Month: June 2022
- Nancy Brophy, 71, was convicted on Wednesday of second-degree murder for shooting dead her chef husband Daniel Brophy, 63, in June 2018
- Prosecutors have claimed she killed her husband in a scheme to collect his $1.4 million life insurance policy
- She has previously written a blog post entitled ‘How to Murder Your Husband’
- Sentencing is scheduled for June 13, and she faces life in prison
A romance novelist who once penned a blog post entitled ‘How to Murder Your Husband’ has been convicted of doing just that.
Nancy Crampton Brophy, 71, was convicted on Wednesday of second-degree murder for shooting dead her chef husband Daniel Brophy, 63, while he was working at the Oregon Culinary Institute in June 2018.
Police said he was shot twice, and was found dead by his students.
Prosecutors have claimed Nancy killed her husband in a scheme to collect his $1.4 million life insurance policy.
They had rested much of their case on the fact that Crampton Brophy had acquired gun pieces in the months before her husband’s death – including a piece that could obscure what gun a bullet was fired from.
‘She had the plan in place,’ Shawn Overstreet, a deputy district attorney claimed in closing arguments last week, according to the New York Times. ‘She had the opportunity to carry out this murder. She was the only one who had the motive.’
‘Nancy is the only person who could have committed this crime,’ he argued.
But lawyers for Crampton Brophy claimed the gun pieces were for a novel she was writing – about a woman who slowly acquired gun parts to complete a weapon and turn the tables on an abusive husband.
The defense argued Crampton Brophy and her husband were actually in a loving relationship of more than 25 years.
In the end, the five men and seven women on the jury delivered a guilty verdict after about eight hours of deliberation, according to Oregon Live.
Lisa Maxfield, one of Crampton Brophy’s attorneys, said the defense team now plans to appeal.
‘We were hoping [the jury] would see it as the “could’ve, should’ve, would’ve that we did, but they didn’t,’ she said.
Nancy Brophy, 71, was convicted on Wednesday of the murder of her husband
Prosecutors have claimed that she shot her husband, Daniel Brophy, right, dead in June 2018 to collect his $1.4 million life insurance policy
Brophy once penned an essay titled ‘How to Murder Your Husband’ in 2011 while applying to a writer’s group
Daniel Brophy was killed on June 2, 2018 in a teaching kitchen at the Oregon Culinary Institute in southwest Portland, where he had worked since 2006.
His students arrived shortly afterwards, and discovered his body on the floor of a kitchen. Police said at the time he was shot twice.
But about a half an hour before his death, Crampton Brophy was caught on camera driving to the culinary institute.
Twenty minutes later, she drove away and went home to Beavertown.
Crampton Brophy testified in court that she did not remember making that trip, theorizing she may have been making a coffee run and taking notes for her new romance novel, according to the Times.