‘I Wanted to Die,’ Broderick Testifies : Murder trial: La Jolla socialite says she had no plan to kill her ex-husband. She ‘shot a gun in the dark,’ then fled.

SAN DIEGO —  Saying she “wanted to die” and had no plan to kill anyone but herself, La Jolla socialite Elisabeth Anne (Betty) Broderick testified Friday that she crept into her ex-husband’s house, sneaked up the stairs into his bedroom and “shot a gun in the dark.”

In her final day of testimony, under cross-examination, Broderick repeated earlier statements at her double murder trial, saying she remembers little about shooting her ex-husband, attorney Daniel T. Broderick, and his second wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick.

Crying, she said she recalls only firing the gun, then fleeing.

Accused by prosecutors of hating them both for breaking up her marriage and of murdering them in anger after a bitter divorce from Daniel Broderick, she said she had not intended to kill them last Nov. 5 when she stole into his Marston Hills home.

“I wanted to die,” she said. “There was no plan. I wanted to die.”

If convicted of both counts of murder, Betty Broderick, 42, could be sentenced to life in prison without parole. She has pleaded innocent and has been held since last Nov. 5 at the Las Colinas Jail in Santee.

Daniel Broderick, who was 44, was a prominent medical malpractice attorney and a former president of the San Diego County Bar Assn. Linda Kolkena Broderick, who was 28, was his office assistant.

Daniel and Betty Broderick separated in 1985 after 16 years of marriage.

Betty Broderick said Friday that her recollection of details from the four years leading up to the killings was often unclear. She insisted, however, that she was not trying to be evasive, telling Deputy Dist. Atty. Kerry Wells, the prosecutor in the case, “I’m not lying. I’m trying to help you, and help me, get it right.”

On Wednesday, Betty Broderick said she was prompted to go to her ex-husband’s house before dawn last Nov. 5 by a letter, the last in a long line of legal papers from her husband, that she received two days before. It threatened her with criminal contempt and the possibility of jail or fines unless she stopped leaving vulgar messages on his answering machine.

The contempt threat meant Daniel Broderick was “still attacking me, bludgeoning me, taking unnecessary advantage of me,” Betty Broderick said Friday.

She said that she decided to drive from her house in La Jolla Shores, a fashionable seaside neighborhood, to Daniel Broderick’s home, about a 10-minute drive. Using a key that she said she found in her car, she climbed the stairs to his bedroom, where he was in bed with his wife. She hoped to talk to him, she said.

After that, she said, her memory is hazy.

“I know I went to Dan Broderick’s house and shot a gun in the dark,” she said. “I didn’t know whether I hit anybody; I didn’t know what to do, where to go.”

Two of Betty Broderick’s five shots hit Linda Kolkena Broderick and one hit Daniel Broderick, mortally wounding them, according to testimony last week.

Defense attorney Jack Earley contends that Betty Broderick did not have the premeditation the law requires for first-degree murder because, as she said again Friday, she intended only to kill herself when she sneaked into their home last Nov. 5.

“There was no plan here,” she said. “I’m telling you that when I read this letter (threatening her with contempt), I gave up.

“I gave up on life,” she said. “I didn’t want to live anymore.”

She admitted she had threatened to kill her husband any number of times over the years, but did not mean those threats seriously.

“I probably said I was going to kill him a million times before but I never said I was going to shoot him,” she said.