Wrong Husband author kills hers

Los Angeles – A writer who penned a piece titled How To Murder Your Husband is on trial in the United States for... killing her husband.

It is a case that has all the hallmarks of classic detective fiction – a huge insurance payout; an impecunious suspect who claims to have amnesia; a missing weapon; and surveillance footage that seems to have caught the culprit redhanded.

But for novelist Nancy Crampton Brophy, it’s not the plot of her latest book; it’s real life in an Oregon court room.

Crampton Brophy, whose Wrong Never Felt So Right series of novels include The Wrong Husband and The Wrong Lover, stands accused of shooting Daniel Brophy, using a gun whose now-missing barrel she bought on eBay.

Prosecutors say the 71-year-old writer was struggling to make payments on her mortgage, but kept up multiple life assurance policies that would pay out a total of $1.4 million (R22.3 million) in the event of her husband’s demise.

“I do better with Dan alive financially than I do with Dan dead,” she said as she took the stand in Portland this week, The Oregonian newspaper reported. – AFP