Times-Advocate from Escondido, California • 23

Times-Advocate Classified Wednesday, November 15, 1989 i I 'There is something repulsive about the woman who wrecked your marriage raising your kids. I don't think there is an excuse for murdering somebody, but I think what happened to (Betty) would drive a lot of people crazy. Karen McGinn Illustration by Jennifer Hewitson Magazines Outlook dark for future of the family By Kathy Hogan Trocheck Co, News Service After reading "The 21st Century a Neu.sueek special edition, you might long to take your meat loaf and mashed potatoes and trek back to the Eisenhower days. ha? pondered the present and peered into the future, and, folks, things don't look too rosy for the American family. Many of the statistics and studies aren't new, but put them together and they spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

To wit: The U.S. divorce rate has doubled since 1965, and demographers predict that half of all first marriages made today will end in divorce. Six out of 10 second marriages probably will collapse as well. One-third of all children born in the past decade probably will live in a stepfamily before they're 18. About 22 percent of todays children were born out of wedlock.

Two-thirds of all mothers are in the labor force, and more than half of all mothers of infants are working. Whats more, the income gulf between rich and poor families is wider than at any time since record-keeping started in the 1940s. There are 33 million Americans living below the poverty level, including 13 million children. Newsweek also did some polling of its own and, not surprisingly, found that 49 percent of Americans find family life worse than it was a decade ago. This is a thought-provoking, disturbing edition, put together in a highly readable format.

A Toddlin Magazine: Check out Chicago. The writers and editors who put out this city magazine have a special talent for capturing the essence of their town. The November issue is especially flavorful, with a wonderful piece called Those Gorgeous Georgelos Brothers, about three young Greek immigrants who run a neighborhood grocery. Its the kind of place where a regular customer strolls in Friday night, takes two beers, waves at the cashier and walks out. It seems the man pays for a six-pack at a time, but lacking a refrigerator, takes home only what he intends to drink in one sitting.

Theres also a titillating piece about the headline-making divorce of broadcaster Paul Harveys son. Nobodys Angel tells as much about the mega-wealthy Paul Sr. as it does about his son, Paul Jr. Seems the hawkish Paul who opposed the Vietnam War only after Paul Jr. reached draft age, had a less than distinguished military career, getting an honorable medical discharge from the Army in 1944 by reason of psychosis.

The Auld Sod: Ireland comes alive in Irish America magazine, a monthly for those with a hankering for news of the homeland. The November issue has a profile of comedian and veejay Rosie ODonnell, a piece on architect Kevin Roche and an all-too-short color photo essay called The Homes They Left Behind, depicting the lives left behind in the emigration that is bleeding Ireland of its best and youngest. (Irish Americas cover price is yearly subscriptions are $25. Write P.O. Box 5141, Grand Central Station, New York, N.Y.

10163.) Amazing-Coincidences Department: The cover story of the July California magazine was about Donald T. Sterling, a tycoons tycoon who owns the L.A. Clippers, the worst basketball team in California, and sizable chunks of Beverly Hills. The cover line: The Man Who Would Be Trump. The November Atlanta magazine is about tycoon Henry Lassiter, the richest Atlantan nobody ever heard of, who buys and sells real estate, drives an Acura and lives in a modest house south of Atlanta.

The cover line, of course: The Man Who Would Be Trump. Atlanta editor Lee Walburn was surprised by the coincidence. I didnt know about it, he said. Inci- dentally, the folks who publish California dont have any copies of the July issue; Sterling bought them all. Walburn said he would be happy to sell his November stock to Lassiter, who so far, has purchased just a few.

At The Checkout: Groom Seals Dead Bride In Fiberglas Weekly World News. The bizarre influence Elvis Lucy had on Jim Tammy National Examiner. ZSA ZSA The Most Hated Woman In America: Id Do It Again, Dahling! Natiojnal beyond the average two or three years. Although she and Dan attended counseling, it is not clear whether Betty sought individual therapy. McGinn said Betty enrolled in a stress management course she taught, but never attended it.

Abandoned women in particular feel a strong need for retribution the you owe me sentiment, said Triere. The more powerless you feel, the more apt you are to take extreme measures. Psychologist and SDSU teacher Maureen OHara offered this reading of Betty Brodericks turmoil: She cant get any recompense from the courts. There is no place for the rage. There is nowhere for her pain to go.

She is left feeling like she has been sacrificed. Every avenue she tried to use, she wasnt able to succeed. The ordinary consciousness is so disrupted that a person can take actions that wouldnt have made any sense at all at any other moment in their life. Nothing connects the way it used to. That is as close a definition to psychosis as you can get, OHara said.

It is no longer winning that counts, but making sure the other doesnt win. Her whole career was being a wife and a i i mother. i I Friend Karen McGinn Elisabeth Broderick Broderick slayings touch a raw nerve By Pancho Doll Times Advocate Staff Writer Before the first Mass on the first Sunday in November, Elisabeth Betty Broderick, a devout Catholic, loaded five shells into a revolver, police allege. By sunrise her ex-husband and his new wife lay dead in the master bedroom of their opulent San Diego home. Two shots struck Linda Kolkena-Broderick, 28, in the chest and head.

Two shots missed and a final shot killed Daniel Broderick III, 44. But Betty Broderick had no bullets left to take her own life, as a police affidavit said she had planned. Those are the raw facts the district attorney will cite in court at her arraignment today. However, the court of public opinion is now in session. Standing in the dock is a middle-aged mother apparently obsessed by her abandonment for a younger woman and the loss of custody for her four children aged 10 to 19.

Within this tragic figure, many women see something of themselves. The Elisabeth Broderick case is already being taught in school. Telephones at a legal reform group have been swamped by sympathetic callers. A radio call-in show recorded nearly unanimous compassion for her as well. As the relatives and friends of Dan and Linda Broderick come to terms with their anger and grief, friends of Betty Broderick, 42, try to find some meaning to the story.

I have a moral, says Karen McGinn, a friend whose children attended school with the Broderick kids. Im not sure its a popular one, but everybody I talked to thinks Dan was a very powerful man who drove her crazy. Friends say the presence of the children in the house where Dan and Linda were living together before their April 1989 marriage was particularly hurtful. There is something repulsive about the woman who wrecked your marriage raising your kids, McGinn said. I dont think there is an excuse for murdering somebody, but I think what happened to (Betty) would drive a lot of people crazy.

Other friends of Bettys echoed that sentiment. Most of the women I talked with this week all say, How do any of us know what we would turn to if the thing you loved was taken away, not taken in a tragic way like an accident, but by a supposedly civilized procedure? said Janna Hemholm, a friend who, like McGinn, planned to attend todays arraignment. Several of us are going to her arraignment supporting her with our prayers. There are a lot of people who may not be screaming at the press, but care very deeply about her, she said. Its not right what she did.

But is it right that someone can kill your heart and soul? The more powerless you feel, the more apt you are to take extreme measures. Divorce consultant Lynette riere Betty and Dan moved to San Diego in 1973. Dans Harvard law degree and Cornell medical degree suited him for the medical malpractice and personal injury cases that reportedly earned him more than $1 million last year. The couple were the stuff of society pages until about the time Dan turned 40. It was then that he bought a Corvette and started seeing Linda Kolkena, a receptionist working in his law firm.

In newspaper photographs after the slaying, Betty Broderick did not compare favorably with her husbands second wife. When I first looked at that picture (of Betty), it brought tears to my eyes, said friend Hemholm. She just looked ravaged. Dan, also Catholic, divorced Betty in an acrimonious breakup in 1986. He won custody of their four children.

Friends say Dan moved in with Linda almost immediately after the split. Betty was awarded alimony of 16,000 a month although the Brodericks were repeatedly in court over payments, child support and Bettys visitation rights. She had nothing left, said McGinn. The clock of her life for 16 years was that family, raising the kids and putting dinner on the table. you get rich you can go from VW to a BMW.

You cant do the same thing with a wife. SDSU instructor Maureen OHara Betty Broderick complained over and over to whoever would listen that her husband, a prominent San Diego attorney and former president of the San Diego County Bar Association, manipulated the legal system to shut her out. It was a topic that consumed her, friends say; but none of them dreamed she was capable of the violent act with which she is charged. Hemholm said she and other friends urged Betty after her 1986 divorce to get on with her life. Dont dwell on the past, they said.

Nevertheless, court records show Betty Broderick received a 30-day jail sentence for making threatening telephone calls. She also crashed her Chevrolet Suburban into Daniel Brodericks home. Thoughts of revenge are not unique in divorce, said Lynette Triere, a North County divorce consultant. Triere said thousands of interviews she has conducted with divorced people show nine out of 10 times, the person being left entertains violent or hurtful fantasies. Therapy can prevent the hurt from enduring Four days after the killings, San Diego State University instructor Maureen OHara dedicated a Please see Woman, page C2.