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his assistant, but Dan again denied he was having an affair. It wasn’t long after that confrontation that Dan finally admitted the truth, that indeed he was involved with his assistant and he wanted a separation from Betty.
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    O VER the next several years the Betty Broderick story was one of rejection, violence, verbal abuse, and finally murder. Feeling scorned and unable to accept the loss of her husband and a life she loved and felt she deserved, Betty became more and more erratic. And given Dan’s stature within the legal community and knowledge of the court system, he saw to it that Betty was thwarted at every turn, which added to Betty’s anger and resolve, and to her increasingly bizarre and dangerous behavior.
    After announcing his intention to seek a divorce, Dan moved the family into a spacious rented home, claiming repairs were needed at their own home. But when the repairs were completed Dan returned there, alone. Enraged, Betty would visit and vandalize the home. On one occasion she took a chocolate cream pie, which had been baked by Linda as a gift for Dan, and smeared it across Dan’s suits and the very bed she’d once shared with him. On another occasion she threw a wine bottle through a window.
    Dan obtained a restraining order against Betty, which infuriated her even more, especially since the separation wasn’t anything she wanted. She certainly didn’t want a divorce and told friends that her difficulties were all caused by her husband. He was the one manipulating their break-up and who had cast her into a rental home and who made her appear to be the bad guy while he appeared to be the victim. Her psyche degenerating, Betty struck again during the Christmas season of 1985. With Dan and Linda’s relationship already publicly acknowledged, the couple took Dan’s children away for a holiday vacation. Betty, alone, once again broke into her former home and destroyed holiday gifts left under the tree. Even after moving into a new home, Dan could not rid himself of Betty, who drove her van through Dan’s front door. Betty was taken to a mental hospital and sedated. She was released after three days.
    For the next three years, despite numerous restraining orders, Betty continued to harass her estranged husband and his girlfriend, often leaving dozens of profanity-laced messages on his home answering machine. And with each message Dan would withdraw alimony money for every obscene word heard on the tape. He also began to deduct higher amounts, as much as $1,000, for other misbehavior, such as taking the children without advance warning. Even the children, who Betty said she loved more than anything else in the world, became pawns in her continuing battle with her husband.
    Betty’s anger had boiled over into obsession and torment by January 1989. Their divorce now final, she was completely crushed by the courts, which awarded custody of the children to Dan and left Betty with only $30,000 in cash. The final blow came three months later, when Dan announced his engagement to Linda.
    On November 5, 1989, Betty Broderick awoke before dawn and drove to Dan’s home. She used a key she secretly took from her daughter to let herself inside. She walked upstairs, a .38 caliber revolver in hand, and into Dan’s bedroom, where he and Linda were sleeping.
    Betty fired, killing them both.
    Her first trial ended in a hung jury. Her second trial, in October 1991, saw Betty convicted on two counts of second-degree murder. She was sentenced to thirty-two years to life and is eligible for parole in 2011.
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    F OR Betty Broderick, it was life imitating art as she appeared to take her fatal marital cues from the movie Fatal Attraction. In this movie a married man, played by Michael Douglas, engages in a brief but exciting sexual fling with a colleague, played by Glenn Close. Although the Douglas character initially finds the relationship erotic and exhilarating, he quickly decides to break it off so he