Betty Broderick has spent the last three decades in jail for murdering her ex-husband and his new wife.

Prior to the shocking double homicide on Nov. 5, 1989, and the acrimonious divorce that preceded it, Betty and Dan Broderick appeared to have the perfect life. He was a successful lawyer in the medical malpractice field, and Betty was a stay-at-home mother to their four children. They had a beautiful home in San Diego and were prominent members of the city’s elite social circles.

But behind the scenes, their marriage was full of strife, as Betty claimed in her 2015 memoir, Telling On Myself. In the early 1980s, Dan began an affair with Linda Kolkena, a 20-something receptionist whom he had hired to be his legal assistant. Betty had suspicions about the relationship early on, which Dan continually denied. Eventually, he decided to leave Betty and filed for divorce in 1985.

Dan’s clout in the local legal community reportedly gave him the upper hand in court, which Betty described to the Los Angeles Times as “putting a housewife in the ring with Muhammad Ali.”

On the morning of Nov. 5, 1989, seemingly fed up after losing custody of her children and watching her ex-husband sell their family home with no profit going to her, Betty shot and killed Dan and Linda in their bed.

So, where is Betty Broderick now? Here’s everything to know about the double homicide she committed and what happened in the aftermath.

Who is Betty Broderick?

Betty was born in 1947 and grew up in Westchester County, just outside of New York City. She was raised in a strict Catholic household and attended religious schools with her four siblings, per Telling On Myself.

Looking back, Betty wrote that her parents primed her to grow up to be a housewife; she regularly took care of her youngest sibling and other children in the neighborhood. Betty then dabbled in modeling and also got a job at a local restaurant and department store.

After graduation, she enrolled at the nearby University of Mount Saint Vincent in 1965, where she studied English and early childhood education.

How did Betty Broderick and Dan Broderick meet?

Dan and Betty first crossed paths while she was on a trip to Indiana to attend a University of Notre Dame football game, per Esquire. At the time, she was 17, and he was in his early 20s, preparing to enroll in medical school at Cornell University.

When Dan moved to N.Y.C. to begin school, the pair connected once again. They quickly became close and went on to date on and off throughout Betty’s time in college.

“He was very ambitious, very intelligent and very funny. And I am those three things. We were from the same kind of background. We both wanted the same things in the future,” Betty told the L.A. Times. “All I wanted to be was a mommy. He promised me the moon. The guy asked me to marry him every day for three years.”

What happened during Betty Broderick and Dan Broderick’s marriage?

After graduation, Betty got a job as a teacher, the couple married and they started having kids. According to Betty, their relationship continued to deteriorate after the family relocated to Somerville, Mass., while she was pregnant with their second child, as reported by the L.A. Times.

In Telling On Myself, Betty claimed that she attempted to return to living with her parents when she realized that Dan had allegedly taken control of her bank accounts. Then, following a difficult third pregnancy, the infant died shortly after birth.

When Dan later graduated from Harvard, the family moved again, this time to San Diego, where he got a job at a law firm, which soon began paying off. He later started his own practice, and the couple became ingrained in the city’s social scene.

But at home, Betty and Dan still struggled. She claimed that he was not an involved parent and wrote that when she got a job as a real estate agent, he refused to help out with the kids. Their oldest daughter, Kim, recalled her parents often fighting.

“Mom was always kind of weird,” she told the L.A. Times. “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.’ ”

Kim continued, “She was always getting all dressed up and at the last minute saying, ‘I’m not going.’ And she was always telling me they were getting a divorce. 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.’ ”

Who was Linda Kolkena?

Amid Dan and Betty’s marital struggles, he met a young woman named Linda Kolkena. He hired the former flight attendant to work as his legal assistant.

“The first time I heard of Linda was at a birthday party during the ’82-’83 holiday season when I overheard Dan say, ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ That caught my attention because I had never heard Dan say that about anyone,” Betty claimed in Telling On Myself.

Even before Dan hired Linda, Betty had suspicions about their relationship, but he reportedly denied cheating.

What happened leading up to Dan Broderick and Betty Broderick’s split?

Dan continued to deny his affair with Linda while tensions escalated in his home with Betty. In 1985, the couple separated, and Dan officially moved out, per CBS8.

In June 1985, Betty allegedly entered the family home and trashed the bedroom by shattering mirrors and spray-painting the walls, curtains and fireplace, according to a declaration filed by Dan and acquired by the L.A. Times.

Meanwhile, Dan had also taken over care of the couple’s children. Since he moved out, Betty had been dropping off the children one by one on his doorstep with all of their belongings. Instead of proving that Dan was unable to care for the children, he took over as their primary parent.

“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. And so, basically, she just used us as pawns and took us over there to screw up Dad,” Kim claimed on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1992.

What happened during Dan Broderick and Betty Broderick’s divorce?

In 1986, Dan sold the family home using a procedure that permitted a judge to sign over Betty’s half, while claiming that she had refused to sign the sale papers, per the L.A. Times.

Dan also officially gained custody of the couple’s four children, with visitation rights for Betty. The former couple’s children often ended up in the middle of their court battle, which Betty said drove her into a depression.

On one occasion that she recalled in Telling On Myself, her sons were set to spend Easter break with her, but Dan allegedly changed his mind at the last second and told the boys that if they could convince their mother to stop harassing him, he would allow the trip. It resulted in a heated phone call that was later played in court.

The following years were filled with complex legal maneuverings, during which Betty claimed she found it difficult to find adequate legal aid who would be willing to go up against Dan and his powerful legal team. As the five-year case unfolded, Betty continually lost court battles and continued to act out.

She eventually ended up spending a weekend in jail for leaving aggressive messages and for being in contempt of the court. Kim also recalled her mother allegedly threatening her father’s life, and on one scary occasion, Betty drove her car into the new home Dan shared with their children.

“I opened the door to try to pull her out,” Dan claimed to the L.A. Times before his death. “As I did so, she reached for a large butcher knife under the seat.”

Betty was placed in a mental health hospital for several days after the incident. In January 1989, the divorce was finalized. Betty lost custody of her children and was set to receive $16,000 a month in spousal support and a cash award of $28,000.

What happened to Dan Broderick and Linda Kolkena?

In April 1989, just months after the divorce was finalized, Dan and Linda married. Then, on Nov. 5, Betty received two letters in response to her new custody request. In the notes shared in Telling On Myself, Dan’s legal team expressed concerns about Betty’s custody proposal and threatened her with more legal action.

“I completely fell apart. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to go back to court, and back to jail, and I didn’t want my boys on a trial basis. 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,” Betty wrote.

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.”

In the early hours of the morning, Betty said she initially planned to die by suicide but changed her mind, rerouting to Dan and Linda’s home.

“Obviously, I was not in my right mind. I wasn’t even in a crazy person’s right mind. I was dissociating and imagining scenarios that could never come to pass. I was no longer seeing or thinking clearly. This is what it feels like to go insane. I had, I was,” Betty wrote.

She then entered Dan and Linda’s home using a key she obtained from her daughter. Betty came into the couple’s room where they were sleeping and opened fire. Linda was instantly killed by two bullets, and Dan was hit in the chest.

Betty contacted her daughter Lee to tell her what she had done and then turned herself in to the police, per the L.A. Times.

What was Betty Broderick charged with?

After confessing to shooting Dan and Linda, Betty was taken to a local jail where she was held without bail.

During the highly publicized 1990 trial, Betty openly admitted that she had shot Dan and Linda but argued that she, too, had been a victim, per the L.A. Times, driven over the edge by years of alleged psychological abuse. She claimed that she could not be charged with first-degree murder because the killing was not premeditated and she had only intended to confront her ex-husband.

“I am not going to turn around and say someone else did it, or I didn’t do it. My lawyers hate it because there is no law that says I can defend myself against his type of onslaught. [But] he was killing me,” Betty said during the trial.

She added, “It was sick of him to always want to control me so totally. He held on to those kids, and he refused to settle the money. I was tied to him. Just let me go! If someone had told me that morning what was going to happen, I wouldn’t have believed them.”

Betty and Dan’s daughter Lee also took the stand, alleging 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 said, according to the L.A. Times. The former couple’s daughter Kim also spoke during the trial, although she recalled an unstable relationship with her mother and painted her in a more negative light.

Additionally, Betty’s housekeeper took the stand, sharing through a translator that the two youngest children were “happy” around their mother but were “frightened and silent” around their father, who she claimed wouldn’t let them “jump or play.” She alleged that the boys often did not want to return to their father after spending the weekend with Betty.

At the end of the first trial, the jury was hung with no verdict. After extensive deliberations, two members of the jury believed a manslaughter conviction should be ruled, while the 10 others pressed for murder. The judge declared a mistrial.

The case went to trial for a second time in 1991, during which experts declared Betty had histrionic and narcissistic personality disorders, according to the L.A. Times. This time, the jury agreed on a verdict, charging Betty with two counts of second-degree murder. She was sentenced to two consecutive terms of 15 years to life plus two years for illegal use of a firearm, the maximum under the law.

Where is Betty Broderick now?

Betty has been in jail at the California Institute for Women since the second trial ended in 1992. She has been eligible for parole several times but has been denied on every occasion.

She was first up for parole in 2010, which resulted in a five hour hearing in front of a judge. Betty recalled how her “whole world fell off its axis” when Dan won custody of their children and she “allowed the voices in [her] head to completely take over,” per NBC News.

Her children also spoke out, but were divided on whether their mother should be released. While Lee wanted her mother to come live with her, Danny said his mother was “hung up on justifying what she did” and releasing her could be a “dangerous mistake.”

Board of Prison Terms Commissioner Robert Doyle issued the parole denial, saying, “Your heart is still bitter, and you are still angry. You show no significant progress in evolving. You are still back 20 years ago in that same mode. You’ve got to move on.”

Betty attempted another bid for parole in 2017 but was once again denied. San Diego County Deputy District Attorney Richard Sachs said Betty was “defiant” and smirked “throughout the hearing.”

“She is completely unrepentant,” he said, “and in complete denial that she murdered two innocent people. She just doesn’t see any of her own part in this at all, and turns around and blames it on them.”

Meanwhile, Betty said that she had met all criteria for parole, and her release date should have been in 2010.

“I have no one to speak for me. This was a case of domestic abuse: a pattern of coercive control that lasted throughout our marriage until the day I killed them,” Betty claimed in a letter to Murder Made Me Famous producers. “Now I am only a political prisoner. They have no reason to deny my parole.”

Betty is next up for parole in 2032 when she will be 84 years old.