No Memory of Killings, Sobbing Broderick Says : Court: Emotional testimony marks the second trial of woman accused of shooting her ex-husband and his wife.

Elisabeth Anne (Betty) Broderick, accused of murdering her ex-husband and his new wife, testified at her trial Tuesday that she sneaked into their home and crept into the master bedroom, but does not recall killing the couple.

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 the slides missing.”

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

She became frightened, she said, and “then 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. But 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, “I don’t even remember pulling it the first time.”

Tuesday marked the second anniversary of the deaths of Daniel Broderick, 44, a prominent attorney, and his second wife, 28, who had been his legal secretary. 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 fall ended in a hung jury, with 10 jurors opting for a murder conviction and two holding out for manslaughter.

If convicted, Broderick could face life in prison without the possibility of parole.

She said Tuesday 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 that Sunday and which she said was “more than I could handle.”

In the letter, she testified, her ex-husband promised to fight her attempts to gain custody of the couple’s two young sons and to cut off her monthly support payments and have her jailed--a tactic he had used in the past during a bitter custody and divorce battle.

Broderick said that on the drive from La Jolla to her ex-husband’s home in San Diego’s Marston Hills, “All these thoughts just 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 former home intending “to splash my brains all over his . . . 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.

Tuesday’s proceedings 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.

Earley complained to Superior Court Judge Thomas J. Whelan that Wells had violated a pretrial agreement not to bring up Broderick’s 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 her direct examination.

During cross-examination, Wells asked about an incident in which Elisabeth Broderick once hurled a ketchup bottle at her husband.

Broderick said the gesture was never intended to be hostile but was only a joke--”and I wish Dan were here to tell you” that it was a joke.

“Well,” Wells said dramatically, “I wish he were too, Mrs. Broderick.”