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

by Bella Stumbo

  "Concerning a phone message that began, 'Dear fuckface, I'm not paying one single payment on a car that has your name on it …" said Wells.

  "I don't know," said Betty. "I would have to look at these whole things; I have to see them in perspective of the other things. If you know the answer, tell me the answer."

  Wells showed her the contempt filing. Now did Betty recall that hearing? "Not really, no … This is the hearing where they took my jewelry and my purse, dragged me off to jail?" asked Betty, befuddled.

  "No," snapped Wells, exasperated.

  "… because I don't remember things when I'm very much upset," Betty said again.

  "That first hearing … you were not sentenced to any jail time at all, were you?" demanded Wells, doggedly trying to advance her scenario that Betty had been warned time and again before the ax finally fell. "… You were held in contempt, [but] you were not sentenced to jail?"

  "That is not the sequence at all," said Betty. "… That is not the first contempt hearing there."

  "Are you saying that the first time you were held in contempt that you were sentenced to jail time?" asked Wells, sneeringly.

  "I don't know," said Betty, faltering. "I don't think so …" Wells's jaw muscles flexed. She wanted to believe Betty was deliberately evading, but, by this time, everybody else in court could see that Betty Broderick's mind was a genuine blur when it came to the contempt actions.

  "Isn't it true," Wells persisted, "that the first time that you were held in contempt, you were simply warned. You were told this is contemptuous behavior, don't do it again, or you will be sentenced to jail time?"

  "There were so many contempt things," Betty explained, apologetically. "But this is not even close to the first one in your hand. There were other ones where I represented myself first, then I was ordered to be represented by an attorney, then Tricia Smith came with me. Dan didn't show up. [That hearing] was put off. He didn't show up again, that was put off ... I don't know where these things fit in!"

  Wells switched her approach. But wasn't the reason for all the delays on the court calendar, all the postponements, because Dan would purposely remove a contempt action from the calendar "in hopes that things would stop—is that not true?" Wells demanded. Betty didn't know.

  Wells finally gave up and moved to the third contempt conviction— skipping over the second one in May, 1987, which resulted in the six-day fail term.

  She didn't get jailed for that third one either, did she?

  "Is this is the attorney’s fees one, or the dog one?" Betty asked.

  "On the third contempt action, three out of four, you were not sentenced to any jail time, correct? On the dogs one?"

  "Oh, we're still on the dogs," said Betty, brightening like a schoolgirl with the right answer. "Okay. Right. No jail time on the dogs."

  Wells clutched for professionalism in the face of this lunatic dialogue. It was not easy to find. "When I say, 'the dogs one,'" she said, gathering herself to a full posture of dignity, "that helps refresh your recollection … [but] there were several different things that you were held in contempt for during that hearing, correct? … It didn't just have to do with dropping the dogs off at Dan Broderick's house?"

  Yes, it did, said Betty. All she remembered was returning from Tahiti and being slapped with a contempt for dropping off two dogs. "My daughter was there, she thought that it was funny …"

  "You thought it was funny," countered Wells, rifling through her files for the pertinent phone message, which she read aloud: "I hope that the puppies are shitting all over your house," Betty had said.

  Patiently, Betty corrected her again. No, no, she said. The message Wells was reading "is years later, when there were puppies! When I put the dogs over there, they were dogs. But we had puppies several times."

  Wells looked ready to faint. All in life she wanted at this moment was simply to make clear to the jury that, of all the contempts filed, Betty Broderick had only been convicted four times and jailed just once. Nor was she jailed on the fourth conviction, was she? Wells challenged.

  No, Betty agreed. That was the one, she thought, where she was fined $16,000 in legal fees for Gerald Barry instead. And the one before that, she was fined $8,000 "for dropping off the dogs."

  No matter how Wells tried to work it, it was not coming out right.

  But those fines, she reiterated, were because Mr. Broderick had argued against jail, correct? demanded Wells, almost screaming now.

  Betty couldn't remember. But, she said, with an ingratiating little smile, if that's what Kerry Wells said, it must be correct.

  Throughout the trials, both attorneys were constantly sneaking in remarks that they knew were taboo, given Whelan's pretrial rulings. The game was to slip the jurors as much forbidden information as possible before being hushed by an objection from the other side.

  And, before long, it was clear to everyone that the attorney who was slowest to object, who let the most pass without yelling bloody murder, was Jack Earley. By contrast to the sharp-tongued Wells, perpetually coiled as a cobra ready to strike, Earley was more like a sleepy, black snake napping in the sun. Wells had long since discovered that she could get away with a lot before Earley would stir.

  And so, now, she decided to play a little more dirty pool: her new goal was to suggest to this jury that—despite all the grumbling they had heard about the Broderick divorce settlement, for all the mysterious absence of detailed financial figures in court, for all of Jack Earley's innuendos that Betty Broderick had been terribly cheated in the final judgment—she had actually been treated with complete fairness. She had won all that she deserved.

  Wasn't it true, Wells asked Betty, that she had been awarded alimony of $16,000 per month? That she got her house, another $239,000 in the pension fund, plus all her furniture and the piano—"all of those things that you had requested, you got … correct?"

  Earley blinked, amazed, then leaped to his feet to shout an angry objection. Whelan of course upheld him—but, again, it was too late. The jury had heard big, big numbers, however incomplete they were.

  Earley, on the other hand, would never be allowed to tell jurors precisely how ungenerous he thought Dan Broderick had been toward the mother of his four children. Never would Earley be able to explain to the jury precisely why it was that Betty had wound up, from an estate worth at least $2 million, and probably far more, with a cash settlement of only $28,000. Worse, he would never craft an illicit insert into his own arguments to compare with the brutal efficiency Kerry Wells had just displayed.

  Wells had also figured out that certain small incidents—such as the scene at Kim's graduation—embarrassed Betty Broderick enough to make her twist the facts, or lie, in an effort to salvage her pride. She finally understood Betty's extreme sensitivity at being called Crazy Betty, too.

  Now she attempted to exploit both those themes. Even if Dan and Linda were telling people she was crazy, asked Wells, why did Betty find that so surprising? After all, she was behaving in a crazy fashion, was she not? For example, wouldn't the fact that Betty had driven her car through Dan's front door "lend to such a rumor?"

  "That might have been an instance where he drove me crazy, yes," Betty said quietly, eyeing Wells with new wariness.

  So why was it all Dan and Linda's fault that rumors were going around that she was crazy? Did Betty take any responsibility herself for her own public image? Hadn't even the children's doctors agreed? Hadn't it been Dr. Ruth Roth, not Dan, for example, who canceled an Easter vacation on grounds that Betty was unfit?

  Wells finally scored.

  Sure, Betty spat sarcastically. It was, technically, Ruth Roth who said she shouldn't have her children that Easter weekend—but Roth was only another of Dan Broderick's hired guns. In reality, said Betty, nobody decided anything about her life except Dan. "Things were always ultimately in Dan Broderick's control," she said bitterly, sarcastically. "[But] he would tell the kids that the judge sent me to jail, the judge fined me. Dan—o
h valiant soul—had nothing to do with it …" Her anger, still so alive, chilled the air. Earley squirmed and looked at the clock, praying for recess. But, in the next moment, Wells lost her lead.

  Hadn't Betty finally lost most of her friends because of her obsession with Dan?

  Betty's face crumbled. Yes, she said, mumbling, all anger gone, she had lost most of her friends and quit most of her activities because she knew that she was no longer "good social company."

  The courtroom was so still, Betty's thin voice so soft that reporters were straining to hear. Tears ran down her face. In her tenacity, Wells had hit home again, but, in the process, also helped create the indelible image of a pathetic, confused woman in ruins. Wells would never learn—at least not in this trial—when it was in her own best strategic interests to back off.

  She finished the day on her harshest note so far. Obviously relying again on her interview notes with the Broderick boys, she asked: "Didn't you tell Danny that you were going to kill his father, and he should be happy about it because he would have all sorts of money after you killed his father?"

  No, said Betty. Wells smirked.

  She had talked to Danny, she again announced, pointedly.

  Wells then accused Betty of telling her sons that if she killed Dan, everyone would be rich on their share of his $1 million insurance policy. "You don't recall [Danny] responding to you that the money would go to Linda, and you said, 'Well, I'll kill her, too?'"

  Absolutely not. Betty's voice was calm, confident, traced with contempt.

  "Did you ever make statements to Kim or Lee during [the fall of 1989] that 'we should just kill him now, we would get all the money, we would be rich?'" Betty looked as bewildered as she had been earlier about the $425 fur. Why would she say something like that? she asked Wells, "Because we wouldn't be rich."

  Wells gazed at Betty with loathing. Would it refresh Betty's memory, she asked, to listen to tape-recorded interviews with her boys, made shortly after the killings? It was not a question, but a threat.

  Betty paled slightly. "I'm not calling my boys liars," she said. "That was the day after. Everyone was very upset. The fact that the boys told you those things does not mean those things happened."

  Earley stirred angrily. What the Broderick boys had said about Betty, he objected, was no more relevant than what they also said about Dan—and, Earley told the jury furiously, before Whelan or Wells could shut him up, "They talked about beatings from their father and all kinds of stuff!"

  The day was finally over. It had been, if anything, a draw. If Wells had demonstrated that Betty Broderick was subject to selective memory lapses and great confusion, she had also failed to dislodge her from her position that she was a victim who had been driven to kill by unrelenting harassment.

  Afterward, Jack Earley was a happy man. Betty had been too controlled, too articulate, and too detached from her acts of death to wrench many hearts. But Earley didn't care, because, in his view, Wells was worse: cold, harsh, unsympathetic, unsisterly in the extreme. "Kerry is doing me the biggest favor I could ask for—she's literally numbing the jury to the impact of Betty's language," he said. "And she's also showing the jury just how confused Betty was, even by 1987."

  He was especially tickled that Kerry herself was now tossing off "cunts" and "fucks" in court as casually as "gollys" and "gee whizzes."

  But Earley's jubilance didn't last. Tomorrow was the last day. Tomorrow Kerry Wells was finally going to get around to asking Betty Broderick exactly what had happened on the morning of November 5, 1989, and why.

  Wells began her last round with Betty on Friday morning in much the way she had started two days earlier—poised over the tape machine, ready to swamp the jury with more obscenities, more evidence of child abuse.

  "Do you recall telling [Danny] that you were not interested in having anything to do with him," asked Wells, "and when he asked why, you said, 'Daddy fucking his office cunt is very embarrassing, and you obviously approve.'" She was ready to play the tape.

  Earley demanded a bench conference, where he again protested that Wells was so overdoing the obscenity tapes that it violated evidence rules against overkill. "This is not an obscenity trial … there [have already] been tons of statements in tapes about her referring to Linda Kolkena as the cunt, the father as the fuckhead."

  Wells argued that the tape was essential to prove that Betty was once again lying. Whelan listened gravely as the two attorneys gesticulated and whispered animatedly. From the audience, no one would ever have suspected that the weighty decision facing this silvery-haired, dignified-looking judge was whether to permit one more "cunt," one more "fuck" into his courtroom.

  He ruled for Wells.

  Triumphantly, she marched back to the tape machine and, one more time, Betty's chirping voice rang through the chamber—and, of course, Betty had said precisely what Wells said she did.

  Betty listened without expression, then shrugged it off. "I don't remember these conversations," she said remotely. "I was obviously very depressed and upset about the situation … the visitation and custody problem …"

  "Would you also tell Rhett that his father was a coldhearted bastard fucking an office cunt?" Wells demanded. Betty didn't remember that either. "If you have a tape of it, I probably told Rhett that," she said. "... I know that is what I felt."

  The rest of the morning was a random chase to nowhere. Wells played more of Betty's taped messages—only to meet with more of the same shameless responses—and roamed over various visitation and custody disputes. The audience stirred restlessly. Jurors looked bored. Would Wells never get to the main event?

  Finally, she did begin to approach the killings, starting with Betty's gun.

  Wasn't it true, Wells asked, that "you would put the gun in your pocket whenever Dan Broderick was coming over to pick up the kids at the end of a weekend?"

  Betty agreed. "There were about two or three times that I had the gun with me when Dan came to my house … the last several times I had confronted or seen Dan Broderick, I had the gun with me …" But she was carrying the gun, she explained, only for protection.

  "You were actually just hoping that there would be a confrontation so that you would have an excuse to kill him, weren't you?" Wells accused.

  No, said Betty. She never planned to shoot him.

  And hadn't Betty been "angry" at Dan's announced plans that he intended to have a new family with Linda, asked Wells.

  Angry? Betty paused for a moment, trying to wrap her mind around the question. Angry? Versus depressed, hopeless, defeated, jealous, resentful, fearful, sad, bitter, crazed?

  Angry?

  "I frankly didn't care," she finally told Wells. "… The [only] comment I made was, 'If they were going to have more children, why did they have to take mine?'"

  Wells next suggested that Betty had waited to shoot Dan until his insurance policy for the children went into effect in September. Hadn't she specifically asked the insurance agent to let her know when the policy was implemented?

  Sure, said Betty—she was very interested in that policy. "I was hyper … wondering why it took him so long to follow through with the court order. If he ever let it lapse, I wanted [the agent] to let me know."

  The insurance policy debate lasted several more minutes until, finally, Betty cut it off by asking Wells, in so many words, why she thought anybody would kill for a measely $1 million? Divided by the children four ways, it was peanuts.

  Wells dropped the topic and got on to the killings. From there, it all moved fast, if not logically, to its baffling conclusion.

  The closer this trial moved to the actual issue at hand—first-degree murder—the more Betty seemed to shrink in both tone and stature. Her voice grew quieter, more tentative. Even physically, she seemed to be contracting, sinking lower and lower into her chair, withdrawing from this bad thing that was about to be thrown at her, she knew, within minutes now.

  In her final hour with Betty, Wells set out to strip her of any
defense that she had acted in the heat of passion, sparked by reading the Cuffaro letters on Sunday morning. Although there were two letters, Wells focused only on the one referring to a possible jail sentence if Betty didn't shape up—and remarking on her "mental disease."

  "You've changed your story about when you read this letter, haven't you?" asked Wells. "You knew that it was not going to help your defense if you had read it on Friday because it would give you time to calm down, correct?"

  "I've never changed my story, because there is only one story," Betty retorted. Wells would not believe it. How could Betty say that she had gotten a legal letter from her attorney but not really focused on it?

  Betty looked ready to explode. "I had been in this thing for seven years!" she shrilled, reddening. "I didn't open a lot of legal mail!"

  Wells next tried, in vain, to force her to admit she had stolen Dan's house key from Kim weeks earlier—that she had planned murder all along.

  Betty's face crumbled, and she began to cry. But, as usual, her words were more persuasive than her tears.

  "I didn't have a plan! I just wanted to die ... I didn't want to live anymore!" she wailed into the silence of the courtroom. Her only thought, she said, was that Dan had to talk to her, that this legal nightmare had to end. He had to return her children. Through her sobs, she challenged Wells to "just read that letter—it's a horrible letter! They were just fucking me over! And what did they have to gain?" For purposes of this hour, Betty had given up on polite language. Her face was red and creased as a Danish cabbage. Wells looked utterly disgusted. The jurors looked transfixed.

  And how was it that she just happened to have the gun in her car? asked Wells. It was such a logical question that it caused Betty to stop crying. Wells hated it when Betty cried; she thought it was such a phony, manipulative ploy. In fact, every time Betty even started to tear over, Wells would instantly call for a recess—but Betty invariably thwarted her. "No, no, I'm fine," Betty would tell Whelan apologetically, wiping her eyes with a Kleenex and instantly drying up.