On June 2, 2018, when romance author Nancy Crampton Brophy arrived to the Oregon Culinary Institute, the scene of her husband, Chef Daniel Brophy’s murder, she looked to homicide detectives as the image of innocence.
“We felt compassion for her. We felt sad for her,” Portland police Detective Anthony Merrill testified in court. “We considered Ms. Crampton Brophy a grieving spouse who had just learned that her husband had been brutally murdered.”
Nearly four years later, prosecutors have spent days presenting evidence that the white-haired romance author shot her husband in the back to collect $1.4 million in life insurance, in a trial that is going on right now.
Chef Brophy and I
In 1997, the culinary school was called Western Culinary Institute, and I was an older student (mid 30’s) and looking for a second career that appeased to my creative nature.
Having more years under my belt was a blessing on many levels. I was stable, had a family with two children, and more settled as a woman, so I was very dedicated to learning and dove into the work. It was clear that many of the instructors were not much older than I was. Brophy, as it turns out, was only 7 years my senior.
Brophy, at that time, taught two classes. One was as the monitor of the evening kitchen class, where we cooked dinner for the other 800 students, and a class that was purely intellectual on introducing us to world ingredients we may not have had an opportunity to know.
Brophy was absolutely brilliant, if not a genius. He knew everything about cooking, and knew the origin and genus of every ingredient you could possibly use. However, he always had an air of austerity and discontent with the world, like a darkness about him. I wondered many times if he was not somewhat autistic, due to his lack of social skills that left most unnerved by him. This man rarely smiled, and rarely looked you in the eye, but I loved his class and had great respect for him. Brophy, without a doubt, was the instructor that influenced me the most.
I remember after writing an introductory paper on my past culinary experience called “Culinary Vibrations and Appalachian Mothersauces” for his class, I had other instructors come up to me and tell me they loved my paper. Evidently Brophy did as well, as I found that he shared it with everyone. That began a mutual respect between the two of us, that allowed me to be more at ease in his class, and, as it turned out, was the beginning of my writing career. I published that paper, and every time I pull it out, I think of him.
Brophy had a field trip one day to the Oregon shore to pull geoducks, a large clam, out of the sand. HIs parents came along, and they were a lovely couple that were both obviously post retirement age. While we walked to the ocean, I noticed they had trouble balancing themselves on the barrier rocks that had to be crossed to get to our location. I went back for them, held their hand and helped them on their way. We stood together the rest of our trip and had a friendly banter. HIs mother whispered in my ear that day, “I’ll make sure you get an A.”
Eventually, you form alliances with fellow students, and mine was with an eastern Indian woman named Meera. I noticed Brophy was very different around her, like she was special. He sought her out, and asked her to come to his office and assist him with some Indian spices he wanted to catalog and teach. He smiled, eerily, stared into her eyes, and held her arm as he talked to her. Meera and I discussed how odd the interactions were for Brophy, but when he asked her out to dinner, Meera decided she had had enough.
“Help me deal with this,” she asked me. After conferring with the options, I decided to take the issue to another fellow instructor rather than going to the school officials. She was very afraid her new husband would find out, and I had to honor her wishes.
I approached the other chef instructor in class when he was alone and explained what Brophy was doing. I asked this friend of his to help intervene, rather than going to the school and reporting his behavior officially. He looked incredibly uncomfortable.
“You know he’s married,” he said.
I rolled my eyes in exacerbation, “This isn’t coming from Meera; its all Brophy, and she wants it stopped. Can you help?”
The chef stood up off his stool, looked down at me, and said sternly, “If his wife knew she would kill him.”
Okay, I thought, she’s jealous, because he has obviously done this before. I took a deep breath and watched him squirm. I left not knowing if this man would help Meera, but in no way did I take the statement Brophy’s good friend made literally, and until 2018, I was positive that it was not intended that way. Now, I’m not so sure.
Eventually, Brophy got the message and his advances ceased. I never knew if he was asked to stop. Meera and I both graduated at the top of our class, and moved on with our lives.
The Shooting
On June 2, 2018, students arrived for their early morning class, only to find Chef Brophy laying on the floor, with blood on his back, two shot shells beside him, in one of the school kitchens. Somewhere in a short amount of time he had been in the school prepping for his class, he had been shot dead.
Police arrived, and as student’s and instructors sobbed, the investigations started immediately. They were looking for a cold blooded killer.
Homicide detectives say their original thoughts of Crampton Brophy, now 71, changed after obtaining security video showing her minivan in the area of the culinary school in the Goose Hollow neighborhood during the 13-minute span in which her husband was murdered.
The initial tapes were discovered as two Portland police investigators transported Crampton Brophy home in the same van, according to court documents. However, police have claimed that they did not request a gunpowder residue test on Crampton Brophy’s hands.
“We were still in shock,” said Merrill, explaining why he ordered an investigator to photograph the van of Crampton Brophy, which had a characteristic scrape above the wheel well. He figured he would unroll this story one lead at a time.
The suspect vehicle’s partial license plate number was captured on surveillance film from a nearby MAX light rail station, which, as he subsequently discovered, matched the plate number belonging to Crampton Brophy’s van.
Police were unable to extract any fingerprints from the two shot shells discovered at the murder site, but that was not unusual.
Crampton-Brophy told investigators after the shooting that she and her husband purchased a Glock at a gun expo after the Parkland, Florida, school shooting. She said they never used it and never purchased ammo for it. Detectives reportedly determined that Crampton-Brophy acquired a Glock slide and barrel on eBay and installed them on the Glock purchased at the gun show.
Police felt that she shot her husband and then switched the eBay slide and barrel with the original slide and barrel purchased at the gun show, “thus being able to present a new, fully intact firearm to police that would not be a match to the shell casings that she left at the crime scene,” the motion alleges.
The eBay slide and barrel that detectives say she used in the shooting were never located, but Portland is at the epicenter of two large rivers.
Then they discovered that she was sole beneficiary to over $1.15 million in life insurance and worker’s compensation policies. The couple also had about $312,000 in equity in their home. Crampton Brophy stood to collect almost $1.5 million upon Brophy’s death.
They also discovered a story she authored called “How to murder your husband.” They had everything.
Crampton Brophy was arrested without an admission in September, 2018, and is currently on trial, facing a murder charge in the death of her husband.
The Trial
Prosecutor Shawn Overstreet said that Crampton-Brophy “executed what she perhaps bereaved to be the perfect plot,” adding that it wasn’t, because “all of the leads that detectives followed up with all pointed back to Nancy Brophy.”
Overstreet attempted to construct a picture of what occurred on the morning of his murder.
“Dan was standing at a commercial sink,” he told the jury. “He was filling up the ice and water buckets as he did every day for the students. He would have had his back to the door Nancy likely came through.”
According to prosecutors, Daniel Brophy arrived at the culinary academy early on the day of his murder, deactivated the alarm at 7:21 a.m., and was shot and killed within seven minutes. According to authorities, detectives then discovered security tape showing Crampton-Brophy arriving before her spouse and departing at 7:28 a.m.
They also said that she first informed officers that she had been at home all morning.
According to police, one of Daniel Brophy’s coworkers came around 7:30 a.m. He was discovered dead around 30 minutes later as students came for class.
At the time, the medical examiner found that Daniel Brophy had been shot twice: once in the back and once in the chest. Both gunshots punctured his heart, and either might have killed him, according to the medical examiner.
The next day, Crampton-Brophy wrote on Facebook, “I have sad news to relate. I’m struggling to make sense of everything right now. While I appreciate all of your loving responses, I am overwhelmed.”
A day later, hundreds of people gathered in the institute’s parking lot for a tribute to Daniel.
“Dan was one of the very few people I’ve known that did exactly what he wanted to and loved doing it,” Crampton-Brophy said.
According to court filings, Crampton-Brophy requested a letter from police stating that she was not a suspect. She intended to deliver it to her insurance company in order to collect on what she said was a $40,000 coverage.
According to authorities, detectives eventually discovered she was entitled to more than $350,000.
Overstreet said in his opening remarks that the insurance policies were just one component of the couples’ financial difficulties. He said that they even skipped a mortgage payment to pay for insurance.
Lisa Maxfield, Crampton Brophy’s lawyer, painted a different image, one of a loving couple dealing with difficulties but working together to overcome them.
Maxfield said that the prosecution’s case demands that the jury “cast a blind eye to the most powerful evidence of all… love,” she said.
Crampton-Brophy was an author who characterized her work on her website by stating “my stories are about pretty men and strong women, about families that don’t always work and about the joy of finding love and the difficulty of making it stay.”
As mentioned before, in 2011, she wrote an essay, “How to Murder Your Husband.”
“As a romantic suspense writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about murder and, consequently, about police procedure,” she said in the essay. She said that if you use a gun, consider that they are “loud, messy, require some skill. If it takes 10 shots for the sucker to die, either you have terrible aim or he’s on drugs.”
She offered five reasons for murdering your spouse in her article on how to murder your husband.
-Financial.
-Husband who lies and cheats.
-I’ve fallen in love with someone else.
-Abuser.
-It’s your line of work.
“It is easier to wish people dead than to actually kill them,” she said in the essay. “But the thing I know about murder is that every one of us have it in him/her when pushed far enough.”
The judge ruled the first day that the essay was inadmissible.
According to Overstreet, Crampton Brophy made a statement inadvertently to a cellmate, and the cellmate should testify after Nancy Brophy’s lawyers present their case.
“Ms. Brophy held her arms apart, like a wingspan, and said, ‘I was this far away when the shooting happened,’” Overstreet said.
Nancy Brophy then corrected herself, according to Overstreet, and indicated that the gunfire occurred at close range.
Andrea Jacobs, a prisoner, told officers that Nancy Brophy seemed uncomfortable after making the remark, and that their connection became “very awkward.”
It’s Not Over
The outcome of this trial at this writing has not be concluded, but as it is in the news almost every day, it’s impossible for me to rest easy. I am so haunted by this act, and by my history with this man, that I went deep into my files and recovered my essay, as a tribute to a brilliant, troubled man. It makes me so sad, and I think of his dear parents often, having no idea whether they had to live through this.
Culinary Vibrations and Appalachian Mothersauces
By Liv Barker, C.C.
As a chef, I took the opportunity to examine my culinary history in an attempt to understand what food meant to me. All the French mothersauces in the world could not erase the indelible memories of my childhood days at a stove, and as my training progressed, it became more and more clear that my WV roots were there to stay. I have also been lucky in regards to the sense of humor that the women in my family possessed, and how it was passed on to me, usually in a kitchen.
My great-grandmother, Callie Pearl, was my first and principal culinary influence. I remember those times as a little girl when she taught me the art of perfecting the grilled cheese sandwich by putting the butter on the inside of the Wonder Bread, and letting it soak through as it slowly heated in an iron skillet. When she fell in a heap on her living room floor, she was clutching her chest and whispering “Velveeta”.
My grandmother, Verna Leola, gave me a similar perspective on food. Her meals of 12 oz. meat portions with a least one form of potato, (usually mashed with whole milk, seasonings, and one stick of margarine per pot) were usually augmented by a vegetable, fresh or canned, that had originated from her garden. I trimmed a few thousand beans sitting on her back porch, only to find them a lovely army green from cooking for hours in a huge pot on the stove, smothered with the freshest bacon grease this side of a Folger’s can. As another grilled Velveeta fan, she taught me the art of using more flavoring in my cooking by adding an onion in the layering before committing it to the big black beast. After having several strokes, she can still respond to her name.
By far the largest celebrations in our house would take place on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Almost identical culinary-wise, with the exceptions of holiday influenced pies, my family cooked like beasts. Twenty-four pound turkeys to begin with, with two different pans of stuffing and always, always a green bean casserole made with Campbell’s mushroom soup and the onion crunchies that come in a can. There were also two large pans of gummy yeast rolls to sop up the turkey gravy with rivers of bright red cranberry sauce running through it. Very traditional, very repetitive, and if Uncle Randy wasn’t snoring by 6 pm in a Lazyboy, we knew the earth’s axis was off.
My mother attempted the first and daring break from her traditions, as she introduced me to the world of brown rice, beans without fatback, and cornbread from a box. Influenced by my father’s Naval career and her jaunts to different parts of the US and the world with us in tow, occasionally some different foods would appear on the table. She worked at it, but the pull of WV was too hard and inevitably a pot of beans would appear on the stove, and beside it, an open, empty box of spoon bread mix.
When I left West Virginia, I lived with a group of vegetarians who taught me for the first time to eat without that WV flare. They introduced me to guacamole, tofu, home-brewed beer, dark breads, garlic, garlic, garlic and many others. Did I say garlic? I then, for the next 13 years, said “nothing with a face, thank you”.
Travel was inevitable as my adventurous spirit blossomed, and I started moving around the country, working as a coordinator on a peace walk. I was greatly aware during these travels of the differences in food, because as a poor troop we relied on the kindness of strange church groups and occasional “shower adoptions” into the local homes. We were then treated to all the delicacies a welcome stranger samples at the table of an eager cook.
From there I became a coordinator for international peace walks, with the first being a trip to Russia, six months after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1987 and during the initiating months of Peristroyka and Glasnost, or the end of the Soviet regime. It was a weird time for money and poison, so sadly, we were eating a lot of tomatoes, cucumbers and brown bread. The only water we could locate that seemed safe was bottled water so thick with minerals that we all got these sexy gray vertical lines on our teeth. Ireland came next, and in the land of a thousand greens I saw no reason to live on anything other than Guinness. I then lived in New Zealand for two years and learned the art of boiling vegetables so that they all have the same color. There, my main sources of food came from the wonderful Greek, Turkish and Indian delis that littered the capital city of Wellington.
I came back to the states eventually and had a family. My pallet has developed to world food, and of course, my children have the most sensitive culinary natures imaginable. I’ve decided it’s a karmic curse. If they only knew that in an attempt to grow some hair to their tongue I add a touch of cayenne to their Mac-n-cheese. Hah!
Sociologically and culinary-wise, West Virginians have a fatalistic approach, one that I spent years working on, both on a couch and at a stove. But there, in the bubbling of my African peanut stew, I can still hear Callie Pearl and her ever-loving phrase, “Don’t burn ‘em beans!”.