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Published 09:07 10 May 2026 GMT
Betty Broderick died in prison at the age of 78 while serving a life sentence for killing her ex-husband and his new wife.
The prisoner, whose full name was Elizabeth A. Broderick, passed away on Friday, May 8, at 3:40AM, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).
Officials said she had been transferred from the California Institution for Women to an outside medical facility on April 18 "for a higher level of care," per a statement shared with PEOPLE.
A doctor initially ruled her death as natural causes, though the San Bernardino County Coroner will determine the official cause later.
In a statement to TMZ, Betty's son, Daniel Broderick, later claimed that his mother had suffered multiple septic infections before her death and had also sustained broken ribs after a serious fall in prison roughly three weeks earlier.
Daniel also alleged that Betty died in an ICU off prison grounds while on life support and unable to communicate.
He told the outlet she was surrounded by all four of her children when she died.
Betty became nationally known after fatally shooting her ex-husband, Dan Broderick, and his new wife, Linda Kolkena, on November 5, 1989.
Betty and Dan had married in 1969 and shared four children together.
In the early 1980s, Dan began an affair with Kolkena, a former flight attendant he hired as his legal assistant while his marriage to Betty was falling apart.
Although Dan initially denied the affair, he later left Betty and filed for divorce in 1985.
The divorce quickly became bitter, with lengthy court battles over custody of their children and the sale of the family home.
Dan was eventually granted custody while Betty received visitation rights. The legal fight reportedly pushed her into a deep depression.
Dan and Linda married in 1989, and later that same year, Betty entered their home and shot them both while they were in bed.
Betty's first murder trial ended in a mistrial before she was later convicted of two counts of second-degree murder in 1991.
She was sentenced to two consecutive terms of 15 years to life, plus an additional two years for illegal use of a firearm.
Although she became eligible for parole, she was denied release multiple times over the years.
In 2017, San Diego County Deputy District Attorney Richard Sachs described her as "completely unrepentant" and "defiant," per 10News.
However, she strongly disagreed and insisted she should have been released years earlier.
"I have no one to speak for me. This was a case of domestic abuse: a pattern of coercive control that lasted throughout our marriage until the day I killed them," Betty wrote in a letter to producers of Murder Made Me Famous. "Now I am only a political prisoner. They have no reason to deny my parole."
She had been scheduled for another parole hearing in 2032, when she would have been 84 years old.
Raised in a strict Catholic family in Westchester County, New York, Betty later studied English and early childhood education at the University of Mount Saint Vincent after briefly working in retail and trying her hand at modeling before marrying Dan.
Her case became one of America’s most infamous true crime stories of the 1990s, inspiring two CBS films, A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story and Her Final Fury: Betty Broderick, the Last Chapter, both released in 1992.
Her story was also dramatized in the Netflix series Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story.
In addition to this, Betty became a regular fixture on major television programs, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Hard Copy, 20/20, and Headliners and Legends.
She is survived by her four children, Kim, Lee, Daniel, and Rhett.
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