storage lockers, like storage units, do you have one? I've never had one because I've always lived in more or less the same city, like I used to live in Surrey now, I live in Vancouver. So all my old shit is just at my parents' house.

Right, yeah. Okay, okay. And but have you frequented, or been to one, not frequented, but have you ever? No, I've always, no, the answer is no, and I'm the kind of person who gets hung up on weird small things like storage lockers, like if we drive by them, I think, oh, that would be a good place to like spend a day, just do a good place to do a little half day. Yeah, a little half day, John. I ask, because recently, you know, when you, if you abandon your storage locker, it just

goes on auction. It gets put up for auction, yes. Hence, storage wars. Yes. Yes. So, recently in San Diego, the city of my birth, a storage locker went up for auction, it was bought for like 180 bucks, something like that, filled with whatever crap. Sorry, just a pause, I'm excited that you're giving me a San Diego story.

Yeah, yeah. That's fun. Yeah, so I figure, all right, let's do it. So, Sorrento Valley, which is the home to storage lockers, very bland looking office buildings, and now a lot of weed shops. Okay, so you go there, you go there to get really high to numb the work of hauling shit out of the back of your truck and putting it into storage. Exactly, yeah.

Or if you are the gentleman who bought this particular storage locker, you paw through it all and find handwritten letters from a convicted murderer in prison to her boyfriend. Okay. Do you know the story of Betty Broderick? Betty Broderick? I watched, I have watched a bad 1990s TV movie starring Meredith Baxter as Betty Broderick. Holy shit, I have watched that within the week. No!

Yep. Oh my gosh, someone is off work, for sure, but also- Who the fuck is Betty writing to? Oh no! All right, all right, this is good, this is good. Okay. I'm shocked that I haven't heard this storage locker development, I know nothing about it, but I am what you might term a Betty Broderick superfan.

Ooh, okay, all right, yeah, I feel like I knew that. But I didn't know it explicitly, you know, it's like in the background. I think I sent you like a couple of months back, because as obviously you will know, they recently did the second season of Dirty John. And it's her story, with Amanda Pete playing her. Right, it's Amanda Pete and like Christian Slater is the husband of something. Yeah, and then in the old 1990s version, it's the dad from 7th Heaven, I think, who plays Dan Broderick.

Yes, it is, yes it is, the diddler, yes it is. Yeah, it's really interesting. So these letters were found, recently came back into the news, all of that. But I'm gonna start, yeah, I'm gonna start from the beginning to let those of us who don't know about Betty Broderick, all about Betty Broderick. You're doing a murder. I'm doing a murder. I'm just...

That's so heavy hitting, that's so dangerous, I love it. Okay, good. I wrote all my notes in red pen, too. Ooh, yes, in blue, I love it. So, I'm gonna take you back to Brooklyn, to the hometown of Elizabeth Ann Beseglia. She comes from an Irish-Italian family. Right, lots of yelling, yes. Lots of yelling, lots of inward feelings that aren't being expressed.

But there is still yelling, so it's the conundrum there. But you're not yelling about what you really feel, what you really feel is why were you so withholding at this particular point, and what you're really saying is like, this fucking, this food sucks, mom. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Wow, nailed it, okay. That's kind of a story right there, now.

No, that's true, if I ain't the truth. Yeah. Okay, so, she's born 1947. She... I was... Oh, yeah. Hold on. I was...

I was... Oh, god. Back from war. War. I was back from war, and I was just really ready to have a nuclear family and eat food out of a tin. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

That's good. That was it. That's what I was up to. If you were Betty, you were living in this upper-middle-class family, Catholic family who had instilled in you the ethic to get married, have babies, and support your husband, wait for your golden years with your grandchildren, and die happily. That's grim. It is.

It is kind of grim. It's super grim. I was watching an old episode of Family Feud, so you're learning a lot about my television viewing habits. Yeah, I know. I was watching an episode of... This is deep. I watch a lot of weird shit from the 60s, 70s, 80s.

I just can't get... If it was filmed in HD, it's too young for me now. I was watching an old episode of Family Feud where the question was, name something like a little girl wants to do when she grows up. It was all like nurse, teacher, actress, ballerina, and then overwhelming number one answer was mother. Mother, mom. Yeah.

Mom, just a good old-fashioned mom. Yeah. Those were the only five jobs available to women in 1973. Right. Yeah. Okay. So, Betty grows up in this atmosphere with this idea of what her life will look like. She goes to college.

She gets a degree in early child education, so she does have a degree. But during these college days, she travels to Notre Dame with some friends, and she meets this kind of geeky, dorky guy named Dan Broderick, who is studying to be a doctor. He courts her, like, yes, like a good old-fashioned courting. I want to get courted. Well, do you? Like, listen to the rest of the story. No.

No. No. So, Daniel T. Broderick, the third, from an Irish Catholic family with a very similar kind of ethic in terms of have a family, support them as best you can. He has some particular drive to be extremely, like, notable, wealthy, well-off in the world as well. Not that uncommon. Yeah.

No, not that uncommon at all. And so, they hit it off. They have about three years of courting, because she's still quite young. She's still a teenager when they've met, and he's, like, three or four years older than her. Okay. So, not a lot. But they get married.

He's still, he's in medical school at Notre Dame, and they get married. They go on a honeymoon. She comes back pregos. Yeah. Like, she got pregnant on the honeymoon. Yeah. Oh, no. I know.

That's hard. Well, I mean. You fuck once. You fuck once as husband and wife, and then that whole part of it. But I guess, I mean, I guess if that's what you're shooting for. Exactly. That was kind of like both of their goals. Like, her goal was to be a mom and a wife.

Thank God we don't need to learn each other's personalities now. Right. We can just sire children together. So apparently, according to Betty, everything kind of changed after the wedding. Like, even on the honeymoon, he told the hotel that they didn't need a maid in their room because Betty would be cleaning it all. Oh. Yeah.

So. Ew. I know, right? What the fuck? Who says that? That's the whole, like, even get the maid. Okay. I know.

I know. Honeymoon. Just let her have a break. Exactly. So they come back. But does he know, sorry, does he know the maids are free? Yeah. Right?

I don't, yeah. So they come back and he's finishing up med school. She's preggers. They have no money, so they're living in the dorm together. He finishes up med school. She's been working. She's been doing, like, waitressing and odd jobs, some teaching, stuff like that. He finishes up med school and says, you know what, Betty?

I think I should go get a law degree because now that I have my medical degree, if I have a law degree, I'm perfectly suited to do medical malpractice and we'll make a lot of money. She agrees of her own account. She agrees to this and they do three more years of her supporting him. They have another kid. It's hard. She works a lot. He gets his degree, though, and then they move, I guess, oh, he got his degree from Harvard.

So they were in Boston. They move out to San Diego because there's a law firm that wants him. Right, right. So they move to San Diego, which is where I currently am, actually. I know. Woo! Go, Padres! Go, pods!

And... Sorry, are, wait, wait, are Padres priests? Yeah, they're like friars, yeah. Sick. Okay, go ahead. No, when you have a beautiful hour to fall down a wormhole, Google the Padres mascot. He looks like Friar Tuft. No, I got you.

Cassick or whatever it's called. Yeah, yeah. And then shaved on top, but then hair on the side stuff. So do they hire a guy to shave the top of your head? No, it's all cartoon. He goes as a cartoon. Very weird. Yeah, very weird.

Yeah, very weird. Just seeing him on the ball field, you're like, what the fuck? And then... It's nice. It's good. But by the end of this, I am going to pitch that Betty Broderick should be the mascot for... Yes!

The San Diego Vengeance they can call themselves. Yes! Oh, that'd be good. Maybe it's like a women's soccer team or something. Again, that'd be good. That'd be really good. Betty Broderick herself would be like, women's soccer. Anyway.

Yeah, probably. Okay, so they moved to San Diego. They rent a house in a neighborhood called Claremont. It's a little two-bedroom shabu. She is working as a waitress. She's working at Black Angus and the Jolly Roger. Yeah, just so you know. Just so you know.

Yeah, no, no, I like that. I like that. That's good to tell. His work at the law firm isn't paying a lot at this point, so she's still working full time. She's a young kid, or not full time, but she's working outside of the house. She has these two little, little, little kiddos. At this house, she's at work and they got a new TV that had an electrical problem and

there was a fire. It burned down the entire house. No! The babysitter got the two little girls out of the house, so it was okay. No one was hurt, but they lost their house and everything in it. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. It was like an extra strain kind of deal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But with the insurance money, they were able to buy a house in a neighboring neighborhood named La Jolla, which was just west of Claremont. And look. I have been to La Jolla courtesy of you. You have been to La Jolla. Yes. Yes.

Courtesy of you. A very kind of Tony, tennis bracelet, fancy car neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah. Lights on the palm trees. Lights on the palm trees. Oh, big time right now too. I bet.

There's like one right outside this window. Nice. Oh, I love that. So they're in this new house, Dan is working constantly, Betty is still really stressed. Dan's career is kind of taking off. He's at this like good law firm, I guess this well-respected law firm. He's starting to kind of represent well-known clients in the news. So his name is kind of coming up.

They're earning more money. So Betty is still, Betty is now at home. She doesn't have to work anymore. Her girls are old enough. The two young girls are old enough to go to a fancy school, the Bishop School, which is actually my alma mater. Get the fuck out. Yeah, dude.

Oh my God. So you're it. You know these girls. You've got a personal connection here. No. I mean, well, they were born, they were born in like 70 and 71. So I didn't, I didn't know them. I'm pretty sure when I was lecturing you on your own age in episode one, we determined

that you were born around then. That's true. Okay. Okay. We're good. Kim is Lee and me. Tight buds. Tight buds.

You now have the benefit of being something of a primary source here. Tell me about the school. Oh, okay. I will. It is an Episcopal school. Right. What does Episcopal mean? Episcopal means, actually, this is really interesting because there is no Episcopal

Church in Canada. There's only the Anglican Church in Canada. I know Anglican. Okay. Okay. The U.S. revolted from Britain. They couldn't have the Anglican Church anymore because the head of the Anglican Church is the queen they weren't gonna, or the royalty.

Right. So they had to make up their own. They had to rebrand. They had to rebrand. Yeah. So they rebranded it as Episcopalian. Nice. Interesting.

Okay. Good to know. So they're going to a fancy school. They're putting a swimming pool in the backyard of their house. You know, things are kind of setting up. Sorry. Stop. You realize, you realize you told me nothing about your school.

Oh. Yeah. Sorry. You told me a lot. You told me a lot about the Episcopal Church. You told me nothing about the Episcopal Church. Yeah. Just give me a lie.

Put me there really quick. Fancy school plaid skirt, saddle shoes. There's a quad that you can't walk on until noon. Thank you. That's all I needed. Go ahead. When I was there, they had a bell tower and they would play the Harry Potter theme song. Harry Potter isn't the devil, though.

Well, that's the thing about Episcopalians. It's just very light. It's like. Diet, religion, you know, okay. So Dan has his own law firm now and one of Betty's jobs now is to decorate the office and she does so opulently. She apparently has an incredible eye for design. And I love, so we're in the 80s, right?

We're tapping at the 80s. We're tapping at the 80s. So I bet someone with a real nice eye for decor in like 1982, I bet that was a paradise to walk into. Yeah. Right? Something very masculine, you know, because he's a man. Very masculine.

Yeah. Kind of dark, you know, like the sunny San Diego, but like this is the law, so let's get some blackout curtains, you know. Yeah. I talk with that. I talk with that. Some vertical blinds. Yes.

Yeah, exactly. He's working a whole bunch with his new thing. They have two more kids, Dan Jr., who was born in 76. Would he not, sorry, wait, would he not be technically be Dan the 4th? Oh yeah, you're right. It is Dan the 4th. They probably called him DJ or something. Yeah, that's true.

That's Dan Ive, man. Are you, sorry, are you literally holding up Betty Broderick's family tree here? No. No, he's my no. Can you imagine? I wish I was like, did you get genealogy down Jesus Christ? So, Betty Broderick, you know, commonly thought to be Italian and Irish, but if you look here, she's actually got 3.5% of her genetic makeup comes from Portugal.

I did a 23 in me of Betty Broderick, that's what this episode is about. Based on the genetic material found on the letters in this storage locker. Exactly. And the person who bought that storage locker was Josie Mitchell. It's true. It's me. That's the big reveal. Yeah.

My life would be different if I were buying storage lockers, wouldn't it? Yeah. You got that, you got that look in your eye. You're literally licking your lips at the prospect of this. You're sick. Go on. Staring out the window. Licking my lips.

It's great. So, Dan the 4th is born. Their last child, Rhett, R-H-E-T-T, is born in 79. At this time, Dan and Betty's relationship is definitely falling apart. They're fighting a lot and the fights are escalating. They're throwing stuff. Betty is throwing things at Dan once she threw like an almost full glass bottle of kakchup at him, and it like shattered behind him.

I shouldn't say nice, this is domestic violence, but my first reaction there was like, this is terrible. I was really praising all of the objects that you could throw at someone in a passionate rage and I saw a glass kakchup and I was like, nice. Yeah, very dramatic. Very dramatic. Yeah. Leaves a big stain, yeah.

Yeah. Dan is also getting aggressive, but never towards her. That's always been clear through the story, is that he was never physically violent towards her. Okay. He did once throw a fish tank off the balcony. Fuck that. Yeah.

I'm sorry. Literally, you've just told me, I know more or less how badly this story is about to escalate, and you've just told me two instances of things, glass objects being hurled around and I was like, I'm out. Sorry. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

It's rough. And the kids are definitely in the middle. It's not like they're fighting behind closed doors. During this time, Betty would sit the kids down when their dad wouldn't come home for dinner, and she would say, we're getting a divorce, who do you want to live with? You get to choose. That's, you can't do that to your kids, Elizabeth, you can't be doing that. And during all these fights, a regular tactic of dance was just to ignore her when she was

getting really upset, which is always a good idea. No. Just to, yeah, not engage. No. To not engage. I feel like a lot of who you identify with in this story cleaves down to, are you a person who wishes all of the emotions would go away, or are you a person who feels too much all the time in a relationship?

Me myself, I am a person who feels too much all the time in relationships and life. Like I wish I had a little bit of a dimmer switch on my emotion because I can get very caught up in my emotions. And I think because of that, I end up being a Betty sympathizer in this, in the story, even though I know that she, you can't fake divorce on your kids, like that's not fucking kosher. Yeah. You know what I mean?

But I think that is a really good thing to kind of clock because there is so much sympathy for Betty that I feel as well, and that other people obviously have felt as well. And it's just like, it is really interesting to notice where my line is with it, because I'll be like, whoa, that's gnarly, like, don't do that. But then on the other hand, I'm like, okay, yeah, you know, it is, it is interesting. Betty is also like a nuts narcissist. We shouldn't lose that plot either. No.

Uh-uh. All right. They are wildly unhappy. Shit within the household is not going well. Right. And to all outsiders looking in, they are just the perfect little family. One society columnist for the San Diego Tribune named Burl Stiff. That is his name.

He works for the society column? Yeah. Beautiful. Love it. Go ahead. And I quote Mr. Stiff here. They were almost sensual casting for early yuppie. Yeah.

Do you think it's good? No, that's good. That's good. I think every movie has done very nicely is just like shoulder pads, big old clip-ons, good big hair, you know, she, she drove an SUV that had a personalized license plate that was load them up. You know that. Wow.

Of course I know that. I of course know that. I'm sorry. Any detail. This is, that's the one. No, she's so, yeah, I never, I never quite thought about it. But like, the context of this happening in the early 80s, early Reagan, greed is good, blah, blah, blah, blah, like that's so intractable from what this story is.

Exactly. And I think also the Southern California vibe a bit too, because I think that, that- Yeah, but you're biased. Reaganism. Well, yeah, I know. I told my mom, I was like, do you know Betty, do you know the story of Betty Broderick? Her first thing was like, oh, poor thing. Yeah.

I knew her from Junior League. She knew her from Junior League? Yeah, dude. Like actually knew her. She knew her, not enough to like, let's go have lunch, Betty, but like, if they were in a room together, she knew who she was. I mean, my dad was a lawyer. My mom was a lawyer.

Right. Fuck that. So someone just walked over my grave. That gave me chills. I know, right? Right? And my mom was like, Dan was a great lawyer. He was one of the best.

So they're yuppies. My parents were a bit of a yuppies, knew each other. They are, their marriage is not doing too super well. Betty is racking up bills. She's buying $8,000 gowns and like, she's spending a lot of money on jewelry and clothes, but she's also becoming kind of insecure about her aging. So she's gaining a little weight, but she's trying to like, dye her hair platinum. So she's very concerned about her physical appearance because Dan is just staying longer

and longer. And again, we're among a very elite circle of rich ladies in La Jolla in Southern California. Like there's a reason that all of the Beverly Hills, Malibu, blah, blah, there's a reason all those shows kind of happen in that general area, right? Right, exactly. So the fights are getting worse. There's a lot of bad stuff. Dan buys a Jaguar, a two-seater Jaguar.

God, these guys really are. The story. Yeah. The story of like yuppie midlife crisis, that sort of very stereotypical thing that he buys a convertible man, they really hit all the beats. Her minivan says load him up on the license plate. It's a SUV, but yeah. Ooh, SUVs.

She was ahead of her time there. She was a little ahead. She was the kind of a rollover ahead. Yeah. Yeah. That's terrible. I know. But she's pissed about the Jag because she's like, this is not a family car.

This is your midlife crisis car. They over it, da-da-da-da-da. So fair enough. I've never been happier to be single than I am right now. Thank you. I know. This story is really bad. This story is reminding me of like, yeah.

Well, God, when it goes bad, it goes bad. So in 1983, Dan, up until then, has had a one-man operation at his law firm. He hires a legal aide, a 21-year-old woman named Linda Colkena. She's hired as a legal aide, but she doesn't really have any education that pertains to a legal aide or any type of office. She doesn't really know how to type, that kind of thing. So Betty is incensed. She's like, why would you hire this woman?

This is ridiculous. And immediately she suspects an affair. And Dan tells her, you're crazy. You don't know what you're talking about. He pretty much just gaslights her. Like textbook again. If these folks are textbook, they're textbook. That's like legit.

He text gaslights her for sure. He textbook gaslights her. On this time, it's Dan's birthday. And Betty shows up to the law office thinking that she'll take him out to lunch. She brings a present and a bottle of champagne, that kind of thing. He's not there because he's out with Linda having a liquid lunch that is going until like 5 PM. Betty goes home, proceeds to remove all of his fancy bespoke suits from his closet and

lights them on fire in the backyard. The fire station has to come because the neighbors have called in a fire and the kids are horrified because now everybody knows what crazy shit is going on in the house. I think that part of the allure of Betty as a figure is that she does shit like that because most of us are moored to reality by the fact that we are not psychotic. And so if we were really upset with our partners, we would really, really like to just drag all of his fucking suits out of the closet and torch him on the lawn. But we wouldn't because that's just, most people wouldn't do that.

And I think that like Betty serves as this sort of id for anyone who's been done wrong and really wishes that they could go to these like nuts extreme lengths that she does because we all get hurt, you know? Yeah. And I think Amy Williams, who's this writer from the LA Times who kind of broke the story, she has this really wonderful way of saying it. I think she says Betty had no issue expressing her anger at a time when women and to a large extent now don't know how aren't encouraged, aren't shown a way to express their anger. And I think that's part of Betty's draw is that she is willing to take all the clothes

out of his closet and fucking burn. Yeah. If you piss her off, she will like tell you about it loudly. Yeah. I think she'll complain to the kids about it. Yeah. She does take it a bit too far sometimes. Just a little too far. Yeah. And funnily enough, that wasn't the thing that pushed Dan out of the house. It was when she threw a bottle of hair gel at him. That's never what you expect. I like that. That was 1985. He moves out of the house and he files for a legal separation and then admits

to an affair with Linda, his legal assistant. Right. So she was never crazy. Damn. Think about that. So around that time, Betty of course is not doing super hot and her oldest daughter, Kim asks her to take a friend home to drive a friend home because it's like Sunday and it's like load them up. Yeah, load them up. You got the load them up. I thought that's that's what this was about. And Betty goes off on her oldest daughter, tells her to pack her bags and she drops her off at her dad's house. Sorry, is he is he living with Linda Culkin at this point? Did

you say not at this point? No, he's moved in to the house that they are having remodeled. Is this the house in Coral Reef? Yes, Coral Reef Avenue. Yeah. Okay, okay. I remember just hearing that name a million times. So I was thinking the house at Coral Reef. The house at Coral Reef. That's right. That's the title of the episode. Yeah, that's a good show. She drops her off Kim is all by herself on the darkened steps. And then Dan shows up and he's like, what the fuck? The next day that he drops off their eight year old son, because he got in a fight with his younger brother. He's all by himself over the course

of maybe a month. She also drops off the other sister and brother so that Dan is looking after all four kids. Did she change her license plate to say unload them? No, I don't think she did actually. That would have been a that would have been a good middle finger. Yeah. And this actually, this is this is an important part because this comes back to haunt her in legal cases with the divorce, because the judge is like, you don't care about your kids, you dump them on his doorstep without any concern for their safety. So that does become kind of a sticking point. He outplayed her hand basically on this one. She

dumped him all there and he was like, okay. Yeah. Well, and I think the idea behind it was that she thought he couldn't handle it. She was like, I've been doing all this work. You can't handle this work too. And he's like, well, if I just hire a nanny and a house sitter. Yes, of course, because he's wealthy. Yeah, so you can do all of that. And then they don't, you know, they never see him anyway. So when they don't, when they see him a teeny bit more, the kids are like, cool, dad's awesome. Dad's chill. Mom is, mom is a lot of stress. Mom's not chill. Mom's not chill. No. So it's, it's pretty, pretty crazy. Betty is still seeing her kids. So she goes in and out of this house often because she's picking up the kids and

taking them to all their soccer practice school, whatever it is. So she's still doing that. She's still seeing the kids. But at one point she sees that there is an obviously homemade Boston cream pie on the kitchen counter. And she's like, who the fuck made this? And her eight year old son is like, Oh, I made that for dad. No. She takes the pie, goes upstairs and spreads it all over his suits, all over the dresser drawers, all over the bedspread, just really letting that anger flow. Again, is there not been a time you've literally been like, I wish I could sneer that fucking Boston cream pie all over everything. Yes. Yes. And then you think, God, I just need to go and have, you know, I need to go have

a drink, calm down. I need to go have a smoke. I need to go for a run, maybe talking to a friend would help me, et cetera. Yeah. But Betty's like, fuck that. I'm spreading it. It's going. Yeah. During this time, Dan is calling the police. There's a lot of police involvement, but nothing, nothing is really happening because it's all nonviolent, domestic dispute stuff where they actually can't do much. And then in 85, he files for divorce. She breaks into the house again. She breaks a black sliding door with a patio umbrella. She spray paints the inside of the house. She writes obscene messages on the mirrors, which I think is kind of, that's kind of like, yeah, very black. So I'm kind of spooky. I like

that one. I'm going to put that one in the quiver. She's like the ultimate bench flex. Yes. There's also this element of like, yes, we've been Betty, but we also fear Betty because you don't know what she's going to do. She's a fucking loose can in this one. She will take her Chevy, load them up SUV and run it into the front door of her ex-husband's new house. You can't do that. You can't do that. That's illegal. Though she wasn't arrested for that. She was put into a 72 hour psychiatric ward following that event. Okay. White privilege. Yes. Got you. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, she obviously has, she's not dealing with some mental stuff, I think. Yes. Yes. So that's definitely there. At this point, that definitely puts them in the news. Like that is an issue. I mean, this

divorce is already kind of messy. They're already kind of, you know, yuppie, mucky mucks. So a lot of people know what's going on, but this is like, this is getting onto like the state news rather than just like the county news. Yes. Yes. This is, this has become a story. They're in and out of courts. At a certain point, Dan has set up a finding system that he will deduct money from her monthly payments, $200 for an obscene word that she says 500. That's not legal. That's not legal. You're a lawyer, sir. And you know that's not legal. That's the thing too. He has all these like, yeah, $200, $500, $1000, this was another term that I pulled from Amy Williams is assault by lawyering. No, that's the thing. And again, and I will continue to expound on my theories and why

this story is appealing. But he's in so many ways as aggressive and kind of violent towards her as she is towards him. Hers is just literal violence. His is like symbolic, legal and psychological violence. Yeah. Emotionally violent. Yes, of course. Okay. Yeah. But that, not of course, to excuse what she's doing. Again, you cannot fucking drive a car into someone's home that doesn't fly, Betty. No, no. But I think there's, he knows the way to be violent towards her that won't get him in trouble. And it's frustrating to hear it. And I would imagine it was 10 times as frustrating for Betty Broderick to have to deal with it. There's more cases of harassment and contempt of court that she's held in. She's actually sentenced to a month in jail in 87,

though she only serves one week. But even after that, she is still kind of showing up. She's still leaving obscene messages. She's pitting her kids against him. And because at that point, Dan Broderick is also still allowing her to see the kids. He was of the mind that if he restricted any access to the kids that she would go really off the rails. So he kept that line open. But even when she's allowed to see her kids, it's contingent on Dan and the strict schedule. And if she's been quote unquote behaving as he approves of. Yeah. There's a lot going on there. Around this time, he buys a whole new house that's no longer in La Jolla. So he's out of out of town or he's like, he's like 30 minutes south. He's by, he's by the zoo. Sure. Sure. Good

zoo. Oh, San Diego zoo, of course. The world famous San Diego zoo. Yes. Go Paz. Go Padres. Exactly. She's still seeing her two young sons, half time. She's getting a full split there. She's getting monthly payments of like $16,000 from Dan. He purchased her home for her. So she doesn't have a mortgage. So she's, you know, in terms of a divorce, doing kind of okay. I don't know. No, but like, you're, that's what I'm saying though, is like, you can do kind of okay in terms of the divorce in terms of the material assets or whatever. But just as an objective person, looking at this divorce and looking at how it's going, do you think she's doing okay? No, fuck no. Okay. That's what, that's what I mean.

Yeah. And this point where she's not doing okay, Dan and Linda get married, 1989. They get married at their house. Do you know what I was doing in 1989? Being born. Oh, good work. You're working hard. Thank you. They were working hard too, because they hired two bodyguards to attend their wedding. And apparently Linda Kulkena wanted Dan to wear a bulletproof vest to the wedding. No, dude, 100%. Does she, she doesn't end up fucking up this thing, does she? No, no. She, a friend stays with her through the whole day. Oh God. Yeah. Cause I was, cause I was like, when you were explaining this wedding, I was like, 10 out of 10 Betty Broderick would fuck up this wedding in some early way. I can't believe she didn't, but that makes sense. She would just

drive through all the little white chairs with the load them up, you know, just like, Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Yeah, exactly. But she didn't. And I should say at this point, Dan is 44 years old. Linda's 28. She's much younger. Okay. And she looks strikingly like a younger Betty. Blonde, tall. That will make, that will make Betty very happy. It's rough. It's rough. It's all rough, but Betty, you gotta throw in the towel. Well, I mean, they wouldn't give back her wedding China, though. Linda and Dan wouldn't give her. Let her, let them keep the China. It's shitty. You'll get new China, better China. So six months later, after the wedding of Dan and Linda, right, Betty wakes up in her La Jolla shores, beautiful seaside home. Yeah. Rolls over, looks at her

boyfriend of the past couple years, named Bradley Wright, Brad. That last name is ironic, yes. Okay. That call. It's with a W if that helps, but fair enough. And it's early, early, like daybreak. And she's like, fuck this, she gets in the load them up. She drives to Mission Hills, close to the world famous Andy Gazoo, brings her 38 caliber revolver with her fully loaded. She uses her oldest daughter's key to get into the house. Oh, I don't like that. No. That's gotta feel yucky. She walks into the master bedroom, second floor. It's a brick kind of colonial vibe house. Yeah. Yeah. And sees Dan and Linda sleeping under a pink coverlet. Apparently, this is according to Betty, she's the only living witness of the events. Linda wakes up,

sees her, says, call the police. And the next 30 seconds are blur, where five rounds are shot from the gun. Five rounds, five rounds. Yeah, like in under 30 seconds. Yikes. She sees that Linda isn't moving. Dan is moving. He's fallen off the bed and it looks like he's going towards the phone. And so she rips the phone from the wall. According to Betty's own testimony, he said, Okay, okay, you got me. Betty recounting this event says there was no pain and there was no blood. It was simple. He was on the floor and the phone was right next to him. I thought, Oh my God, he's going to be on the phone before I'm down the stairs. And so that's when she removed the phone. She knelt down beside her husband who was bleeding out and

ripped the phone from the wall, dropped it down the hall and left. That's gnarly. We can yasqueen Betty Broderick all day because of the campy particulars of her story, but that's fucked up. That's that's like, that's a horrific way to die. Apparently, in the post mortem, Linda was shot. It severed her spine. So she died instantly. But Dan most likely bled out for about 20 minutes. Ew. Yeah. Yeah, that's terrible. So Betty gets back in the load them up, goes to a pay phone and calls a series of people. One of whom is her eldest daughter who lives in Arizona at that point. And she says, I shot at them. I don't know if they're dead, but I've shot at them. She then calls a friend and says something similar. Right. So the daughter calls the police,

the friend calls Brad and Brad then gets in touch with a mutual friend of Dan's. So Brad and this mutual friend go to the house and they have to break in because it's all locked and they find the two bodies. That's fucked. So that same day, Betty turns herself in. She has in the next few months, she has a trial. It is a hung jury. They can't decide what has happened. One of the, I guess, hung jurors, the undecided jurors was like, I don't know why she didn't do it sooner. The people sympathize with Betty Broderick. People love Betty. There's a few ways to lay out this case. My favorite is the one that you've told, which more or less reveals the intense character flaws of both the main people involved, right? Yeah. But there's

definitely a way to lay out this case where you could make either one of them look like a complete monster. Big time. Because you could make Betty Broderick look like a fucking crazy when to go, or you could make her look like a poor, innocent woman who worked hard her whole life to put her family on the map. And now her husband is reaping the rewards with her younger clone. And if any part of that resonates with any part of your own life, then you're that one juror, being like she should have plugged him yesterday. Since the trial, the days of the two trials, there has been overwhelming response in favor of Betty. And a lot of it is kind of like, we don't agree with the act of killing, but we know where she's coming from. I identify with that. That's so interesting,

because I can't really think of any other vaguely sympathetic murderers like that. Do you know what I mean? Obviously, like, when you actually sit and listen to the particulars of everything that was going on, I don't think you could have reasonably come to the conclusion that Betty was justified in doing what she did. However, most people aren't getting the full podcast experience. Most people are getting, they heard a snippet of one or two things in the news. And if you, especially if you're her defense team, if you're able to like kind of control that media narrative, that can be really influential. Big time. And I think the other thing too is that Betty, well, the second trial, she was sentenced to life in prison. Okay, so that second trial didn't go as well for her.

Did not go as well. Did not go as well. It was murder in the second degree. Right. So that and that means it was not premeditated, which even that is still kind of debated because it's like, she woke up, got in a car with a fully loaded gun and walked into a house. Right. And then like, is it not the case and correct me if I'm wrong, but both of the televised, both Amanda Pete Betty and Meredith Baxter Betty got quite a big head in between the two trials and just like could not be convinced that she wasn't getting off and and that she was a national icon and that like just and just wouldn't hear otherwise. And regardless of who was trying to be like, no, Betty, like we need to focus here. She had the availability of parole in 2010. Okay. And it was it was denied.

Her kids all testified and I think it was kind of split. Two of them said she's ready to come back. That must be hard. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Those poor kids, that's you don't, if you can, if you can scrape out of that one, be in halfway normal, then like, God bless you. They seem to be doing okay. That's good. One of the younger brothers was running into a lot of problems because he was a teen when this was happening. It's just like, it's not a good time to have your parents. No, I would act out a bit too. I would be like, wow, look how loud I've got to be to get attention in this family. I better I better start driving cars into buildings. Exactly. Like literally, who's going to notice if this kid lights a mailbox on fire?

They'll be like just a mailbox. Your mom lit the dining room on fire, huh? She tried to burn down the house. Step it up. Yeah. But they're all living in the San Diego area. And the oldest daughter was married now divorced. She's got two girls, and they all go see their, their mom. So wait, what happened with the letters in the... Oh, yeah. Did I get you? Yeah. Beautiful. Love it. So during the trials and then during her imprisonment, she's still quote unquote seeing Bradley Wright to this day. No, no, no. It was like during the trials and then like a year or two after. Yes. And he's sending money to the prison, giving her... It can't be worth it. Right. Right. To get a new dump. Betty Broderick. I'm sorry,

literally dump, dump her. She's in prison. Yeah. I know she's, I know you want to keep out of her good side indefinitely just in case she gets out though. Like I get that. Right, right. Because that chick with nothing to do but stew about how much she hates a man in jail for the first fucking, the first day out, she'll come for you. But... And it's so strange too, because during her relationship with Bradley, which did happen before the murders, her kids were like, mom, dad has Linda and you have Bradley. And supposedly her response was like, Bradley doesn't count. Like he doesn't, he doesn't support me. And she, she claims still to this day that they never had sex. They never boned because she's not the type of woman who would do that outside of

wedlock. So, so wait, so I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was under the impression that this man was staying in this relationship because he was getting the WAP on the regular. No dude. She's not, she's not even putting out for the guy. That's rough. So she claims though, because her claims are pretty intense. People are like, why, well then why does he spend the night all the time? And she's like, we just don't have that type of relationship. He's like a dog, but housebroken, which is rude. That's rude. She's, she's so mean this one. So mean. That he's a really mean lady. He's so mean. And he takes care, she goes to prison. He takes care of sale of her house. He puts her furniture in storage. He gives money to her kids when they need it.

He puts her furniture in storage, did you say? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, does he? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if this is the storage that he lets lapse and like gets bought by a total stranger. But if the story, the story is better this way. It doesn't need to be a separate unrelated storage locker. That's true. You have your say, just say that it is. Why would you have to? So when she's in prison, she's writing him letters saying, you know, you are the perfect man. I love you so much. She doesn't feel this way. No, no, because she says that in the first line. And then the next line is like, where's the March money? You didn't send, you haven't sent money since March. Man, her priorities have not changed a bit since going to jail habit. They have not.

And, but the letters are beautifully written. I have to say, she's got wonderful cursive. Definitely the yuppie vibe is coming through because there's like, you have very nice, you have very nice cursive as well. So I don't, I don't, I trust your judgment. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But like a beautiful sloping, the first few, they're on her own station. Are you, sorry, are you not, are you not also going to compliment my cursive? Or I would like a compliment to my cursive, please. I love your cursive, Taylor. You know that. You know that. Yours is, no, yours is nicer than mine. And I'm jealous. So I need, I need that affirmation. No, yours, I love yours. Yours is not nicer. Thank you. Yours, yours, yours is absolute.

Jersey, you have the nicest cursive of anyone I met. And I know that because up until I met you, I thought I was the shit. And I saw was like, I'm doing chicken scratch. Well, I think Betty might outdo us both though. Love that. Love that. Some of the letters are written on her personal stationery that like have her name written on them. She would have nice cursive must keep up appearances. Exactly. Exactly. And I love that kind of yuppie vibe of like, you don't just call your grandma and say, thank you. You write her handwritten thank you. On the stationery. On the stationery you write it. That she bought you. Yes. Yes. That's the type of thing. Yeah. So Bradley Wright has all these letters. He keeps

up correspondence with her, but the letters like, and these are published. You can find them online. Okay. They kind of continually say like, Hey, I didn't get a birthday card. Hey, I didn't get a Christmas card. What about Valentine's Day? Question mark, question mark. She's asking for money again and again. She signs it. She signs like love, comma, me, M E, like, me, like he would know. I mean, how many other letters is he getting from that prison? You would know. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I mean, unless he's, I don't listen, I shouldn't assume. Maybe he's got a few booze behind bars. That's true. You never know. You never know. So eventually, he stops getting in touch with our Peters out, stores all the letters, lets the storage lapse.

Doesn't burn the letters. Right? See, Betty, that's what most people do. Most people put it into storage. Yeah, yeah. But maybe Bradley, you should have burned it. Because when it came out, this and this broke like December 18th. Oh, so this is quite recent. 2020. Yeah, that these were published online. And he was sought for a quote. And he's like, this is old news. I don't understand how America is still obsessed with this story. And it's like, dude, it's Betty Broderick. She was on Oprah like five times. She is writing letters to like the LA Times and like all this stuff, like she her parole comes up every 10 years. They just put her TV movie on to be I watched it last week. Exactly. Yeah, Amanda, they just did they just did a fucking limited series with Amanda Pete

and Christians later. Yeah. So the next time that Betty is up for parole is in 2024. And she'll be don't don't let her out. No, she'll be in her 80s. Let her out. She's she's not going to kill anyone in her 80s. Let her out. You never know. I have vast objections to the carceral system. I question its uses. But I don't know that I could propose like I'm not wise enough to propose an alternate solution. I certainly think that as it is now it serves nobody or whatever. So I'm literally just I'm you've really got me thinking about the carceral system. Josie, thank you. Good. Good. I'm glad 2021. That's a hell of a story. That's that's hardcore. It's pretty wild. And to this day, and that's why she can't get out on parole. She shows no signs of remorse.

That'll do it for the act of murder. She still stands by the shoe and I think correctly so that she was emotionally abused and taken advantage of. She was emotionally abused. She was incredibly emotionally abusive to everybody in her life. And that's that's I think what is so strange too because so much of her argument is like, I'm doing it for my kids. I want my kids. I want my kids. But she also used her kids as pawns. She also dumped her the whole reason that she didn't have the kids from the jump is because she dumped them on him as part of some ploy because she thought it would fall apart without her and and instead it just moved on with her. And I mean, why would you kill the father of your children? Then your children don't have a father and nor mother

because you'll be in prison, you know, the thing is she didn't think end of the day. And I think there's a lot of mental illness to play here. I think there's a lot of like different fucking more personality disorders. You can shake a stick at play. I think there's the circumstances of trauma at play. I think there's a lot of things at play. But end of the day, you can see it when she said, dad's got what the kids said, dad's got Linda and you've got what's his name, Bruce. Brad. Duh. That's Brad. Sorry. Um, sorry, fuck. You can see it when the kids said you've got Brad and dad's got Linda or whatever they said. And she was like, Oh, Brad doesn't. It doesn't matter. Brad doesn't count. It's different. This marriage, she must have known that there was no getting back

together with her husband. And she must have known that she probably didn't even want to get back together with her husband at this point is too much has changed. And the marriage itself was never beneficial to her. The marriage was always she was always in subordination in the marriage and all those things. So there was no particular end to it other than vengeance. It was just she got tunnel vision on like, yeah, yeah, Brad's Brad's my boyfriend. But what does that have to do with any of this? I'm trying to destroy your father. Yeah, like it wasn't even about anything anymore. She just got so she got like lost in this tunnel of rage forever. And then what do you like, what do you even do with that? Right? Yeah, yeah. How does that how

does that end except a murder or an incarceration? And in this case, but obviously, yeah, I think that's something that's like, truly frustrating to her kids is like, you have so much energy and so much like fortitude and like, imagine if you opened a store, right? Imagine if, imagine if instead of obsessing on our father and his new wife and eventually murdering them, you just opened a boutique for flattering stylish clothing for women around your age. You know what I mean? Yeah, would have taken off did it would have taken you would have been on those books. You've got a great mind for details. I know because you remember everything dad has ever said to you. And you will talk about it completely unbidden, regardless of the occasion.

Yeah, I think that's maybe my moral of this week's story. Are we ready for the moral? I'm ready. I'm ready. Yeah, my moral of the story is open a store. I know that in these dire times, it's, you know, we may not be financially able to do that. And of course, you'll want to go online rather than brick and mortar. That's just common sense. But if you feel the urge to take it to a Betty Broderick level, open a store, do an open an Etsy shop. Ooh, nice. There you go. Do some pearler beads, you know, cross stitch. Hobbies. I'm just gonna say hobbies. Hobbies are great. Work on your cursive. Work on your cursive. Maybe that's the problem here is that Betty's cursive was too good. She didn't have that outlet. Do you have a collection of

glass snow globes that you need to replenish because you've been hurling them at your fucking husband? Build your snow globe collection. Maybe not glass. Maybe go stuffed animals. Beanie babies, do it. I wonder if there's a Betty Broderick beanie baby. Quadruple B, I don't know that we're ready for all that. No, that's a, oh yeah, Quadruple, that's four. Yeah. It'll be your first piece of merch. Yes, yes, exactly. Intense stuff. Thank you, Josie, for that story and to all of you for listening. If you want more infamy, we release episodes every other Sunday on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and at bittersweetinfamy.com. Stay sweet.

The sources I used for this episode were the podcast Once Upon a Crime by Esther Ludlow. The episode was a woman scorned Betty Broderick and it aired May 1st, 2017. I used the article Till Murder Do Us Part. Dan and Betty Broderick's divorce played out over five vicious years written by Amy Williams in the LA Times, June 3rd, 1990. Also, Amy Williams article One Angry Betty published in LA Magazine, November 1st, 2009. The CBS 8 article Betty Broderick's Love Letters found in San Diego by David Godfordson and Isidual Walters published December 18th, 2020. The TV series Dirty John and the second season is the Betty Broderick story, which was released in 2020 created by Alexandra Cummingham. And the two made-for-TV movies by Dick Lowry in 1992,

the first being A Woman Scorned, the Betty Broderick story, the second, Her Final Fury, Betty Broderick, the last chapter. Go Pots!