Episode 449: The Murder of Daniel Brophy | Morbid

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Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash.

And I'm Caleb. and this is morbid it's a special edition of morbid with caleb i would also like to acknowledge the fact that pepper is here you might hear him every so often if you're so lucky he's a very he's a very uh dapper dash hound he's like the most dapper he is he's a beautiful man he has a sweater he has a diaper but that doesn't matter to the audio listeners my bad I mean it does matter they need to know like set the scene Caleb has a Christmas sweater on I just have a lavender sweatshirt we're all pretty pretty dashing today I almost also wore a santa hat you should have i can i mean i

like the turkey 100 hat i can't lie shout out turkey 100 i'll go listen to scream um but yeah so caleb's joining me today because elena is busy at some kind of award show getting awards for her book and stuff i know things um but yeah caleb was nice enough to join me while elena is in new york being fancy with john and actually getting some husband -wife time.

So happy for her. What a, you know, a book writing gal, just a real gem.

Just writing books, kicking ass, taking names.

I love that girl. Period.

All right. So I invited Caleb on to tell him the story of Dan and Nancy Brophy.

And I actually picked this case cause I was watching, um, this is embarrassing, but I was watching Married at First Sight on Lifetime.

Have you ever seen that?

I have. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm like wildly addicted to it um but i was watching that i don't watch a lot of lifetime anymore that's like the only thing that i will watch on there but when i was younger i used to watch lifetime movies all the time so when i see the commercials now i'm like damn that shit's wild and i saw a commercial for this lifetime story which is the nancy brophy story and i was like what the hell is happening there and yeah the last name brophy is crazy uh this woman is also completely delusional um yeah yeah the fact that she thought she was gonna get away with this is wild sorry to um alert you up

front she did it i mean yeah she definitely did it she definitely wrote about it um the fact that she wrote about it so she wrote about it before it even happened we're gonna get into all of that But first, I got to tell you about Nancy when she was born.

Okay, tell me about when she was born.

I'll tell you. Nancy Crampton Brophy.

She was born Nancy Lee Crampton on June 16th, 1950, which makes her not only a Gemini, but the middle child of her parents.

So it was off from the start.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a little, there's a few problems there.

Yeah, Gemini, middle child, out here wildin'.

So both her parents were lawyers, and they decided that they wanted to raise their family in Wichita Falls Texas which is my favorite place to say it is a very fun name Wichita is a is are there more Wichita's is it just the one in Texas no I feel like there's other ones there's more Wichita's right I mean I'm gonna I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say there's like many Wichita's I feel like there is I think I've heard of that name often like when you said Texas it kind of threw me off because I feel like I've heard of a Wichita somewhere else I think there there might be a Wichita, Kansas.

Wichita is going to stop being a word any second now.

This is Wichita with Caleb and Ash.

But anyway, after graduating from high school in 1968, Nancy, she went on to study at the University of Houston.

And there she majored.

I don't know why I said it like that.

I was in Texas, I guess.

There she majored. She majored in economics and And she ended up graduating in 1972.

Now, not long after graduating from the University of Houston, she got married to her first husband, who was a police officer.

And according to her later testimony, she was not, or he was not allowed to keep his gun in the house.

She wouldn't let him.

Okay. Which is interesting when we get to later, because she claims that she's obsessed with guns, but weird that she was like, no, he couldn't leave his gun in the house.

Like, I didn't like that.

from what I saw about this it seems like she kind of flip -flops too she'll be like no I'm not I don't like guns at all it's not a thing but she's like well everyone had a gun so like you know we just had to and then she was like oh well we shouldn't have yep that's exactly what she does she's she's a flip -flop fish she's definitely a flip -flopper she is um so it's unclear really how long their mass marriage lasted or when it ended but by the end of the 1980s she was divorced and she was ready to shake her life up in a real big way.

And so she moved to Portland, Oregon in 1990.

She just really wanted to put, like, her old life behind her, start over completely.

So she decided to try something new.

She said, I'm going to enroll in culinary school.

Okay. Yeah, I feel like that's a fun thing to do.

I didn't know that was her thing, too.

Interesting. Yeah, it was for, like, a minute.

So she enrolled in the Western Culinary Institute, which is now les cordons bleus college of culinary arts it's another fun fun set of words cordon blue yeah le cordon bleu um but it was there that she ended up meeting daniel brophy so okay he was also born in june but he was born a little bit later in june june 27th 1954 which makes him a cancer but he was born in valley city north dakota and after he graduated high school in 1971 he went to the university of sioux falls graduated from there in 1976 and then he started his own culinary career shortly after that now i go him doing a lot of things

big moves right his passion for food and cooking eventually led him to portland oregon where he became i feel like you're gonna love this He became a mushroom hunter and gardener Oh no I don't love that No?

No I hate mushrooms Oh well yeah but I just thought you would love that like lifestyle Like he was just like you know what I'm gonna go find out about mushrooms I'm against it I don't think they should be harvested I don't think they should be made I don't think they should be in existence I don't like smelling them You don't like smelling mushrooms?

I feel like they don't really have much of a smell They smell like fungus Because they are a fungus That's true And they you know they're just dirt I don't like them okay well you might not like them and I might I like I go back and forth with mushrooms but Daniel he loved mushrooms and he was good at mushrooms like like picking out which ones you could harvest and eat and which ones you shouldn't and he got this is a very interesting thing there are a lot of mushrooms out there there are I've even like in Elena's yard there's like several different kinds of mushrooms that is true and I'm like

kids don't eat those because i am not an expert on true me's these are weird i could never imagine just walking out and going like all right i'm gonna eat this weird looking phallic thing growing out of the ground kids will eat like anything on the ground but i mean alina's kids do not eat the mushrooms on the ground but i feel the need to be like don't touch that yeah mushrooms just seem like something i shouldn't eat yeah but but it's good to know which ones you can and cannot eat like if you're like stranded somewhere and you're hungry I can see that yeah so you know Daniel he knew all about that and actually

he got so good at it that he would eventually start leading tours and giving lectures on the region's mushrooms herbs and other local ingredients and once he became a full -blown chef he honed his craft at restaurants like Jake's Famous Crawfish which is a Portland landmark that has been in business for more More than 125 years.

Wow, okay. That's a lot of crawfish over that time.

That's a lot of restaurant over that time.

But outside of work, Daniel was really committed to his community.

He not only worked at a soup kitchen every week, but he would also bring his own ingredients to the soup kitchen to make sure he could cook up something special.

This wasn't like regular soup kitchen food.

It was Daniel's soup kitchen food.

Yeah, he put a lot of love into his food.

He did. It really seems like he did.

And he loved cooking.

He was super knowledgeable in his field.

He was also just like a really easygoing man in general, and he just wanted to share his passion and his smarts with other people.

So because all those things were really working for him, he decided that he'd like to become a culinary instructor.

So he started at that Western Culinary Institute, the one that would later become Le Cordon Bleu.

And he was in his first year as an instructor when he met Miss Nancy.

Okay, not a good time.

Not a good time. she you know I have I all the Nancy's I've come across I'm sorry to all the Nancy's out there but they've been a problem and this Nancy just kind of confirms it for me I only have ever really dealt with one Nancy in my life that I can think of and she's the only person that I ever requested not to work directly with so I agree with you so guys I'm sure there's a few of you good Nancy's out there and shout out to you but yeah these Nancy's I don't know so far it's It's like Karens.

There's great Karens, but then there's Karen Karens.

Yeah. But then you feel bad for the great Karens because they're like, Jesus Christ, I want to change my name.

Yeah, some of these Nancys are just, you know, they're making it bad for other Nancys.

Needle and Nancys, you know?

I don't know if that's the best I could come up with.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I got it.

She's a meddling Nancy because she was immediately taken with Daniel.

She thought he was a fine instructor and a fine man.

And it started to become very clear to everybody else in the class just how much she liked him um but there was a big issue daniel was married so okay he couldn't be out here with miss nancy nance now nancy's roommate at the time tanya medley she warned nancy about getting too close to daniel because you know he was married and all and she told her don't be dipping your candle in somebody else's wax which i love that's like a that's a real quote that's a that's a crazy way to put it don't dip your candle in somebody else's wax I love it let's break that down let's not are you why no not even the that side

of it the candle side of it why would you how would you dip your candle in somebody else's wax in the first place it's already wax it's already a candle that's the thing you already it's already a marriage it's already them two together stop dipping into it that's that's what my good girl Tanya was trying to say it's a saying and a half you know but nancy responded well that's not gonna last which like don't ever be that girl like you don't know his wife or anything about her and even if you do like stop meddling in people's marriages but unfortunately nancy was correct the marriage would end

just a few years later in 1994 and once it did daniel brophy began dating nancy see now he kept building his career at the same time as a chef instructor with the culinary school and nancy actually opened up her own catering business chef du jour catering it was a really successful catering company in northwest portland by the late 1990s things actually were going really well for the both of them as a couple because nancy's catering business had grown really considerably at the time they were employing 25 people and they were earning half a milli per year damn okay right and then in 1999 eight

years after they met dan and nancy held what they called a large marriage ceremony and they started calling each other husband as what husband and wife but it actually took them until june of 2016 to file the legal paperwork okay i don't know if they were just paperwork because like that's really relatable for me but But I was going to say, I mean, some people just, you know, I'm bad at paperwork.

I'm bad at getting back to things like that.

Whatever my accountant is like, it's time to look through your taxes.

I'm like, I don't know what those are.

I don't have those.

Trust me, I'm horrified about that.

I hate tax season. It freaks me out because I'm like, where did I put that little slip of paper six months ago?

Literally. So maybe that's what happened with Dan and Nancy here.

They were like, fuck, we had that marriage certificate.

We don't know where it is.

And then they found it and they filed it.

But you get to it when you get to it.

Yeah. Now, just like a lot of people, Dan and Nancy hit a little bit of financial trouble when the economy downturned after 9 -11.

Nancy had to lay off at least 10 people from the catering business.

So to help supplement their income, Dan kept teaching, but he also started moonlighting as a chef at a retirement home.

Now, they also on top of that ended up refinancing their house so that they could get money from their equity.

I don't really know how any of that works, But things started improving financially over the next couple of years.

Daniel got a better job.

He got hired actually as lead chef instructor at the Oregon Culinary Institute in 2006.

And immediately people freaking loved him there.

Students especially really loved him.

And they said he was, quote, the most active faculty member leading field trips, organizing student projects and speaking in the community.

So he's like one of the favorite teachers.

Sounds like a stand up guy.

shout out Brody he really does now not long Brofia not long after he started working at OCI the college there he and Nancy moved to Beaverton which I love the name of that town it's a small city just outside of Portland and in 2013 Nancy decided to dedicate as much time as humanly possible to her passion for writing you guys had no idea Nancy is a writer now in the past she had had written some small pamphlets in college she made some money as a technical writer but she always wanted to pursue her interest in writing fiction and now she kind of had the chance since graduating from culinary school

in the early 90s she joined a few writing groups and she said that she had quote spent years dabbling in literary crafts but she never really thought it would be something or could be something that she would take very seriously but she she i because i don't know enough about all this part is she a successful writer like was she fairly big how um in the grand scheme of things how did it go for her i don't really think she didn't make a lot of money doing it she may have been successful in the way that she did write several books which is more than i can say um but i don't i don't think they were like

in in a crazy amount of success yeah because i think we'll get into it later but one of the books she wrote it seems like like it has one of those names that seems like it's pretty popular but it also seems like it's just she called it that because something like that is already really popular you know what i mean yeah i think that's exactly what it was and i think okay she was also writing in a genre that is probably i'm just assuming here probably hard to get into because i think there's so many books that in the genre that she's writing already exactly but we'll get get there.

Don't jump ahead. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Okay. So she, she really, when social media started like happening and the internet started becoming more mainstream throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, it made it easier for writers to reach an audience through websites and blogs and self -publishing.

So Nancy decided to give writing an honest try for like the first time ever.

Now we're going to get into some of what she wrote.

Writing as Nancy Crampton Rofe, she would eventually pen nine romance novels including a five book series with titles like the wrong husband the wrong cop and the wrong lover oh my god i've seen this time and time again standard lifetime standard lifetime and these were self -published books and they were sold online they were pretty much all within i've never heard of this but it's called the bodice ripper genre what is that i think it's like when you rip off your corset probably or something like that it's a whole genre for that isn't that just an action i don't really know man i'm not in that genre

but it featured quote unquote rugged men strong women and a good story and that was according to her website and then all of the novels had covers that quote depicted depicted handsome heroes and at least one heroine with chiseled bodies and dark coifed hair coifed coifed or coifed actually it was coifed my bad their their hair is coifed coifed i don't even know what coifed hair is i think it just means it's like in place it just seems like a very uh i don't know it's very lifetime explanation it's very like nicholas sparks arcs kind of writing and like kind of genre I feel and also it's taking

me back to a place of the America's Next Top Model shoot where Fabio joins I don't know if you ever watched that I'm not I've just been honestly my brain is getting fried lately because all I've been watching is 90 Day Fiance and um since I got into this rabbit hole I've realized that there's like 36 like offsets of 90 Day Fiance so really it's a hole you could dig yourself into too I don't think it's it's not a hole you can dig yourself it's a hole you can't dig yourself out of that's really actually that's exactly what it is that's what I should have said it doesn't end like there's so many

my grandma you should talk to Kath next time you're here because that girl loves 90 day she's like did you watch the other night I'm like I don't watch it ma she's so I didn't know that ma loves 90 day I mean me and ma already get along well but once we start getting into 90 day I mean it's not gonna stop it's about to go off ma's the one that got me into Bravo in the first place.

She doesn't really watch it anymore.

But 90 Day, I don't think she'll ever give up on 90 Day.

I feel her, dude. I get it.

Well, it's kind of like how Nancy wasn't going to give up on writing bodice ripper novels.

So writing fulfilled her personally.

But like you were kind of asking earlier, it didn't really do it for the couple financially.

She wasn't making a lot of money doing this.

And very soon they were struggling again to the point where in 2014 they started dipping into Daniel's 401k which like I don't really know a lot about that but I don't think that's something you want to dip into if you can help it but yeah that's basically the standard practice yeah that's the take so they were dipping into it I think like obviously like good intentions they wanted to fix up their house and eventually subdivide the property and sell off the various subdivisions and they actually even went as far as to have Nancy's name taken off the deed which reduced the amount of income reported

by the homeowner who now at that point was just daniel basically i was trying to figure out like what that would save them and i think it just saves them taxes if you're like if your income is like less than what you were originally reporting i would think it was just tax time like things but i don't really know i'm sure you guys listening will know if you're into taxes and things like that all you people that are into taxes out there eric you just you do your tax things all you cpa brothers and sisters shout out cpas shout out even though there was a steep decrease in income nancy she kept focusing

on her writing she was writing full -time at this point but now she was spending money quite frequently on her writing and quote -unquote research for her novels she would spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on all kinds of things for this research like one time when she bought a victorian era chastity belt for research to research what exactly bodice ripper genre i don't know do you can't just like google that stuff well that's the thing i think maybe she had like a shopping problem or something like that or i don't know maybe she just really liked to these things and wanted them but then like

wrote it off as research so her husband wouldn't get mad at her i would just love to be a fly on the wall just to see what she was doing with this chastity belt i would not i would not like to be a fly on the wall for that look it's not for pleasure it's purely for science just for writing it down and doing experiments later of course but in addition to her spending on research she and daniel actually started investing heavily heavily in life insurance policies and that was starting in 2014 it's always a red flag right when people are just like gambling on their life insurance yeah definitely

definitely not you don't need to have like multiple multiple life insurance policies I think like one or two will cut it again not something I really know a lot about yeah to me it just seems like starting a life insurance policy seems fairly standard to a certain extent but then those They used a few keywords that made it sound like they're doing this many different times and just kind of throw in life insurance policies around, and that seems worrisome.

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That was a really good inference you made there because between 2014 and 2017, they had acquired six life insurance policies all right for daniel like not for nancy for daniel these life insurance preparers how do they even allow that they could be they should just be like okay wait i think that's why i think it's because they were going like different places so the other life insurance brokers i guess is what you call them they didn't realize that they already had had five others taken out this is crazy it does so they had six life insurance policies between 2014 and 2017 that they took out and they

had a base payout of four hundred thousand dollars and an additional three hundred and twenty thousand dollars in the event that daniel's death was accidental is this from each of them um i think it was like a majority of them okay okay like at least but i think between all of them that's what would have happened so can you just do that like can you just have multiple life insurance policies and just like i don't take them all out i don't know enough about life insurance is what i'm realizing right now i would think that that would be some kind of fraud if you had multiple but right i don't know

i mean like people aren't going around with like you know three different car insurances you know what i mean right and i mean you have to get approved for all of them also fun fact getting life insurance is really fucking hard and it's really fucking annoying because you have to answer like a bunch of questions like if you've ever done drugs are you overweight do you smoke cigarettes you must have a physical some lady has to come to your house and you have to pee in a cup and give it to her it's awful wow and to do that six different times i'm like you you couldn't pay me money.

And like you would be, but you couldn't.

So by September of 2017, sadly, they had blown through almost all of Daniel's 401k.

And as of that month, there was only about $35 ,000 remaining.

Now obviously $35 ,000 is a lot of money, but I think when it comes to a 401k, not very much. You can't really live off of that for the rest of your life.

No. And that's, that's exactly it.

But Nancy had been pushing Daniel to sell the house and the land thinking that that would wipe away their debts and kind of give them a fresh start.

But the problem was after consulting with a financial advisor, Nancy was informed that even if they sold the house and the land, they would still come out of that deal with negative cash flow.

So basically her spending habits and I mean really inability to generate income had put her and her husband deeply in the red financially speaking and not even selling the house would generate enough money to get them out of it so basically they're fucked pretty much basically nancy should have just like reopened her catering business yeah i've done anything really aside from the wrong mister and the wrong chastity belt because it's like at the end of the day if that's not bringing you in enough money to support you and your husband and like in addition to his income that's a hobby you're not yeah

you know like you you gotta get something to supplement month this if you're in the red so the morning of june 2nd 2018 we're flash forwarding here and fast forwarding um it started out pretty much sorry let me cut you off real quick what what timeline were we at before that uh before that we were between 2017 or 2014 and 2017 oh okay yeah they started having money problems after 9 -11 because like the economy went down and stuff like that but then they were able to kind of regain but then they kind of started floundering again when nancy stopped the culinary business and started writing okay okay

so 2017 is when things got like really really bad financially that's when they were told like even if you sell the house even if you sell the land and subdivide all these properties you're still gonna end up with some debt and like a good amount of debt so now we're in 2018 it's june 2nd 2018 and this morning started off pretty regular for Daniel Brophy, like pretty much like every other morning had.

He woke up early, he went out back to feed the chickens in the backyard. He just seems like a very wholesome man, like working at a retirement home, working at a soup kitchen, feeding his chickens.

He takes the dogs for a walk, comes back home, takes a quick shower, and then he heads off to work.

So he got to the Oregon Culinary Institute, OCI, a little after 7 a .m. and since he was the first one to come in the building he disabled the alarm and headed to kitchen one which was his usual kitchen classroom that was another thing too he was pretty much always there every morning he was the first one there every morning really early yep he loved getting there early and just like being able to set up the kitchen before all the people came now a co -worker arrived about 10 or 15 minutes later they were going to be the one that was going to unlock the doors for the students and kind of greet them

when they started filing in and then they would go to their classroom room where Daniel had everything set up.

So in kitchen one, like I just said, he was setting everything up for the day, starting the coffee maker, making other arrangements.

He was at the sink filling up pitchers with ice water though, when somebody snuck into the classroom quietly and shot him one time in the back.

And when he got shot with that one shot, the force of the the bullet caused his body to spin around 180 degrees, at which point his killer fired again, quote, directly sent her mouse to his chest. Jesus.

Which sent a second bullet tearing through his torso, ultimately piercing his heart.

God damn, that's brutal.

Brutally, brutal as fuck, and just like out of nowhere, this man is just at work setting up for the day.

You would never expect this.

and for his carl his first culinary class yeah right exactly and here's the thing students are starting to come in and clearly like nobody really heard this because there wasn't that many people around us like right when it happened so he's laying there on the ground as students are filing into the kitchen just after 7 30 and they are completely shocked to find their instructor instructor, lying on his back in front of the industrial sink, unconscious and bleeding profusely from two gunshot wounds.

And I did watch a little video about that.

I think how it happened, and I'm not sure who I heard speaking.

They were in court and they were explaining like, you know, this is the building, this is the back door that we were all lined up at, blah, blah, blah.

I'm not sure if it was one of the students or I think to my knowledge, it might have been another one of the teachers, like another one of the culinary teachers.

i think there's only like a few because they were doing like weekend classes saturday and sunday type thing um but she said she saw a bunch of students like lined up out there and was like that's weird they're usually all in there because he's early he lets them in really early but the door was locked none of them came in and then another like um one other worker or something something like that came over to the side let all the kids in and then after they're in i think they walked around for a bit and eventually one of them goes hey call 9 -1 -1 there's a body over here like found him over there

can you imagine you're just like filing into your classroom you're like oh I gotta take a Saturday class and that's what you stumble into yeah like so the 9 -1 -1 call is pretty crazy too I didn't listen to it I can never listen to 9 -1 -1 calls it's not one of those like really really I mean they're all horrific you know but it's not one of those ones it's like you know it like makes you want to like break down while you're listening to it but it is still pretty fucked up and you know you're listening to it and they don't really realize that he's dead at first they're like hey he's unconscious like

he's down here i don't think he's he's breathing but then after a while they go oh shit like he's bleeding from his chest right and then you know it goes on and then they realize yeah he's gone so sad so yeah like you said one of the students just called 9 -1 -1 the police and the emergency responders they raced to the scene but again like you just said by the time they got there it was too late he was dead dead on arrival so portland detectives anthony merrill and darren posey arrived at osi excuse me around 8 30 in the morning and at that point the school had been placed in lockdown crime scene

technicians had started processing the scene so when the detectives entered the kitchen they found so sad the metal ice scoop lying on the floor where he had dropped it when he was shot and then nearby they discovered two nine millimeter shell casings on the floor which meant that whoever had killed daniel most likely wasn't a professional killer meryl told interviewers from dateline they wanted to get in quick and get out quick yeah so within two hours of the murder somebody a friend had called nancy to let her know that the police were converged on oci so she immediately drives down to the school

detectives meet her and they usher her into a room that they started kind of using as a command center and they kind of you know go through their series of questions like what was your husband doing this morning what does he usually do like blah blah blah what were you doing and after several minutes they finally gave her the news they told her we believe it's Dan that's been killed now she barely skipped a beat and said to them yeah I got that when everybody gave me the sad sack look hmm like okay weird response weird energy weird response now what followed was typical behavior like what you

would call it she was bewildered she was grief stricken she was crying that is the kind of reaction that you would expect from somebody but again me and alina say it all the time like you can't chop like somebody's guiltiness up to how they react to something right away because not everybody's gonna cry right away some people are gonna you know freeze yeah everyone everyone has different reactions man yeah nancy just makes weird comments and and then she cries.

But anyways, they were like, okay, you can go for now, and we're going to talk to you later today.

We'll be in contact because they were still working on the scene.

So by the next day, the news had made its way around the OSI community, and there was a wave of stunned and shocked responses.

Current and former students were on the internet just sharing their surprise and grief.

They were posting comments to social media.

One said, Oregon Culinary Institute lost a top -notch chef instructor that touched so many lives and another one said daniel was also one of the smartest most thoughtful people i've ever met and would take the time with whatever you needed so sad so that seemed like a good dude he really did and then nancy shared her thoughts online um and in my opinion this is a pretty strange facebook post but she wrote for those of you who are close to me and feel this deserved a phone call you're right but i'm struggling to To make sense of everything now.

While I appreciate all of your loving responses.

I'm overwhelmed. Please save calls for a few days.

Until I can function.

Just weird like. I don't know.

A bizarre post in my opinion.

Yeah I mean I guess.

Again I guess. I don't know what to chop it up to.

Because I mean I guess I already know the outcome.

Of the story. And she's a scumbag.

Yeah I guess in hindsight looking at it.

But I don't know I guess if I didn't know what I knew.

it might not be that odd of a statement like hey you know leave me alone kind of thing give me a little while like yeah i can't talk about this like i get it i appreciate it but i don't know it is it's a little odd no but that's a solid point i'm looking at it through the lens of like i already knew and again we already said it yeah like clearly she did this so when i read that i was like well that's weird but if i had read that and she didn't if she wasn't the one that did it maybe i would feel differently yeah you might just think like hey you know she's tired hearing about this and she's trying

to agree right right and she doesn't want to like have her phone blown up all day when she's going through it yeah but to reiterate that's not what's happening she's a piece of shit yeah not the case fuck nancy so a candlelight vigil was held in daniel's honor a few days later in the parking lot at the school and nancy reiterated her grief and her shock to the students and the faculty saying i just can't wrap my head around it dan was one of the very few people i've known that knew exactly what he wanted in life and loved doing it which is really sad when again we know that she's the one that is doing

this she's standing in front of all of these grieving people saying i can't wrap my head around it he was the nicest guy he knew what he wanted and he was doing it it's like okay so like then why did you kill him he was happy he was doing what he wanted to do like what like that's just some people have no shame they truly don't so back to the investigation as they surveyed the scene detectives Merrill and Posey were rather perplexed there was no sign of a struggle no sign of forced entry Daniel still had his wallet phone keys his car was still parked in the parking lot so pretty much right away

those factors ruled out the whole robbery gone wrong scenario to them it seemed like somebody had snuck into the culinary school to murder him and then snuck out without disrupting or taking anything but they were stumped because they were like who the the hell would want to do that daniel was super well liked so they were having a really hard time coming up with anybody who disliked him especially enough to kill him or have him killed yeah i mean you get a culinary chef who's just there for his like weekend job right at an institute like someone walking in and killing someone like that is pretty

wild yeah just like very sudden and out of the blue and then to have all of his things still with him you're like what like yeah crazy crazy.

So Detective Posey told Dateline there was people that were like he's tough but nothing that you know somebody had it out for him because they like had their career ended by him or anything like that.

So many people knew Daniel Brophy to be a very direct person who quote wasn't afraid to have conversations that many instructors might shy away from and also his dry sense of humor and he did have kind of like a rigid personality that did did tend to rub people like certain people wrong way but it was never to the extent like i was just saying that somebody would want him dead for something he said or anything he did it was just like i'm trying to i honestly he kind of reminds me of my grandpa like you know like just like a very direct guy yeah like yeah he might fuck with you a little bit he

might like piss you off because he's not gonna like beat around the bush but it's like hey he's not like he's not a bad murder material you know no exactly not that anybody is but no yeah and that's i think that's exactly like you put it so perfectly like he's not gonna beat around the bush like he's just gonna tell you how he feels so with a case like this where somebody is killed seemingly for no reason as we all know the spouse is the one that they look into first so when nancy was questioned shortly after the murder she told investigators that she'd woken up briefly when daniel came in after walking the dogs

that morning but she said she fell asleep soon after he had left and otherwise she had just gone about her morning leisurely until she got the call about what happened.

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Now, detectives outwardly seem to accept her description of her movements that morning, but they also knew right away that she was lying, even as she was telling them her version of that morning's events.

Because by the time they sat down to question her, they had already found surveillance footage that contradicted her story so she says she's sleeping and that she just woke up when daniel came in with the dogs and then fell right back to sleep and just had a chill morning nope at 7 0 8 a .m when she was supposedly at home sleeping a surveillance camera from a business across the street from the culinary school school captured Nancy driving by the school in her minivan I mean the dude's been an idiot every step of the way seriously this dude Nancy leaving shells at the scene just driving by running

around with cameras all over you she's like oh no I'm sleeping I was in bed come on don't understand 2018 you don't realize that we are being videoed every fucking second of every fucking day like when you were driving around in your car you were being caught on surveillance footage everywhere you can't just say that you're not home sleeping you should have said oh i got gas across the street from the culinary school i can't believe that happened while i was there i mean again i'm not giving you like a an alibi but still no but we're just saying she's a giant idiot and she could have said anything

else if she was really you know a not a giant idiot and And was able to like, you know, come up with some kind of alibi.

I mean, I'm glad that she's a bozo and got caught.

But but come on, man.

Now, again, that she was not snoozing like she said she was because that same camera where she was caught at 708 captured her again about 20 minutes later in front of the school.

And then about 10 minutes after Daniel had deactivated the alarm system at the school and then five minutes before his body was discovered in the classroom.

so she was discovered left right and center on this fucking surveillance system so the other thing is her story about being home and in bed at the time of the murder was not her only suspicious behavior in the days and weeks following the murder just three days after dan was killed detective posey got a call from nancy asking if he would produce a letter confirming that she was was not a suspect in the murder so that she could assure the insurance company she wasn't involved in the death okay buddy aka let me get my insurance payout yeah like hand me the check and then we'll figure out what else

is going on exactly so posy clearly had never been asked for such a letter by anybody and he was like yeah girl like that's not gonna happen his real direct quote was he literally early center he goes the way you clear somebody is you arrest somebody else and take them to trial like you're not going to get a letter until i have tried somebody for this murder that's not you so she's just like wait so her quote wasn't yeah buddy no no not the direct quote okay but it wasn't just detectives who found her reaction to dan's death to be unusual there were neighbors were also pretty put off by her behavior.

Don McConnell, who lived in the house that abutted Daniel and Nancy's property, told reporters, quote, She never showed any signs of being upset or sad.

I would say she had an air of relief, like it was almost a godsend.

McConnell asked whether the police had been keeping in touch with her, and Nancy told him, No, I'm a suspect.

Like, damn, girl. Now, other neighbors had also noticed her odd behavior, too.

she was moving furniture in and out of or out of the house she had started telling people that she was seriously thinking of putting the house on the market because she was quote haunted by dan's side of the bedroom she said thinking about him upset her and she wanted to get away from the house okay which i mean if my neighbor said that to me after their husband was murdered i feel like i'd be like i don't think i would consider that strange like no like she's haunted by a side out of the bedroom that makes sense but putting the house on the market that's like that's abrupt yeah i mean i don't

know again i guess when i look at it through the lens of maybe she you know like something she's actually going through something i could see that happening because i've had friends who have lost spouses who have had very similar reactions so i mean yeah i don't know i guess it's just kind of out of character at this point because she was so sporadic and terrible about like you know leading shells at the scene like being caught on camera everywhere just saying like oh I'm in bed but then when it comes to this I don't know I feel like I almost feel like she did react kind of well for someone who's

trying to hide the fact that they killed their husband I think there are times where she does and then I think there are times where she slips up oh I think she slips up pretty basically all over the place yeah I think more often than not she's slipping up but as technicians began digging into dan's personal life they only found more evidence leading them back to nancy as they were searching through his cell phone for clues they actually discovered an article bookmarked on their shared itunes account so this itunes account was shared by dan and nancy and the article they found was titled 10 ways

to cover up a murder okay now not Not long after, they also discovered another suspicious article, this one written by Nancy herself in 2011.

She had written this article for a blog called CJ and Publish, and it was titled How to Murder Your Husband.

Yeah, that's that's the one I was referring to earlier.

Unreal. Unreal. Like, I don't know.

I don't know, Nancy.

Again, maybe. Maybe don't if that's your goal, but you know.

Maybe don't even if that is not your goal.

Like don't write about how to murder people.

It's something else.

So this article was written kind of like in an essay format and it detailed the motives and methods that somebody might use to kill their spouse in a romance novel.

Nancy wrote, divorce is expensive and do you really want to split all your possessions?

Or if you married for money, aren't you entitled to all of it?

The drawback is the police aren't stupid.

They're looking at you first. If the murder is supposed to set me free, I certainly don't want to spend any time in jail.

I wish I said the police aren't stupid, but I am.

Yeah, literally. Then she launched into the pros and cons of the five methods of murder.

The essay recommended against hiring a hitman to do the job because, quote, an amazing number of hitmen hitmen rat you out to the police.

How many hitmen do you know?

Thank you, Nancy. What statistic is this?

She made it up. She then cautions against using poison, saying, who wants to hang out with a sick husband?

Yeah, that's the only downside to poisoning your mans.

I'm sorry, what? And then she ends the essay by saying, I find it easier to wish people dead than to actually kill them.

I don't worry. I don't want to worry about the blood and brain splattered on my walls.

And really, I'm not good at remembering lies.

i mean i guess this is a fairly it's not even a good script for a movie about a psychopath it's a very bland script it's a very but wish them dead i'm sorry yeah this is a weird list even for someone who is a terrible person and does terrible things this is this is odd like i love that she's like you know i would just rather wish people dead because i don't really want to like like clean up my walls and i'm really bad at remembering lies not like i have a conscious and i would never murdered someone like oh i get what this is now she wrote this so she could show it to the police later and go no no no see

this is me saying i would never do i would only wish it i i acknowledge that you guys aren't stupid and i knew you'd be looking at me of course it's not me maybe it was honestly that's not a bad point like that's crazy nancy but i can see that being like her kind of logic you know and probably yeah no i mean because we'll get into it we already have a little bit her logic is wild logic but so they find all of that they're like okay well this is plenty of evidence and then detectives learned that the couple owned a glock nine millimeter handgun which was the very same caliber used in daniel's murder

that it was but it gets tricky according to nancy she had purchased the nine millimeter as research for one of her novels and she claimed that neither her her or daniel had ever fired it so see and i heard another side too where she was like oh all my friends had one and then we felt like it was stupid because we didn't have one because pet friends just kept showing up to our house and they were like oh we have a gun i was like i don't think that ever happened actually but sure interesting story i don't think that ever happened nancy i think you're just cray cray but so she said that they They

had never fired it, that it was for research, blah -de -da -doo, or it was because all her friends had one and she just had to get it.

Like, it's a new pair of Nikes.

But investigators took the gun into evidence, and they had it tested, but forensic technicians determined it probably was not the gun used in the shooting.

Now, later, but maybe it was, because later, detectives learned that this wasn't the first gun Nancy had purchased.

purchased in late 2017 she had purchased what's called a ghost gun kit online which would have allowed her to make her own untraceable gun now wait what apparently the kit was actually too difficult for her to complete and that's when she purchased the glock but through the course of their investigation detectives would also learn that while the glock wasn't a match for the casings at the scene on the day of the murder it might have been used because nancy had purchased additional parts for a glock 9 millimeter on ebay and she had swapped several components of the gun before handing it over to

detectives so that's where she actually like is kind of a scary mastermind how did she manage to do all of that but she goes no i was asleep i have no idea also like mama they're gonna look at your search history yeah i mean you bought it it on ebay come on like that's very traceable i mean like the thing that she did like you said that's kind of impressive that's kind of crazy right i don't know how many people would think to do that but uh maybe people that are like more into guns but i don't know like that's still just it's crazy this chick writing murder mystery fucking lifetime novels about killing

her husband i mean i don't know and she's saying she's gonna wish people dead but then she thought to do this that's that's something else it's wild and i also love that she was like yeah the the ghost gun kit online was too hard for me but i was able to switch out several components of another gun she's an enigma for sure she really is so after months of quietly following leads and collecting evidence detectives had assembled what they believed was a pretty strong case against nancy crampton brophy for the murder of her husband she and daniel were way behind on their mortgage They were living

well beyond their means.

And it was mostly, especially when it came to Nancy's spending habits, she was really the one pushing them above their means.

Then there were the multiple life insurance policies that would pay out nearly $400 ,000 in the event of Daniel's death.

Israel is also, she's spending all this money.

How much money are they spending on six different life insurance policies?

It must have been like crazy.

And I have to wonder if he knew, I don't think he knew about those.

i think she was probably buying those and like keeping it secret from him and then the fact that should daniel die the house and all of his assets would be transferred directly to nancy so she had the most to gain from his death and then finally the most damning evidence of all and the reason why they were actually able to get a probable cause affidavit in the first place was the surveillance video footage proving that contrary to her statement nancy was at the school during During the very short window of time.

In which Daniel was killed.

Can I actually play you a clip.

Yeah. That I think is very interesting.

Kind of regarding that.

Yes you may. This is from one of her trials I believe.

Did not shoot my husband.

You were there. In the area.

At the same time. That someone happens to be shooting your husband.

Within a six minute window.

With the exact type of gun.

That you own. your version of what happened that is not my version i think your case is held together with real frankly band -aids girl that's the thing it's like you were there in a very small time frame you have all the means all the motives to do this but it wasn't you all the materials even too and then why why were you lying about sleeping like you really put it out there like pretty straightforward within a six minute time frame and she goes nope your defense terrible dog shit what do you mean why why is the defense terrible because it doesn't work in her favor that's the thing so it's so crazy

on the morning of september 5th 2018 just three months after the murder of her husband police arrested nancy at her home at previously the couple's home in beaverton she was seemingly shocked and asked You're arresting me?

You must think I murdered My husband No, Nancy, we thought that you actually stole Some Cheerios from the stop and shop down The street, so you're being arrested for that This has nothing to do with your husband's murder No, this is just from something that happened Like two decades ago, you know When you grabbed the Skittles from the Kroger You just, like, had a couple unpaid parking Tickets, Nance.

We're just gonna take you downtown Like, yes, they think you murdered your husband Of course, that's why they're arresting you And don't they literally say, like, you're being Arrested for the murder of Bull Yeah, for sure.

There's no way. You have the right to remain silent.

Anything you say can be blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So she's really quick on the uptake there.

But despite all the strong evidence against her, like we just heard in that crazy ass clip, Nancy maintained that she was innocent, but still offered zero explanation for her presence outside the school on the morning of her husband's murder.

her but strangely enough her arrest actually shocked almost everybody who knew her and Daniel especially the people closest to them her old roommate Tanya she said I was absolutely shocked I don't think she did it and I would be embarrassed if I was them if they can't prove this now Daniel's son Nathan Stillwater was among those most stunned by Nancy's arrest he told Dateline they were you know they had started making some plans for what was going to happen in their retirement years and while it hadn't been nailed down yet it seemed like they were on to some exciting ideas honestly we were coming

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when you download the earnin app type in morbid under podcast when you sign up it will really help the show morbid under podcast earnin is a financial technology company not a bank access limits are based on your earnings and risk factors standard cash outs take one to two business days with no mandatory fees expedited transfer is available for a fee tips are voluntary and don't affect the service available in select states terms and restrictions apply visit earnin .com for full details download earnin now and take control of your pay wow so at first I think before they knew what the evidence was people

in their lives were just like no there's no way Nancy could have done this but then they're sitting there through the trial and they see the surveillance footage the multiple life insurance taken out the the different gun parts like and they're like holy shit I knew this woman and like this is what she's capable of So Nancy was arraigned in Multnomah, I believe is how you say it, Circuit Court on September 7th, and a week later on September 13th, a grand jury indicted her on one count of murder with a firearm constituting domestic violence, to which she pled, I'm sure you'll be amazed, not guilty.

I'm not amazed at all.

No, exactly. I was being sarcastic.

So while she was sitting in jail waiting for her trial, the story was circulating online and eventually made its way to the national news outlet and the late night cycle.

And of course, they were all chomping at the bit to get the story out about the woman who wrote The Wrong Husband and How to Murder Your Husband.

But reporters were actually having a tough time lining up any interviews with the Brophy's friends, family, or anybody at the school.

Their request to those people went almost entirely ignored.

And actually, Daniel's students and his friends had, quote, made a pact to stay silent out of respect for a man who in life valued his privacy.

Yeah. Which I think is cool.

Yeah, that's good stuff.

Yeah, good stuff. Amendable.

So in the months after Nancy's arrest, the county judge imposed a protective order, actually, which barred the release of any information or evidence related to the case on the grounds that it might jeopardize the investigation.

But by April 2019, the news had gone national, and because of that, Nancy's attorney tried to have the protection order extended ended essentially arguing that if any more coverage or any more information got released nancy wouldn't get a fair trial but the prosecutor sean overstreet completely disagreed and he argued all of the information being shared was fact it was just damning and that's why the defense wanted it left out so ultimately the judge agreed with the prosecution and the order was lifted as it should be yeah agreed so as the prosecution and the defense did their thing detectives

actually kept on investigating gathering more and more evidence against our girl nance who was not our girl at all it was during this time that they discovered several more life insurance policies that nancy had taken out in daniel's name and they discovered the replacement glock parts that would later be essential in prosecuting nancy according to the prosecutor the gun confiscated from nancy was the exact make and model used in the killing of daniel but the the ballistics testing found out that the bullets taken from his body were not a match for Nancy's gun.

But the match of gun, but mismatch of the bullets seemed too much of a coincidence for the investigators.

So they dug deeper into Nancy's activities and they found a possible explanation.

And that's when they ended up finding out that she had bought separate parts for a Glock nine millimeter handgun on eBay, meaning the gun could be a match for the murder weapon.

It just had a a different slide and barrel and that's why nancy thought she was going to get away with it i mean like she she couldn't even have had someone else buy it for her on ebay like i don't know like i'm not trying to give you ideas uh potential nancy's out there but no come on no you're right though like you have to sit there and you're like oh my god but then at the same time it's like wow she literally thought to like replace different i would i don't i don't even think think i knew before this that you could replace different parts and like mix match gun parts i thought they all just

had to like line up together like a lego set or something but i mean like i knew that that was a thing i'm not like super into guns or anything um but like i knew that was a thing but i wouldn't have i wouldn't have thought to like you know be like oh that could be a thing in a case where you're switching it around for like you know the investigation purposes like i wouldn't have thought of that and i don't i don't know maybe other people listening they're like oh Oh, of course you think of that.

But I wouldn't think that Nancy would think of that.

That's the thing. And why is she so cocky thinking she's going to get away with this when she's like, yeah, I did this.

But you didn't you didn't prep anything else.

That's the thing. I don't understand.

I think like you were saying in the beginning, I think she just had to have been delusional if she thought she was going to get away with this.

She is fully delusional.

I mean, as the case is held together by band -aids, according to her.

it's like no it's tied together by actual surveillance footage of you outside of a murder scene but the case ended up finally going to trial on april 4th 2022 there were tons of delays because of covid her lawyers actually tried to get her released from prison um because of like covid complications they were like she's in danger and this is like a violation of her rights and they were like she waived a bail hearing so unless you want to have a bail hearing Like, we can talk then, but if not, you're sitting in prison.

And even if you do talk about a bail hearing, you're most likely sitting in prison.

You're awaiting trial for murder.

Yeah. But they were off to the races with prosecutor Sean Overstreet arguing on behalf of the state and Lisa Maxfield arguing for the defense.

Now, by the time the case was ready for trial, the judge actually had decided to exclude the How to Murder Your Husband blog post from the evidence on the grounds that quote any minimal probate of value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice and a confusion of the issues so i think basically what he was saying is that it might be confusing to the jury and that's kind of what i got out of that i don't agree but i can see where like maybe it would have been an issue because it's like it's like a fiction novel type thing or like a blog post or whatever it happened to be exactly

and i think they were well in the prosecution they were okay with that because they had actually planned in their argument to minimize that post anyway because they had stronger evidence so they were okay with it being omitted yeah they had better shit to work with so in his opening statement prosecutor overstreet told the jury that even though a good amount of their evidence was circumstantial They planned and believed that they could show that it was greed that motivated Nancy to kill her husband back in 2018.

He told them and would later tell Dateline as well, quote, Nancy wanted more.

Nancy wanted a lifestyle that Dan couldn't give to her.

I think she thought if I could do this, I'll get enough money that will allow me to change that lifestyle.

We never thought that she didn't love him.

I think she probably hoped things had worked out differently.

But when they didn't, he was a problem for her.

ultimately i mean nancy's out for number one right exactly it's tail as old as time she thinks she's entitled to a certain lifestyle she's gonna do whatever she needs to do to get there and i think she also got more and more desperate as they were losing more and more money and she wanted to be able to spend money on things that she wanted but she couldn't because he was the only person making money and she was not and how fucking old was she at this point she's like i want to say she's like in her like late 50s early 60s that's just i don't know at that point like i don't know is this we're just

i feel like material things mean less and less the older you get you know i think that it depends on who you are i think yeah if you've gotten what you if you've gotten what you wanted out of life okay so far and when you get to like age 50 60 I would assume that material items would mean less to you but I guess if you're not getting what you want out of life then it's going to mean more to you I think it just makes it really depends on the kind of person you are and how much material things mean to you I think she was a very materialistic person it seems yeah that's true and I and like you were saying

I think she was always out for number one she's definitely over number one Nancy you suck right crazy and as over overstreep again the prosecutor put it to the jury dan brophy was worth almost 1 .5 million dollars to nancy if he was dead but worth a life of financial hardship if he stayed alive damn so fucked up either like it's either way it's your husband i know and it it sucks that you know they get to that point where they have to put it out there like that it's like hey yeah i don't want to say this but he was just a number to her yeah like i can't imagine like like putting a value on how

much drew is worth to me like a money a monetary value right like that's crazy way more than that like i would what it's like hey this this is also a human you know you remember that part uh no all right not really for your monetary gain but thank you so over the course of 11 days the prosecution supported their argument by showing the surveillance footage of nancy at the school on the morning of the morning of the murders and then search history and data from her computer which showed the purchase of the additional parts for the glock the multiple life insurance policies that would have provided

a payout altogether once they found the other ones of nearly eight hundred thousand dollars jesus and then the jury also heard from 47 witnesses including everybody from the oci which by the way i think i said osi earlier.

I'm sorry. I meant to say OCI.

I think you did say OSI.

I definitely did. Yeah.

You guys got what I was saying.

But they heard from the facilities manager at the school, several of the students who actually were the ones to find Daniel.

They heard from Daniel's father, Jack Brophy, and several of the couple's friends.

Now, one of the witnesses that helped the prosecution significantly actually came from a financial analyst named Stephen Santos.

He testified that that Nancy and Dan's retirement plans were financially unsustainable and that the life insurance policies taken out in Daniel's name would have been more appropriate for a couple with more discretionary income.

So basically saying, cause again, when they met with that financial advisor earlier, they said, even if you sell your house, even if you sell your land, you're still going to end up in the red.

I think she had gotten them so much in the red that even with the money that she would have gotten from Daniel she like she still potentially could have been in the red I'm sure she would have been I mean it sounded like it wasn't going well no and eventually I think even if even if she like did end up in the green a bit it was only a matter of time before she ended up in the red again for sure I mean she's obviously wanted to get rid of him to keep spending so I don't think that was going to slow down I think if anything it was going to ramp up yeah and i mean it's crazy i'm sure like how fast

that money could go like you see it when people win the lottery and like stuff like that like obviously a million dollars is a lot of money but when you are spending it with like absolutely no regard i'm sure it's gonna go quickly yeah so lisa maxfield the defense attorney she tried to poke any hole that she could in the state's case about nancy she told the jury in her opening statement the state will present a circumstantial case that begs you to cast a blind eye to the most important circumstance love nancy crampton brophy has always been thoroughly madly crazy in love with daniel brophy and she

still is to this day for nancy brophy he was perfect wow it's like yeah why'd she murder him then yeah it kind of it kind of shatters once you uh like why was she outside of school when he got killed then that doesn't really make a lot of sense to me why'd she uh write a whole entire article on how to murder your husband while she was married to a perfectly great husband why'd she uh write a letter to the insurance and go hey uh can i get that money uh post haste no she literally that wasn't even to the insurance that was to the detective she said can i get a letter clearing me as this like as

like saying i'm not a suspect and they were like no because you're a suspect that's fucking crazy insane like I said this woman is delusional truly is the definition of the word and then she she went on to try and explain every point that the prosecution had made away she said the ghost this is the defense attorney the ghost gun kit and the glock were merely research for nancy's writing I'm like I host a true crime podcast and never have I ever bought in a glock on ebay yeah i mean really anything that you need to research about it you could look up or if anything i don't know maybe ask a friend

who has one or something be like hey can i just look at this for like a little bit or something like anything else i don't think you need to go out and get a gun license if you just want to look at a gun for a little while exactly and you were saying all of her friends had this specific kind of gun so use theirs for your fucking research and if she's saying like oh it's research is research this and that but i've never fired it how much research are you doing that you're not even going to shoot the thing that you're researching like don't you want to see how a thing functions if you're researching

it i don't know there's there's a lot of levels to that which i think she's full of shit i agree giant asshole i agree and then she also said that the internet searches uh for how to cover up a murder were also just for research yeah yeah fair and then she offered the alternative theory that brophy had actually been killed by a local unhoused man seen in the area that morning yeah you always know it's going well when uh they start offering up their own theories yeah exactly exactly the theory was very quickly dismissed by detective anthony merrill who told the jury he and his partner had located

the man and determined he was never a threat and he pointed out daniel had been shot but nothing had been taken yeah like hello and he said there she was was also being a little racist when she did this because the um detective ended up saying later they're asking you to consider the black guy in the neighborhood as the killer without any evidence you should be offended like literally said you should be offended it's true now the most dramatic moment came on day 21 of the trial when nancy took the stand to testify in her own defense and as we we know from the clip you showed us this was a big

yikes yeah during questioning from the defense she tried to explain away the more damning aspects of the prosecution's arguments she told the jury she was a very thorough researcher hence all the guns she and Daniel were very much in love and they were working on solving their financial problems and then she admitted yes she had purchased that replacement Glock barrel and slide from the seller on eBay but it was because she was was quote obsessed with gun parts and that the missing part were parts were surely in storage somewhere okay well what do you think her plan was in that moment to draw

them up like she was gonna order them again that's definitely what she was gonna do right i don't even think she had a plan i think she was just talking out of her ass i think if it went down to it she was gonna order them again and she's gonna go look they're right here then they were gonna go um it says right here that you just ordered a second set so where's the first set she'd be like i don't know what you're talking about surely she'd be like my my account was hacked she'd be like oh no ridiculous so some of her testimony seemed some plausible like seemed plausible in some way but other parts

were downright ridiculous she said she had no memory of leaving the house on the morning of the murder and she didn't know what she was doing on the surveillance camera footage she said you know maybe i was struggling to write and i went out to clear my head and a psychiatrist for the defense testified it was possible that nancy was suffering from what's called retrograde amnesia from the later trauma of learning that her husband had been killed and that's why she didn't remember what she was doing that morning but the prosecutor challenged that claim and said to nancy if you can't remember anything

how could you be sure that you didn't kill your husband she goes uh she was like uh she said i see dan every day i talk to him every day this is not a man i would have shot because i had a memory issue it seems to me if i shot him i would know every detail okay okay buddy that's also just a strange explanation yeah i mean like i said she's the king of flip -flopping so after 25 days of evidence and testimony closing arguments were presented on may 23rd 2022 so not that long ago over street focused on nancy's convenient claim of amnesia the physical evidence the forensic evidence that linked her

to the crime including the purchases of the guns the surveillance footage and in closing he turned the defense's argument back onto them and reminded the jury no one would want to hurt dan even nancy herself told that to detectives, so nobody else had a motive, but Nancy did.

Now, literally the only person in the world.

Literally. Now, in closing arguments for the defense, Nancy's attorneys focused on the purely circumstantial nature of the case and reminded the jury that the prosecution's case couldn't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Instead, they emphasized that throughout the trial, the jury repeatedly heard how happy Nancy and Daniel were together.

Maxfield even said at one one point that the best proven fact during the trial was that nancy and dan loved each other that doesn't nah i think that she murdered him and then because after she was like they loved each other she was like there were other possible assailants in the area then she claimed the police had ignored them which was not true and also why are you saying there are multiple other assailants when the only person you brought up in the first place was just an unhoused man minding his own business you dingus you said assailants you're not wrong i thought i was gonna move past that but i

didn't assailants so on may 25th 2022 after eight hours of deliberation i can't even believe it took them that long the jury returned with a unanimous guilty verdict for the second degree murder of daniel brophy sentencing was held on june 13th and that's when they did victim impact statements um daniel's son nathan did an impact statement and said to nancy you opted to lie steal cheat fraud ultimately killed the man that was for some reason still unbeknownst to me your biggest fan you executed my father in an act of cold -blooded premeditated murder the man that did everything for you i was actually

curious on if they had kids or not i think that was his son from like his first marriage yeah no that's what it seemed like yeah it's really sad so before pronouncing his sentence the judge addressed the family saying i think the thing that you can take away which i hope gives you some small measure of solace is that he was a mentor and a teacher to many and hopefully they will and hopefully they will turn and have an impact on others themselves as they teach and with that said he sentenced nancy to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years and then lifetime went on to make

the movie called how to murder your husband the nancy brophy story which i have not watched wow they took the name took the name that's crazy just like a really sad story overall because it just didn't need to happen no i mean what an idiot dude i mean i'm glad she's in jail i'm kind of disappointed that she has the possibility of parole in 25 years but um hopefully she'll be like withering and like dying at that point seriously but caleb thank you so much for joining me doggy of course dude thanks for having me i hope uh did all right my my uh it's been a while since i've done a true crime anything

really i think it's been like three years you did a great job and for those of you who were listening we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not so weird that you murder your husband and write a blog post about it because that's really too weird it's a little too weird We'll be right back.

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[The Culinary Crime: The Case of Nancy Crampton Brophy]-[Episode 449: The Murder of Daniel Brophy]

📋 Summary

The Twisted Tale of Nancy Crampton Brophy

A Culinary Union

The Red Flags of Greed

The Murder of Daniel Brophy

The "How-To" Murderer

Justice Served

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript