- Just like any other day, Dan Brophy got ready to go to work and left home
- A respected teacher at a culinary school, he prepared for his students’ arrival
- But instead of facing his class, he came face to face with a killer
Daniel Brophy woke early on the morning of June 2, 2018.
He had chickens to feed, his dogs to walk and then he was off to work by 7am.
Dan taught at a well-respected culinary school.
Once he arrived, his day should have followed its usual pattern of setting up for the students and then cooking alongside them.
But horrifically, things went very differently.
A bullet whizzed towards him, striking him in the back
Dan was alone in the kitchen when a bullet whizzed towards him, striking him in the back.
Dan was a much-loved member of the community with no known enemies.
So was this an accident? An opportunistic robbery? What happened next meant the police didn’t think so.
Whoever shot Dan made sure they finished the job.
READ MORE: Man kills partner because he was jealous of their newborn
As the 63-year-old chef fell to the ground, he was shot again, this time in the chest.
His wallet full of cash and cards was left untouched, and the killer escaped unseen.
When one of Dan’s students discovered the teacher’s body 30 minutes later, it shocked everyone.
None more so than Dan’s wife, Nancy Crampton Brophy.
The then 67-year-old romance novel writer was understandably distraught.
Perfect relationship
My husband and best friend Chef Dan Brophy was killed yesterday morning, she wrote on Facebook, the day after his death.
For those of you who are close to me and feel this deserved a phone call, you are right, but I’m struggling to make sense
of everything right now.
The couple had been together for over 25 years and had what seemed to be the perfect relationship.
In a blog post about Dan before his death, Nancy – who’d penned romantic suspense novels including The Wrong Lover and The Wrong Cop – described Dan as the type of husband who whipped up delicious dinners, did the washing and even brought her treats in the bath.
Ups and downs
Like all marriages, we’ve had our ups and downs, she admitted, but said there were always more good times than bad.
Despite Nancy’s description of her wonderful husband, she quickly became the police’s key suspect.
She’d been captured on CCTV driving her van the morning of the murder, despite initially saying she was home.
She also failed to mention to detectives that she owned a ‘ghost gun’ kit, which is a homemade weapon designed to be untraceable.
And then there was the issue of an essay she’d written in 2011.
READ MORE: Tinder romance turned deadly – the murder of Kendra Hatcher
Under the title How To Murder Your Husband, she’d detailed the possible motives for doing so.
The drawback is the police aren’t stupid. They are looking at you first. So you have to be organised, ruthless and very clever, she wrote.
But the thing I know about murder is that every one of us have it in him/her when pushed far enough, she continued.
As the evidence stacked up, Nancy was arrested in September 2018, and charged with the murder of her husband, Daniel.
Prosecutors also found a motive for Dan’s death.
Struggling with debt
At the trial in May 2022, it was revealed the couple were struggling with debt.
A potential $1.5 million payout from Dan’s life insurance policies was a compelling reason for Nancy to want to kill him.
Incredibly, four days after Dan’s murder, Nancy spoke to one of the investigators, asking whether he would provide a letter saying she was not a suspect.
She said she needed it to show an insurance company so she could cash in a $57,000 life insurance claim.
The prosecution also pointed to the ghost gun kit Nancy had bought six months before the murder.
‘She’d also bought a 9mm Glock pistol’
They claimed she hadn’t been able to put it together, so she’d also bought a 9mm Glock pistol and then replaced its barrel with one she bought on eBay, so the gun shell casings wouldn’t match the weapon she owned.
Nancy’s defence argued at every turn. Buying the gun parts, they said, was research for a new novel about a woman slowly acquiring gun parts to kill her abusive partner.
‘It was for writing,’ she said in the trial. ‘It was not to, as you would have it, murder my husband.’
She also said she couldn’t remember being in the area that morning, because she was processing the shock of losing her husband when she was questioned.
The defence pointed instead to various homeless people in the area who’d never been questioned.
As for the motive, Nancy’s defence argued it was flawed.
They said the couple had largely solved their financial problems after cashing in a chunk of Dan’s retirement savings plan.
And given that Nancy very much loved her husband – a fact that various witnesses testified to – she had no reason to murder him.
Clear her debts
But the prosecution argued that Nancy had murdered her husband to clear her debts.
‘Nancy Brophy planned and carried out what she believed was the perfect murder.
A murder that she believed would free her from the grips of financial despair,’ prosecutors said in court documents.
READ MORE: Raised by a serial killer – How I uncovered Dad’s dark secret
Nancy’s essay on how to murder your husband wasn’t used in evidence, because it was ruled the piece had been written too long ago to be relevant.
Nancy herself said it didn’t stand up to scrutiny.
‘An editor would laugh and say, “I think you need to work harder on this story. You have kind of a big hole in it”,’ she said.
But hole or not, it took a jury just eight hours, on May 25 this year, to convict Nancy, 71, of murder.
She was sentenced to life in jail, with a minimum of 25 years.
Before the sentencing, Dan Brophy’s son from a previous marriage, Nathaniel Stillwater, read a statement.
‘You opted to lie, cheat, steal, defraud and ultimately kill the man that was…
your biggest fan,’ he said.
‘You executed my father in an act of cold-blooded, premeditated murder. You were – to borrow from your catalogue – the wrong wife.’
