Betty Broderick, Ultimate Tradwife, Dies In Prison At 78
Broderick killed her terrible husband after he left her for a younger woman.
I think about Betty Broderick a lot these days.
For the last few years, manosphere stooges have been desperately trying to convince young women that they need to marry young — because, they insist, men are absolutely disgusted by women older than 29, and in some cases, 26 — and spend their 20s having children, even if it means they have to struggle financially. And unless they do this, they’ll all be sad and lonely like all of the millennial women who spent their 20s and later years out enjoying themselves and doing what they wanted.
Of course, the problem with that is we’re all actually doing pretty great and it’s the menfolk who are out here having a loneliness crisis. Multiple studies actually show that the happiest subgroup of human beings are unmarried, childless women. Additionally, other studies show that as much as the incels may screech incessantly about how older men are fine being single because of how they can “fuck 20 year olds” for the rest of their lives, single women are usually happier than single men. And married women. (Though this is actually changing to some degree — because women now get married because they want to and not because they are economically screwed if they don’t.)
But hey! It’s not as though these men ever actually talk to women in person, so how would they know? I guess they think if they can make women as insecure as they are, they have more of a chance.
You know who also might have been a whole lot happier if she had spent her younger years being, as these men claim, “selfish,” taking care of herself, having a good time and waiting until she was educated and financially self-sufficient before getting married and having kids? Betty Broderick.
Betty Broderick died on Friday at the age of 78, having spent around 36 years in prison for the murder of her ex-husband Dan Broderick and his new wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick.
She met Dan Broderick when she was just 17 years old, and he was 21. According to her account, he aggressively pursued her in a way that would be pretty unseemly today.
“Dan never once wavered from his goal of making me his wife. He would wait, he would do and say whatever was necessary, even agreeing with me when he didn't, and doing things I wanted to do when he didn't, until he had me. Nobody ever used the terms ‘obsessive-compulsive’ or ‘stalker’ back then, but that is what he was,” she wrote in her 2015 memoir, Telling On Myself. (This is obviously not what obsessive-compulsive means, but it’s clear what she meant.)
Eventually she did marry him, in 1969, and got pregnant on their honeymoon. While taking care of that child and the other three they would eventually have together, keeping house and cooking his dinner, she worked her ass off, working multiple jobs and going through her savings to put him through medical school. Then, he decided he didn’t want to be a doctor, so she kept working so he could go to Harvard Law School.
In 1982, not very long after his career took off, he hired 21-year-old former flight attendant Linda Kolkena as a legal assistant, despite the fact that she was not a paralegal, had no college education, and could not type. She did, however, look strikingly like a young Betty Broderick, before she had four kids and spent 16 years caring for them.
By 1983, it was common knowledge at his firm that they were having an affair. Betty suspected it was happening as well and every time she confronted him about it, he gaslit her and told her she was crazy. In 1985, he filed for divorce. She couldn’t get a lawyer anywhere in town, because he was a prominent lawyer (president of the San Diego Bar Association!) and no one wanted to cross him. He also refused to pay the retainer for the lawyer she did get, and then complained that she didn’t have a lawyer. He sold her house without her approval, which did piss her off so much that she drove into his house … after which he had her committed to a mental institution on a 72-hour hold, which was easier for him to do than it might be for others because he was also a “doctor.” He asked for a bifurcated divorce (where the divorce is official before the financials are worked out) and full custody of their four children, which he got. He asked for her to not be allowed to make a claim on his law firm, which he got. She got half their assets (which came out to $28K, total, thanks to all the financial maneuvering he did before she even knew he planned to leave her and the several years he dragged the divorce out) and spousal support, along with the realization that he planned to simply recreate their whole life, just replacing her with Kolkena, who he married that same year.
Because she’d spent all that time taking care of Dan Broderick and raising their children, she didn’t have a life outside of that. She didn’t have an identity outside of that. She didn’t have a way to start a new career for herself, all of a sudden, at age 45, in the year 1989. She was, more or less, totally fucked, and that kind of sent her off the deep end.
And then, November 5, 1989, at approximately 5:30 a.m, Betty Broderick let herself into his house with her daughter’s key, shot and killed them both in bed.
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Now, everything she went through wasn’t an excuse for a double murder, but it was a reason. And a whole lot of women out there had a lot of sympathy for her, either because they’d been through something similar, seen another woman go through something similar, or were worried they could, someday, be in her position.
Hell, there are still women who end up in that position today.
Betty Broderick wasn’t a saint, but she was a warning — and, quite frankly, not just to women. There is a reason we all stopped doing things this way.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Dan's glasses are eerily reminiscent of another lying sack of shit, the current Sucker of the House, Mousy Mike Johnson
OT: War back on. @atrupar
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