Hillcrest confidential or cide in the hood

Hillcrest is celebrating its centennial this year. Two of the items on the Hillcrest time line on the Hillcrest History Guild's web page deals with a bit of homicide in the hood.

In 1989, shots rang out in the Marston Hills (boundaries of which are never really clear to me) home of local attorney Dan Broderick and his second wife Linda.

Dan's first wife, Betty, fired those shots and after several years and couple of court trials was convicted of the murders.

The house in question is once again up for sale and was part of my Sunday walkabout.

I was living in North County San Diego when the Betty Broderick thing happened so I didn't have to deal with the PITA press coverage but I did live in the hood in 1997 when the press invaded for the second 'cide in the hood related event.

Andrew Cunanan

, the murderer of five people including designer Gianni Versace may have been born in Rancho Bernardo, but he was gay and once lived in this condo complex in Hllcrest.

As the cross country man hunt and murder spree continued in the Summer of 1997, with no news, the press descended, not on RB where Andrew had worked in a pharmacy and was born but, into the hood. Gotta (not) love the knee jerk gay equals Hillcrest reaction in the media.

Living only a block or two away, daily life was complicated by the national and local idiot news teams whether the camera vans were clogging/hogging the streets making parking even m,ore of a nightmare or roaming the streets hoping for quotes.

I doubt that I was the only resident who had the experience of having some moron make assumptions about my sexuality and shove a microphone in my face during that Summer.

Living here you get used to assumptions being made and that doesn't bother me, microphones and cameras do. Long ago I learned that pushing the press aside and refusing to co-operate is the only way to avoid being unpleasantly surprised by the edited result.