How romance writer became a cold-blooded killer and...

SITTING down at her computer in the four-bedroom house she shared with her husband Dan, Nancy Brophy looked every inch the genteel romance novelist – big round cheeks, curly grey hair, glasses. She had recently self-published her first steamy thriller, The Wrong Brother, which – like all her subsequent books – starred a beautiful but desperate woman and muscle-bound hero.

Image Credit: The Sun [Nancy Crampton Brophy in court.]

But that day as she was writing at home, in November 2011, Nancy had something very different on her mind. “I don’t want blood and brains spattered on my walls. And really, I’m not good at remembering lies. "But the thing I know about murder is that every one of us has it in him or her when pushed far enough,” she wrote on her blog.

Image Credit: The Sun [Photo of Dan Brophy, a culinary instructor.]

Her post, entitled How To Murder Your Husband, proved eerily prophetic. Seven years later, Nancy, now 74, would indeed go on to murder her husband in an elaborate scheme to pocket more than $1million in life insurance policies. Making headlines beyond their US hometown of Portland, the murder inspired a film starring Steve Guttenberg and Cybill Shepherd in 2023, named after her ominous blog post.

Image Credit: The Sun [Book cover for Nancy Brophy's *The Wrong Husband*.]

It’s now the subject of Wondery podcast Happily Never After: Dan And Nancy, which unravels a tale stranger than any fiction Nancy ever wrote. Born in Texas, where she grew up with lawyer parents, Nancy moved to Portland in the early 90s following the end of her first marriage.

Image Credit: The Sun [A woman being comforted by police officers at a death investigation scene.]

She enrolled in culinary school and met Dan, a divorced chef instructor. He was quiet and serious, whereas she was outgoing and garrulous. Opposites attracted and the pair fell in love and married in 1993. By 2000, they were living a seemingly idyllic life in the suburbs, with their chicken coop and a nice home that had a kitchen garden.

Image Credit: The Sun [Prosecutor presenting a crime scene map during a trial.]

They never had children, but Nancy – who had long dreamed of being a writer – often described on her blog how much she loved Dan and how healthy their sex life was. It was in Portland that Heidi Tretheway, who hosts the Happily Never After podcast, first met Nancy in 1993.

Image Credit: The Sun [Nancy Crampton Brophy in court during her trial.]

“I joined our local writing group, the Rose City Romance Writers,” says Heidi. “Nancy made an impression, not just on me, but on almost everyone there. "She had real ‘main character’ energy. She even had a thing where she would hand out roses to writers for finishing their novels, like she was on The Bachelor.

Image Credit: The Sun [Man in suit holding a handgun.]

“All her books had similar plots – there was always a woman in a troubled relationship, and almost always a gun involved. . .”. Still, no one could ever have believed it was anything but fiction – until on June 2, 2018, when Dan, 63, was found dead in his cooking school kitchen at Oregon Culinary Institute.

Image Credit: The Sun [Screenshot of a Facebook post announcing the death of the author's husband.]

When police arrived, they confirmed Dan had been shot in the back and chest as he’d struggled on the ground. It was a brutal assassination, but there was no forced entry, no defensive wounds and nothing stolen. As shockwaves rippled through Portland, the close-knit community struggled to make sense of it. Chef Brophy had been so quiet, so unassuming and well-liked – who could possibly have wanted him dead?.

Image Credit: The Sun [Mugshot of Nancy Crampton Brophy.]

Called to the scene by police, Nancy took the news of her husband’s death calmly, though officers surmised she must have been in shock. Asked some routine questions about her whereabouts and whether they owned a gun, Nancy explained she’d been in bed writing that morning and they did have a gun, which she’d got for protection, but hadn’t bought bullets for.

Later, on Facebook, she posted that she’d lost her “best friend” and was “struggling to make sense of everything”, asking that people give her space to grieve. However, she also told friends and family she was going to sell the house, and asked for help decluttering and clearing the garden, getting rid of Dan’s beloved chickens and uprooting the kitchen garden.

Meanwhile, the police continued their investigation. The Brophys’ gun, a Glock semi-automatic, was the same calibre as the shell casings left at the scene. It was sent to ballistics to see if it was a match, but Nancy still wasn’t considered a suspect.

That began to change when detectives reviewed security cameras from businesses in the area. Footage from a pizzeria across the street revealed a silver minivan like Nancy’s driving by just before 7.30am – the time Dan was killed. Then, on June 6, one of the lead detectives received a phone call from Nancy asking for a letter of exoneration to prove she wasn’t a suspect.

She said it was needed by the company handling Dan’s life insurance claim of $40,000. Suspicious, investigators combed through the couple’s bank statements and discovered that they were struggling financially. “After over a decade of writing romance, Nancy didn’t have an agent or a publisher,” reveals Heidi. “She was still self-publishing and offering her books online for free.”.