In 2011, American author Nancy Crampton Brophy wrote How to Kill Your Husband, an essay published on her online blog about how to kill your husband. A few years later he self-produced the book The Wrong Husband, the protagonist of which was a woman trying to escape her husband’s abuse by pretending to be dead. Since 2018, Crampton Brophy has been at the center of a crime story that appears to have sprouted from one of her stories, and this week she testified for the first time in the ongoing Portland, Ore., trial in which she is the defendant: She is accused of her Killing husband Daniel, somewhat inspired by her 2011 essay, raising more than $1 million in life insurance.
Nancy Crampton and Daniel Brophy met in the early 1990s when she had just moved to Portland and signed up for a series of cooking classes where he was the teacher. The two began dating, married, and settled just outside of town. He taught at culinary school and raised chickens at home; she, on the other hand, did a few odd jobs, occasionally handled insurance sales, and attempted to establish herself as a writer, without much success.
They had no children, but according to some of their family members who testified at the trial, their relationship was peaceful and cooperative: Susan Estrada, a granddaughter of Brophy’s who had lived with them for about a year, said she broke up writing to helping him with chores while he made her lunch when he was selling insurance.
Now prosecutors allege that Crampton Brophy, 71, put into action a plan very similar to the one he wrote about in his works, while taking the same precautions not to arouse suspicion.
According to the indictment, she built a weapon by assembling parts of different weapons, kept it away from surveillance cameras and killed her husband in a place and at a time with few witnesses. Most notably, before committing the murder, she is said to have persuaded her husband to take out a number of life insurance policies, in many cases naming them as direct beneficiaries so that she could collect the policies after his death.
“As an author of romantic suspense books,” Crampton Brophy wrote on her blog, “I spend a lot of time thinking about the murders and, by extension, the police procedures.”
Many of her stories were about characters of strong women, tales of tortured love, betrayal and murderers, but most of all she talked about how to avoid detection. In his 2011 essay, he said that a woman who wanted to kill her husband had to be “organized, ruthless and very intelligent”. “If murder is going to set me free, then I don’t want to go to jail.” She also said she didn’t like the uniforms that people wear in prison or the orange, the color they’re typically worn in the United States.
Daniel Brophy was killed by two shots early in the morning of June 2, 2018, just as he was arriving at the culinary school where he worked. When questioned by police, Crampton Brophy said her husband woke up around 4 a.m. to feed the chickens and walk their dogs: she said she woke up when he came back to take a shower and that he went out just after 7, after a short chat while she was in bed.
Until then, police had no suspicions about Crampton Brophy, who incidentally had freely said he had bought a gun a few months earlier.
However, things changed when investigators, while examining surveillance camera footage of a pizzeria located near the cooking school, saw a van similar to that of the woman who was driving around at the time the death was being tracked down her Husband.
Analysis of the images revealed that the person driving the van was Crampton Brophy. The vehicle was first seen in the area at 6:39 a.m., picked up by another camera at 7:08 a.m. and again around 7:30 a.m. on June 2, when she had previously said she was at home.
At hearings this week, Crampton Brophy said she didn’t recall being in the culinary school realm at the time, adding that she might have stopped by for inspiration and to write one of her stories. However, during the trial, she claimed she was unsure what could have happened at the time or in the hours that followed, stating that she was shocked by her husband’s death.
According to the defense, surveillance cameras could point to other possible suspects, including some homeless people; Prosecutors said they had not identified other suspects and questioned the defense’s thesis.
– Also read: The killers who wrote books about their murders
One of the main points of the indictment concerns the alleged murder weapon. In fact, police found Crampton Brophy bought the barrel of a handgun on eBay in February before the murder, which investigators say he then assembled with other parts of the gun he had at home to avoid this do not leave any traces on the original weapon after use.
Investigators also found that the woman had also purchased a kit to assemble an unregistered handgun: purchases she allegedly made to more accurately write a new story, not to kill someone. The barrel of the gun bought online was never found and Crampton Brophy could not say what happened to it.
Prosecutors allege that Crampton Brophy killed her husband to try to collect claims on the couple’s 10 life insurance policies, which totaled about $1.4 million (about $1.3 million).
Recently, the two had run into financial difficulties and had missed making some mortgage payments, but still paid about $1,000 a month in insurance premiums. However, according to Crampton Brophy, by 2018 their economic woes were resolved and the two were having “the happiest time” of their lives. “Financially, I was better off with Dan alive than with Dan dead,” the woman said during the hearings. “What’s the motive, I would ask you? An editor would laugh at this point and tell you that you had better work on your story that has a big hole ».