The novelist who wrote “How to Murder Your Husband” is now on trial for murdering her husband.
Huh. Imagine that. A few years after Nancy Crampton Brophy—a self-published romance novelist—wrote an essay called “How to Murder Your Husband,” her husband was found shot to death in his classroom at the Oregon Culinary Institute in Portland. While that essay might have been a little bit of a red flag to investigators, the trial judge has deemed it inadmissible as evidence on the grounds it might prove prejudicial (you think?).
Nonetheless, it sounds like the case is pretty solid, as there were no signs of struggle or theft in the murder, and Brophy’s minivan was seen arriving at and leaving the scene around the time of the shooting. And the alleged motive? As old as time. Greed: Brophy would have stood to collect a $1.4 million life insurance policy. Which reminds me of one of the first rules of spouse-murdering: do not write an essay about how to murder your spouse.
The trial, which began yesterday, is expected to last seven weeks, and I only hope that somewhere out there someone is writing a six-episode screenplay, and that Olivia Colman is set to star.
