How to Murder Your Husband — From Fiction to Reality
You are scrolling down the page and see a blog post with a catchy title ‘How To Murder Your Husband’. Intrigued by the title you click the link and read the post.
From an archived version of a blog post titled “How to Murder Your Husband,” which was allegedly written in 2011 by Nancy Brophy
As a romantic suspense writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about murder and, consequently, police procedure. After all, if the murder is supposed to set me free, I certainly don’t want to spend time in jail. And let me say clearly for the record: I don’t like jumpsuits and orange is not my color.
Motives
Financial: 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? The drawback is that 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?
Crime of passion: In anger, you bash his head in or stab him with a kitchen knife. Most of the time there is a trail that directly leads to you. Every murder leaves clues. A crime of passion does not look like a stranger was involved. And who is left to clean the blood from your carpeting?
Fell in love with someone else: Let’s say your church frowns on divorce. You need to be a widow so you won’t fall out of favor. I should mention that it helps if you aren’t too burdened by the Ten Commandments.
Options to consider
Guns: Loud, messy, require some skill. If it takes ten shots for the sucker to die, either you have terrible aim or he’s on drugs.
Knives: Really personal. Blood everywhere. Ew.
Garrotes: How much upper body strength does it require to strangle somebody?
Random heavy pieces of equipment: Usually this involves hitting someone hard with a baseball bat or the pipe wrench you just happen to have in your hand.
Poison: Considered a woman’s weapon. Arsenic is easy to obtain and worse, easy to trace. It takes a month or two to kill someone. Plus, they are sick the entire time. Who wants to hang out with a sick husband?
I find it is easier to wish people dead than to actually kill them. But the thing I know about murder is that every one of us has it in him or herself when pushed far enough.
In 2011 it was a blog post and in 2018 it was a murder.
Nancy Brophy
On June 2, 2018, Nancy Crampton Brophy, 72, fatally shot her husband, Daniel Brophy, an esteemed instructor at the now-closed Oregon Culinary Institute. Brophy’s first published work, according to her author biography on Amazon.com, was a pamphlet about the shifting sexual norms of the 1960s and 1970s that she wrote for the University of Houston titled “Between Your Navel And Your Knees.” “Her true love was story-telling,” but she also wrote for trade publications and HR divisions.
Nancy Crampton-Brophy, a graduate of the University of Houston, was up in Wichita Falls, Texas, and is the daughter of two lawyers. After relocating to Oregon in the early 1990s, she enrolled at Portland’s Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, where Daniel Brophy was a teacher, and they eventually became friends. She became a member of the local Romance Writers of America chapter in 2003 and began writing novellas and romantic suspense books with names like “The Wrong Hero,” “The Wrong Husband,” and “The Wrong Lover.”
The Trial
On the morning of the event, Nancy Crampton-Brophy had informed investigators during the preliminary inquiry that she had taken a shower and taken the dogs for a walk. The homicide occurred during a 13-minute interval when she drove to and from the cooking school, according to traffic camera evidence that detectives discovered in 2020. In an updated account, Nancy Crampton-Brophy said she didn’t remember going on such a trip and that the stress of the day’s events had probably caused her to forget she went out for coffee.
The prosecution claimed that the Brophys were having financial difficulties. According to Portland’s KOIN 6 News, the couple withdrew $35,000, or nearly half of Daniel Brophy’s retirement account, in the fall before he was killed to pay off debt from credit cards and their mortgage. In her deposition, Nancy Crampton Brophy stated that she would “do better” while her husband was still living as they planned to downsize their property and cash in on their retirement accounts. The defense conjectured that Daniel Brophy’s death might have been the result of an attempted robbery. The prosecutors say Nancy killed Daniel due to financial problems and to get his life insurance.
Forensic evidence indicated that Daniel Brophy had been shot by two bullets from a Glock pistol. The prosecution entered evidence that Ms Nancy Crampton-Brophy had purchased a receiver blank kit of parts from the Internet. She conceded that she had bought a slide and a barrel for a Glock pistol via eBay. But the police never found the pistol. She argued that the purchase had been made with her husband’s approval, that she had given her husband the pistol so he could defend himself when mushroom hunting, and that the gun parts were needed for research on a new book about a lady who meticulously collected gun parts. According to the prosecution, Crampton Brophy began investigating “ghost guns” — untraceable weaponry that may be purchased online and put together at home — in late 2017. According to the prosecution, she spent $15,000 on firearms and gun parts, including a ghost gun that was delivered in January 2018 but that she lacked the building abilities to assemble.
A judge ruled against admitting the essay (How To Murder Your Husband) as evidence at her trial because it was penned years earlier as part of a writing seminar. But prosecutors did not need the text.
Nancy Crampton-Brophy was convicted of second-degree murder on May 25, 2022. She received a sentence of life imprisonment on June 14, 2022.
According to KOIN-TV, Crampton Brophy will be eligible for parole after 25 years, according to Judge Christopher Ramras, who oversaw the trial. Impact comments from Daniel Brophy’s family, including his son Nathaniel Stillwater, were included at the sentencing, the station said.
At trial, Stillwater described his father as an affectionate grandfather with a dry sense of humour. He also testified that his father and stepmother seemed to have a good marriage, and never spoke with him about their relationship or finances.
“You are a monster and I’m ashamed that I have to admit to my children that people like you walk among us undetected,” Stillwater said. “You lived in the shadow of a great human being.”
Neighbor Don McConnell told KOIN-TV in 2018 that Brophy didn’t appear to be upset in the wake of Brophy’s death. “She’s taking it well, and that’s what I said, you know, I said maybe some people can handle things better than others,” McConnell said.
Crampton Brophy kept busy preparing to move, McConnell said. “Even after she said, ‘I’m a suspect,’” he said, “I just thought oh, yeah, well, they always suspect the opposite spouse.”
She is serving her sentence at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, Oregon.
Media
In 2023, Lifetime filmed an adaption of the Murder of Daniel Brophy called How to Murder Your Husband: The Nancy Brophy Story. The film stars Cybill Shepherd as Nancy Brophy and Steve Guttenberg as Daniel Brophy. In January 2023, the case was covered by the A&E series Taking the Stand.
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Sources
- https://harpers.org/archive/2022/07/how-to-murder-your-husband-nancy-brophy-blog-post/
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61786575
- https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/nancy-brophy
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Daniel_Brophy
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nancy-brophy-sentenced-to-life-prison-killing-husband-daniel-brophy/
