Prime Crime: Solved Murders - How To Murder Your Husband: The Nancy Brophy Case

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

Daniel Brophy was an extraordinary chef who dedicated his life to his craft, teaching at a culinary school in a tranquil suburb of Portland, Oregon. His passion for cooking extended beyond the classroom, as he raised chickens and turkeys in his backyard and grew his own vegetables to create unique, gourmet dishes. Brophy's love for food and his commitment to sharing his knowledge with others made him a beloved figure in the community. Tragically, on June 2, 2018, Daniel Brophy's life was cut short when he was brutally gunned down in the kitchen of the Oregon Culinary Institute, one of the places where he felt most at home. The shocking murder left the culinary world and the Portland community reeling, as they struggled to come to terms with the loss of such a talented and beloved chef. As the investigation into Brophy's death unfolded, suspicion fell on his wife, romance novelist Nancy Crampton Brophy, who had written an essay titled "How to Murder Your Husband" years earlier. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Prime Crime. 9-1-1. There's somebody collapsed in one of our kitchens. Do you know what happened? Somebody just found him on the floor. An adored chef is killed in cold blood. I just can't imagine who would want to kill him. Sparking a search for the one who committed this callous murder.

There was no video. There was no eyewitness. It didn't look like anything was really disturbed. It seemed like there was something really personal going on here. Hey, everybody. I'm Jesse Weber. Prime Prime is taking... Own it all.

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Now, Prime Crime is a true crime docu series. It dives into cases across America. It features exclusive interviews, body cam, interrogations, a lot more. It's all in the pursuit of truth and justice. So join us each week for riveting and respectful storytelling and in-depth reporting. Hey there, everybody. I'm Jesse Weber and welcome to Prime Crime, where we break down the most compelling and memorable true crime cases. Our next story starts with the sudden killing of a culinary instructor.

This left investigators scratching their heads. Who would want to kill this man? A stranger, an enemy, a loved one? Let's find out. 911. Hi, we are at Oregon Culinary Institute. There's somebody collapsed in one of our kitchens. It's early Saturday morning, June 2nd, 2018, at the Oregon Culinary Institute in Portland.

students walk in expecting a day of learning techniques and recipes yet instead they discover the body of their instructor 63-year-old daniel brophy lying on the floor of one of the school's kitchens he's one of our chefs and he's an older man all right is he conscious right now no he is not conscious is he breathing no he's not breathing Daniel brofey was at his school where he teaches culinary arts and on that day he was preparing for students to come in. It was just like any other day. The students had found Chef Brophy lying on his back by the sink. The water was still running. One of the students, Clorinda Perez, actually tried to perform CPR.

They assumed that he had maybe had a medical event. Do you know the cause of this or what happened? Did he just go out? We have no idea. Somebody just found him on the floor. What made it harder at the beginning was we have our initial 911 call that even that's confusing. The callers stating, hey, we have an older gentleman down. They didn't even know right away that Dan had been shot. He's bleeding out of his chest. If someone's still doing CPR?

Yes, so should you keep going? The gunshot wounds were not apparent. There was no pool of blood. There wasn't the classic kind of signs that people imagine. And it wasn't until Clarinda Perez saw blood on her hand that they realized that, oh, this isn't some sort of heart attack. You're doing a good job. I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry. Oh, my God. Do you see any of the responders? No, they're getting him. Okay. Officials are called to the scene, but they aren't sure what exactly happened or even what to expect when they arrive.

Fire and medical arrived, they realized after examining Shep Rofi's body that he had what appeared to be a possible gunshot strike to his chest. They found two spent shell casings lying on the floor. The patient is an instructor at the location. He's bleeding out of his chest and the ribs are broken. This is a shooting victim.

Okay, we need to figure out if this just happened and where the shooter is. Because this was a large building and it was a school, they didn't know if it might have been an active shooter situation and if the shooter could still be in the building. I can hear footsteps upstairs. I don't know if that is related to this building. They went through and methodically cleared the entire building to make sure there was no shooter or suspect still at the scene. It looks like a lockdown. They don't know what the suspect is, so we need a bunch of people here.

This is a building with exits on multiple streets. If the shooter's still at large, we need to have a perimeter going. After confirming there's no active threat on the property, authorities have to figure out what happened here. You start immediately thinking motive, who would want to do this? Why would somebody want to do this? Why would somebody want to? to do this. We treated it like we do any other homicide. We start to separate all the witnesses. And in this situation, there were numerous witnesses because there were two different classes going on that day. So there were anywhere from 30 to 40 some students. We started looking at the students first, the students that were there, and then more importantly, the students that weren't there, that should have been. So we tracked all of them down.

While you've been here, have you noticed homeless people or transients hanging around? A lot, yeah. I found a couple needles in the bushes right out there by where we smoke. You know, it kind of looked like, well, given the area of downtown Portland, you know, could have been a robbery gone wrong. A couple months ago, somebody had broke the window. Did they get entry into the building or just... No, they just broke it and they had to fix up the next day.

Those were some of the things we were thinking. Could have been maybe a houseless person that came in and wanted to rob the place, but Chef Brophy interrupted it. There was a homeless man on this side of the street with his back turned towards me. He looked in the recycling bins over there and then kind of peaked around the corner to the parking lot and then just walked up the street.

This was today? Mm-hmm. It just didn't seem that way from him working at the sink and getting shot in the back. There was no video, there was no eyewitness, and it didn't look like anything was really disturbed. One person that became of interest was a guy named Oscar Taylor. I've prosecuted him before. We know him as somebody who steals. He was out looking for canned. Introducing Taco Bell's new

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They get their race day fit and you get a payout for trying. Someone on Deepop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Deepop where Taste recognizes taste. That warning, which is pretty normal. So we thought, okay, he didn't go canning, walk in, murder Dan for no reason whatsoever, and then just leave. That doesn't make any sense. You know, he's living from day to day trying to survive canning.

I don't expect him to have a $500 Glock handgun in his pocket. There's no signs of forced entry on the building. They don't really find anything as if somebody had done a robbery or something of that nature. Is there anything of value inside the school or anything that anybody would, you think, would break in to want to take? I mean, food or equipment is the only real thing that I could think of. I mean, unless there's money in there, but I, we wouldn't know about that. The one of the things that stood out right away was that Dan's wallet was there with money in it.

He had cash in his pocket, his credit cards, debit cards, his ID, his cell phone, his watch, his keys. Nothing was taken. We thought, okay, this maybe is more personal, maybe this was targeted. You said there's no students that really don't get along with Chef Brophy. Oh, everybody knows Chef Brophy? I couldn't think of anybody in that school right now that would be upset with him at all. He's a very, very kind person. The lack of evidence was pretty telling.

When you're looking at the crime scene and you're looking at the video from outside the crime scene, and you don't see anybody fleeing. There's nobody running down the sidewalk. There's no car speeding away. Everyone liked Dan, everyone respected Dan. He was passionate.

His students respected him and loved him. They adored him. Nobody had a bad thing to say about him. He worked them hard and that's what they respected most about him because he brought the best out of them. Investigators aren't sure at this point had a piece together who killed Chef Brophy, and they need to get a better understanding of his life. That's when they decide to speak with his wife, 67-year-old Nancy Brofey.

Perhaps she could provide some clues as to who may have done this to her husband. So Nancy, I think some people kind of notified you that something's coming on. Just what they heard on the news. KGW. said that there was a shooting, there was one fatality. Nancy was from Texas. She decided she was going to go into the culinary world. And that's where she met Dan.

In the early 90s, Dan was actually her instructor. They got together and they eventually got married in 99. Nancy wore a lot of hats. She was developing her writing. She was working on some books. She sold insurance. She also sold Medicare covers. Nancy and Dan have been married for years.

They were known to love each other, and they were always with each other. Sometimes it's the people closest to the victim that can provide the best information. Up next, can Nancy Brophy help law enforcement find her husband's killer? Here's the question I'm just realizing. Where is he now? He's in the building. Oh, man. We're going to do a lot of pictures. We're going to search for evidence, talk to all of the students.

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You can learn more at Palmpeperspray.com and use code Crime Crime 10 for 10% off. I just can't imagine who would want to kill him. He wasn't that kind of guy. You know, I've never even known him to have a confrontation with anybody. Back on June 2, 2018, culinary students discover 63-year-old cooking instructor Dan Brofey shot to death on the floor of a kitchen at the Portland, Oregon Culinary Institute. Investigators are exploring every avenue to determine who would want Chef Brofei dead. Hours after the murder, Dan's wife, 67-year-old Nancy Brophy,

arrives downtown at the school. The wife on the victim just shut up. Where is she at? She's at 17 in Jefferson, and she has not been notified. We were just kind of standing around, and that's when Nancy Brofie first got to the crime scene. I just remember that very vividly she was just standing there. Didn't show any emotion.

She was just kind of there. Police initially met when Nancy to let her know that her husband was killed. It was something that's normal with every homicide that takes place. We took Nancy Brophy into the van that's set up for interviews. I thought this looks pretty complicated here. There's a lot of unanswered questions. I think maybe we should record the notification with her. Detective Darren Posey began asking her questions.

What time did he from your guys' place? He left, I'm going to say, seven-ish, maybe seven. 705, that's about the time he normally lives. Okay. We need to learn as much as we can about Chef Brof's activities that morning, what he did, what he's last doing, if there was anything going on, problems, grievances with other people. You guys up earlier this morning or anything? He's up there early every morning.

He has his list of things he does. You know, he walks the dogs, he feeds the chickens. She said that he had come up and taken a shower upstairs in the master bedroom area while she was in bed and then he left. I didn't sleep well. I woke up when he came up for a shower. He used to shower downstairs, but you'll see stitches on his hand? Because last week in the shower, our shower door shutters.

He's not having a good week. Oh, that sounded good. So after he got his shower this morning though, he didn't need a spotter. Okay. Okay. So, and then you think he left like around seven. The next thing you know after that, when did you know? Did you hear something?

Maxine called me. She said, what do you know about what's going on at OCI? And I said, I don't know anything, what's going on? And she said, well, it's on the news. And I said, okay. And she told me what she had heard. A mutual friend of hers and Dan's, Maxine called Nancy. Maxine kind of filled her in and asked her if she was going to go down to the Culinary Institute.

And Nancy's reply to me. was fairly odd. She said that she wasn't because something along the lines of there was going to be too many cops or there was going to be a lot of cops around there. And then she gets a call from Dan's mom, Karen. And then it was really when Karen insisted that she needed to go down there. That's apparently when Nancy decided that she needed to. As investigators push for more information, they look for possible suspects from Dan's life. Is he typically the first person that opens up in the first person? morning?

No, Yadu is. Yadu is. Yadu? You know, I think Yadu gets here in the middle of the night because it seems to me like Yadu is always here. And that's the cleaning guy, correct? Yes. Somebody whose name came up was a janitor that may or may not have been there that night before

or maybe even that morning. Was there any kind of issues with Yadu or any kind of issues with anybody at the school? You know, the hand is... Dan is not hellful well met. We had no communication issues. I'm not trying to make it sound that way, but he's not a chatter. We had alarm panel codes,

and so we had the history of the alarm panel. We know nobody was there the night before or the morning up before Dan. Here's the other thing. He doesn't harbor grudges. When he first went to work at Western Culinary, God, I'm going to have to tell you his stories here. There was another chef that really disliked him.

Dan said, he's just a guy with a different opinion. in the mind. And he just never in 25 years of teaching, I have never heard him bad mouth of a student one time, ever. Dan Brophy was a beloved teacher. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney Plus. Let's go. Get ready for a new case. We're going to crack this case and prove for a decoranist

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said he knew that wanted his teacher position or wanted his job. We just don't know. She made it very clear that nobody would want to hurt Dan. He wasn't abusive at home. You know, he wasn't secretly doing side deals with people. He went to work, tended his chickens, and lived a pretty simple life. There's no, you know, like he was like, oh man, that's person's really got it out for me or none of that kind of. And that wouldn't be how he thought anyway. Okay. Dan kind of is his own little world.

God, that makes him sound incompetent. He's not. He's not. He's not. Where to turn in a case where it seemed no one wanted Dan Brophy dead. Yet coming up, authorities learned some case-changing information. She said, oh, no, I was doing research for my book, for my writing. That's why I was looking that information up.

It had nothing to do with wanting to kill my husband. Even if you find who shot him, he's not going to bring him back. And I want him back. I don't care about who shot him. I just want him back. I don't want him dead. 2018, Portland, Oregon. Investigators are working to determine who shot and killed culinary instructor Daniel Brophy in a teaching kitchen where he worked at the Oregon Culinary Institute.

He had been shot twice through the heart. As police try to learn more information about him, Dan from his wife, Nancy Brophy, a self-published romance author, they realize her behavior and answers are a bit off. When they met with Nancy, Nancy very talkative, inserting herself a little bit, but more shocking was when they let her know that her husband is a person that was killed. I just want to let you know. We believe it's Dan that's been killed. Yeah, I kind of got that when everybody gave me the sad sack. She's like, oh, I figured that by the way that people were looking at me.

You're being told that the love of your life, this person that you just saw this morning, this person that you've been with for over 10 years, was just killed and there's no reaction. The unusual thing was she never asked us, is my husband okay? Is he doing okay? prior to her finally being notified that he was in fact deceased. Is there anybody that, you know, that wanted to do something to Dan? Everybody I've heard from so far is like, Dan's a nice guy. He is a nice guy.

You know, and students seem to like him and everything. He's not a rabble ralcer. I mean, he is, he just, it took me four and a half years to convince him to marry me. Yeah. She was giggling, she was laughing, she was being very tall. She wasn't in shock. But then, Nancy finally starts asking questions, which leads to some interesting details. We're just trying to figure out what, you know, and that's why I'm asking some of these kind of questions.

Can you tell me what happened as far as you know? He was shot. Was an AR-15? No, I don't know what he was shot. Why do you say AR-15? Because school shootings are all AR-15 is now. Was it an AR-15 that killed him? 15, they killed him.

And we just were like, what? It just seemed like an unusual question. I realize and understand that there's always shock and different reactions that people have in a time of such trauma. So we didn't pay too much attention to it. Does Dan O'ney kind of guns at all, or does he carry a gun at all for any reason?

For protection or anything? You're gonna be so embarrassed. I'm kind of embarrassed. After the Marjorie Douglas Stoneman shooting, in February. We talked about it. And I said, maybe we ought to buy a gun. And he said, okay. And so there was a gun show. And I went down and bought a gun. Nancy disclosed that back in February, they had purchased a Glock 17-9mm. She said that they got it home. They took it out of the box. They looked at it. They thought it was ugly, heavy, kind of scared them a little bit. And so she just put it away and never did anything with it.

I bought this gun. I got it home. We looked at it and neither one of us wanted it. And so it's still on my closet shelf and it still has that little plastic band around the shooter thing. We've never even bought bullets for it. Is it a pistol or is it a rifle? It's a lock. It's a handgun. At first we're thinking, well, if she is the murderer, there's no way this is the gun. She just voluntarily turned it over. So we tested it and and it was not a match. We knew the gun she got from the gun show was not the gun that shot Dan Bruffey. She liked to have hands-on experience with props and things that she used in her books. I work with a bunch of writers.

I'm a writer too. I write romantic suspense. And I work with all these writers and everybody has a gun. The thing though that didn't fit is that she bought approximately $1,500 worth of guns and gun parts during this time. time frame leading up to her husband's murder.

It was heavy. Well, because you know how heavy again is. Sorry. It was heavy and it felt terrible handling it. It was like. Just wasn't something that you guys did. No, real frankly, I couldn't imagine ever needing it. We did a search of one of her storage units and we found a box and sure enough they open up the box and there were scarves and purses and it.

a glot kit. It was a ghost gun. We thought, oh my gosh, this must be it. This must be the murder weapon. But as we got looking closer at the physical gun itself, we realized, I knew about investing, but I really didn't know how to go about it. Meet Corey, a Walthfront client. With Welfront, it could put money in, and it would automatically distribute it into a diversified portfolio. Then it starts to compound. The compounding compounds on the compounding. Just let it run, and it's great. Over 1 million clients trust Wealthfront. Get started at Wealthfront.com. Client was paid thousand dollars for their testimonial creating a conflict of interest outcomes vary investment management and advisory services provided by wealthfront advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor investing involves risk to principle regardless of the strategy used task performance does not guarantee future results Ryan Reynolds here for mint mobile the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much please for the love of everything good in this world stop with mint you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month of course if you enjoy overpaying no judgments but that's weird okay one judgment

Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. She never built it. Nancy had done searches on ghost guns and just guns in general. And it turns out that Nancy had purchased ghost gun pieces online.

However, she failed to mention to law. law enforcement that she had purchased a ghost gun piece, a slide, from eBay. We have experts that contest to determine which shell casings came out of which gun. The part that leaves the mark on the shell casing comes from the slide and barrel of the gun. So in theory, you could take a slide and barrel off of one gun and put it on an identical lower unit and it would work. The big question was, well, where's the slide and barrel from eBay? That's the only firearm piece that law enforcement was never able to locate. With no murder weapon directly connecting Nancy to the crime,

investigators begin to question, why would she kill Dan? They discover a key piece of evidence that could change this whole investigation. We had a great marriage, but the only people I know who have ever hated him, was his ex-wife and who is ex-wife doesn't hate the husband, you know, and I can't believe after 25 years she'd be motivated. I mean, short of that, we live a quiet life. Everybody around them thought they had a great relationship. They seemed to be doing fine until 2016. 2016 is where things we could see started to derail. You know, Nancy is management and she controlled pretty much all aspects of their life. Most importantly, they're

finances. They had a lot of financial issues and financial troubles, from taking out loans on their pension to their 401k, to paying down their debt, to thinking about selling their property. They weren't paying their mortgage on time. There was repeated times where the mortgage just didn't get paid. But ironically, she's buying all these Glock parts and guns. Simultaneously, she's prioritizing paying for life insurance policies. and these are in Dan's name, some of them.

So it looked very suspicious to us. She would take out $35,000 on their 401k, and she would spend it on getting the yard cleaned up and vacations. And then she, of course, spent part of that money on firearms and firearm accessories. But having financial problems doesn't mean Nancy's a murderer, or does it? I know this is selfish, but what am I going to do without him? How am I going to get worse? It's not selfish.

No. You know, I should be worried about him. And all I can think about is, oh my God. Yeah, take one step in time, okay? I know. Just not a lot of things you can do right now. As detectives try to sort out what actually happened to Dan Brophy, days after the murder, they receive a strange phone call from Nancy.

This may give you a laugh this afternoon. I don't want to be the stupid question of the day, but I think that you I think I need to be the stupid question of the day. Nancy called and asked the investigator. I know this is weird, but can I get a letter and say that I'm not a suspect, that I wasn't involved? And I prosecuted homicides for over 10 years, and this is the first time I've ever heard this. My insurance company said, just have the detective write a letter that you're no longer a suspect. My sister, when I told her this as a lawyer, laughs the heart you got out of the chair.

If you listen to that call, Detective Posey is caught off guard. Why would you need that? They don't want to pay if it turns out that I secretly went down to the school and shot my husband because I thought, hey, going into old age without Dan after 25 years, it's really what I'm looking for, you know. Okay. Well, we never would do something like that. I really didn't think so. It's just an odd phone call in general. I mean, she's laughing. She's very much downplaying it. This is such a stupid little policy. I can't believe they're making me jump to the hoop like this.

This is only $40,000. The other thing is, I said, what happens if in fact this case never gets resolved? And they said, well, that has to go up to the supervisors to be evaluated. And I'm thinking, great. It was something that gave some additional insight to this investigator.

Wait, hold up. Insurance policies, and it wasn't just the $40,000. There were also other insurance policies totaling over $1,000. million dollars. Let me ask you my next question which I know you're going to give me a vague answer but you've got enough things that you really think you know or you think you've got the potential to solve it at this point. We are looking at a lot of stuff. There's a lot of things to go through and review. Real frankly, I want you to take as long as it takes because I want us to find this person. Nancy seems to be a very weird person. Just her interoperable, just her

action and how she had this conversation with this investigator. So it was definitely a red flag. We did a lot of work trying to find a suspect that was not Nancy Brophy and to try to rule out that there was no other motive person that had a problem with Dan. There was nothing else suspicious or anything else that led us a different direction. Based on her statements, behavior, and activities leading up to Dan's death, detectives narrow in on Nancy as their likely suspect. But there's something else a bit curious about romance novelist Nancy Brofey. One of the investigators googled Nancy Brofey's writings and learned that she had written an essay several years ago called How to Murder Your Husband. And it talked about police tactics,

avoiding detection by law enforcement if you were to carry out a murder of your spouse. Another odd detail. Maybe Nancy did kill Dan to collect life insurance money and to live out her retirement years without him. But a lot of this is purely circumstantial, and there's still not quite enough evidence to charge her. However, when we return, investigators find out something big about the murder. Nancy said that she had not left her house. Well, all of a setting, the investigator gets a call from another investigator and said, look, we pulled some surveillance, and in the surveillance, we see this band pass by. Ding, ding, ding. He's a wonderful guy. He really is a wonderful guy.

Oh, man. It's summer 2018, and Portland investigators suspect 67-year-old romance novelist Nancy Brophy may have shot and killed her own husband, 63-year-old chef Dan Brophy, as he was preparing his kitchen at the Oregon Culinary Institute for a Saturday class. A potential financial motive to kill, suspicious firearm-related purchases, strange comments to police, and literally authoring an essay on how to kill your husband, all look bad for Nancy Brophy.

However, there's nothing concrete tying her to the crime until we take a closer look at the scene. As we continue to investigate, we learn that there's no video surveillance on the premises in the interior of OCI. Detective Merrill and Detective Posey came to me and said, hey, do you want to walk around and look for a surveillance video with us?

Which is not something we normally do, but we walked across the street to Bellagio's pizza, and we all watched the video together. When the first pass goes by of this kind of silvery, tan-ish minivan, I don't even know that we noticed it on the first pass. We didn't really, I think, pay it much attention until we saw.

saw it after the time of the homicide as well. What kind of vehicles do you guys drive? You guys each have your own vehicles. He has a white truck, and I have a Toyota van. What color is that? Gray. What year is that one? 2007.

It was Detective Posey, actually. He's like, hey, isn't that Nancy's van that we just saw her drive away in. And we start looking at it, and we're slowing it down. We're rewinding it, pausing it, doing still images. And it looks exactly like the van we just saw. And not only that, right as the van crosses in front of Bellagios, it stops for a stop sign. And as it stops, you can see the driver appears to look

just like Nancy Brophy. I didn't get out of bed. Oh, you just kind of woke up and you were alert. Yeah, and he got dressed and left. She said that she never got out of bed from their master bedroom upstairs, that she was working on a book. Our ears perked up quite a bit. Just what are the, you know, chances of the same exact type of minivan, the same rims, same lights, has this particular scratch in it. And it wasn't just a scratch. I mean, it was a pretty significant scrape down the side.

And so really to connect the van to Nancy, it was that sticker in the window. Dan's mom. Karen explained that that minivan used to belong to Jack and Karen Brophy. and that they had given that minivan to Nancy when she needed a vehicle. That was a church parking lot sticker in the corner of the van. We were able to verify it was in fact the church parking sticker. The van was spotted in the area without any reason to be in that area at that time. If somebody says they're not there when their husband's getting murdered, but the video shows otherwise, that's a huge problem.

Nancy Brophy is arrested and later charged. charged with the second-degree murder of her own husband. When they put handcuffs on her, she said, oh, you must think I killed my husband, which I thought was not something you say when being arrested for your husband's murder. Four years after Dan Brofey's murder, prosecutors lay out the case for the jury

in the criminal trial of Nancy Brofey. On the surface, the Brofees appeared to their friends and family to be a couple in love who are entering the next stage of life. Financial struggles really began to develop in 2016. By late 2017, financial despair evidence and no-eyed in sight, Nancy started researching and planning the murder of Dan Roebren. The prosecution put forward that, yes,

they had a lot of financial issues and financial troubles. Nancy made claims on 10 separate life insurance policies. in which she was the beneficiary of over $1.4 million. Eventually, all of the evidence and all of the leads all pointed back to Nancy Brophy. Prosecutors call several witnesses over the course of the trial to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Nancy murdered Dan. These include detectives. We couldn't figure out any other motive of what happened that day because it didn't look like a burglary, a robbery. There were no grudges against Dan.

an accountant. I reviewed bank accounts. There were insurance payments for six different life insurance accounts. It was a Wells Fargo home mortgage. I did see a lot of months where there was loan delinquency. And an investigative analyst. That X in the middle, is that that public shooting range? Yes.

The North Fork Wolf Creek public range. That morning, March 26, 2018, you're detective. Nancy Brophy's phone starting around the area of her home, heading out Highway 26 into that area. Yes. But it was some of the first witnesses that really set the stage. So you're in the lounge area at the table. What's the next thing that you remember? The next thing I remember is a fellow student yelling call 911.

I came to her to see what she needed. I think I had my phone in my hand already, and I dialed 911. I went to Dan and tried to figure out what was going on. I knelt down beside him, and I didn't know what to do, so I held his hand. I just, I wanted to see if he would squeeze it back, and he didn't. So it was obvious that Dan was gone. They knew Dan, too. It was personal for them.

They all loved and respected him. And they tried to save his life. When those people testify and they're feeling that emotion all over again and the jury sees that, it's pretty powerful. But unfortunately for prosecutors, they ran into some difficulty with a key piece of evidence. The 2011 essay authored by Nancy entitled How to Murder Your Husband. We were trying to introduce it, trying to show the jury that she has the knowledge of how to do it. This could be helpful to a jury, but it's so prejudicial that it's too much to give that to a jury. It would be too sensational. So the judge, I think, erring on the side of caution, decided to keep it out.

And once the case turned to the defense, Nancy's attorneys took their time, their case lasting weeks, arguing Nancy could impossibly be down. killer. Nancy Crampton Brophy firmly believes in life insurance and her love and concern for her husband was demonstrated in the life insurance choices that she made over the years. The other thing that's important about insurance is legal ownership. Nancy Brophy made Dan Brophy the legal owner of every policy that insured his life. I kind of thought well what were they supposed to do. They weren't working with much. All they could do, all they could do. is try to distract away from all of that evidence

and try to humanize Nancy as much as they could. The state suggests that Nancy Brophy's life was going to get a lot better when Dan was gone. They're wrong. Nancy was lost after Dan was killed. It was as though the earth had fallen away from her feet. Nancy Brophy did not kill her husband. The most difficult part about the prosecution's case is the love story that both Nancy and Dan had. They had a wonderful relationship.

They worked very well together. This was a relationship, one of the only ones that I know of, that I thought, if that's what marriage is like, I would want that. It seemed to be an ideal marriage. They personally, I think, were very well suited to each other, you know, as sort of yin and yang. You know, and they just seem to, I mean,

just really enjoy each other. There was no inclination that there were troubles in the sense of there was any infidelity, that there were any arguments, that they were bickering, or that they couldn't stand each other. They couldn't find anything that could have been brewing to lead to Dan being killed by his wife. Then Nancy Brofey took the stand herself, and her testimony caught everyone's attention. Had you ever met a guy anything like Dan Brofey before you met him? No. No. He was unique. He loved. loved me and I loved him back.

The person that the jury and all jurors usually want to hear from is the defendant themselves. She was on the stand for hours. What happened on that day? Why did you lie about where you were at? Why is it that now you can't remember where you were at or what you did that day? I'm reconstructing this based upon what I know in my heart and what I know in my heart is the reason why I have no memory is because I'm I was stunned by the fact Dan was dead.

And I wouldn't have been stunned if I'd been in the building and shot him. She testified fine on direct examination with her attorneys. When she knew what the questions were going to be, she was very comfortable. Did they tell you that they had video of you near the murder scene? Yes.

Did you believe that was true? Not for one second. I thought they're making this up. This isn't true. It wasn't until cross-examination. examination that just went completely off the rails. You talk about the interview with the police and how you just found out your husband died and told them the whole story about why and how you purchased.

Dan owned half a block. I told him about the full clock. I answered him the best way I knew how. Why didn't you just say yes, we have a gun? I was trying to be helpful to the police at this point. I thought they were going to find my husband's killer. I didn't think they were going to say, let's look at the one person who didn't The longer that she was on that stand, she just became so combative, two different people between the prosecution and the defense.

The sliding barrel is what is that issue, right? Yes. You have a gun complete, slide and barrel intact. You know how to remove it. In fact, you did. You can manipulate the sliding barrel separate and apart from the rest of the gun. Mm-hmm. But you chose to buy the exact same piece.

Why in the world, when you already own this exact piece, you would need to buy another one, days later. What I can tell you is it was for writing. It was not to, as you would have it, murder my husband. The jury's looking at her, wait, you're not coming off as that Mao-mannered, I wouldn't hurt a fly type person that the defense is trying to sell us.

You think you have relevant evidence to a murder investigation, and you don't think you should mention it to the police. Even though I marked it, how is it gun kit relative evidence? I'm asking you. I'm asking you because I don't think it is because it's never been put together. Then why would you mark it for the police? Because I figured the police would come back and want to know. Nancy Brophy should not have testified, especially since she wasn't going to be able to provide

you an answer as to what were her whereabouts on the day of the murder? The day of June 2nd, not only is there a memory hole, but I have a hard time making it clear of what I actually remember. There were so many things that she could remember during our notification with her. And then for the defense to come in and say, well, she had retrograde amnesia, causing her to not recall the events of that morning. It just didn't sit well with me. You have no memory of driving around downtown on the morning of June 2nd.

How can you sit here today and say that I was driving around writing? If I was down there, that's what I was doing. I do know based upon the time stamps that I was only down there for six minutes or less from the time that he signed into the building until you see me again leaving the area. How do you know you didn't go in the building? I know I didn't go in the building. because I didn't kill Dan.

I know that for a fact. After weeks of testimony and a day and a half of deliberations, jurors return their decision. We, the jury, do find our verdicts as follows. Count one, murdering the second degree, guilty. I was a surprise. Based on her testifying, her performance while she was on the stand, that played a huge role in jury deliberations

and the quickness of their very, That just goes to show you that they did not find her to be believable. Following her conviction, Nancy Brophy was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. I felt relief that we had put all this work into this case. We worked our butts off. I've never written so many search warrants in my life. We just kept going every direction it led us and we ruled out all the other things and we felt very confident. and we felt very confident Nancy Brofey shot and killed Daniel Brofey.

I think for the family and everybody involved, that it was probably the final piece was getting that sentence handed down. And frankly, I mean, 25 years, I think we figured she'd be about 92 when she'd be eligible for release, which there's no guarantee, especially somebody who's defiant and will never admit that they did anything. But it's the question that the family will love to know, friends will love to know the public will love to know why would you kill your husband who didn't cheat on you didn't hurt you didn't hit you gave you everything

praised you that's a question that will always remain unanswered what a case started with a dead body a potential school shooting possibly the work of a stranger or enemy and it all came full circle to one of the closest people in dan brofe life. It seems like one takeaway from this story, never judge a book by its cover. That's all we have for you here on this episode of Prime Crime, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, stay safe.