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It is often said that life imitates art, but in this case, art appears to have imitated life, as an author who penned an essay entitled How to Murder Your Husband is now accused of murdering her own husband.
In November 2011, a romance novelist, Nancy Crampton-Brophy, penned an essay entitled How to Murder Your Husband. The piece was published on the See Jane Publish blog, the Independent reported.
“As a romantic suspense writer, I spent a lot of time thinking about murder and, consequently, about police procedure,” the instructional piece by Crampton-Brophy begins. “After all, if the murderer is supposed to set me free, I certainly don’t want to spend any time in jail.”
Romantic suspense novels are a thriving genre. A typical plot involves the female victim of a crime falling for the gorgeous hunk law enforcement officer or detective tasked with protecting her from the threat.
So, it’s hardly eyebrow-raising that a romance novelist would know ways of killing people. In fact, it’s prerequisite knowledge to weave a good, believable yarn.
Crampton-Brophy’s 2011 piece described five core motives for having a character kill her husband, VT.co reported. She also listed the best weapons for carrying out the crime while advising hiring a hitman to carry out the task. However, she added one caveat: “An amazing number of hitmen rat you out to the police.”
On June 2, 2018, around 7:30 AM, Daniel Brophy, the 63-year-old husband of author Nancy Crampton-Brophy was found with gunshot wounds to his chest and back. He had been shot shortly after arriving for work at the Oregon Culinary Institute where he taught, KGW8 reported.
Crampton-Brophy told police she was at the couple’s home when the shooting unfolded, the New York Post reported. There were no obvious subsectors at the time.
After her Daniels slaying, Crampton-Brophy took to Facebook to break the news to family and friends that her husband of twenty-five years had been murdered.
“For my Facebook friends and family, I have sad news to relate,” Crampton-Brophy wrote. “My husband and best friend, Chef Dan Brophy, was killed yesterday morning.”
“For those of you who are close to me and feel this deserved a phone call, you are right,” she added. “But I’m struggling to make sense of everything right now.”
However, days after the shooting, Crampton-Brophy took the first action that raised suspicions with cops.
Allegedly, she asked the police to provide her with a letter stating that she was not a suspect in her husband’s murder. The reason? She wanted to collect on his life insurance policy worth $40,000.
But later, authorities would learn much more, leading them to arrest her.
First, they learned it was much more than $40,000 Crampton-Brophy stood to gain from her husband’s death. The total number was $1.5 million.
But it was another fact that prompted them to slap the handcuffs on her – detectives said she had been in the vicinity of the crime scene.
Now 71 years of age, Nancy Crampton-Brophy is going on trial for years after her husband was found shot to death. She has been in custody since September 2018, facing a murder charge in the death of her husband, Daniel Brophy, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.
Crampton-Brophy has previously entered a not guilty plea to the charge of murder.
At the time of the murder, Nancy and her husband Daniel had been living paycheck-to-paycheck, according to detectives, CBS reported. Prosecutors are pursuing the angle that she was motivated by greed, wanting to collect on a $1.4 million insurance policy.
As this trial got underway on Monday, Judge Christopher Ramras announced the “how to murder your husband” essay would be excluded from the trial’s evidence, KOIN reported.
“Any minimal probative value of an article written that long ago is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice and confusion of the issues,” Judge Ramras said.
