A Real Murder by the Book (Or Blog Post, As The Case May Be)
Okay, so now she’s ruined it for the rest of us.
For years, I’ve thought law-enforcement agencies monitoring internet traffic must perk up when they see some of my Google searches. I’ve looked for information about poisons, about bombs, about “untraceable ways of killing someone,” about where to bury a body (hint: under an endangered/protected species of plant or tree is a good choice). After a time, I figure, I probably made it to a list somewhere: “Oh, that’s just one of the crime writers, never mind.”
And then a self-published romance writer ruined it for those of us on that list. Because Nancy Brophy was recently convicted in an Oregon court of second-degree murder for killing her husband.
It happens. In fact, the spouse/partner of a murder victim is usually the first person suspected of the crime, and very often is in fact the criminal. The difference here? In 2011, seven years before her husband’s murder, Brophy wrote a blog article titled How to Murder Your Husband.
Talk about tipping your hand!
She might not have been thinking about applying the techniques she discusses in the article to her own life back when she wrote it, of course, but one wonders why on earth she didn’t take the post down once she decided that she was going to follow her own advice. And—it has to be said—when she did finally set out on the enterprise, she didn’t do a very good job of it. I’ve never written a step-by-step article about any kind of murder but, with a couple of murder-mystery series under my belt, I’d hesitate before applying any of the techniques I’ve used to murder fictional characters to real life. It’s just a tad—obvious, wouldn’t you say?
The rest of her story is dreary and pedestrian (as most real murders tend to be; it’s never Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a candlestick): the couple was experiencing financial difficulties and she thought a big life-insurance payout would make everything just peachy-keen.
For her, anyway. Not so much for Daniel. Even though she practically giggles when introducing him on her website (“can you imagine spending the rest of your life without a man like that?”), his presence in her life—and on the planet—was apparently not as exciting as the thought of a brighter financial future. I’m not particularly interested in this tawdry little motive; what fascinates me is her inability to shut up. “Writers are liars,” she says on the website. “I don't remember who said that but it's not true. In writing fiction, you dig deep and unearth portions of your own life that you've long forgotten or had purposely buried deep. Granted, sometimes it is smarter to change the ending.”
Yep. She’s proof positive of that.
I know it sounds like I’m being very tongue-in-cheek about a tragedy, Daniel Brophy’s tragedy, and I don’t mean to be: he deserved to continue with his life for another twenty or thirty years. He deserved a better life-partner. I just wonder how an intelligent person—and even bad writers have a modicum of intelligence—could write that article, order pieces for a ghost gun online, and not have the presence of mind to—oh, I don’t know, maybe establish a better alibi than “I was getting coffee at a Starbucks.”
And of course now someone, somewhere, is probably looking at the Don’t-Worry-About-This-One list and saying, “maybe we should worry after all.”
Ah, well. At least the girl was consistent. She said she’d murder her husband, and she did.
I promise: my recent searches entailing the possible use of dexamethasone as a murder weapon? I don’t actually mean it.
No, really.