Betty Broderick

Betty Broderick is one of those rare murderers for whom I feel a twinge of empathy.

These are usually women who have been driven crazy by former husbands--I mean men who didn't do this unintentionally but intentionally.

I remember when this case blew up so huge in the media and everybody seemed divided over what was the correct punishment for Broderick, who drove over to her ex-husband's house before sunrise one morning and pumped a few bullets in him and a few into his new trophy wife.

Then she pulled the phone cord out and left.

I think it's so strange that her husband said "You got me" as his last words (if B.B.'s testimony is to be believed) and held his palms out before him in a conciliatory "Go away, you killed me" gesture.

That reminds me of Quilty's death in that Nabokov novel.

Even then he was rejecting her, and it comes across almost as if he was creepily proud even in death. His last words were basically, "So you killed me. Fuck you. Buh-bye now."

Dan Broderick wouldn't have been shouting out "Why?" as his last word.

Because he knew exactly why.

She had been served the bazillionth set of legal papers (these were part of the custody war) and something in the tone of the papers allegedly had sent Broderick completely over the edge.

She had left countless threatening and humiliating messages on her ex's answering machine directed at him and his wife, and would even use very foul language to describe her kids' father to them on the phone (while she knew she was being recorded). Even when the kids would cry and beg her to stop using those words, she persisted.

Clearly, Broderick had become Medea. While she never fully sacrificed her children, she sacrificed their mental well-being and it's possible she could have gone that next step if she had thought that would have hurt her ex more.

I think she guessed the truth. That it wouldn't have hurt him more than his own death.

It's strange how fatalistic he was about the increasingly unstable ex. He hadn't had the security system repaired after B.B. had damaged it when she rammed her vehicle into the front of his new house. This is why the victims never heard her enter the dwelling on the morning they were murdered.

By all accounts and by all evidence he was a savage prick. He left his wife to replace her with a younger version of her--since he couldn't roll back her odometer, he simply got a flashy new car.And the new bride showed no evidence of any empathy whatsoever for what B.B. was going through, which was hell.

But that's the least of his malfeasance, really.

He did pull a number of maneuvers in which he bankrolled about three-quarters of a million dollars by siphoning these off as "loans" to his brother (totally transparent sneak move). So these assets were not counted in the divorce settlement as they should have been.

He made sure she lost her house when almost any woman would have been entitled to keep the same. But Broderick had the misfortune of being divorced by a very powerful, very devious attorney.

He wanted her to lose everything and he proceeded as if this were a war to annihilate B.B. and to drive her insane.

He gave her enough rope to hang herself and pretty soon it was clear she was going to lose her kids forever.

He was a powerful and well-regarded and well-connected attorney and it really looks like Betty Broderick's allegations are correct: that he schmoozed and she got treated unfairly and judges let him slide at every turn of this messy divorce.

Most troubling of all are documents (never allowed into trial) that both Dan Broderick and his new wife had admitted they intended to drive B.B. insane and they counted on her committing suicide.

Her first trial ended in a hung jury. First, five jurors were refusing and wanted to acquit. Finally, they got it down to two but they wouldn't budge.

One of these was interviewed (surprisingly a man) and he said if Dan Broderick had pulled the sort of things on him he had pulled with Betty Broderick, he would have been dead in a much shorter time than it took Betty to kill him.

He seemed like a pretty rational man. Scary, right?

But that's the creepy thing about this case.

I'm one of those who don't condone (and condone means "forgive," not "approve") what she did.

Taking their father from her children, putting her children through hell, and the act of murder itself are unforgivable things. The one exception to justify murder would have been if these two were trying to physically murder her.

But there's the rub. Because there's evidence these two were trying to murder her (well, drive her to suicide). So that bothers me. It's hard to process.

But it's still not the same thing. You have to be responsible for your own mind, even when it's sick. Even if it's sick because of human cruelty. Even if this is because of psychological torture, which I believe did occur here.

I know Broderick's acts can't be defended using the insanity defense, since she clearly was not legally insane.

But she was insane in the medical sense when she committed her act. Perhaps a majority of murderers (or close to a majority) are. It won't affect the prosecution and it's almost seen as incidental today. The world is full of crazy people. Some of them kill and some of them don't.

The simple fact is she should have walked away. She should have medicated herself, committed herself. Anything other than what she did.

Yes, her husband baited her horribly.

Had he been a decent person, he would have tried to make her life more tolerable, even if he felt he had to leave her.

But he was an arrogant prick and he didn't have these types of feelings. Clearly he looked at his marriage as only another contract, another legal battle, another chance to prove his competency.

And that's why he's fucking dead. Arrogance and superiority and selfishness like that.

Betty Broderick is still insane.

I suspect she's had a lot of people bolstering her own insane arguments about why she was ultimately justified in what she did.

Some of these people might be advocates for abused women or feminist thinkers and such who might be trading on Broderick's story to add interest to whatever they're writing or whatever cause they're espousing.

But allowing Broderick to continually self-justify and to refuse to look at the true nature of her act is ultimately to do her a great disservice as a human being.

I understand exactly why the parole board said what they said to her when refusing her request. I feel it's unfortunate they set the next hearing at the maximum allowable amount (fifteen years, when Broderick will be well into her seventies). Because she could have a breakthrough next year and begin to truly understand what she has done and what she has forever undone.

It's horrible to see a human being become a killer because they loved someone in a very honest and trusting way. It's like that classic Raymond Carver story, "What We Talk about When We Talk about Love." That's basically this story being told one afternoon over cocktails, deeply troubling some couples with its mordant truth value.

I suppose Medea was the exact same story. The only difference is Broderick didn't physically sacrifice her children--she did it mentally and spiritually.

Aphrodite Jones, in her recent documentary on Broderick, included commentary by a journalist who summed up Broderick's situation today best: "She feels that if she just tells you every single horrible thing he did to her, every unjust and cruel act perpetrated against her by her ex and his new wife, she can somehow make you understand that what she did to those two people was justified." (I'm paraphrasing).

And that's exactly what she did at her parole board hearing and that's why she was (understandably) denied.

Is Betty Broderick a threat to anyone other than herself anymore?

Probably not.

Is she insane? I believe she is still completely insane. I mean she has no control over her own mind or that idee fixe she has that Dan (and his new wife) made her do it.

That's the insanity. That she felt like a puppet even as she premeditated and did this heinous act.

She has never believed that she was responsible for the murder. Somehow, Dan nefariously drove her to do this against her will. Or that's what I'm honestly convinced this woman believes.

I mean I believe that she believes what she says about Dan still persecuting her from beyond the grave with his connections and powerful friends. Those people have probably all long buried this story in their minds and forgotten about Betty Broderick. But she hasn't forgotten about them. She's still there. In that year. In that nightmare. In that bedroom trying to reason with him by putting bullets into him.

Which is so sad. But I guess it protects her from the knowledge of what she actually did. Maybe she can't survive knowing the truth. I've seen other murderers like that. They simply create the truth they can live with. In a sense, we all do this, even those of us who are non-murderers.

I don't think for a moment it's an act. Because as an act it's not self-serving at all. The act that would serve her would be contrition, false or otherwise. But she can't go there. She's still fighting a dead man.

I kept thinking how ironic this situation is. Because you just know if Betty Broderick had been a stone-cold sociopath and not a woman driven insane by betrayed love, she would have surely been paroled after that recent hearing.

Because parole boards are only too ready to be flattered by people who know just what to say in any given circumstance.

Had Broderick been such a creature, she would have aced that hearing.

But sociopaths don't turn themselves in, either. And Broderick turned herself in the very day she committed these murders.

Probably because she didn't know what to to. Her entire reason for existing (revenge) had ceased once her great antagonist was dead. Her universe was probably spinning. I bet it felt like the Death of God to her.

And then she found her champions and advocates and she fell almost gleefully into her victim narrative.

She'd go from genuine sobbing tearful testimony to weird little gleeful smiles when she made hateful jibes at her dead antagonist.

It was so clear she was insane.

Just not legally insane.

If the prosecution had not managed to get so much defense material quashed in the second trial, she might very well have ended up with a hung jury or been acquitted there too.