Court Documents Reveal New Information on Romance Novelist Accused of Husband's Murder

Nancy Crampton Brophy Multnomah County Sheriff's Office

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It's been seven months since a grand jury indicted romance novelist Nancy Crampton Brophy for the murder of her husband Daniel Brophy, a longtime instructor at the Oregon Culinary Institute (OCI).

She's still awaiting trial. In the meantime, Multnomah County Circuit Court has unsealed court documents that offer new information from the county's investigation.

According to an affidavit penned by county prosecutor Shawn Overstreet, Brophy was the first to arrive at OCI the morning of June 2, 2018—he set off the building's alarm around 7:21 am. A surveillance camera captured Crampton Brophy driving her minivan past OCI at 7:08 am, and then driving away from the building twenty minutes later (7 minutes after her husband entered the building).

Daniel Brophy HEIDI VON TAGEN

Culinary students discovered Brophy's body, pierced by two bullets, on the floor of an OCI kitchen around 8 am on June 2, 2018.

"Nancy stated that she had been at home that morning and had not left until called about an incident at OCI," Overstreet writes. She also told detectives that she had recently purchased a Glock 9mm handgun—the same model that detectives believe fired the fatal bullets into Brophy's chest. However, when detectives eventually retrieved that gun from Crampton Brophy's house, they determined it was not the firearm that killed her husband.

Overstreet adds another interesting wrinkle to the case: That three days after Brophy's death, Crampton Brophy called detectives asking them to send her a letter stating she wasn't a suspect in her husband's murder, so she could access his life insurance funds. The detectives declined.

As it turns out, Crampton Brophy works in the insurance industry (and has sold life insurance policies in the past), suggesting this may have been a premeditated plan. According to Overstreet, Crampton Brophy had one life insurance policy for Brophy valued at $40,000, and "several policies" valued at over $350,000.

Crampton Brophy made headlines after her arrest for her work as a self-published romance novelist. Most notably, Oregonian reporters found she had written an essay in 2011 titled "How to Murder Your Husband."

"Divorce is expensive, and do you really want to split your possessions?" she wrote in the essay.

The affidavit underscores this interest. According to Overstreet, detectives found Crampton Brophy had bookmarked an article online with this straightforward title: "10 ways to cover up a murder."