The author of “How to kill your husband” marries her biggest admirer and murders him as in the book

Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction, and sometimes it imitates it. This is what has happened with the writer of romantic and suspense novels Nancy Crampton Brophy71, author of an essay titled “How to Murder Your Husband” and other books such as “the wrong husband” and “The wrong lover”. Nothing foreshadowed that his fictitious story would end up being reality.

Four years ago, the writer killed Daniel Brophy, her husband, shot in the back inside the Oregon Culinary Institute, where he worked as a cook. The reason? Purely economic. Crampton wanted to keep the lucrative sum of life insurance money in the event of death, a million and a half dollars.

During the trial it was proven that the couple had financial difficulties at the time of the murder. The condemned confessed to having investigated and bought a kit of “ghost-gun” on the internet and also Glock 17 pistol. With it, he fired two shots at her husband, who was a cook and teacher at the institute, in the kitchen of the educational center.

In the popular essay, the woman gave advice on ways to get rid of a husband: she spoke of the possibility of using guns, knives and poisons without ruling out the option of resorting to hitmen. “It is easier to want people to die than to kill them”, she left written in her reflection, an essay written as an exercise in a literary workshop and that the judge did not admit as evidence during the trial.

The prescient essay begins like this: “As a writer of romantic thrillers, I spend a lot of time thinking about the murder and, consequently, the police procedure. After all, if murder is supposed to set me free, I certainly don’t want to spend time in jail.”

The Portland justice has ended up sentencing, after a seven-week trial, against the writer, whom he finds guilty of second degree murder. Although the gun was never found, the institute’s cameras recorded the moment Nancy entered and left the center. In addition, prosecutors argued that the writer had the motive and knowledge to carry out a murder like the one she ultimately committed.

The family of the late husband spoke very harshly against the widow. “You chose to lie, cheat, steal, defraud, and finally kill the man who was your biggest fan.” said Nathaniel Stillwater, Brophy’s son from a previous marriage. You were, borrowing from your catalogue, the wrong wife.