Broderick Relives Her Role in Killings : Testimony: The former La Jolla socialite says she doesn’t remember pulling the trigger.

Elisabeth Anne (Betty) Broderick testified Tuesday that, on the morning of Nov. 5, 1989, she sneaked into the Marston Hills home of her ex-husband and his new wife, crept up to the master bedroom and remembers screams, followed by a gun discharging, “then this clicking.”

Sobbing during much of her testimony--the most emotional by far of Broderick’s second murder trial--she said her memory of the morning two years ago is “like a slide show with a lot of slides missing.”

She said she remembers entering the bedroom around dawn on a Sunday and hearing Linda Kolkena Broderick scream for her husband to call the police. Broderick said she remembers Daniel T. Broderick III lunging for the phone.

She said she became frightened and “I screamed, ‘No!’ I fired the gun, and this big noise went off, and I grabbed the phone and ran out of there. I felt like I let out a huge scream. I don’t know if I even made a noise. It was all sensation . . . this huge sensation.”

Defense attorney Jack Earley asked if she now remembers pulling the trigger.

“No,” she replied.

Tuesday marked the second anniversary of the deaths of Daniel Broderick, 44, a prominent medical malpractice attorney, and his second wife, Linda, 28, who had once worked as his legal assistant and with whom he began an extramarital affair in 1983.

Prosecutors say that Elisabeth Broderick killed the couple by firing five shots from a .38-caliber revolver. They describe the killings as first-degree, premeditated murders.

Broderick’s first trial last year ended in a hung jury, with 10 jurors opting for a murder conviction and two holding out for manslaughter. If convicted, Broderick faces the possibility of life in prison without parole.

She said Tuesday that she went to her ex-husband’s home, intending only to kill herself. She said the drive across town was prompted by a letter from an attorney, which she read for the first time in the pre-dawn hours of that Sunday, after a sleepless night.

She said of the letter, “It was more than I could handle.”

In it, her ex-husband promised to fight her attempts to gain custody of the couple’s two young sons and, she said, to cut off monthly support payments and have her jailed--a tactic he had used repeatedly during a custody and divorce battle that raged on for years.

Broderick testified that she felt “terrified” and “helpless” and finally overwhelmed by the maneuverings of her former husband, who used his legal acumen to “drive me crazy.”

Broderick said that, on the drive from La Jolla to Marston Hills, “all these thoughts kept churning in my head, like my eyeballs were turned backwards. It felt like the whole world was inside my head. . . . It felt like hell, actually.”

During last year’s trial, Broderick testified that she went to her ex-husband’s home intending “to splash my brains all over his goddamned house.” She made no such comment Tuesday.

Last year, she described the killings by saying, “They moved, I moved, and it was over.” Tuesday, she talked of animated conversation and movement, screams and sensations.

During Tuesday’s cross-examination, Broderick said she never remembered telling the press or her 20-year-old daughter, Lee, that Daniel Broderick sat up in bed and said, “OK, you shot me. I’m dead.”

She said Tuesday that her daughter remembers that--she doesn’t.

Tuesday’s action featured numerous skirmishes between Earley and Deputy Dist. Atty. Kerry Wells. At one point during cross-examination, Earley objected vehemently when Wells asked about Broderick’s having undergone abortions.

Broderick has said that she was pregnant nine times in 10 years, that all her pregnancies were difficult, and that some were even life-threatening.

Earley complained to Superior Court Judge Thomas J. Whelan that Wells had violated a pretrial agreement by bringing up the abortions, but nothing was stricken from the record.

Earley also complained to Whelan about Wells “glaring at the defendant” and “throwing her pencil in disgust” during direct examination.

Whelan replied by saying: “Knock it off, Mr. Earley!”

During cross-examination, Wells asked about an incident in which Elisabeth Broderick once hurled a ketchup bottle at her husband in the kitchen of their La Jolla home.

Broderick said the gesture was never intended to be hostile--it was only a joke--”and I wish Dan were here to tell you” that it happened, not in anger, but in jest, merely a response to his playful teasing.

“Well,” Wells said emphatically, “I wish he were here too.”

Broderick smiled and said, “So do I.”

Near the end of direct examination, Broderick said she regretted that, after the killings, “I wasn’t able to tell anyone how sorry I was.”

During cross-examination, Wells zeroed in on the comment, suggesting that Broderick had shown no remorse for having killed two people.

She pointed out that Broderick had written “hundreds” of letters from jail and spoken on the phone with “friends, family members, newspaper reporters and celebrities,” including Cyndy Garvey, the ex-wife of former San Diego Padres first baseman Steve Garvey.

Wells wanted to know why Broderick had never expressed remorse to those people.

She responded by saying that many of her letters and phone calls were monitored.

Broderick was asked about telling a Times reporter about Daniel Broderick stating, “OK, you shot me. I’m dead.”

She said, “I don’t remember him sitting up in bed and saying anything like that. I don’t really know what happened in that room. It was all these . . . flashes of things.”

She did admit to telephoning, writing or giving interviews to reporters from The Times, the San Diego Union, the San Diego Reader, the La Jolla Light, the New York Times, the Ladies’ Home Journal and People magazine.

During direct examination Tuesday morning, portions of Broderick’s testimony moved some observers in the 36-seat audience to tears. Several jurors appeared to be moved; others sat staring straight ahead.

Wells later cited comments Broderick reportedly made to a deputy at the Las Colinas Jail and to numerous newspaper and magazine writers.

She asked Broderick: “Isn’t it true that you told Deputy (Maria) Woods when you cried that the jury would eat it up?”

“No, absolutely not,” Broderick answered.

Wells asked about Broderick’s having called her husband, during their marriage, a “pathetic bumpkin,” a “nerd” and a “fag” and having made friends feel as though the couple were headed for divorce.

Broderick said many of the comments were made in jest, but at times, “Yeah, I probably called him an (expletive) too.”

Wells suggested at one point that Broderick prided herself on being a “great actress”--especially when testifying.

The give and take between the two ended with Wells asking Broderick about money she had spent after she and her husband separated. Wells produced a summary of Broderick’s 1986 expenses showing she spent $220,000, including fees for a maid, a gardener and a swimming pool service, and $37,000 for clothes.

Broderick said many of those items were charged on charge accounts but never actually paid. As she blurted out quick replies to Wells’ questions, a man in the back of the courtroom drew stares when he blurted out, “ She’s a great witness!”

The cross-examination of Broderick continues today.