A romance novelist who once penned an essay titled “How to Murder Your Husband” has been convicted of murdering her husband.
Nancy Brophy, 71, was convicted by a Portland, Oregon jury of second-degree murder in the shooting death of her husband Daniel, a chef who was found dead inside a kitchen at the Oregon Culinary Institute in June 2018. Nancy Brophy was arrested in September 2018; she has been in jail since then.
Brophy self-published many romance novels; her Amazon bio states, “Her stories are about pretty men and strong women, about families that don’t always work and about the joy of finding love and the difficulty of making it stay.”
A self-published romance novelist — who once wrote an essay titled “How to Murder Your Husband” — has been convicted by a Portland jury of fatally shooting her husband. https://t.co/1kebdcW2HR
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 26, 2022
“As a romantic suspense writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about murder and, consequently, about police procedure,” Brophy wrote in her essay. “After all, if the murder is supposed to set me free, I certainly don’t want to spend any time in jail. And let me say clearly for the record, I don’t like jumpsuits and orange isn’t my color.”
“Prosecutors claimed the Brophys were facing financial ruin and that Crampton Brophy’s motive for killing her husband was to cash in on his life insurance policies and remove herself from the debt she was in,” KOIN noted. “The fall before Brophy was killed, the couple had taken $35,000 out of Brophy’s 401K account — about half of its total amount — to pay down credit card debts and to catch up on the more than $8,000 they owed on their mortgage.”
“Motives: 1) Financial (this is big): Divorce is expensive, and do you really want to split your possessions? Or if you married for money, aren’t you entitled to all of it?” Brophy wrote in her essay. “The draw back is the police aren’t stupid. They are looking at you first. So you have to be organized, ruthless and very clever. Husbands have disappeared from cruise ships before. Why not yours?”
“Investigators say they never found the slide and barrel or gun that fired the two bullets that went through Brophy’s heart,” KOIN reported.
“She owned the same make and model of gun used to kill her husband and was seen on surveillance footage driving to and from the culinary institute, court exhibits and testimony showed,” The Guardian noted, adding, “Prosecutors alleged Crampton Brophy had bought a ‘ghost gun,’ an untraceable firearm kit, and swapped parts with a shop-bought handgun.