Until the Twelfth of Never: Should Betty Broderick ever be free?

They were two of the most notorious and controversial murder trials of the last twenty-five years, splitting American public opinion in half. Before dawn on November 5, 1989, Betty Broderick got into her car and drove over to the house in San Diego of her lawyer ex-husband, Daniel T. Broderick III, and his new wife, Linda. Arriving at 5:30 a.m., she used a key that she had obtained from one of her children to enter the house by a back door and climbed the stairs to Dan and Linda’s bedroom. Five shots rang out in the dark, three hitting their targets. Linda died instantly. Dan lingered on for several minutes. As he tried to call for help, Betty stamped on his hand and tore the phone from the wall. The prosecution claimed it was as about as clear a case of premeditated murder as anyone could imagine. Betty claimed she had gone over to the house to talk to Dan - or maybe to commit suicide in front of him - but when someone shouted, ‘Call the police’, she got flustered and started firing. Betty Broderick was acquitted of first degree murder in her second trial but found guilty of second degree murder. To some, Betty Broderick is virtually the patron saint of the sanctity of marriage, executing her abusive, cheating husband and his ‘nineteen year old college dropout of a Polack whore’ (actually Linda was twenty-eight, a college graduate and a professional paralegal). To others, Dan Broderick suffered his wife’s abuse of him for fourteen years of marriage, left her well provided for and then married the love of his life, only to be continually stalked for seven years, to have Betty repeatedly incite his children to kill him and Linda, to find her driving her car through the front door of his new house, and then to be murdered in the coldest of blood. Bella Stumbo’s account of the Dan, Linda and Betty Broderick affair is encyclopedic and definitive, and ‘Until the Twelfth of Never’ was a runaway international bestseller when it was first published twenty years ago, as well as winning an Edgar Award. Bello Stumbo herself died in 2002, so was not alive to cover Betty Broderick’s parole hearing in 2010, a short account of which is included in this book. Dan Broderick, Linda Broderick and Betty Broderick – saints or sinners? Betty Broderick – sane or insane? Read ‘Until the Twelfth of Never’ and you will certainly have an opinion. (Contains new material – interviews with Dan Broderick’s friend and an analysis of Betty Broderick’s handwriting.)