Crime Be a Lady

Till Murder Do Us Part

In 1990, Betty Broderick confessed to killing her ex-husband and his new wife to Los Angeles Times cub reporter Amy Wallace:

Betty said that in order for me to understand the killings, I had to know the long history of her case—and with Dan and Linda dead, only she was left to tell it. Over the next six months, she called and wrote often, always eager to describe the “overt emotional terrorism” that Dan had inflicted upon her. At first, she talked only obliquely about the killings, which she called “the incident,” but eventually she called me from a public telephone at the jail and confessed.

Almost two decades later, Wallace tells of how she landed the story and explores its lasting impact:

I’d like to say I was assigned to the Betty Broderick story because I had a reputation for getting the ungettable. In fact, I drew the short straw. After the killings, a veteran police reporter was assigned to cover the investigation. Being less experienced (and, not incidentally, female and thus, presumably, more persuasive with Betty), I was assigned Betty duty. My job was to describe her world by reaching out to her and every friend she had—what’s known in newspapers as the “soft” side of a hard news story. That kind of assignment can be difficult if not impossible. Once Betty and I made contact, though, our relationship became instantly and strangely intimate.