Betty Broderick: Telling on myself

By: Betty Broderick

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

What do you do when you have struggled loyally for years beside your husband, living in financial hardship as you bring up your joint children virtually as a single mother, working toward the good times that you can see coming for all of you, only to discover that your husband is committing adultery and is planning to leave you? Worse, he aggressively denies his affair, denouncing you as crazy to your face and to everyone you know, while he schemes to walk off with everything you have worked so hard for as he is reborn into a new life with a star-struck younger woman, as pretty as you once were, who will enjoy everything you have invested in – your financial security, your home-life and even your children. Worse still, he is a notoriously hard-ball lawyer with every intention of crushing you in any way he can, of erasing you from his life, of reducing you to nothing, so that he can move on as if you never existed. Daniel T. Broderick III’s relentless harassment of his discarded wife, Betty, made her increasingly crazy as he and his girlfriend – then second wife – Linda Kolkena Broderick piled on the pressure, until one day, on November 5, 1989, at her wits’ end and believing herself to be acting in self-defense, she confronted them in the early hours of the morning and in a panic shot them both dead. A multitude of onlookers has absolved Betty for what she did. Many even admire her, especially if they have suffered similar fates to hers. One juror at her trial openly questioned why she had taken so long to kill Dan under such extreme provocation. Now, twenty-five years into a thirty-two year to life prison sentence for her second-degree murder of Dan and Linda Broderick, Betty has reluctantly decided to give her personal account of what led up to that fatal and fateful day, when all three of their futures came violently and abruptly to an end.

Excellent

It is good to hear Betty's perspective. it really a matter of having to walk a mile in her shoes.

didn't like AI

i didn't like AI voice. It mispronounced some common words. The story was good in spite of the robotic sound.

Disappointed

The audio voice was very hard to listen to . The book skipped over major events and left me feeling she was only being open and honest when she chose to . I do not agree with how Dan treated her but her behavior was over the top also .
This was a story of 2 egotistical people who get married , had kids and did not care about their kids and were only wanting what was best for themselves .

She never mentioned the crazy stuff she did

She always blamed everyone else for her crazy behavior and never acknowledged her bad behavior.

FREE BETTY

loved it. This poor woman deserves to get the hell out of prison. Let her out already

She still refuses to take accountability

In true Betty Broderick form, she won't take true accountability for her actions, even decades later. It's sad to see. Her children deserve better from her. Sure, she has always admitted that she shot Dan and Linda, but she still makes excuses as if Dan cheating on her and going through a contentious divorce is a reason for killing them. The woman has always been her own worst enemy. Throughout her book, it's obvious that she still sees herself as a victim and completely ignores her outrageous behavior throughout her marriage and her divorce. There were restraining orders against her because she kept going into Dan's house and causing damage. She drove her vehicle into the front door of the house when her children were home. She left a multitude of vulgar laced messages on the answering machine for the telephone that was solely for her children's use. She dropped each child, one at a time, at Dan's front door when he wasn't home because she "wanted to show him how difficult raising children was". She pulled away leaving the children crying and begging her to not leave them. They each sat outside the house for a few hours until Dan got home. She purposely dragged out many aspects of the divorce, including the same of the marital home and various court hearings. She also cried poverty while being given thousands of dollars in support month after month, the amount of which many of us could live comfortably with. If she was so worried about money why didn't she work after the divorce? Use her teaching degree? It couldn't have been too hard to obtain certification in CA. Why didn't she use her real estate license? She had options, but she chose not to do anything to help herself. It's sad that she's still complaining about things 30+ years later. SMH