Fresh out of law school, Dan was hired by a firm in San Diego, Calif., and in 1973 they moved to La Jolla, the oceanside community known for its big beachfront houses

Fresh out of law school, Dan was hired by a firm in San Diego, Calif., and in 1973 they moved to La Jolla, the oceanside community known for its big beachfront houses and golf courses, as well as being the home of the famed Salk Institute and Scripps Research medical center. Betty sold Tupperware and Avon products on the side, but was primarily a stay-at-home mom.

Son Daniel was born in 1976 and Rhett arrived in 1979. They lost another child, a boy who died two days after he was born, in 1973, according to Bryna Taubman's Hell Hath No Fury: A True Story of Wealth and Passion, Love and Envy, and a Woman Driven to the Ultimate Revenge. Betty also told the Times in 1990 that she had an abortion in 1974.

The Brodericks belonged to country clubs and sent their kids to private school, drove sports cars and took ski vacations in Colorado. But they also fought, sometimes violently, and Betty threatened to leave countless times.

"Mom was always kind of weird," Kim Broderick, then 20, told the 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.'"

Her mother 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.'"