Where Are Betty Broderick's Children Now? Inside Their Lives Over 3 Decades After Their Mother Killed Their Father and His New Wife By Jordana Comiter

Although the courts made their decision about Betty Broderick’s crimes in 1991, her four children remain split on their mother’s punishment for murdering their father.

The California socialite and her then-husband, lawyer Dan Broderick, became parents in 1970 when they welcomed their daughter Kimberly, per the Los Angeles Times, followed by Lee, Dan Jr. and Rhett. In the years to follow, the family of six lived a normal life in San Diego. But behind closed doors, the then-couple were facing marital struggles, as Betty claimed in her 2015 memoir, Telling On Myself.

In the early 1980s, Dan began an affair with his secretary Linda Kolkena, which he denied following Betty’s suspicions. He eventually left Betty and filed for divorce in 1985, going on to marry Kolkena in 1989. During a November morning that year, Betty shot and killed Dan and Kolkena in their bed.

After a mistrial, she was eventually charged with two counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to two consecutive terms of 15 years to life plus two years for illegal use of a firearm. Shortly after the conviction, Rhett appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and recounted the morning after the shooting, when a family friend told him the news.

“I just remember thinking, ‘Wow.’ I wasn’t really surprised,” he said. “On multiple occasions [my brother and I] went to my dad and said to him that we wanted to live with my mom and that not having her kids was driving her crazy — and that she could do something extremely irrational if she didn’t have us.”

So, where are Betty Broderick’s children now? Here’s what to know about their lives, over three decades after their mother murdered their father and his new wife.

Kim recalled her parents often fighting

During a 1990 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Kim opened up about her childhood with her parents, saying, “Mom was always kind of weird. Mom would get mad at Dad all the time.”

“Once Mom picked up the stereo and threw it at him. And she locked him out constantly. He’d come around to my window and whisper, ‘Kim, let me in,’ ” she recalled.

Kim went on to allege that her mother would often throw frozen food or hit Kim and her sister, Lee.

She added that her mother was always “getting all dressed up and at the last minute saying, ‘I’m not going.’ ”

“She was always telling me they were getting a divorce,” Kim said. “She’d say, ‘Who are you going to live with?’ I was dying for Dad to divorce her. I’d say to Dad, ‘Just take me the day you leave.’ ”

Dan officially moved out in 1985, when he and Betty separated, per CBS8.

Dan became their primary parent and received sole custody

After Dan moved out, Betty started dropping off her children one by one on his doorstep with all of their belongings, which Kim claimed during a 1992 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show was her mother’s way of trying to “screw up Dad.”

“I think Mom thought that it was going to be a total disaster and that then we’d all see that we needed her. And that we can’t do it without her,” she said. “And so, basically, she just used us as pawns and took us over there to screw up Dad.”

In July 1986, Dan went to court to finalize his divorce from Betty, and he received sole custody of their children, per the Los Angeles Times. According to the outlet, Betty had no visitation rights.

Betty called her daughter Lee after killing Dan and his wife

Betty and Dan’s divorce was finalized in January 1989. Dan and Kolkena married that April.

On Nov. 4, 1989, Betty received a series of legal letters from Dan and his team. Per the Los Angeles Times, the letters allegedly threatened her with fines and jail time unless she stopped leaving vulgar messages — which she has said were rooted in frustration at not being able to reach her children — on his answering machine.

“I completely fell apart. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to go back to court, and back to jail,” Betty wrote in notes included in her 2015 memoir. “I knew exactly what that meant: Dan would be my judge and jury, and I knew how that would go — an endless Salem witch trial.”

She continued, “I had to make it stop. I could not live one more day like this, waiting for his next ‘Gotcha!’ I just couldn’t stand it. I felt like I had failed my kids and I had nothing left to live for.”

Although she planned to die by suicide, she rerouted to Dan and Kolkena’s home in the early hours of the next morning, Nov. 5. She used a key she obtained from her daughter to enter, making her way into the couple’s room and opening fire, instantly killing Kolkena with two bullets and hitting Dan in the chest.

After shooting them, Betty called her daughter Lee before turning herself in to local police, per E! News.

Several of Betty’s children took the stand in her murder trial

Betty went through two trials for killing her ex-husband and his wife — the first ending in a mistrial — and her children testified at each.

When Lee took the stand in Betty’s first trial, she alleged that her father often spoke disparagingly about her mother and had moods where he would “break things that would frustrate him.”

“Nobody would want to disobey him or make him mad when he was home from work,” Lee claimed, per the Los Angeles Times.

Although Betty testified that her ex-husband hit her during their marriage and once gave her a black eye, Lee said she never saw that happen.

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According to the Los Angeles Times, Daniel had written Lee out of his will, leaving his entire estate to his other three children before his death.

In addition to Lee, Betty’s housekeepers took the stand and shared through a translator that the two youngest children were “happy” around their mother but were “frightened and silent” around their father.

In 1991, Kim took the stand at Betty’s second criminal trial after the first ended in a mistrial. According to the Los Angeles Times, Kim testified that her mother intended to commit suicide after shooting her ex-husband and his new wife, but that her pistol ran out of bullets.

Kim also said that her mother “wasn’t crying” in any of their phone calls recounting the incident.

The children were divided on their mother’s punishment

The former couple’s children remain divided on whether or not their mom deserved to be sentenced for as long as she was.

During Rhett’s appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, he opened up about why he strongly believed his mother should be released from prison, saying, “She’s a nice lady. Everyone here would like her … if they spoke with her on any topic other than my dad.”

“Keeping her in prison isn’t really helping her,” he continued. “She’s not a danger to society—the only two people she was a danger to are dead.”

During Betty’s 2010 parole hearing, the children continued to be split. While Lee testified that Betty should be able to “live her later life outside prison walls,” her brother Dan Jr. said “releasing a lost person into society could be a dangerous mistake,” per CBS News.

Betty has been in jail at the California Institute for Women since the second trial ended in 1992 and has been denied parole on every eligible occasion. She is next up for parole in 2032.

Where are Betty Broderick’s children now?

Betty shared in her 2015 memoir that this was not the ending she wanted for her family, specifically her children.

“I absolutely adore my children, from the first moment of the day to the last, and still do,” she wrote, per Marie Claire. “They were my priority and I wanted so badly for them to have a happy childhood.”

Some of the Broderick siblings have gone on to start families of their own. Rhett and his wife have welcomed two daughters together, per Wood River High School’s website. He has been teaching at the school, which is located in Hailey, Idaho, since 2016, per the site.

In June 2020, Vulture reported that Kim and Lee were living in central Idaho, though it’s unclear if they remain there today.

The siblings have primarily stayed out of the public eye in recent years, except Kim, who published a book, titled Betty Broderick, My Mom: The Kim Broderick Story, in 2014.

The memoir tells Kim’s story of “how she helped herself and her siblings survive and triumph over the tragedy,” per the synopsis.

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.