Socialite Broderick Fought With Deputies, Officials Say

SAN DIEGO — La Jolla socialite Betty Broderick, scheduled to go on trial again in two weeks on charges of killing her ex-husband and his new wife, fought with deputies as they tried to transfer her to an isolation cell and smeared her own feces around the cell, officials said Thursday.

The unidentified guards were slightly injured and Broderick, 43, was not hurt, the officials said.

County prosecutors and jail officials said the fight began on Sunday when Broderick resisted deputies who were to take her to an isolation cell as punishment for an earlier incident. But her attorney, Jack Earley of Newport Beach, said that one of the guards antagonized Broderick and sparked the scuffle.

Earley disputed the claim by authorities that Broderick smeared excrement around the isolation cell.

Broderick remains in isolation. She is charged with two counts of murder in the Nov. 5, 1989, shooting deaths of her former husband, Daniel T. Broderick III, 44, and his wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick, 28.

Her first trial ended in a hung jury. She has remained at the Las Colinas Jail in Santee since she surrendered to authorities the day of the killings. Daniel Broderick was a prominent medical malpractice attorney and a former president of the San Diego County Bar Assn.

The murders followed a long and bitter divorce and the case has attracted wide interest. On Thursday, for example, Broderick was released temporarily from isolation to be interviewed for the ABC-TV news show “20/20,” Earley said.

The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jail, said the transfer was punishment for an Aug. 22 rules violation that resulted in Broderick’s being ordered to isolation for four days. Officials declined to elaborate on that incident.

But Earley said that Broderick had been chained to a bench with a prisoner she considered violent. She screamed for attention and was charged with breaking jail rules, he said.

When deputies arrived at her cell Sunday with a video camera, Broderick refused to move, Earley said.

Sheriff’s spokesman Dan Greenblatt confirmed that deputies videotaped the scuffle, saying it was routine in transfers to isolation cells. Broderick, officials said, jumped on her bed frame and held on, then kicked one deputy in the chest, causing the deputy to fall backward and hit her head against a wall bracket.

It has not been determined if the scuffle will lead to criminal charges against Broderick.