Wife who wrote How to Murder Your Husband is held, accused of ... murdering her husband
‘Hit men rat you out to the police’
SHE once wrote an essay entitled How to Murder Your Husband.
And romance novelist Nancy Crampton Brophy’s books include The Wrong Cop – about a woman who ‘spent every day of her marriage fantasising about killing’ her other half.
In 2012, 68-year-old Mrs Brophy even wrote in a blog that her real-life husband ‘has learned to sleep with one eye open’.
So perhaps it’s not terribly surprising to learn that the US writer is number one suspect in the death of 63-year-old Daniel Brophy ... her husband.
She is accused of shooting Mr Brophy, whose body was found in the kitchen of the culinary institute where he was a chef.
Detectives looking for a motive are examining her 700-word online essay from 2011 in which she identified the five basic reasons for murder. She also went through possible methods – such as hiring a hit man or poisoning.
She wrote: ‘The thing I know about murder is that every one of us have it in him/her when pushed far enough.’
Mrs Brophy was arrested after a threemonth investigation in Portland, Oregon, where the couple had lived for their 27-year marriage. She has been remanded in custody after appearing in court accused of one count of murder and the unlawful use of a gun. She has not entered a plea.
If the claims about the murder of her husband are true then she appears to have followed her own advice.
The How To Murder Your Husband essay, which was published on a website called See Jane Publish in November 2011, dismissed the idea of using a hit man because ‘an amazing number of hit men rat you out to the police’.
Getting a lover to do it was ‘never a good idea’, she wrote. Poisoning was off the menu because it was traceable and if it failed ‘who wants to hang out with a sick husband?’.
Turning to the motives for a murder, Mrs Brophy said that infidelity was one and money was another because ‘divorce is expensive, and do you really want to split your possessions?’.
She also wrote: ‘I find it is easier to wish people dead than to actually kill them. I don’t want to worry about blood and brains splattered on my walls. And really, I’m not good at remembering lies.’
Mr Brophy was found dead early on June 2 by his students at the Oregon Culinary Institute, a killing which initially left detectives baffled because he was well liked and had no obvious enemies.
The day after her husband’s murder Mrs Brophy wrote on Facebook that she was ‘struggling to make sense of this right now’. She was among the hundreds who attended a candlelight vigil held outside the Oregon Culinary Institute two days later and she spoke at the event. But she aroused the suspicion of neighbours at her suburban home in the weeks later when told them ‘I’m a suspect’ – but appeared unfazed.
A prolific writer, she has produced at least seven novels – mostly about secret relationships between, as she put it, ‘rugged men and strong women’.
As well as the Wrong Cop, her titles include the The Wrong Husband – about a woman who tried to escape her abusive husband by faking her own death.
The arrest has shocked Mrs Brophy’s family and her sister Holly Crampton has said: ‘None of us believe it. It’s craziness’.