A Portland, Oregon-based romance novelist has been charged with a crime she once wrote about.
Nancy Crampton Brophy, author of an instructional online essay titled “How to Murder Your Husband,” has been charged in connection with the death of her husband, Daniel Brophy.
He was a chef. She shot him in the kitchen where he worked, say authorities.
Brophy wrote the essay on the blog “See Jane Publish” seven years ago, in November of 2011.
In it, she describes five motives, and various murder weapons she might use if her character were to kill a husband — in a romance novel.
WaPo:
She advised against hiring a hit man to do the dirty work — “an amazing number of hit men rat you out to the police” — and against hiring a lover. “Never a good idea.” Poison was not advised either, because it’s traceable. “Who wants to hang out with a sick husband?” she wrote.
“After all,” Crampton Brophy wrote in the post, which was made private after inquiries from The Washington Post to the site’s administrators, “if the murder is supposed to set me free, I certainly don’t want to spend any time in jail.”
In real life, she appeared to follow some of her own advice, at least according to police. Rather than hire a hit man, she allegedly pulled the trigger herself.
Crampton Brophy, 68, was arrested Sept. 5 on charges of murdering her husband with a gun and unlawful use of a weapon in the death of her husband, Daniel Brophy, according to the Portland Police Bureau. She was arraigned Thursday, appearing in blue inmate clothing, and ordered jailed without bail, court records show. She has not filed a plea, and her attorney declined to comment when contacted by The Post.
Police have not revealed the alleged motive. The story was first reported by the Oregonian.