Reality has surpassed fiction. In 2011, Nancy Crampton-Brophy published on her blog a pungent essay simply titled How to kill her husband. Devoted to the art and the way of getting rid of a spouse without being worried by justice, the text notes that “the thing to know with murder is that each of us is capable of it, when we pushes him enough”. Eleven years later, the American novelist was sentenced for the murder of her husband by a court in Oregon, in the northwestern United States.
Specializing in self-published rosy romances, Nancy Crampton-Brophy has written dozens of books with evocative titles – Hell in the Heart, The Bad Husband, The Bad Brother – and whose alluring covers expose particularly male role models. muscular. “My stories are about handsome men and strong women,” she says in the biography section of her blog. Her husband, Daniel Brophy, taught at a cooking school in Portland where they met in the 1980s. In June 2018, students found him dead in a classroom, shot twice in the body. His wife was arrested in September of that same year and had been in detention ever since.
After eight hours of deliberation, the jury found Nancy Crampton Brophy guilty of the murder of Daniel Brophy. According to the prosecutors in charge of the case, financial and existential problems would have pushed her to kill her 63-year-old husband. The 71-year-old writer denied outright, assuring that the CCTV footage where she appears near the crime scene simply shows her looking for inspiration for her books.
During their investigation, the inspectors found a firearm in the couple’s house, in the place designated by Nancy Crampton Brophy. They also discovered that the writer had, without having declared it, bought on eBay elements to manufacture or modify a firearm assembled in kit form (a “ghost gun”, in English). These elements could have been used to hide the use of the family pistol – the murder weapon, according to the police – and have never been found. When questioned on this subject, the accused swore to have handled the weapon only as an accessory in the writing of a book. She also denies the accusation that she killed her husband to pocket hundreds of thousands of life insurance dollars. Lawyers for the 71-year-old woman have indicated their intention to appeal, according to local newspaper The Oregonian.
At trial, prosecutor Shawn Overstreet presented the evidence he said showed the defendant committed the murder. “It’s not just about the money. It’s about the lifestyle that she wanted, and that Dan couldn’t give her,” he said to explain his gesture. At the helm, Nancy Crampton Brophy had dismissed these allegations, assuring that her financial problems were ancient history. “Financially, I’m doing better if Dan is alive than if he’s dead,” she testified. “Where is the motive, I ask you? An editor would laugh and say ‘I think you need to work harder on this story, there’s a big hole in it’.” The length of the sentence that the writer will have to carry out is not yet known.
