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when the rose-colored glasses fade.
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    W HILE Clara Harris acted swiftly upon learning of her husband’s affair, BETTY BRODERICK let her emotions simmer over several years before her actions resulted in death.
    The Broderick story is perhaps one of the most overpublicized and discussed cases of betrayal and abandonment. It’s a story that follows the disintegration of a woman spurned and obsessed, and whose final act was one of murder.
    Betty was a college student in New York when she met her future husband Dan, a premed student, at a Notre Dame football game. The pair dated for several years, became engaged and married in April 1969. Less than a year later Betty gave birth to the first of her four children, and the couple soon moved to Massachusetts, where Dan would attend Harvard, changing his career focus from medicine to law.
    Betty helped support her husband during those early years, taking various jobs day and night to pay the rent and buy the food. In 1973 the young family moved to Los Angeles, and then soon after to San Diego, where Dan took a job as a junior partner with a local law firm. Overwhelmed by the crushing debt of her husband’s student loans, Betty continued to work, teaching religious classes and earning her real estate license, her salary helping to keep the family solvent.
    By 1979, following the birth of their fourth child Rhett, Dan had formed his own law firm and was quickly becoming one of the more successful attorneys in southern California. His success eventually led to a seven-figure salary, which allowed Betty to stay at home and fully devote herself to their children. Her hard work, devotion, and support of her husband, she believed, had finally paid off. But despite the appearance of an “idyllic” marriage, all was not well with the Brodericks. While Betty may have thought she and Dan were partners for life, Dan had other ideas. He often worked late into the evening, socializing with other attorneys at local pubs. His affinity for pubs resulted in one explosive confrontation with Betty while on a family vacation, when Dan spent more time in the local bar than with his family.
    Dan was thought by many to be cold and distant, and as hard as she tried, Betty felt she could not please him. Friends could easily see changes in her demeanor at the end of the day when it came time for Dan to return home from work. Betty would transform from happy and easygoing to nervous, even afraid.
    As Dan’s law practice prospered, his marriage faltered. By 1983, and after fourteen years of marriage to Betty, Dan’s attention was diverted toward another woman. Her name was Linda Kolkena, and Dan first spotted her at a party he attended with Betty. Linda was only twenty-one, but Dan was so smitten he soon hired her as his personal assistant. It wasn’t long after they met that Betty began to suspect something was wrong. She’d catch her husband sneaking away to call Linda on the phone, and he’d even call her during family vacations. During one trip to England, Betty discovered that Dan had sent Linda flowers. While away with the children on a camping trip that summer, Betty could not reach her husband on the phone. Upon her return Betty finally blurted her concerns about the pretty assistant, but Dan denied that anything illicit was going on, calling his wife paranoid and insecure.
    After a surprise visit to her husband’s office, Betty finally learned the truth. She arrived unannounced bearing gifts to celebrate his thirty-ninth birthday. But Dan was gone, and so was his assistant. They had left for lunch and never returned. Betty walked into Linda’s office and saw a portrait of Dan there. Incensed, and believing that her husband was having an affair with his assistant, Betty drove home and pulled out all of Dan’s expensive, tailor-made suits. She threw them into a pile in the backyard, poured gasoline on them, and set the clothing afire. When Dan returned home Betty confronted him about