Betty Broderick
| Betty Broderick | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Elisabeth Anne Bisceglia November 7, 1947 Eastchester, New York |
| Criminal charge | Second-degree murder x2 |
| Criminal penalty | 32-years-to-life in prison |
| Criminal status | Incarcerated in California Institute for Women (CIW) |
| Spouse(s) | Daniel Broderick (m. 1969–1986, divorced) |
| Children | 4 |
Elisabeth Anne "Betty" Broderick (born November 7, 1947) is an American former suburban housewife convicted of the November 5, 1989 murders of her ex-husband, Daniel T. Broderick III, and his second wife, Linda (Kolkena) Broderick. After a second trial, she was convicted on December 11, 1991 of two counts of second-degree murder and later sentenced to 32-years-to-life in prison. The case received extensive media attention and was extremely controversial. Several books were written on the Broderick case, and a made-for-TV movie was televised in two parts.
Growing up in the New York City suburb of Eastchester, Broderick was the third of six children born to devout Roman Catholic parents, Marita (née Curtin) and Frank Bisceglia (1915-1998), who owned a successful plastering business with relatives . Her mother was Irish-American and her father was Italian-American. The Bisceglias were very strict parents, and much was expected of all the Bisceglia children. As Betty later recalled, she was trained to act as a housewife since the day she was born, or as she recalled "Go to Catholic schools, be careful with dating until you find a Catholic man, support him while he works, be blessed in your later years with beautiful grandchildren". This Catholic upbringing was bolstered by the economic conditions of the 1950s, where the Bisceglias expected their future son-in-law could work a lifetime of steady employment in one career until his retirement.
Broderick graduated from Eastchester High School in 1965. She attended and later graduated from the College of Mount Saint Vincent, which was at that time a small Catholic women's college in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, New York, where she majored in early childhood education, a degree she later earned through an accelerated program.
In 1965, Bisceglia met her future husband, Dan Broderick, at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. Broderick was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the eldest son of a large Catholic family akin to the Bisceglias, and both his parents were descended from Irish immigrants. The couple was married on April 12, 1969, at the Immaculate Conception Church in Tuckahoe. Betty returned from her honeymoon pregnant with her first child, daughter Kim. She gave birth to four more children: daughter Lee, two sons named Daniel and Rhett, and an unnamed boy, who died two days after birth.
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