Morbid: Episode 449: The Murder of Daniel Brophy

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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 dapper, dashhound.

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 wore a Santa hat.

You should have.

I can.

I mean, I like the turkey 100 hat.

I can't lie.

Shadow turkey 100.

Oh, go listen to scream.

But yeah.

So Caleb is joining me today because Alayna is busy at some kind of award show, getting

awards for her book and stuff.

I know things.

But yeah, Caleb was nice enough to join me while Alayna 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.

She's writing books, kicking ass, taking names.

I love that girl.

Period.

Period.

All right.

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

And I actually picked this case because I was watching.

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.

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 so the last name Brophy is crazy.

This woman is also completely delusional.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The fact that she thought she was going to get away with this is wild.

Sorry to alert you up front.

She did it.

I mean, yeah.

She definitely did it.

She definitely wrote about it.

The fact that she wrote about it.

So she wrote about it before it even happened where we're going to get into all of that.

But first I got to tell you about Nancy when she was born.

So okay.

Tell me about when she was born.

I'll tell you Nancy cramped in Brophy.

She was born Nancy Lee cramped in 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.

Yeah.

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

Yeah.

Gemini, middle child out here, Wilden.

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, 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 going to, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say there's like many Wichitas.

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 might be a Wichita, Kansas.

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

This is Wichita with Kayla Benes.

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 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 bitch.

She's definitely a flip flopper.

She is.

So it's unclear really how long their 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 show 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, oh, the enroll in culinary school.

Okay.

Yeah.

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

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

Interesting.

Yeah.

It was for like a minute.

Okay.

So I went to the culinary institute, which is now Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary

Arts.

It's another fun, fun set of words.

Cordon Bleu.

Yeah.

Le Cordon Bleu.

Le Cordon Bleu.

Um, but it was there that she ended up meeting Daniel Brophy.

So.

Oh, 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.

I know.

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 going to love this.

He became a mushroom hunter and gardener.

Oh, no, I don't love that.

No.

No, I hate mushrooms.

Uh, well, yeah, but I just thought you would love that like lifestyle.

Like he was just like, you know what?

I'm going to 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 and they, you know, they're just dirt.

I don't like them.

Okay.

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.

It 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 weird.

I could never imagine just walking out and going like, all right, I'm going to eat this

weird looking phallic thing growing out of the ground kids will eat like anything on

the ground.

But I mean, Elena's kids do not eat the mushrooms on the ground, but I feel the need to be like,

don't touch that.

You know, mushrooms just seem like something I shouldn't need.

Yeah.

But, but it's good to know which ones you can and cannot eat as 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 than 125 years.

Wow.

Okay.

It'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.

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 easy going 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...

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

these Nancy's, I don't know, so far...

It's like Karen's.

There's great Karen's.

But then there's Karen Karen's.

Yeah.

But then you feel bad for the great Karen's because they're like, Jesus Christ, I want

to change my name.

Yeah.

Some of these Nancy's are just, you know, they're making it bad for other Nancy's.

Needle and Nancy's.

You know?

I don't know.

That's the best I could come up with.

Yeah.

I know.

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.

But there was a big issue.

Daniel was married.

Okay.

So he couldn't be out here with Miss Nancy Nance.

You know, Nancy's roommate at the time, Tonya Medlin, 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 loved.

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 break that down.

No, not even the, that side of it, the candle side of it.

Why would you, why 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, Tonya was trying to say.

It's a saying and a half.

You know, but Nancy responded, well, that's not going to 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.

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, a 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 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 on the paperwork because like that's really relatable for

me, 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.

Whenever 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 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 standup 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 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 nineties, she joined a few writing groups

and she said that she had 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 because I don't know enough about all this part, is she a successful writer?

Like was she fairly big?

How 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.

But I don't think they were in the crazy amount of success.

Yeah, because I think we'll get into it later.

But one of the books she wrote, it seems 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 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.

So saturated already.

Exactly.

But we'll get there.

Don't jump ahead yet.

Okay, okay, okay.

So she really, when social media started 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-Brophy, 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 handsome heroes and at least

one heroine with chiseled bodies and dark coiffed hair.

Coiffed?

Coiffed.

Or coiffed, actually it was coiffed, my bad.

Their hair is coiffed?

Coiffed.

I don't even know what coiffed hair is.

I think it just means it's like in place.

It just seems like a very, I don't know, very lifetime explanation.

It's very like Nicholas Sparks 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 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.

I don't think it's, it's not a hole you can dig yourself in.

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 cute.

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 going to 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 bonus 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, 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.

And she bought a Victorian era Chastity belt for research.

To research what exactly?

Bonus Ripper genre.

I don't know.

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 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 like to be a fly on the wall for that.

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 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.

No, 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 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 for Daniel, like not for Nancy, for Daniel.

I'm like, uh-oh, and they're out of your face.

These life insurance preparers, how do they even allow that?

They should just be like, okay, wait.

I think that's why.

I think it's because they were going different places.

The other life insurance brokers, I guess, is what you call them.

They didn't realize that they already had five others taken out.

This is crazy.

It does.

They had six life insurance policies between 2014 and 2017 that they took out, and they

had a base payout of $400,000 and an additional $320,000 in the event that Daniel's death

was accidental.

Is this from each of them?

I think it was a majority of them, but I think between all of them, that's what would

have happened.

Can you just do that?

Can you just have multiple life insurance policies and just 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 I don't

know a lot about life insurances.

I mean, people aren't going around with three different car insurances, you know what I

mean?

Right.

I mean, you have to get approved for all of them.

Also, fun fact, getting life insurance is really fucking hard.

It's really fucking annoying because you have to answer 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 couldn't pay me money, 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 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.

And they've never 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, you know, like you got to get something to supplement this if you're in

the red.

So the morning of June 2nd, 2018, we're flash forwarding here and fast forwarding.

It started out pretty much.

Sorry.

Let me catch you off real quick.

What timeline were we at before that?

Before that we were between 2017 or 2014 and 2017.

Oh, OK.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

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 going to 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 was getting there early and just like being able to set up the kitchen before all the

people came.

Now, a coworker 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 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 pictures 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 bullet caused his body to spin

around 180 degrees, at which point his killer fired again, quote, directly center mass to

his chest, Jesus, which sent a second bullet tearing through his torso, ultimately piercing

his heart.

Damn.

That's brutal.

Brutal, 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 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 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.

And I think there's only like a few because they were doing like weekend classes, Saturday

and Sunday type thing.

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 one other worker or 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 911.

There's a body over here.

I like found him over there.

Yeah.

Can you imagine you're just like filing into your classroom and you're like, oh, I got

to take a Saturday class and that's what you stumble into.

Yeah.

Like the 911 call was pretty crazy too.

I didn't listen to it.

I can never listen to 911 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 that'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 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 911.

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 the rifle.

So Portland detectives Anthony Merrill and Darren Posey arrived at OSI, excuse me, around

eight 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.

Merrill told interviewers from Dateline they wanted to get in quick and get out quick.

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 weird, 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, immediately to 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 going to cry right

away.

Some people are going to, you know, freeze.

Yeah.

Everyone has different reactions, man.

Yeah.

Nancy just makes weird comments and then she cries.

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

you later today.

Like 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.

Yeah.

It seemed like a good dude.

He really did.

And then Nancy shared her thoughts online 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 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, 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, but yeah, I guess in hindsight

looking at it.

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.

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.

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.

And I was like, hey, you know, she's tired of 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.

Karen 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 Marilyn 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 hell would want to do that?

Daniel was super well liked.

So they were having a really hard time coming up with anybody who just liked 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 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.

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 the 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, honestly, he kind of reminds me of my grandpa, you know,

like just like a very direct guy.

Yeah.

Like, he might fuck with you a little bit.

He might like piss you off because he's not going to like beat around the bush.

But it's like, hey, he's not like, he's not a bad do murder material, you know, no, exactly.

Not that anybody is, but no.

Yeah.

So I think that's exactly like, you put it so perfectly, like he's not going to beat

around the bush.

Like, he's just going to 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

had 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 7.08 AM, when she was supposedly at home sleeping, a surveillance camera from a business

across the street from the culinary 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 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, I'm not a giant idiot 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 come on, man.

Now again, that she was not snoozing like she said she was because that same camera

where she was caught at seven, oh eight 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 not a suspect in the murder so that she could

assure the insurance company she wasn't involved in the death.

Okay, buddy.

Okay, 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 Posey clearly had never been asked for such a letter by anybody and he was like, yeah,

girl, like that's not going to happen.

His real direct quote was he literally said to her, 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 just like, wait, so her quote wasn't, yeah, buddy.

No, 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 who 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, honed in 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 it makes sense.

She's haunted by his side 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 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.

So 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 C Jane Publish and it was titled How to Murder

Your Husband.

Yeah.

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 your

is not your goal, like don't write about how to murder people.

It's that's something else.

So this 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.

She launched into the pros and cons of the five methods of murder.

The essay recommended against hiring a hit man to do the job because quote an amazing

number of hit men hit men rat you out to the police.

How many hit men do you know?

Thank you, Nancy.

What statistic is this?

She beat it up.

She then cautioned against using poison saying who wants to hang out with a sick husband?

Yeah, that's that's the downside to poisoning your bands.

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 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 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 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.

I can see that being like her kind of logic, you know, in this.

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 and they're like, OK, 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 or 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 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 had never fired it, that it was for research.

Blotty dodo or it was because her all her friends had one and she decided to get it.

I think 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 that, but maybe it was because later detectives learned that this wasn't

the first gun Nancy had 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 nine 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 going to look at your search history.

Yeah.

I mean, you bought 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 maybe people that are like more into guns, but I don't know, like that's still just,

it's crazy.

This chick riding murder mystery fucking lifetime novels about killing her husband.

I mean, I don't know.

And she's saying she's going to wish people dead, but then she thought to do this.

That's something else.

It's wild.

I love that she was like, yeah, the ghost gun kit online was too hard for me, but I

was able to switch out several components of another gun.

She's in the big mouth 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.

And 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 after David in the first place was the surveillance video

footage proving that contrary to her statement, Nancy was at the school during the very short

window of time in which Daniel was killed.

So can I actually play you a clip that I think is very interesting kind of regarding that?

Yes, you may.

This is like from one of her trials, I believe.

You were there in the area at the same time as 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, fan dates 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.

Then why are you lying about sleeping?

You really put it out there like pretty straightforward.

Within a six minute time frame, she goes, nope, your defense terrible.

What do you mean?

Why?

Why is the defense terrible?

Because it's worth in her favor.

That's the thing.

It's so crazy.

On the morning of September 5th, 2018, just three months after the murder of her husband,

she's arrested Nancy at her home, 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 grabbed the Skittles from the Kroger.

You just like had a couple unpaid parking tickets, Nancy, we're just going to take

you downtown.

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.

Exactly.

The right to remain silent.

Anything you say can be a 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 house

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.

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.

She 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 onto some exciting

ideas.

Honestly, we were coming to terms that this would be an unsolved murder.

It doesn't make any sense.

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anguish.

So how does our culture allow them to thrive?

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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 different gun parts, and they're like, holy

shit, I knew this woman and 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 chelping 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 say silent out

of respect for a man who had life valued his privacy, which I think is cool.

So yeah, good stuff.

Yeah.

Good stuff.

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, 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.

Yeah, that should be.

Yeah, agreed.

So as the prosecution and the defense did their thing, detectives actually kept on

investigating and gathering more and more evidence against our girl, Nancy, who is 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 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 different slide and barrel.

And that's why Nancy thought she was going to get away with it.

I mean, like, 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, potential Nancy's out there, but 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 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.

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.

I don't, I don't know, maybe other people listening, they're like, 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 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.

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 like, it might be confusing to the jury.

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 blog post or whatever it

happened to be.

Exactly.

Well, in the prosecution, they were okay with that because they had actually planned

and their argument to minimize that post anyway, because they had stronger evidence.

So they were okay with it being omitted and 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 did it, he was a problem for her.

Ultimately, Nancy's out for number one.

Right.

Exactly.

It's Taylor's oldest time.

I think she's entitled to a certain lifestyle and she's going to 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 late fifties, early sixties.

That's just, I don't know.

At that point, I feel like material things mean less and less the older you get.

I think that it depends on who you are.

I think if you've gotten what you wanted out of life so far and you get to 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 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 like you were saying, I think she was always out for number one.

She's definitely out for number one, Nancy.

You suck.

Right?

Crazy.

And as overstreet, again, the prosecutor put it to the jury, Dan Brophy was worth almost

$1.5 million to Nancy if he was dead, but worth a life of financial hardship if he stayed

alive.

Damn.

So fucked up, either way, it's your husband.

I know, and it sucks that 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, I can't imagine putting a value on how much Drew is worth to me, like a money

of monetary value.

Right.

That's crazy.

Way more than that.

Like, I would, what?

It's like, hey, this is also a human, you know, do you remember that part?

Exactly.

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 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 $800,000.

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, the Oregon Culinary

Institute.

I definitely did.

Yeah.

That's 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 Steven Santos.

He testified 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, because 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 still potentially could have been in the red.

I'm sure she would have been.

And it sounded like it wasn't going well.

No.

And eventually, I think even if she 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 going to 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 crept in 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 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 write a whole entire article on how to murder your husband while she was married

to a perfectly great husband?

Did she write a letter to the insurance and go, hey, can I get that money, post haste?

No, she let her, that wasn't even to the insurance.

That was to the detective.

She said, can I get a letter clearing me as 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, the woman is delusional.

Truly.

Is the definition of the word.

And then 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, if you ask a friend who has one or something to 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 isn't that, but I've never fired

it.

How much research are you doing about it?

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 for how to cover up a murder were also just

for research.

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 they start offering up their own theories.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Like, okay.

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 then he said, she was also being a little racist when she did this because the 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 that.

You should be offended.

That'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 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 had saw the guns.

Nancy 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, quote, obsessed with gun parts and that

the missing 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 was gonna go, look,

they're right here.

And then they were gonna go, 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.

It's storage somewhere.

Surely.

She'd be like, my account was hacked.

She'd be like, oh no, ridiculous.

So some of her testimony 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 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.

It'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.

Maxwell even said at one point that the best proven fact during the trial was that Nancy

and Dan loved each other.

That doesn't.

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.

I did.

You're not wrong.

I thought I was going to move past that.

But I did.

Assailants.

So on May 25, 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 13, and that's when they did victim impact statements.

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 his first marriage.

Yeah.

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 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 hopefully

she'll be withering and dying at that point.

Seriously.

But Caleb, thank you so much for joining me, doggie.

Of course, dude.

Thanks for having me.

Of course you're welcome.

Anytime.

I hope I did all right.

It's been a while since I've done a true crime, anything really.

I think it's been like three years.

I think you did a great job.

For those of you who are listening, we hope you keep listening, and we hope you keep

it weird.

Weird.

But not so weird that you murder your husband and write a blog post about it, because that's

really too weird.

Bye.

It's a little too weird.

For my taste.

Peace.

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.