Double-murderer Betty Broderick is denied parole for a second time

Elisabeth “Betty” Broderick will remain in state prison, where she is serving time for the 1989 murders of her ex-husband and his new wife at their San Diego home, California’s parole board ruled late Wednesday.

At the end of a daylong hearing, the two-member panel found that Broderick was not suitable for release and denied parole for the longest term possible: 15 years. Broderick could request another hearing sooner than that if she meets certain criteria.

Now 69, she is serving a sentence of 32 years to life at the California Institution for Women in Chino.

This was the second time that the former socialite had been granted a parole hearing since being convicted in 1991 for the murders of Daniel Thomas Broderick III, 44, and his wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick, 28.

Daniel Broderick was a well-known medical malpractice lawyer. Linda had been his office assistant before they married.

Both were fatally shot the morning of Nov. 5, 1989, as they lay in bed at home.

“Betty Broderick is an unrepentant woman,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Sachs, who argued against a grant of parole at the hearing.

“She has no remorse and zero insight into the killings,” Sachs said afterward in an interview. “She just basically said, ‘They drove me to do this.’ ”

Betty Broderick’s attorney declined to comment after the hearing.

After one mistrial, Broderick was found guilty in December 1991 of two counts of second-degree murder. She previously was denied parole in 2010.

During the trials, Broderick never denied firing the fatal shots, but contended that she had been pushed to do so by her husband’s abuse during their contentious divorce and the custody battle over their children.

The prosecution maintained that Broderick was a cold and deliberate killer who felt she had the right — no matter the cost to others — “to act out in vicious and extreme ways just because she was angry.”

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Littlefield writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune