Trashy Divorces

Today, we revisit the very Trashy Divorce of Betty and Dan Broderick, which ends in tragedy with the murder of Dan, and his second wife. Betty Broderick’s ultimately fatal obsession with her ex-husband is a true trashy classic and seemed timely to reprise as Betty passed away in prison last week at the age of 78. Want early, ad-free episodes, regular Dumpster Dives, bonus divorces, limited series,...

After escaping her abusive husband, Hortense spent some time on the lam. She published her memoirs, which made her a celebrated author, and then, at the urging of the English ambassador, headed to London to "see her niece" - and within months, was yet another mistress of Charles II. And soon after, Charles II's eldest daughter with Barbara Villiers. There were plenty more lovers to come, so to spe...

Use code trashy at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: ⁠⁠⁠incogni.com/trashy The Restoration court of Charles II is known not for governing, but for the seemingly endless bed-hopping antics of the Merry Monarch. Today, in this Trashy Royals crossover, we meet the last mistress to join that odd club, Hortense Mancini. Born to a big brood in Rome - Hortense was the eig...

It is late breaking Tudor news that Alicia had to share! Just published, scientists from the University of Bradford through a little fancy math and facial recognition just might have discovered the true face of Anne Boleyn, the second and murdered wife of Henry VIII. Want early, ad-free episodes, regular Dumpster Dives, bonus divorces, limited series, Zoom hangouts, and more? Join us at⁠ patreon.c...

Use code trashy at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: ⁠⁠incogni.com/trashy Today we're wandering to the land of tulips and windmills to explore the trashiest Dutch divorce we've ever heard of. Leontine Ruiters is a well-known television personality in the country, married until 2020 to one of the most successful singers ever to hit the Dutch charts, Marco Borsato. I...

Alicia comes to us with a story we've been loosely watching for years: the slow, apparent destruction of the marriage of singer Justin Timberlake and actress Jessica Biel. According to Page Six, Jessica is near her wit's end with Justin's behavior - drinking seems to be at the core of it - and his absences as she raises their two sons largely solo. Apparently there's been an ultimatum! And Alicia...

Today's episode is sponsored by Incogni. Use code trashy at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: incogni.com/trashy. After his first divorce and his toxic relationship with Cathy Smith, it would be 16 years before Gordon Lightfoot took the plunge and married again, this time to Elizabeth Moon. It's hard to say if this was a good relationship, but it produced two child...

After her tumultuous relationship with Gordon Lightfoot ended, Cathy Smith headed to California to pursue her own musical dreams. She was briefly a backup singer for Hoyt Axton. She also had a brief interlude in Paris, where she met The Rolling Stones, who she would later provide drugs to. But it was her association with John Belushi that made her notorious. In March of 1982, she injected Belushi...

As ever, the Trashy Divorces Cinematic Universe has been on full display of late, with new entrants as well! First up, we mourn actor Patrick Muldoon, who died suddenly of a heart attack on April 19 at just 57 years old. He was not part of our TDCU, but his 36-year-long friendship (and early 90s romance) with Denise Richards, then later a romance with Tori Spelling, certainly give us reason to gri...

Starting around 1970, Cathy Smith and Gordon Lightfoot reconnected and embarked on a wildly toxic romantic relationship that ran three or four years. He, of course, was still married to Brita (Brita would name Cathy Smith in her divorce suit), but they had been living separately. Cathy moved in with him, quit her job, and the pair immediately began cheating on each other. Jealousy seems to have be...

Super Groupies were a hot topic in the 1960s and 1970s, and definitely still are around here on Trashy Divorces. In this episode, Alicia gets into the life, work, and spiderwebs of Cynthia Albritton, known in the day as Cynthia Plaster Caster. Her art was unusual, certainly, but Cynthia went to great lengths to make her creative work her own. Cynthia was truly a Super Groupie, and is remembered in...

One especially fascinating figure who intersected with Gordon Lightfoot was named Cathy Smith. As a teenager in Ontario, she'd hooked up (literally and figuratively) with Levon Helm, Rick Danko, and Richard Manuel, then future members of The Band. Before her several-year relationship with the married Gordon Lightfoot, she helped The Band get out of a drug bust and gave birth to a daughter who beca...

Use code trashy at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: ⁠incogni.com/trashy There are few artists as iconically Canadian as Gordon Lightfoot, whose eight decades on Earth produced some of the most recognizable music there is. In this first episode of his story, Alicia gets into his formative years, his time in California, his first marriage, and Canada's then-most exp...

Welcome back to Today's Trash! This story has actually been ongoing for, well, parts of it for years, but acutely over the last month or so. Fired DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has been having some trouble on the homefront recently, as The Daily Mail keeps finding online personalities in the "Bimbofication" subculture that her husband has been paying for services. But what's a guy supposed to do when...

Welcome to our first ever Today's Trash, a quick-hits approach to keeping tabs on the ongoing dilemmas of the Trashy Divorces Cinematic Universe! Today, we get into the sexual assault allegation levied by Australian actress and model Ruby Rose against pop songstress Katy Perry, hear more Beckham family drama from one of Brooklyn Beckham's exes, catch up with Britney Spears as she heads to an open...

Perhaps it's reassuring to know that people have always been awful, and when a person is powerful, they've always found ways to avoid accountability. Which brings us back to a contested incident in Ireland's County Roscommon back in 1852 - was Mary Anne Talbot engaged in an adulterous affair as her husband claimed, or was John Talbot spearheading a violent conspiracy to lose an infertile wife and...

Trash Pandas, it's time for another catch up with some of our favorite TD alums. In the Dumpster this week, Alicia celebrates the upcoming SIX The Movie, coming to America and Canada in August; wonders aloud why celebrities can't take an Uber instead of flipping their cars or otherwise dealing with DUI-related fallout, notes a changed landscape in the lawsuit against Justin Baldoni, talks parentin...

In this episode, Alicia follows up with some spiderwebs from the Doris Day story, and how her son Terry factors into those terrible events on Cielo Drive on August 8, 1969. Terry and his longtime girlfriend Candice Bergen lived there in a fairy tale dream in 1968, before Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski moved into the home. Why did Terry and Candice move? Doris told them they must. This one is fille...

In this second part, Alicia tracks Doris Day's disastrous marriage to Martin Melcher, and the enormous financial hole he left her in when he died at the young age of 52. There was still one more husband to go before Doris would decide she'd had enough of matrimony and turned her focus to a more deserving cause: rescuing animals. Want early, ad-free episodes, bonus divorces, limited series, Zoom ha...

Actress and singer Doris Day built a giant career in Hollywood on the image of the All-American Girl, a perfectly relatable Girl Next Door, virtuous and funny. It was pure spin, with Groucho Marx once quipping, “I’ve been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.” Doris herself chafed at the limitations of the typecasting and how utterly at odds it was to the life she was actually...

Australia, it seems to us, is a country of huge personalities, and that's even true when it comes to endeavors as mundane as selling car tires, or tyres. Australia didn't simply need a mass-market tyre retailer, Aussies needed Bob Jane T-Marts with their clean image, catchy jingle, and celebrated race car driver at the helm. The company made Bob himself a multimillionaire, but his inability to for...

Alicia is a collector of vintage magazines, and couldn't resist sharing this 1963 Saturday Evening Post profile of a 21 year old Sandra Dee, on the heels of the first separation from Bobby Darin. She is a movie queen and this piece includes bits about her time on the lot, her split from Darin, her stage mother, and more! Want early, ad-free episodes, regular Dumpster Dives, bonus divorces, limited...

Actress Sandra Dee and crooner Bobby Darin were the Hollywood it couple of the early 1960s, marrying just months after first meeting. But the marriage was troubled from the start, as both partners were unable to escape the effects of their damaging childhoods. Want early, ad-free episodes, regular Dumpster Dives, bonus divorces, limited series, Zoom hangouts, and more? Join us at patreon.com/trash...

In 1920s Los Angeles, one of the biggest names in American evangelism was, surprisingly for the time, a woman. Aimee Semple McPherson founded America's first megachurch, preaching to some 17,000 people at three services, seven days a week. She founded a radio station that shared those services to millions of households around the country. 10% of the population of Los Angeles held a membership at h...

Left to their own devices, and with the Sex Pistols basically over, Sid and Nancy found their way to New York City. From room 100 of the Chelsea Hotel, they spent 1978 in a drug-fueled haze, with Nancy booking some gigs for Sid to keep them supplied with money to support their habits. On October 12, 1978, Sid awoke from a Tuinal-induced sleep and found Nancy dead on the bathroom floor, with a stab...