Nancy Crampton was born June 16th 1950 as the daughter of two lawyers. She grew up in Wichita Falls, Texas. When she had completed high school in 1968, she went on to study economics at the University of Houston. She moved from Texas to Portland, Oregon after her first marriage to a local police officer failed in 1991.
Once she had settled in at Portland, she enrolled at the Western Culinary Institute which was later renamed the Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts where she became friends with an instructor, Daniel Brophy. They eventually became romantically involved and got married in 1999.
In 2003, Nancy joined the Romance Writers of America. In 2011 she wrote an online essay titled “How to mu*rder your husband.” The now-deleted blog post stated “As a romantic suspense writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about murd*er and, consequently, about police procedure. After all, if mur*der is supposed to set me free, I certainly don’t want to spend any time in jail for it. Let me set the record straight, I don’t like jumpsuits and orange isn’t my colour. Divorce is expensive, do you really want to split all your possessions?” The post also included possible motives mur*der including financial gain, your partner cheating and/or being an abuser. She also outlined several methods consisting of knives being “up close and personal, blood everywhere”, poison “being a woman’s weapon and too easy to trace” and a gun being “loud and messy, requires some skill.”
In 2015 she published a total of 6 novels called: “Hell on the Heart (Shadow men Book 1); “The Wrong Brother (Wrong never felt so right Book 1), “The Wrong Hero (Wrong never felt so right Book 2)”; “The Wrong Cop (Wrong never felt so right Book 3)”, “The Wrong Lover (Wrong never felt so right Book 3.5)” and “The Wrong Husband (Wrong never felt so right Book 4).”
In 2016, Nancy and Daniel filed the paperwork for their marriage as they had neglected to do those 17 years previously. January 2017 Nancy released the 5th instalment of her “Wrong never felt so right” series titled “The Wrong SEAL: Small Towns Hide the Biggest Secrets.” In November 2017, Daniel was forced to take out $35,000 of his retirement money to pay off their credit card debt.
On the 2nd of June 2018 Daniel Brophy was found dead with two gunshot wounds by some students in a kitchen at the institute he worked at. When police questioned his wife, Nancy Crampton-Brophy said she had walked the dogs and had a shower the morning he was killed. In September 2018, she was arrested for the suspicion of mu*rder. Whilst investigating, the police found traffic cam footage of Nancy driving to and from the culinary school during a 13-minute window of the homicide taking place. She changed her story stating that she had no memory of the drive and she was most likely on a coffee run and forgot because of the stress she had endured that day finding out her husband was dead.
Prosecutors found that Nancy had acquired a 9mm hand gun. She bought separate components from another gun online so she could replace the slide and barrel in an attempt to have the gun be untraceable. When police found a 9mm hand gun in her home, they found it was the same make and model of the mu*rder weapon but they could not tie it to the mur*der. They suspected she had put the original parts back on the hand gun after mur*dering her husband. They also found that Daniel Brophy had a life insurance policy worth $1.4 million which was most likely the motive for mur*der.
In April 2022, Nancy Crampton-Brophy was put on trial for the mu*rder of her husband at the age of 71. When she took the stand in her defence, she recited stories of Daniel who she claimed she had a “wonderful 25-years” with. She sobbed as she described losing her “smart, funny, kind and humble” husband.
She was found guilty of second-degree mur*der on May 25th 2022. On the 14th of June 2022, she was sentenced to life Impr*isonment and could only be considered for parole after 25 years served.
