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I want him back. I don't care about him. Shot him. I just want him back.
Chef Daniel Brophy is lying on his back in front of this large kitchen sink. We believe the suspect snuck up and basically assassinated him. So if you never saw a comment. No, I lost a friend and a good friend.
I was gonna find the person that did this. My first thought was maybe it was a student who dad didn't rub the right way. Who knows if somebody was in the building? Who knows if somebody followed him in.
Chef Griff wife, Nancy Brophy, she's a writer. She had this life where she was a novelist and they kind of all came together. How to murder your husband. That certainly got a lot of attention reading it and going, oh, my gosh.
She kind of followed her own plan. I don't think she did. Nancy not capable of planning a committing murder. You kidding me?
No, I did not shoot my husband. I don't know he would. House within myself the nightmares is now beginning. Portland, Oregon.
June 2, 2018 911Hi, we are at Oregon Culinary Institute. A shooting a man down. He's an older man. 8:24am On a Saturday.
A building that's virtually empty at this hour, the building is on lockdown. In the surrounding area, a killer is on the loose. Not located the defect yet. By the time Portland detectives Anthony Merrill and Darren Posey arrived an hour later, uniformed officers had secured the scene.
The whole area is taped off. I noticed our criminalists were videoing the whole entire scene. I had heard of the Oregon Culinary Institute, but that was as much as I knew at that point. The Oregon Culinary Institute, known as oci.
Its motto, training kitchen people. It was a school as well as a restaurant where the students, as part of the curriculum, prepared and served three course lunches and four course dinners. Detectives walked in through a storage area and then into an instructional room known as Kitchen 1. He was lying on his back right in front of this large kitchen sink.
No surprise there. The victim was a chef and teacher. We're getting four dozen oysters each. Team Chef Dan Bro Brophy was one of OCI's OGs, original gourmets.
I have been teaching since the Oregon Culinary Institute. 12 years at OCI. A chef for more than four decades, a commanding presence at the school and a well known figure in the Portland culinary scene. Dan Brophy was dead at age 63.
Detectives soon learned Chef Brophy had driven his white pickup to the school, parked and then disabled the building's alarm at 7:22am it was about 10 minutes later when a colleague arrived. She soon found Chef Brophy lying on the floor. And a student made that 911 call. Could you tell what Dan Brophy was doing when he was murdered?
Yes, he was at the sink getting the ice water ready and coffee ready for the students who were going to be coming in. Not far from the body, detectives saw this. A large ice scooper. So we believe he was up there at the sink when whoever shot him came in and shot him in the back.
First. He had another gunshot directly center mass to his chest. He's shot, he falls, he drops the ice shovel and then whoever it is stands over him and finishes the job. Correct.
Somebody just wanted to execute this person. No gun was present. Investigators did find two 9 millimeter shell casings. Let me help pick up the brass.
Does that say anything to you? They wanted to get in quick and get out quick. If this was a professional hit man, then yeah, maybe they do pick up those casings. As detectives went about their work, word was beginning to spread.
Students showing up for class found a man shot to death in the school's kitchen. By mid morning, Chef Brophy's son Nathaniel was hearing the news. My wife and I took a phone call from my grandmother who said that it was my father that had been killed. And what did you think?
We were in shock. It was really hard to wrap our minds around what could have possibly happened. A common reaction as it turned out. This is Vanessa Paz.
She used to work with us here at Dateline and then went on to OCI as a marketing and communication specialist. She and Chef Brophy were close. In fact, these videos you're seeing of Chef Brophy. Vanessa was behind the camera.
I received a text message, Dan Brophy is dead. And I remember I stopped and I just started crying. I couldn't believe it. About two hours after the 911 call, at 10:28am, Dan Brophy's wife Nancy had driven from their home in nearby Beaverton to OCI and had been ushered into a command post for what police call a death notification.
Dan is Your husband, is that correct? Nancy Brophy told police that as usual that morning, Dan had risen early and left for work around 7:05 or 7:10. While she was still in bed. Seven minutes into that conversation, Detective Posey finally broke the bad news.
So I just want to let you know, we believe it's Dan. Yeah, I got that one. Everybody. Danny is heads act.
Yeah. All I can think about is. Oh, my God. Yeah.
Take one step at a time. Okay, I know. I'm sorry. Just take it slow and you know, there's nothing you can.
There's not a lot of things you can do right now. Your mind's going a million miles per hour. You want to. Here's the terrible thing.
Even if you find a shot him, it's not going great back. And I want him back. That's the part I want. I don't care about who shot him.
I just want him back. I don't want him dead. Detective soon sent Nancy home to grieve. And she called her best friend Tanya Medlin.
She sounded like she was in shock. She put forms a whole sentence. Tanya had been a friend of Nancy's for 30 years, and she'd known Dan well, too. In fact, to earn a little extra money, Dan had been moonlighting cooking for fellow chef Tanya at an assisted living hall.
You saw him the night before he died. What was he like on that last night? He was his same old self. He was happy.
Gave me crap about the menu. And you see the same old Dan, which is what? Like when I first met him, I didn't think he liked me. I always go to Nancy and ask him, you know, what the heck is his problem?
Like, does he not like me? She's like, no, no, this is Dan. Well, you didn't sense he was concerned about nanny's life. No, no, it sucks.
Because like, his head. He wasn't just my employee. I lost a friend. I want them to find the person that did this.
She was not alone in wanting that ingredients for a mystery. I'm always looking to learn new techniques, new cuisines. He was very much into teaching others. And the more he saw somebody feed off of what they were learning, the more he wanted to teach.
Who wants. My first thought was maybe it was a student who Dan didn't rub the right way. In the days after Chef Dan Brophy was shot dead working in his kitchen at the Oregon Culinary Institute, those who loved him were all asking the same question. Who'd like your Dan?
My first thought was maybe it was a student who Dan didn't rub the right way, you know it was true. Friends said Dan Brophy, like many chefs, could come off a bit crusty. And maybe it had something to do with the way he'd been trained. I probably work for 10 different European chefs.
They don't really believe in human rights. Chef Brophy's career began washing dishes in Kansas City, which led to a job as a graveyard chef cook in a 24 hour restaurant. Later he'd gone to culinary school and then begun teaching. His mom said he'd always had his nose in a book and that never changed.
I'm always looking to learn new ingredients, new techniques, new cuisines. He was very much into teaching others, and the more he saw somebody feed off of what they were learning, the more he wanted to teach. One way he taught was by taking field trips. He loved the Oregon coast, had a degree in marine biology, and was a bon vivant of the beach.
We were taking a look at what we might see that's edible in the woods. Chef Brophy was also an expert in foraging for and cooking edible mushrooms with the portobello you may not want. And he was a beekeeper. So we can pull these aside.
A master gardener and an enthusiastic composter. Our first field trip, he gave me these bags made out of compost, right for the kids to throw trash in. He said, here, disperse them to the students. And I said, oh.
I said, these feel really good. And he goes, you want me to leave you alone with them? Like that was. And that was the first day I met him.
And that was his humor. That humor came through in what came to be known as Brophyisms. Job wouldn't go so slow if he'd probably did it faster. How do you fix a sick chicken with a shovel.
You can eat any exotic mushroom. Once the chef also had a softer side, donating food and helping his parents feed hundreds of meals a week to the homeless at a church not far from OCI. His personal life was simple. His marriage to Nancy was his second.
In the early 90s, Nancy, a Texas native with a degree in economics and a divorce on her resume, ended up as both a student at a cooking school where Dan taught and a roommate of Tanya Medlin. She was telling me, she says, you have Dan Brophy? I said, no. He came after I left.
She goes, what do you know about him? I said, he's married. She goes, well, yeah, that's not gonna last. And I said, don't be dipping your candle on somebody else's wet.
Actually, you know, you be careful there. She's like, no, no, no. He's gotta handle his business. She graduated school, she opened up a carrying company, and the next thing I know, we got a white invitation.
Dan's son Nathaniel would soon go to work for Nancy's catering company. When your dad finally introduced you to Nancy, was that a moment of some tension or nervousness? I mean, I assumed that, you know, if he'd brought her into his life, then he was sure someone that was gonna be good enough for him. Everyone said it was obvious Nancy and Dan love one another.
Even if Dan did have a rather odd pet name for his wife. Anytime someone was like, hey, Dan, what do you think of, you know, making it on this trip? His response would be, oh, I have desk management. Or let me check with management.
She was in charge. She was in charge. Nancy eventually sold the catering company. When she could no longer do all the physical work required, she began selling insurance.
Her real passion, it turned out, was writing, specifically mysteries and romance novels. Bodice rippers with names like Hell on the heart. She'd written a series mostly revolving around Navy SEALs. The wrong cop, the wrong lover, the wrong husband.
You get the idea. It's funny. We go to work, we bust the Anne's traps about it. So you used to be a firecracker in Dead Buddy.
He'd be like, shut up. Oh, yeah, we spluss his traps constantly. Nancy had her writing, Dan had his gardening, mushroom hunting and teaching. And they were active grandparents to Nathaniel's daughter.
They were, you know. I started making some plans for what was going in their retirement years. And while it hadn't been nailed down yet, it seemed like they wanted some exciting ideas. Now there would be no retirement for Dan Brophy.
Instead, everyone wanted to know who killed him in a kitchen while Dan was doing what he loved. Or as a mystery writer might have asked, who had developed a taste for murder? Who knows if somebody was in the building, who knows if somebody followed him in? We found that he had his wallet on him with all his credit cards.
He had 70 some dollars in cash, a cell phone, a watch, keys to his truck that was parked outside. Detectives dig deep for a motive. There's alcohol in there and a lot of expensive cooking equipment. Any of that disturbed or missing?
We did several layers of searches of building. What would they find? Two days after chef Dan Brophy was shot in the back, friends and family gathered at the Oregon Culinary Institute. Hundreds of people came out for his vigil.
It was sad. Nancy sat there and gave her favorite memories of Dan. He was a person who did what he loved. He loved teaching.
He loved mushrooms. Dan is one of the few people I've ever known exactly what he wanted in life and loved doing. You have any idea he'd touch that many people? I do, yeah.
It never ceased to amaze me how many people he intersected with throughout the course of his career. Detectives Anthony Merrill and Darren Posey were aware that Dan's friends and family were asking some obvious questions. Who knows if somebody was in the building? Who knows if, you know, somebody followed him in, you wouldn't look at him in the street and say, yeah, that somebody should tap for money.
We found that he had his wallet on him with all of his credit cards. He had $70 in cash, a cell phone, a watch, keys to his truck that was parked outside. Detectives wondered, could the killer or killers have been after something else? There's alcohol in there and there's a lot of expensive cooking equipment.
Any of that disturbed or missing? We did several layers of searches of the building. From what we could determine, that all seemed to be in place in your investigation. I mean, who didn't like Dan Brophy?
There was people that were like, he's tough and he, you know, kind of has a dry humor that, you know, sometimes maybe would rub somebody the wrong way. Right. But nothing that, you know, somebody had it out for him because, like, they had their career ended by him or anything like that. There was also no sign of forced entry.
Maybe because Dan Brophy's habit after disarming the alarm was to raise a roll up door and load in supplies. A killer could have simply walked in that open door. Clues from the scene were hard to come by. OCI had no security cameras inside or outside the school.
Meantime, Dan's widow Nancy had begun cleaning out the home they'd shared for 22 years, getting set to put it up for sale. Nancy's exact words to me were, everywhere I look in this house, Tanya, I see Dan. She did not want to be in that big house. That house was theirs.
It made sense. It was also a project that they had embarked on before his death. So it didn't seem out of the ordinary. They were going to sell anyhow.
Correct. And as summer started to fade, so too did Nathaniel's hope. It seemed like police weren't making any progress. Honestly, we were coming to terms that this would be an unsolved murder.
What none of Dan Brophy's friends or family members knew was that there was a lot happening behind the scenes. In fact, just days after the murder, detectives had received a call from Dan's wife, Nancy, she had a question about collecting life insurance, and police recorded it. I don't want to be the stupid question of the day. I think I need to be a stupid question of the day.
My insurance company said, just have the detective write a letter that you're no longer a suspect. No longer a suspect. At that point, she wasn't named a suspect, and neither was anyone else. And I said, man, I just don't know that he's there, and I'm not sure that he will suspect that.
If you do, I get to write the letter. This would be something that would go to an insurance company that would allow them to make a payout to her. Well, yeah. Why would you need that?
Because they don't want to pay. If it turns out that I secretly slipped down to the school and shot my husband, well, we never would do something like that. I've never heard of that being done. This is such a stupid little policy.
I can't believe it's making me jump to roof like this. It's only $40,000. And as my sister said, you know, usually when they do that, it's for millions. And I said, yeah, we weren't sure for millions.
Well, as we say around here. Or were they? More on that later. For now, normally in murder investigations, the way you clear somebody is you arrest somebody else and take them to trial.
Correct. You find the perpetrator and you clear the case. And that means other people who might have been suspects earlier are now off the hook. Yes, that would help.
And there was something else. Investigators discovered that Nancy, the romance novelist, had in 2011, written a blog post. The title, how to murder your husband. That blog post, tongue in cheek or tipping her hand.
What'd you think when you saw that? It was really weird. It just makes you wonder, what is going on here. I was absolutely shocked.
It's like somebody hit you in the back. We were all shocked, especially after reading it and kind of going, oh, my gosh. She kind of followed her own plan. How to murder your husband.
The blog post does sound provocative, especially when panned by someone whose husband was just murdered. Nancy Brophy wrote that she spends a lot of time thinking about murder and consequently, police procedure. After all, if a murder is supposed to set me free, I certainly don't want to spend any time in jail. And let me say clearly for the record, I don't like jumpsuits, and orange isn't my color.
She then lists the various motives for financial lying, cheating, and fell in love with someone else. In some ways, The Post is less than it seems. Nancy wrote it seven years before the murder, and it was dark humor, certainly not a blueprint for the crime. This is, after all, a woman whose books all bore the tagline wrong never felt so right.
Still, it couldn't be ignored, especially when Nancy listed options to consider for killing her husband. Number one was labeled guns. What'd you think when you saw that? It was really weird.
You know, it just makes you wonder what is going on here. In one of the Post's closing paragraphs, Nancy summed up her feelings, writing, I find it is easier to wish people dead than to actually kill them. But the thing I know about murder is that every one of us have it in him or her. When pushed far enough, Nancy Brophy had definitely written a twist into her own life story.
Except that blog post was not what detectives had focused on when they wrote their own twist. Three months after chef Dan Brophy's murder, the stunning break in the murder of an Oregon Culinary Institute instructor. Police tonight have arrested his wife for the crime. Nancy Brophy, Dan's wife of more than 20 years, was now charged with murdering him in cold blood.
I was absolutely shocked. It's like somebody hit me right back. They loved each other. Yeah, I don't think she did it.
And I would be embarrassed if I was them if they can't prove this. I'm sure by now you have reviewed almost every memory you have of the two of them, thinking to yourself, was there something there that I didn't say? Certainly. And it still, you know, doesn't make any sense.
As Nancy Brophy's trial began, the case became a late night punchline. This is a weird story. You know, you hear a lot about life imitating art, but rarely do you hear about death imitating it. Prosecutors Nicole Herman and Sean Overstreet were in charge of the Multnomah County DA's team.
It's not that often, I think, that you get someone who's accused of murdering their husband attached to a blog post in which they write about how to murder their husbands. No, it's not. And it was quite a piece of information to find. We were all shocked, and then, especially after reading it and kind of going, oh, my gosh.
She kind of followed her own plan. However, on the first day of trial in April 2022, the judge dealt prosecutors a bit of a blow, ruling that Nancy's blog post, how to murder your husband, could not be seen by the jury. Any minimal probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of Unfair prejudice and confusion of the issues. The blog post was years old, and it's not as if it described the crime exactly.
How much of a roadblock to your case is it when the judge won't let that blog post in? We decided pretty early that it wasn't going to be a roadblock. We had a plan to move forward without it. And so prosecutors did.
All of the leads the detectives followed up with, all pointed back to Nancy Rophey. One of those came from a laptop found in Nancy's closet. Looks like there's an attempt to log into. In November 2017, six months before the murder, Nancy's computer visited a website that sold ghost guns and soon ordered a ghost gun, some assembly required.
It's an unserialized, unregistered firearm. She was gonna buy it, she was gonna use it, and then when she received it, I think she quickly realized this is too complicated for her to put together. Records then showed Nancy googling about Glock revolvers, asking if Glocks have a big kickback, and searching for gun shops in Portland. Then, in February, four months before the murder, Nancy went to a gun show and bought this 9mm Glock 17.
She registered it in her own name and admitted owning the gun to police the morning of the murder. What she did not tell police is that she also went on ebay and bought an extra slide and barrel that fit the Glock. That's one way of disguising whether a bullet or casing comes from a particular gun. Prosecutors showed the jury this video made by a detective, showing how a slide and barrel can be easily swapped out together.
They leave distinctive marks on the bullet as it moves down the barrel toward the target and on the empty casings as they're ejected. So you switch the slide and barrel. A firearms analysis will suggest it's not the same gun. Yes, absolutely.
What do you think happened to that extra slide and barrel? We have a lot of bodies of water here in Oregon. Could be in any one of them. Missing evidence claimed prosecutors did not clear Nancy Brophy.
Her attorneys, however, were about to reveal the identity of a man they thought just might do exactly that. I don't care about who shot him. I just want him back. Nancy Crampton Brophy has always been thoroughly, madly crazy in love with Daniel Brophy.
And she still is. Today, the defense serves up an alternate suspect. Could this be Dan Brophy's real killer? Get the best of NBC News with a subscription, viewer ads, deeper access, and exclusive content.
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Visit nbcnews.comxfinity for full offer terms and details. He was a young Marine. She didn't care about convention. They made a life together.
Then one night the Marine died. And then the death investigation took a wild, unexpected and utterly bizarre turn. I'm Josh Matiewicz and this is Trace of Suspicion, an all new podcast from Dayline. Listen to all episodes of Trace of Suspicion now, wherever you get your podcasts.
As a day wraps up, get this scoop on what's been happening with here's the Scoop, a new podcast for NBC News with your host Gaza Studio. We'll take a deep dive into today's top stories with NBC News's trusted journalist. It's a fresh take that sharp, thoughtful and it's informative, bringing you closer to headlines and conversations that are shaping our world. The Front Page the Zeitgeist.
Here's the scoop from NBC News. Listen daily on Amazon Music. Prosecutors at Nancy Brophy's murder trial were about to drop a bombshell. They called the two detectives to the stand to lay out the heart of the case, starting with that death notification just a couple hours after the murder.
I don't care about who shot him. I just want him back. After that, detectives sent Nancy home in the company of two investigators. They watched Nancy's gray Toyota van disappear down the street, and then they began to look for evidence in the neighborhood.
We don't have a motive, we have no eyewitness, and we have no video camera at the scene. So any of the surrounding businesses that have video is going to be extremely important to us at this point. The first stop was a pizza place called Bellagio's. It had a video surveillance camera inside behind the counter that faced the windows.
Detectives look at the store's video starting about 10 minutes before chef Dan Brophy arrived at OCI that morning at 7:20. Watching it and I see this van drive by. I'm like going, wait a second, that looks just like her van. Hers meaning that gray Toyota van owned by Nancy Brophy.
I said, yeah, it looks just like it. We were like, okay, there's something probably wrong. Portland's a big city. There's probably a lot of gray Toyota minivans in there.
Exactly. Let's double check this because this doesn't add up because here's her van at the crime scene at a time when she shouldn't be there. And she told you she was home. Correct.
So to make sure it was the same van, the detectives asked those investigators who take a Nancy home to snap some pictures of the van and Nancy's van and the van on the surveillance tape, each had a visible scratch below the gas cap. In the detective business, that's what you guys call a clue. Absolutely. Detectives immediately began looking for more security footage from the area, and they found plenty.
All of it providing a clearer picture of the timeline. On the morning of dan's murder, at 6:39am, a full 41 minutes before Dan Brophy arrived at OCI, there is Nancy's gray van. And I think she left her house about 6:30, I think, trying to find a vantage point where she could see Dan coming in that morning. At 7:08am There's Nancy's gray van driving by that pizza place across the street from OCI.
Then at 7:20, Dan Brophy drove by in his white pickup and parked at the curb next to the school. And we already know that two minutes later, at 7:22, Dan entered OCI and disabled the alarm on the wall. He probably went in and out of the building a couple times. And so I think she probably waited and then she walked up right behind him and shot him through the back first.
He wouldn't have been dead yet, so she had to take that second shot. And then I think she very casually walked out of the building, got in her van and went home. And on the route back to the couple's home, Nancy's van is again caught on camera just before 7:29am you know, this is somewhere in a seven minute window. 7:22 to 7:29, probably about a five and a half, a six minute window.
Very tight, very tight. She had to have figured there were going to be some cameras in the area. She either miscalculated or she thought we just wouldn't be looking for it. Prosecutors argued Nancy had means and opportunity to kill Dan.
So then what about motive? Why would Nancy Brophy kill the man everyone said she loved and adored? Well, they said maybe the oldest motive in the book, they'd had money troubles. Remember, Nancy sold life insurance and knew that business.
It turned out that after Dan's death, prosecutors revealed Nancy had put in claims on multiple policies that would pay out if Dan died a little more than $800,000. The state theorized this wasn't as much about the money as what it could buy, you know, Nancy wanted more. Nancy wanted a lifestyle that Dan couldn't give her. And so I think that she thought, if I could do this, I'll get enough money that will allow me to change that lifestyle.
Because Dan doesn't want to go on that ride with me. He doesn't need to be there, and he's kind of a curmudgeon, so I'll be better off without him. We never thought that she didn't love him. I think she probably hoped things had worked out differently, but when they didn't, he was a problem for her.
After 11 days and 47 prosecution witnesses, Nancy Brophy's defense would have its turn. Her attorneys had said in their opening, the prosecutors had it wrong. Dead wrong. Nancy Crampton Brophy has always been thoroughly, madly crazy in love with Daniel Brophy, and she still is today.
When Nancy Brophy's defense team began offering its theory of the case, the strategy was one you've heard on Dateline before. It's the Sodi defense. Some other dude did it. Although there was no evidence to support it, the only alternative suspect the defense offered was a homeless man picking up cans around oci the morning of the murder.
The defense saying he might have been the killer. They dismissed money as a possible motive. They had absolutely turned around their financial health. The defense admitted the Brophys had some financial problems in the past.
Now, financial experts testified Dan and Nancy were well on their way to straightening those out by paying off debts and making plans to sell their home. Please raise your right hand. And as for the suggestion that Nancy had far more life insurance on Dan than was needed or normal, the defense said that was hogwash. I'd say he was adequately insured, not underinsured, and not overinsured.
All of this was a prelude to the main event, an hors d' oeuvre on day 20 of the trial when Nancy Brophy broke her silence on the witness stand. From the frying pan into the fire. How many years were you together? 24 years, 10 months, 2 days.
Nancy's story on the stand. I did not shoot my husband, and I don't know even how to defend myself. You were there in Ariel at the same time that someone happens to be shooting your husband within a six minute window with the exact type of gun that you own. That's your version of what happened.
That is not my version. A jury is about to write the final chapter. Did you kill Dan Brophy? No, I did not.
After listening for three weeks to prosecutors who painted her as A killer. Nancy Brophy took the stand to answer her lawyer's questions, testifying in her own defense. How many years were you together? 24 years, 10 months, 2 days.
What's it like to be without him now? It's like you've lost an arm, you know, like you're just not as good as you were when you were with him. So if Nancy hadn't killed Dan, why did you purchase that ghost gun kit and the Glock 17 months before the murder? Well, said the romantic suspense writer, it all started with a story.
I read an article about a guy in California who bought a gun online, put it together, and killed his family. I sit there thinking, you know, what if it was a woman who was afraid? And so once I kind of flipped the story in my mind, I started building it. That's why, she testified, she visited the ghost gun website and bought a kit to research a new novel.
Then six weeks later, in February 2018, a mass shooting took the lives of 17 students and faculty at a Florida high school. And Nancy said that once again brought guns to the forefront of her mind. After all, Dan taught at a school. I said, dan, it's time.
And he said, okay. In other words, Nancy testified, it was their idea, not just hers. Dan Brophy, she said, signed off on getting the Glock for protection. Nancy, though, said she went on ebay and bought that extra slide and barrel that police believe was used in the murder.
And she got back to researching that new novel. Where was the slide and barrel now? Who knows, was her answer. As for June 2, the day Dan was murdered, Nancy said she remembers waking up and talking briefly with Dan.
And then. Do you remember anything else from that morning? No. No, the next thing I remember from that morning is the phone ringing.
You heard right. Nancy testified she has no recollection of the time. From somewhere around 7am until that phone call around 10am stress induced traumatic memory loss or something like that. Because when police later told Nancy they had videos of her driving her gray van around OCI the morning Dane was killed, I thought, they're making this up.
This isn't true. Nancy Brophy testified that she now believes that during those missing periods of memory, she drove the Starbucks and then disappeared into a world of her own making. The world of a writer sketching out a story in her head, driving around aimlessly until just by coincidence, she drove right by OCI right around the time of the murder. Strangely, the only time Nancy's van wasn't on camera was between 7:22 and 7:28.
The exact window of time in which police believe Dan Brophy was murdered. Was there anything you needed to do to this? As cross examination began, that coincidence of Nancy having no memory of the very time period the murder occurred went over like sweet and low in Chef Brophy's organic kitchen. Isn't it possible with your memory problems in the morning that you actually went into the building and shot your husband and you just don't remember?
No, it is not. I did not shoot my husband. And I don't know even how to defend myself against the truth. You were there an area at the same time someone happens to be shooting your husband within a six minute window with the exact type of gun that you own.
That's your version of what happened. That is not my version. The fact that you have managed to construct a case against me out of that is you've constructed a case. But I think your case is held together with Franklin band aids.
And then, although the judge had not allowed the blog post how to murder your husband to be used, Prosecutor Overstreet could use the information in it as the basis for his questions. Do you agree that divorce is expensive? Divorce is expensive. I don't think that is a mystery to anybody here.
You actually find it easier to wish people dead instead of actually killing them? Oh, yeah. My last question to you, Ms. Rofi, is if there's one thing that you know about murder, is it that anyone is capable of doing it?
I absolutely believe that. I think people get pushed into a corner where they have no other options. Going back to my case, there's not enough financial reason there to make it. I do better with Anne alive financially than I do with Anne dead.
We had solved our problem. She went on and on and on about why people commit murder. And I thought that, well, that's all the jury is here for murder. You guys feel confident the jury was out.
I think we felt like we did the best job that we could do if we can have appropriate rights. After just eight hours of deliberation, the jury was back. Count one, murder in the second degree guilty. The judge had no choice in Nancy's sentence.
Mandatory life in prison. She will not be eligible for parole until she is 93 years old. Her best friend Tanya, who once stuck by Nancy, now believes prison is not punishment enough. I'm a firm believer in an eye for eye.
I know that sounds cruel, but I, I, if that was my mother or father, I want justice. I would demand it. It has definitely brought some modicum of closure. There was certainly a time where we were concerned.
If she was acquitted that there would be a very real threat to the safety of our family. That relief is priceless. For Dan's son Nathaniel, it was finally time to send the ashes of his father, the organic farmer, back to the place he loved. I find a little bit of chanterelle mushrooms growing somewhere and I think that'll be the perfect spot.
But it seems like a fitting place to return in. I'm Craig Melf. Cheers. Cheers.
Cheers. I've always been a glass half full kind of guy and now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their try offs, their challenges, their stories are fun and quite candid. So I hope you'll join me each week.
Who knows, you might just come away with your own glass half full. Search Glass Apple with Craig Melford From Today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast.