Doesn’t Recall Firing Gun, Broderick Says

Elisabeth Anne (Betty) Broderick testified Thursday that she was in an “altered state of consciousness” on Nov. 5, 1989, and does not remember pulling the trigger of the .38-caliber revolver that killed her ex-husband and his new wife.

When confronted with the photographs of the bodies of Daniel T. Broderick III, 44, and Linda Kolkena Broderick, 28, and the blood-stained sheets on which they lay, the onetime La Jolla socialite stared with a blank expression and said she never intended to kill them.

Under intense and often combative cross-examination by Deputy Dist. Atty. Kerry Wells, Broderick testified during her second murder trial that she remembers little about sneaking into the bedroom of the couple’s Marston Hills home around dawn on a Sunday.

She said she does not remember seeing them. Nor does she remember firing five shots, she said, although she described them in last year’s trial.

Broderick, 44, said she went to the home of her ex-husband, a prominent medical malpractice attorney, to confront him over issues surrounding a divorce and custody battle that had lasted for years.

“I was in a totally altered state of consciousness,” she said.

” . . . I walked into the room. I’ve testified that it was dark. It appeared that way to me. I moved, they moved, the gun went off. . . . “

Wells, who ignored the details of the killings in last year’s trial--which ended with the jury deadlocked--spent more than an hour on them Thursday afternoon.

The prosecution contends that Broderick murdered the couple “as they lay helpless in their sleep,” and that her crime is a first-degree, premeditated offense for which she should receive life in prison without parole.

The defense contends that she was driven to near-insanity by the legal maneuverings of her ex-husband, a powerful past president of the San Diego County Bar Assn.

Wells, who was criticized for not being aggressive enough during last year’s trial, pounded away relentlessly on Thursday.

Broderick testified that she could see neither Daniel Broderick nor his wife before or after she shot them and that the shooting was merely a “reflex” action.

“You had to go up and point (the gun) at (Linda) to shoot at her, didn’t you?” Wells asked. “The reflex action didn’t make the gun go off in the floor, did it? So, you pulled the gun up and you pointed it at Linda to shoot her, didn’t you? Was the gun pointed at Linda’s chest when you shot her?”

“I don’t know,” Broderick said. “I’m telling you it was dark. I didn’t see Linda. I couldn’t have pointed it at anybody’s chest.”