Los Angeles: In a supreme irony, an American novelist who wrote an essay titled ‘How To Murder Your Husband’ is herself on trial for killing her husband!
Nancy Crampton Brophy is accused of shooting Daniel Brophy using a gun whose missing barrel she bought through e-commerce platform eBay.
According to prosecutors, the 71-year-old writer of ‘Wrong Never Felt So Right’ series of novels had been struggling to make payments on her mortgage, but had multiple life insurance policies that would pay out $1.4 million in the event of her husband’s death, reported AFP.
Crampton, who said in court that she suffers from amnesia, claimed: “I do better with Dan alive financially than I do with Dan dead.”
She argued in a US court this week: “Where is the motivation I would ask you? An editor would laugh and say, ‘I think you need to work harder on this story, you have a big hole in it’.”
Daniel, a chef who taught in a culinary institute, was found dead by students while readying for a class in June 2018. He was shot twice.
The trial began last month.
The prosecutor said security camera footage had captured Crampton’s minivan outside the Oregon Culinary Institute on June 2, 2018 at almost exactly the time her chef husband was killed in one of the school’s classrooms.
“You were there at the same time that someone happens to be shooting your husband… with the exact type of gun that you own and which is now mysteriously missing,” the prosecutor told her.
Crampton defence was that she had no memory of being there, but acknowledged she must have been, insisting that she was in the area driving around to get inspiration for a story.
She was facing financial ruin before her husband’s death, still continued to pay for 10 separate life insurance policies.
Crampton’s blog ‘How To Murder Your Husband’ is still accessible online.
The article discusses methods and motivations — including financial gain and use of a firearm — for dispatching an unwanted spouse. However, the essay notes that guns are ‘loud, messy, require some skill.’
“But the thing I know about murder is that every one of us have it in him/her when pushed far enough,” she wrote.
