It is a case that has all the hallmarks of classic detective fiction: a huge insurance payout, an impecunious suspect who claims to have amnesia, a missing weapon, and surveillance footage that seems to have caught the culprit red-handed.
But for novelist Nancy Crampton Brophy, it’s not the plot of her latest book; it’s real life in an Oregon court room.
Crampton Brophy, whose “Wrong Never Felt So Right” series of novels include “The Wrong Husband” and “The Wrong Lover”, stands accused of shooting Daniel Brophy, using a gun whose now-missing barrel she bought on eBay.
Prosecutors say the 71-year-old writer was struggling to make payments on her mortgage, but kept up multiple life assurance policies that would pay out a total of US$1.4 million in the event of her husband’s demise.
“I do better with Dan alive financially than I do with Dan dead,” she said as she took the stand in Portland this week, “The Oregonian” newspaper reported.
“Where is the motivation, I would ask you? An editor would laugh and say: ‘I think you need to work harder on this story, you have a big hole in it’.”
Prosecutor Shawn Overstreet said security camera footage had captured Crampton Brophy’s minivan outside the Oregon Culinary Institute on June 2, 2018, at almost exactly the time her chef husband was killed in one of the school’s classrooms.
“You were there at the same time someone happened to be shooting your husband, with the exact type of gun that you own and which is now mysteriously missing,” he said.
Crampton Brophy told the court she had no memory of being there, though acknowledged she must have been, insisting the CCTV images showed her in the area because she was driving around getting inspiration for a story.
“This is not a man I would have shot because I had a memory issue. It seems to me if I had shot him, I would know every detail,” she added.
Daniel Brophy, 63, was found dead that morning by students readying for a class. He had been shot twice.
Investigators say the barrel from the Glock handgun used in the slaying had been purchased by the suspect on eBay. That barrel – which would contain damning forensic clues – has never been recovered, despite an exhaustive police search.
Crampton Brophy admitted to having bought a Glock pistol, which she said was for her husband to protect himself when he went mushroom hunting in the woods, but added that the missing barrel was purchased as part of research for an unfinished novel.
“There was a big separation between what was for writing and what was for protection,” she told the court.
Prosecutors said Crampton Brophy, whose “How To Murder Your Husband” remains accessible online and whose books can be bought on Amazon, was facing financial ruin before her husband’s death, but continued to pay into 10 separate life insurance policies.
The blog on murdering a husband discusses methods and motivations for despatching an unwanted spouse. These include financial gain and the use of a firearm, although it notes guns are “loud, messy, require some skill”.
“But the thing I know about murder is that every one of us have it in him/her when pushed far enough,” the essay says.