‘How to murder your husband’ writer sentenced for murdering husband

(BBC) An Oregon judge has sentenced Nancy Crampton Brophy, a romance author who apparently foretold of her crime in an essay titled “How to murder your husband”, to life in prison for the shooting death of her late spouse.

Crampton Brophy, 71, was found guilty of second degree murder last month.

A jury found that she shot her husband of 26 years in 2018 for a $1.5m (£1.2m) life insurance pay-out.

Before her crime, Crampton Brophy had been a self-published author whose works of steamy romance and suspense include novels such as “The Wrong Husband” and “The Wrong Lover”.

Her late husband, Daniel Brophy, was a chef and respected teacher at the Oregon Culinary Institute.

His widow was convicted of the murder last month.

The case attracted much attention for an essay Crampton Brophy had written years before the crime, titled “How to murder your husband”.

“The thing I know about murder is that every one of us have it in him/her when pushed far enough,” she had said in the now-deleted post.

She listed a number of ways to commit mariticide, from guns and knives to poison and hitmen before writing “it is easier to wish people dead than to actually kill them”.

She added: “If the murder is supposed to set me free, I certainly don’t want to spend any time in jail”.

A judge ruled against admitting the essay as evidence at her trial because it was penned years earlier as part of a writing seminar.

But prosecutors did not need the text.

They successfully argued that Crampton Brophy had the motive and the means to murder her partner, showing the couple had fallen on hard times financially, and she stood to pocket a hefty insurance pay-out after his death.