Nancy Crampton Brophy wrote an essay entitled “How to Kill Your Husband”. But apparently she didn’t follow her own instructions properly – and has now been convicted of murdering her husband.
Apparently she didn’t heed her own advice properly: In the US, a writer who wrote an essay entitled “How to Kill Your Husband” has been convicted of murdering her husband. After eight hours of deliberation, the Oregon jury returned a guilty verdict on Wednesday, and the Nancy Crampton Brophy will hear her sentence on June 13. The 71-year-old rejects any guilt.
Crampton Brophy is known for a whole series of novels with evocative titles like The Wrong Husband or The Wrong Lover. The essay How to Kill Your Husband is about the way a woman can get rid of her spouse without being bothered by the judiciary. It states, among other things, that firearms are “loud, create a mess and require some skill”.
Author is said to have shot a man in the heart – for life insurance
But this is exactly how she is said to have killed her husband. According to prosecutors, she shot the then 63-year-old twice in the heart in June 2018 at the cooking school where he worked as a chef to collect his life insurance. So she had financial problems – and the hundreds of thousands of dollars from insurance should enable her to live a lifestyle that her husband could not offer her.
Crampton Brophy denied all allegations. Surveillance footage of her near the crime scene said she was only looking for inspiration for her books. She bought a missing pistol – according to the police, the murder weapon – to research a novel that was never completed.
She also denied the prosecution’s motive for the crime. She is better off financially with her husband than without him, she testified at the trial. Their financial problems have been solved for a long time.
Defense plans to appeal
The defense has announced an appeal, local newspaper The Oregonian reported. “Nancy Brophy loved her husband,” her attorney Kristen Winemiller told the jury, becoming almost lyrical herself: “You could see it in her eyes when she talked about him. Her eyes were shining, they were really beaming.”
In her blog about motives and methods for getting rid of an unwanted spouse, Crampton Brophy also wrote that any woman, any man, is capable of it – “if only sufficiently goaded.”