Where is Nancy Crampton-Brophy now? Lifetime's 'How To Murder Your Husband' follows author's dark crime
PORTLAND, OREGON: Lifetime will soon be premiering the new movie, 'How To Murder Your Husband: The Nancy Brophy Story', on Saturday, January 14. The film stars Cybill Shepherd as Nancy Crampton-Brophy whose fondness for writing about murder is the basis for the story. Drawing from a real-life situation, Nancy was a Portland-based writer with a flair for writing stories of murder and mystery.
Her books, which typically featured attractive men on the covers and female protagonists yearning to get rid of their husbands or escape by faking their own deaths, took an unexpected turn when Nancy was found guilty of the murder of her own spouse in 2022. Nancy had become infamous for being the author of the essay 'How To Murder Your Husband' and many thought she had planned the murder beforehand. Now, with the release of the new Lifetime feature film based on Nancy's story, viewers might be wondering about the defamed author's current situation. Keep reading to know in-depth details.
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Where is Nancy Crampton-Brophy now?
According to A&E News, in 2018, 72-year-old Nancy was arrested and charged with second-degree murder for the shooting and killing of her husband, Daniel Brophy, who was an instructor at the then operational Oregon Culinary Institute. After a seven-week trial, she was convicted in May 2022 and sentenced to life in prison. Nancy is currently serving her sentence at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility located in Wilsonville, Oregon.
At trial, the prosecution alleged that the romance and thriller novelist had been planning for months to murder her spouse in order to get her hands on his $1.4 million life insurance policy and gain possession of their $300,000 residence. The prosecution argued that the Brophys were having financial difficulties, citing that the year before Daniel's death, the couple withdrew $35,000 from his retirement fund, almost half its total, to make payments on their mortgage and credit cards.
Nancy had murdered her husband, chef Daniel, by shooting him twice at close range in the chest. Daniel was later discovered dead by his students. He had been filling buckets of water and ice after arriving and unlocking the building in the morning. But Nancy stated that her situation would have been significantly improved if her husband was still alive as they had been in the process of cashing out their retirement plans and were planning to downsize their property.
The defense earlier theorized that the homicide of Daniel may have been due to a botched robbery. It was the essay, 'How To Murder Your Husband', that linked her closely to the murder. While the judge excluded the text as proof, "the prosecutor quoted its themes without mentioning it by name," Oregon Live reported. Nancy outlined five possible motives for murder in her writing: financial gain, getting revenge for cheating or lying, an affair, being a victim of abuse. Additionally, she outlined various ways in which one could take the life of another.
While surveillance video footage also showed that Nancy had been spotted near the institution where Daniel worked and had even purchased a Glock pistol recently, similar to the one her husband had been shot with, Nancy denied the claims. She stated that she did not remember any of the details after suffering from shock after learning of her husband's death.
After months of deliberation, a jury in Multnomah County found her guilty of second-degree murder. The evidence uncovered by the prosecution indicated that Nancy had both the means and the cause to murder her husband as she would have profited considerably from his life insurance policy worth $1.4 million. Consequently, Nancy was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment with the option of parole after 25 years.
Watch 'How to Murder Your Husband: The Nancy Brophy Story' to catch the full story on Saturday, January 14, 2023, at 8 pm ET on Lifetime.
