A few days after the story appeared, I received a ten-page letter from Betty.
Behind her anger at me lay the wellspring of fury she was still directing at her ex, dead now for seven months.
I didn’t hear from her again for almost 19 years.
Back in 1989, my fiancé and I talked about Betty Broderick often. He was a newspaper reporter, too, and he understood what a boost it was for my career that she’d opened up to me. The irony, however, wasn’t lost on either of us that her fatal divorce coincided with our wedding plans. When I wasn’t running off to the jail to see her, I was ordering cream-colored invitations from a fancy stationer not far from where she’d lived in La Jolla. When I wasn’t frantically typing notes during our interviews, her voice blaring from a phone cradled next to my ear, I was talking to caterers, reserving blocks of hotel rooms, and shopping for a simple white linen dress.
We were to be married in Marin County. A subpoena from Betty’s prosecutors almost delayed our ceremony. When I got word that I was about to be served with the papers, my editor suggested I make myself scarce and go north ahead of schedule. I was happy to comply.
Our wedding was perfect, and Betty helped pay for it. My magazine piece had drawn inquiries from more than three dozen television producers. One even sent me red roses. Eventually I agreed to be a consultant for a TV movie. The first crisp check I received was for $5,000—more money than I’d ever seen in one chunk. I signed it over to my mother to help pay for the caterer, the tent, and the champagne.
The second check came several months later, when principal photography began on the show, A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story, which would become a CBS movie of the week. This check was for $25,000, and my husband and I used it as most of the down payment on our first house. It was in Los Angeles—not in San Diego County, where we’d lived when I first met Betty. We were moving, and for me, that too was mainly because of her. I’d been promoted from the Times’s San Diego edition to its Los Angeles headquarters. In large part I’d advanced because my coverage of Betty had put me on my bosses’ radar.
Again I was aware of the irony: Writing about Betty’s ruined life had led to improvements in my own. I didn’t feel guilty exactly. I had always been honest with her about my pursuit of the whole story, not just her version. Besides, if I had used her to succeed, she had used me right back—to let the world know her feelings. Nonetheless, the juxtaposition felt strange. It still does. Her impact on me was undeniable.
On February 7, 1992, Betty was sentenced to 32 years to life. In March 1992, A Woman Scorned aired to record ratings. Meredith Baxter, who portrayed Betty, was nominated for an Emmy. Because the movie ended with the murders, it left room for a sequel, and CBS immediately ordered up Her Final Fury: Betty Broderick, the Last Chapter. This movie covered the period between the killings and her conviction and sentencing. It aired in November 1992. Unlike most movies of the week, which were broadcast and then forgotten, these two lived on. For years Lifetime Television played them so frequently it seemed impossible to tune in without seeing Betty drive her car into Dan’s front door or Dan threaten to take Betty to court.
I appeared in the first movie as an extra, an inside joke that the director couldn’t resist. He dressed me up in a lawyer’s suit and sent me to the hair and makeup trailer, which made such an impression that I recall precisely how the makeup artist assessed me: “Your lower lip is all right, but you really have no upper lip to speak of.” I’m not in the second movie, but I am mentioned by name. The prosecutor grills Baxter-as-Betty: “Do you remember telling Amy Wallace from the L.A. Times that ‘There was no pain. There was no blood. It was simple’? Do you remember saying in the same interview, ‘I had only one choice: his funeral or mine’?”
Sounds like a Mad Men marriage…