Nancy Crampton-Brophy wrote romantic suspense novels. In 2011, she published an essay with a title that today sounds like a confession: “How to Murder Your Husband” (How to Murder Your Husband). There, amid narrative advice, she let slip a sentence that prosecutors would cite years later: she said she would never wear the orange uniform of a prison, because it wasn’t her color.
On June 2, 2018, her husband Daniel Brophy, a 63-year-old chef and professor at the Oregon Culinary Institute in Portland, Oregon, was found shot to death at his workplace. The prosecution, led by prosecutor Rod Underhill, argued that Nancy would collect 1.4 million dollars from a life insurance policy.
The judge barred the use of the essay as direct evidence, but the jury still found her guilty of second-degree murder on May 26, 2022. She was sentenced to life in prison. In the end, she wore that orange uniform she swore she would never put on.
