Friends Say Losing Children Hit Broderick Hard : Courts: As trial nears end, those close to Broderick testify that she was never the same after divorce.

Longtime friends of Elisabeth Anne (Betty) Broderick testified Thursday that she changed dramatically after the end of her 16-year marriage to a prominent San Diego lawyer and that his attempts to keep their children from her led to her emotional unraveling.

The defense stopped one witness short of resting its case in Broderick’s second murder trial, which is now in recess until 9 a.m. Tuesday. Superior Court Judge Thomas J. Whelan told the jury that he remains optimistic that testimony will be completed by Wednesday.

Phyllis Jardel, who said she met Broderick in 1976, testified that she once saw her with a black eye and that she asked about it.

“She just said it was an accident,” Jardel said. “It was embarrassing enough anyway, and I didn’t pry.”

Broderick has testified that her ex-husband, Daniel T. Broderick III, a medical malpractice attorney and past president of the San Diego County Bar Assn., hit her on several occasions, and, in 1976, blackened her eye before a La Jolla charity event.

Broderick, 44, is accused of murdering Daniel Broderick and his second wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick, 28, in the bedroom of their Marston Hills home on the morning of Nov. 5, 1989. The prosecution is seeking a first-degree murder conviction and life sentence without parole.

Last year’s trial ended in a hung jury, with 10 jurors favoring a murder conviction and two holding out for manslaughter. The defense contends that Broderick was the victim of emotional abuse, brought on by her ex-husband’s manipulation of the legal system during their divorce.

Jardel testified that, when the Brodericks were married, Daniel Broderick often came home late and mildly inebriated. She said that, after his extramarital affair with legal assistant Linda Kolkena, Elisabeth Broderick deteriorated not just emotionally but physically.

Melanie Cohrs testified that Broderick was happy only when her four children were a visible force in her life. She said Broderick was not the La Jolla socialite she has been portrayed to have been in the media but someone who wore “jeans, jogging suits, sweat suits.”

Cohrs said she remembered one incident that happened at Broderick’s La Jolla home, after she and her husband separated, at a time when he had custody of the children.

“I can’t get it out of my head,” Cohrs said. “Rhett (the Broderick’s youngest child, now age 12) was on the phone, crying, calling out for his mother, asking for help. He said, ‘He’s going to hurt me,’ and, all of a sudden, the phone went dead.”

Cohrs said Broderick immediately phoned Daniel Broderick’s Marston Hills home but got only an answering machine, into which she proceeded to scream obscenities “out of frustration.”

“The boys were not very happy there,” Cohrs said. “Rhett would cling to his mother and cry, saying, ‘I don’t want to go back there. It’s horrible. I hate it.’ ”

Marilyn Olson, another friend, said that Broderick was frightened of raising her children “as a single parent” but wanted them badly.

“She wanted to know what was going to happen,” Olson said. “She wanted some resolution. She wanted to get on with her life. And, she wanted her children.”

After the last defense witness, the prosecution will call rebuttal witnesses Tuesday morning.