An Oregon romance writer who once penned a blog essay about murdering her husband has started her trial on Monday, April 4, after she was charged with shooting her spouse to death, allegedly in order to collect the hefty insurance money that she has on him.
Sixty-nine-year-old Nancy Crampton Brophy has been accused of shooting her 63-year-old husband Daniel Brophy with a Glock handgun at his workplace in the Oregon Culinary Institute, allowing his co-workers and students to discover his body as they arrived for his class later that day, according to NBC News.
Brophy worked as a chef by trade, and while Crampton Brophy sold Medicare policies in her day job, she was a self-published romance novelist with writing online that she describes as “fiction books under the Romance Suspense genre.”
As the couple struggled with paying for their mortgage, the prosecution claims that she planned the murder in order to gain money for a better life. She reportedly stood to gain over $1.15 million in insurance payouts as well as $300,000 in home equity from her husband’s death, the Daily Beast reported.
“[She] planned and carried out what she believed was the perfect murder,” District Attorney Rod Underhill said. “A murder that she believed would free her from the grips of financial despair and enter a life of financial security and adventure.”
Her minivan was captured by a CCTV camera close to the scene of the crime, and she reportedly used a “ghost gun” to shoot her husband, changing the slide and barrel of the gun to ensure that the bullets could not be linked to their gun conclusively.
She also reportedly published an essay in 2008 entitled “How to Murder Your Husband,” which she wrote eleven years ago at a writing seminar before posting it in her blog and website.
“Nancy Brophy once wrote that finances could be motivation for murdering, asking the question, ‘Divorce is expensive, do you really want to split your possessions?’” Underhill said regarding how the essay shows Crampton Brophy’s mindset regarding the crime.
This evidence has been thrown out by the judge largely for its age and the prejudice that it may push against Crampton Brophy if presented as evidence.
Crampton Brophy has denied the charges, pleading “not guilty” for the murder of her husband. Her lawyer Lisa Maxfield even attesting to her worsening financial state due to grief and being unable to return to her day job selling Medicare policies at her workplace.
The prosecution’s case and argument, she says, “begs you to cast a blind eye to the most powerful evidence of all: love.”
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