A writer who once penned a piece titled How to Murder Your Husband has been convicted of fatally shooting her husband by a jury in Portland, Oregon.
The jury took just eight hours to return a guilty verdict of second-degree murder against Nancy Crampton Brophy for shooting dead 63-year-old Daniel Brophy at the Oregon Culinary Institute in June 2018 on Wednesday (May 25).
Prosecutors said the self-published romance novelist, whose Wrong Never Felt So Right series of novels include The Wrong Husband and The Wrong Lover, killed her husband in a scheme to collect his $1.4 million life insurance policy.
Authorities said that her spouse had been shot twice, and was found dead by his students.
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The 71-year-old had denied the charge and insisted security camera footage that put her at the scene captured her looking for inspiration for her upcoming novel, but she admitted she had 'no memory' of being there.
The writer also claimed a missing gun, which police believe was the murder weapon, that had been bought months before her husband’s death was research for the novel.
She also denied that the multiple life assurance policies in the event of her husband's death were a motive for murder.
“She had the plan in place,” Shawn Overstreet, a deputy district attorney claimed in closing arguments last week, according to the New York Times.
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“She had the opportunity to carry out this murder. She was the only one who had the motive. Nancy is the only person who could have committed this crime”.
However, lawyers for Crampton Brophy claimed the writer and her husband were actually in a loving relationship of more than 25 years.
"Nancy Brophy loved her husband," her attorney Kristen Winemiller told the jury at the trial.
"You can see that in her eyes every time she talked about him. Her eyes lit up, they absolutely twinkled."
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Despite their argument, the 12 person jury delivered a guilty verdict after about eight hours of deliberation.
Lisa Maxfield, one of Crampton Brophy's lawyers, said the defence now plans to appeal the verdict.
She said: “We were hoping [the jury] would see it as the ‘could've, should've, would've that we did, but they didn't’.”
Crampton Brophy was arrested in September 2018 and has been in custody since, with the murder trial having begun in April. The writer faces life in prison and will be sentenced later.
Her blog post titled How To Kill Your Husband discusses methods and motivations for murdering an unwanted spouse.
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The motivations include financial gain and the use of a firearm, however it notes guns are 'loud, messy, require some skill'.
Lisa McLoughlin