Dan and Betty’s House from “Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story”

No true crime case has fascinated me quite as deeply as the murder of prominent La Jolla attorney Dan Broderick and his wife/former mistress, Linda Kolkena.  The intrigue is odd considering we know who the killer is (Dan’s first wife, Betty, confessed immediately following the slayings), we know the why (she could not get over the affair, the divorce settlement or the fact that Dan had moved on), and we know the how (on numerous occasions Betty has detailed sneaking into Dan and Linda’s Hillcrest home on November 5th, 1989 and shooting the couple dead).  There’s really no mystery here.  Yet, I.am.engrossed.  So is much of the world.  There have been myriad books and articles written on the subject, television interviews broadcast (including several with Betty conducted from prison), and a two-part made-for-TV movie starring Meredith Baxter that aired in 1992.  But the public can’t seem to get enough.  So it is no surprise that the USA Network decided to dedicate the second season of its Dirty John series to the case, with Amanda Peet and Christian Slater at the helm.  Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story hit the small screen this past Tuesday.  My interest was piqued long before that, though.  In fact, I started tracking down the show’s locations as soon as the first trailer was released!  The spot that most interested me, of course, was the home where Dan and Betty lived before their relationship went bad, which turned out to be a snap to find.

[ad]

In the first Sneak Peek of the series, which was released in early May, a young Dan and Betty are shown removing a “For Sale” sign from the yard of their new house.  An address number of “19854” was clearly visible on the front of the property in the scene and, thanks to its early-80s tract look, I figured it could most likely be found in the San Fernando Valley.  So, armed with that information, I headed over to Google and fairly quickly IDed the place as 19854 Dina Place in Chatsworth.

I ran out to stalk it – from an appropriate social distance, of course – shortly thereafter.  I call the picture below “Stalking in the time of the Coronavirus.” 

Betty Broderick’s story is a tale as old as time.  Wife works to put husband through school (in Dan’s case, medical and law school) while managing the household and caring for the children.  Husband finally starts making money, opens up own practice, buys a house, and a new sports car.  Not long after, husband begins affair with young secretary (in Dan’s case, his 21-year-old legal assistant, whom he hired even though she couldn’t type).  Husband leaves wife for secretary, files for divorce, and things get ugly.  Extremely ugly.  At the center of Dan and Betty’s divorce proceedings was their longtime family home, which they both referred to as the “Coral Reef house.”

The actual Coral Reef house (pictured in the top Google Street View image below) is located at 5555 Coral Reef Avenue in La Jolla.  Dan and Betty purchased the 5-bedroom, 3-bath, 3,000-square-foot pad, which you can see interior photos of here, in 1976 after their rental in nearby Clairemont was damaged in a fire.  Per a 1989 San Diego Reader article, Dan was just on the cusp of hitting it big financially.  Author Jeannette DeWyze states, “Betty said they moved there with virtually no furniture, and even after her third child, a son, was born in 1976, she continued to work nights as a cashier and hostess at the Black Angus restaurant in Kearny Mesa.  According to her, the family only became ‘solvent’ around 1979. ‘I can remember because we built a swimming pool in the back yard.  And that’s a luxury, right?  We financed it onto the house, so it wasn’t like we paid cash for it or anything, but we were able to increase the house payment a little.  So, in my mind, that’s when he had some money.'”  When a cracked slab was discovered at the property in the fall of 1984, the family moved out and into a rental nearby so that repairs could be performed.  Dan left Betty the following spring, moving back in Coral Reef alone for a time and then into a handsome dwelling in San Diego’s Hillcrest neighborhood.  On February 4th, 1986, he sold their longtime home out from under Betty via a legal loophole (granted she had been trying to stall and hamper the process for months), and when she found out, she was so furious she proceeded to drive a car into his Hillcrest residence!  Like I said, things got extremely ugly.  As you can see below, Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story location managers really strove to find a house for the series that closely resembled the real thing, which I couldn’t appreciate more.

The peaked red-tile roof, three-car garage, double front doors, stepped front walkway, and Spanish style of Dan and Betty’s actual former home are all a direct match to those of its TV counterpart, as you can see in the MLS photo of Coral Reef as compared to the image of the house used on the series below!

    Not only that, but the TV pad still has a very ‘80s feel, despite being 2020, so producers must have been elated to find it!

In real life, the 1976 home boasts 4 bedrooms, 5 baths, 3,989 square feet, a 0.41-acre lot, a pool, a jacuzzi, and a tennis court.

I had to laugh at the Ferrari parked out front being that Dan bought the same kind of sports car shortly before leaving Betty – both on the series and in real life.  His was red, but still.  Life imitating art imitating life, I guess.

The property’s backyard is also being featured on the series.

The inside of Dan and Betty’s residence was, I believe, just a set – one closely based upon that of 19854 Dina Place.  And though I could not find interior photos of the home with which to verify that hunch . . .

. . . an Instagram follower named mz._royale informed me that the very same property appeared in another true crime anthology series based in San Diego!  In 2018, it popped up as the supposed Rancho Bernardo home where Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) grew up in the “Creator/Destroyer” episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.

I was thrilled to discover while watching that the home’s actual interior also appeared in the episode!

Though it is similar in layout and design to the inside of Dan and Betty’s house, as you can see above and below, the two are not one and the same, making me all the more certain that filming of Dirty John took place on a set.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine, and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: Dan and Betty Broderick’s house from Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story is located at 19854 Dina Place in Chatsworth.  The couple’s real-life former residence can be found at 5555 Coral Reef Avenue in La Jolla.