There's a montage at the end of Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story which shows how things could have ended differently for Dan and Betty Broderick if they had made a series of slightly different decisions.
If they had approached their divorce amicably.
If Betty hadn't given up the kids.
If Dan had told Betty the truth about his affair.
Perhaps, if they hadn't married in the first place.
WATCH: The trailer for Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story. Post continues below.
But Dan and Betty made another series of decisions which ended with two dead bodies and a life sentence.
The second season of the Dirty John anthology series, which drops on Netflix tonight, tells the story of the Californian couple who met and married in the late 1960s. By the early 1980s, their marriage was breaking down. By the end of the decade, Dan and his new wife, Linda Kolkena, were dead and Betty was on trial for double homicide.
Their story is not a new one. It's been told over the past three decades through news stories, books, podcasts, and even a made-for-TV movie.
It's often wheeled out alongside the story of Lorena Bobbitt - the woman who cut off her own husband's penis - as a cautionary tale for both men and women. For men, the warning is to ensure they don't get themselves entangled with a "crazy woman", someone who will speak up, someone they will never be able to escape from. This narrative is reinforced every time a man refers to his ex-partner as "crazy", without taking any responsibility for the breakdown of their relationship.
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