Jury Rehears Broderick’s Account of Killings

After asking to hear again how La Jolla socialite Elisabeth Anne (Betty) Broderick described the killings of her ex-husband and his new wife, jurors in Broderick’s double-murder trial left for the day Monday without reaching a verdict.

The panel asked to have reread a court reporter’s record of Broderick’s account of the shootings. Testifying Nov. 2 in her own defense, Betty Broderick said she crept into her ex-husband’s house, stole into the bedroom where he lay in bed with his new wife and, intending to kill herself, was startled by movement in the bed and began firing.

The jury’s request for Broderick’s testimony was included in one of three notes it passed to San Diego Superior Court Judge Thomas J. Whelan during its third day of deliberations. The notes gave no hint of agreement or division among the jurors.

Betty Broderick is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the Nov. 5, 1989, killings of her ex-husband, Daniel T. Broderick, and his second wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick.

If convicted of both counts of first-degree murder or of one count of first-degree and another count of second-degree murder, Betty Broderick could be sentenced to life in prison without parole. The jury has five options: to find Broderick guilty of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter or not guilty on any charges.

Daniel Broderick, who was 44, was a prominent medical malpractice attorney and a former president of the San Diego County Bar Assn. Linda Broderick, who was 28, was his office assistant.

Betty and Daniel Broderick separated in 1985, after 16 years of marriage. During their bitter divorce, which did not conclude until 1989, Betty Broderick accused him of using his legal influence to cheat her out of her fair share of his seven-figure annual income.

Betty Broderick has been held without bail at the Las Colinas Jail in Santee since she surrendered to police only hours after the killings.

She appeared in court Monday dressed in street clothes. In her last court appearance, she had dressed in jail sweats to protest what she viewed as unfair rulings that kept from jurors her secret diaries and the bulky court file in the divorce case, material she felt backed up her testimony.

When she testified Nov. 2 about the killings, she said she remembered very little about them, only that she fired the gun, then fled. Deputy Dist. Atty. Kerry Wells, the prosecutor, did not ask her about the shootings on cross-examination.

One of the other two notes the jury passed Monday morning asked for help in defining the word act in the legal definition of first-degree murder.

In a note signed by foreman Lucinda L. Swann, 26, the panel asked whether the word meant the “moment of pulling the trigger” or the “setting up of a dangerous situation.”

Whelan said it was whatever conduct that “directly inflicts the injury that causes death.”

The third note asked to have read the testimony of Robert W. Weller, a clerk at the Neighbor-Saver Food Store in La Jolla. In his testimony, which took precisely three minutes Nov. 6, he said that Betty Broderick bought a cup of coffee and one of cocoa early most weekday mornings.