CHINO, CA — Elisabeth “Betty” Broderick, the ex-wife of prominent San Diego attorney Daniel T. Broderick III, who was convicted of murdering him and his new wife in 1991, died Friday at a hospital in Chino, according to multiple reports. She was 78.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation confirmed Broderick's death in a statement sent to People. Officials said she died at the Chino Valley Medical Center, but did not disclose the cause of her death.
In an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Broderick's family said she tripped in prison several weeks ago and broke some ribs. She then got an infection that turned into sepsis, and she was not able to recover.
“She passed away from natural causes with three of her children at her bedside, and the other was FaceTiming,” her youngest child, Rhett Broderick, told the Union-Tribune. “We were all able to come and be with her.”
Before her death, Broderick was serving a life sentence at the California Institute for Women after she was convicted of fatally shooting Dan Broderick and his new wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick, as they slept on Nov. 5, 1989.
The crime rattled the San Diego legal community, where Dan Broderick had served as president of the local bar association, according to reports. The case was later fictionalized in a series of true-crime books and movies.
According to the Union-Tribune, Broderick was immediately a suspect in the murders because she harbored an intense rage against her ex-husband and his new wife. She was also suspected of harassing the couple in the weeks leading up to the killings, leaving threatening voicemails, vandalizing their home, and even driving her car into their new house.
Reports said on the day of the murders, Broderick took one of her daughter’s keys to her ex-husband's house, entered through a side door and went upstairs to the bedroom. She fired five shots from a .38 caliber revolver, killing Linda Broderick instantly. Dan Broderick died shortly after.
Broderick's first trial ended in a mistrial, but she was officially convicted of two counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to two consecutive terms of 15 years to life plus two years for illegal use of a firearm in 1991.
Though she was eligible for parole, Broderick was denied several times.
In 2017, San Diego County Deputy District Attorney Richard Sachs said Betty was "completely unrepentant" and described her as "defiant," according to People.
Meanwhile, Broderick argued that she met the requirements for parole and should have been released.
“I have no one to speak for me. This was a case of domestic abuse: a pattern of coercive control that lasted throughout our marriage until the day I killed them,” Betty alleged in a letter to "Murder Made Me Famous" producers. “Now I am only a political prisoner. They have no reason to deny my parole.”
Broderick was scheduled to be up for parole again in 2032, reports said. She would have been 84 years old.
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