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

by Bella Stumbo

He didn't like her. "She always tells on me, like when I cuss at my brother. She goes, 'Dan, Dan, Rhett said a bad word to Danny.'" Anything else that Rhett wanted to tell him?

  Rhett thought. "Well, when my dad gets really mad, he starts breaking things. He tries not to. Like once my brother and I were wrestling ... I pushed him … and his elbow went through the window, and my dad came in and he had a fit, and he looked like he was ready to punch another window … Once me and my brother were fighting, and he was really sick of it … and he threw Danny across the room … first he threw me and then he threw my brother on top of me, so then I got squashed, and then he got really mad and he spanked us."

  How about his mother? Did she get angry like that?

  No. Only with Lee for sneaking out and staying all night, and cussing at her. So, "Like every four months, [Betty] kicks her out of the house, but then she [Lee] comes back thirty minutes later and Mom forgives her and everything is good again. But the next day she [Lee] starts at it again."

  Kim, he added, was rude to his mom, too, but nice to his dad. Anything else Rhett wanted to say? No. "Except for I want a new video game."

  Betty worried all night. She arrived in court the next day a nervous meek. Now the Reader's attorney was there, too. The magnitude of the drama she had provoked was terrifying.

  Gerald Barry made a last-ditch effort to keep the press out, now arguing that open hearings would not only be harmful to the Broderick children, but also unfair to Dan, since Betty had been allowed to ask such " "outrageous" questions as "Are you a cocaine user or addict?" Had he known the hearings might be opened, said Barry, he would never have allowed such questions to go unchallenged.

  Betty began to waver. "I am now being put in a position that appears that my choice is to hurt or not hurt my children ..." That wasn't true, she told Howatt. Nevertheless, she had decided to drop her demand for an open trial and "leave this to your discretion, Your Honor—anything you choose."

  No dice, said Howatt. It was not his decision to make. It was hers. She could not shift the burden on this one. "What I need from you is a final determination, either yea or nay?" he said. "Do you want it open or do you want it closed?"

  Then, lest she waffle, he basically threatened to punish her in his final ruling if she didn't make the correct call. Hers, he said, was "a terrible dilemma," which he outlined thusly:

  On the one hand, he said, if she decided to demand an open trial, "there is the inference that may be drawn from your action that that is not an appropriate parenting decision and could adversely affect your position in the custody matter." Whereas, if she suppressed her "primary need to have the hearings opened … you act in a manner which can be inferred as appropriate in a parenting way …" although she might be sacrificing "your own personal needs and welfare, as you believe them to be." So which would it be? Her interests or the children's? Betty not only folded, she groveled.

  "I thank this court from the bottom of my heart for its understanding throughout this entire case," she said. "I think since this case is 99 percent over, it is a rather moot question at this point. And at this point, I definitely do not choose to have it open."

  "Thank you very much," said Howatt.

  Two mental health experts testified in the custody matter, one for each side. Dan's advocate was the court-appointed psychologist, Dr. William Dess. Dr. Gerald Nelson, who had been treating Betty personally over the past seven months, testified for her. Nelson was the only trial witness she called.

  Although Dess had met none of the Broderick children and Nelson had met only Lee, each was unequivocal in his opinion about what was best for the four youngsters.

  Based on all he had heard about Betty's behavior from the children's various therapists, Dess was so appalled that he recommended against even visitation unless it was in a supervised setting, such as the YMCA or the YWCA "to start out with." In his view, all four children were suffering "significant emotional problems" related to the divorce, and only Dan could provide the requisite stability needed for them to heal. He didn't think Betty should be allowed anything beyond "extremely limited" contact, especially with the two young boys. Only once before "in ten years of doing this," he said, had he recommended such drastic measures concerning a mother.

  Not that he thought Dan Broderick was the perfect father, Dess added delicately. "Some people have commented that Mr. Broderick at times might tend to be a little rigid and is not the most affectionate person in the world, and may not have been overly involved with the children during the marriage." Even so, said Dess, he was a better alternative than Betty. "He is consistent and, to my knowledge, has not taken a vendetta to run down Ms. Broderick to them …"

  Dr. Nelson was equally convinced that, if Betty got both a suitable financial settlement and her children back, her extreme behavior would end and she would once again become the exemplary parent Dan Broderick himself remembered. Like Dess, Nelson agreed that the Broderick children had been severely damaged by the divorce. But he thought that Betty was "the only person who is going to take the time to bring them to therapy, to spend time with them, listening to them, talking about the pain and anguish they felt …" Nor, in his opinion, did Betty show any evidence of "serious psychopathology."

  Howatt intervened, in defense of Dan. How could Nelson say that Betty was the one parent who would tend to the children's mental health needs when Dan had been sending them to therapists for years?

  "What I am saying," said Nelson, "is that the children need a parent. They don't need a psychotherapist. They need a parent who is going to be full-time and take care of them, and Mr. Broderick is unable to do that because of the pressures of his work … basically, I don't get the sense that he knows the children very well."

  He allowed, however, that Betty "is a very difficult person. She is very strong-willed and determined to get her way." On the other hand, "I think she is a very loving and caring person … where she gets into trouble is through this rage at her husband.

  "I think it is rather sad," he concluded, directing his remarks at both Dan and Betty, "that two competent, capable, bright people with your training have let your children suffer ... I think that the community has failed you in helping you work out this problem ... It is a tragedy."

  In his cross-examination, Barry asked Nelson about a remark he had found in Nelson's notes, saying that Betty was someone who "plays at therapy." What did that mean? "It's basically a person who uses therapy in a manipulative way," said Nelson. "That is, her goal is not to seek relief of symptoms or good mental health or growth, but to use it to get her children back and to work through her divorce with her husband."

  Betty was polite and brief in her cross-examination of Dess. She established that they had never met, and that, in preparation for his testimony, he had not spoken with Nelson or any other doctors beyond those recommended by Dan and Gerald Barry. She also got him to agree that, based on what he had heard, she had once been an ideal parent— "until this thing broke open," he added, "and you felt wronged."

  "In your psychology practice," Betty asked, "is there any allowance in human experience for anger?" Yes, Dess said. "But it does not rationalize your behavior."

  Despite their differing recommendations, Dess and Nelson had one attitude in common: neither thought the Broderick case was a conventional domestic dispute; both spoke in tones laced with foreboding, hinting of violence and even death.

  Before Dess left the witness stand, he asked the court to take note of his concern about the potential dangers in this situation if Betty did not get what she felt was an equitable settlement. "I have heard things that refer to drastic action," he told the judge. "I am concerned about perhaps her health … about the possible reaction … towards Mr. Broderick ... I don't know what to do about that, other than to say that, however this comes out, I hope that … some type of a cool head will prevail …"

  Nelson sounded the same ominous note, in response to a question from Howatt, who asked him flatly what significance he a
ttached to Betty's obscene phone calls, as well as reports that she had "on occasion threatened to kill Mr. Broderick"?

  Nelson agreed that Betty's behavior often indicated "lack of impulse control, poor judgment, immaturity …" Nevertheless, he insisted that she could still be the better parent, once the pressures were relieved.

  "She is not mentally ill," said Nelson. "She is perfectly rational. If she murdered Mr. Broderick, as she has threatened … she could never be called incompetent in terms that she was psychotic or mentally ill. This lady knows what she is doing. She is very bright, very determined to get her share of the assets and to get her way."

  Needless to say, Nelson's remarks would come back to haunt Betty during her murder trials.

  Nor was the talk of death done. In her final courtroom exchange with Dan, Betty herself raised the issue of her various threats to kill him. How could he take such talk seriously, she asked. "Haven't you heard me say that to the children and everything when I am so mad? Did you think that I was going to kill you?"

  Dan turned grave. "Bets, we shouldn't play games about this. There are many times when people—myself—[say] ‘I am going to kill that guy,' or 'I'm going to kill you,' and not said it with conviction … but you have threatened to kill me hundreds of times, and I have taken those threats very seriously on many occasions, and you shouldn't try to trivialize this. I don't think that was the way you said you were going to kill me on the phone. I thought you said it with conviction, and I think you said it many more times than you know you have."

  The Brodericks spent the next several minutes, in an open courtroom, engaged in serious, eerie discussion about the merits of her murdering him.

  "Being that you canceled me out of your insurance years ago, do you think killing you would be a way for me to get a settlement out of this case?" she asked.

  "Killing me would probably be one of the most self-destructive things you could do, and when I go, there goes the income stream," he said. "So it would be a bad move. But that doesn't alter the fact that you have threatened, and I have taken it seriously."

  She abruptly dropped the topic to ask him some minor question about the Christmas ski trip of 1985. Before finally letting him off the stand for good, she wanted to know, again, what had been the final straw in the destruction of their marriage? "Did it have anything to do with Linda Kolkena?"

  "Linda Kolkena has nothing to do with the end of that marriage," he told her.

  Full circle. It was the same answer he had been giving her for years—and it remained just as unacceptable to her in January, 1989, as it had been in the summertime of 1983.

  * * *

  Then it was time for Betty to present her case. But she had no case. She had only her life story, with no attorney to lead her, only herself to tell it. So she took the stand and started talking.

  Her first remarks were vintage Betty. She apologized for herself yet again—"I am still very nervous and totally overwhelmed by the task I have taken upon myself here." Then, in an extraordinary display of the distorted realities of her mind, she told Howatt, "All these accusations of calling Mr. Broderick horrendous, horrible names, were made in '85 and—when I was under tremendous stress and pressure. And I hope I am appearing in front of this court with the benefit of four years in distance, and the knowledge of many, many different books." It was as if the last two years, her phone calls and letters of only weeks before, no longer existed.

  She then made a small, nostalgic little speech, filled with anger and pain apparent even on the printed transcript pages:

  "Mr. Broderick was low enough to put in front of this court that our divorce started the day we were married, and I will argue that, I guess," she began. "In 1969, we were two young, bright, ambitious people. Our only assets were the wife's car, wife's degree and well-paying job, and wife’s savings account."

  She talked about her background. Parts of her self-analysis were remarkably astute and candid: She had gone to all-girls schools, "and I know it sounds funny now, but they were more or less finishing schools that only prepared women for marriage. We were taught … that to be married to a very, very successful man meant that in the early years of your marriage you did accommodate [the man's] work schedule … that [by doing so], you would reap the benefits then of a successful man's income. All I ever wanted was a husband and a family, and that was it."

  And so her needs and Dan's had converged harmoniously for a long time, she said. "He needed a wife that could wait on him, have sex with him, have his family for him, and run his home for him, while he worked all the time. I needed a successful husband to fulfill my financial needs for the house and the kids. We had a very symbiotic relationship, as long as I was totally submerged in my babies, and we were in the formative years of the practice. We were equal partners until we became wealthy—and Mr. Broderick at that time considered his earnings his sole property."

  Now that they were divorced, she only hoped that Howatt would see that she got her fair share. "We have so much money, more than enough to keep Mr. Broderick and his new family happy, and me and the family we have now happy."

  She was so quiet, so submissive. All anger had gone out of her, now that she was on the stand, sitting there alone, with three pairs of male eyes on her. It was the sort of exposed vulnerability few women ever suffer in such raw form. She was stripped, for the moment, of all but her abiding faith in this judge to help her.

  Why did she think she should be the custodial parent? Howatt asked.

  And so she was next obliged to sell herself to him as a mother.

  "Because I'm there all the time, and [she and her children] have this incredible attachment and communication … And I think that is a real important thing, that they feel they have someone who cares. I don't think they feel that way about Mr. Broderick at all, and I don't think you can pay anyone enough to feel that way about your children … You know, the maids will do their job … but it is just a job to them. My children have been my life. They are the only thing that matters to me. The house and the cars and the boats and the furs and the diamonds and all that crap doesn't mean anything to me."

  But at the same time, she added, she needed decent support in order to raise her children properly. "If I got the children, I wouldn't want them to have to give up their private schools and their health and car insurances when they come of age, their ski trips, their summer camps, their music lessons, things like that …"

  In a note of irony that only she could not see, she also told Howatt that her children needed her for proper lessons in conduct—for example, "Nobody has ever taught these kids telephone etiquette." Only recently, too, she had discovered that Kim had no knowledge of the "trivial kitchen skills. She can't even poach an egg …" Nor did Kim become a debutante, "as she naturally would have if she was in my home with all of her friends in La Jolla … [who] went through that process. Although it appears trivial and silly, I think it is an important part of someone's self-esteem, a feminine self-esteem, as she grows up."

  She again likened her situation to being fired from a job she did well and being replaced by an incompetent. She couldn't do Dan's job, so why was he proposing that he could do hers? She was begging. The transcripts are painful to read.

  And so it went, until she finally wore down and, with an air of confusion, rested her "case."

  Barry hardly bothered to cross-examine her. He asked her a few minor questions about financial transactions and sat down.

  The Broderick divorce trial concluded on January 6, 1989.

  Closing arguments were quick. Barry begged the judge to recognize that Dan Broderick's former wife "really knows no spending limits" and that her $27,000 monthly expense account was "emotional blackmail." Dan Broderick had risen to his wealth through hard work and his own "God-given talents,” said Barry, and he was already being more generous than most men in even conceding that his former wife might require as much as $9,000 monthly for a year with $5,000 for a couple of years afterward.

  Mo
reover, Barry argued, it was for Betty's own good that she be put on a financial tether. "If you make an artificially high award, you really cripple her," he told Howatt. "In effect, it provides a lack of incentive to contribute to herself." Besides, Barry added in a moment of blatant, cynical flattery, Betty Broderick was clearly a woman of considerable abilities—only consider her fine performance in this divorce trial. What professional attorney could have done better?

  As for the property division, Barry reiterated his argument that the court should value Dan's practice as of 1985 and accept all the Epstein credits he had claimed—including the Harvard loan, since it had clearly "enhanced" the Broderick community wealth. In Barry's final analysis, Dan owed Betty a total of $29,366 in cash, plus another $28,000 from various partnerships. Concerning custody, Barry asked that Dan be awarded the two boys, but with visitation rights to Betty—Dr. Dess's recommendation to the contrary just wasn't realistic, given the boys' obvious affection for their mother, he conceded. In a rhetorical sleight of hand, Barry also managed to include Lee in Dan's custody request, while strongly implying at the same time that she should obviously be given to Betty.

  Betty's financial proposal took no more than five minutes to present. It was the same one she had been seeking since 1987: $25,000 per month for ten years, whether she remarried or not, plus a $1 million cash payment, tax free. Given that—and only given that—she also wanted all three minor children back, with visitation to Dan.

  Miscellaneously, she also reiterated her demand that the court should order Dan to buy a life insurance policy of "at least $1 million ... so that I would have some security … should his death take away our earning capacity …" And she wanted full reimbursement for her attorney fees during the past four years, a total of around $78,000.

  She thought that her requests were more than fair. "I think I have been incredibly nice and generous in letting Mr. Broderick calculate [the value] of everything," she told Howatt. Even assuming that Dan's figures were not deliberately deflated to cheat her, the income levels involved were still so high that "I don't think necessity should be the basis for anything … we have to look at proportions and an equitable life-style." In an acerbic parting shot, she also noted that Mr. Broderick's "God-given talents," as described by Mr. Barry, had been vastly enhanced by his medical and law degrees, which she—not God—had helped to pay for over many years of struggle in her youth.