How To Murder Your Husband | 3
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It took a lot to cut through the clutter on Shane Cavanaugh's desk. I've got...

Stacks of paper, police reports, newspaper clips that I've either cut out or printed off the internet. As a crime reporter at The Oregonian, he was always on the lookout for the next big story. In particular... A real curious, interesting, dark, twisted, weird, strange story. And he just might have found one.

The Portland Police Bureau had just posted a press release. They'd arrested a suspect in the Dan Brophy murder case. There was also a booking photo, and Shane couldn't tear his eyes away from it. The expression on the woman's face changed depending on Shane's angle. It was like the Mona Lisa of mugshots. Expressionless on the one hand. Almost. Almost.

Unapologetic. But then on the other hand, there was a sort of shock as if a little bit of a deer in headlights look to it. Shane got to work. Within 24 hours, he dropped an article with the headline, The Chef's Murder Was a Mystery. Then Portland police arrested his romance novelist wife. It was a good story.

With Nancy's arrest... This had gone from a mildly intriguing to a very interesting crime story. But things were about to get even stranger. Soon after the article dropped, Shane received an email from an anonymous reader. With a message...

saying, hey, you should check out this link. I think this is the person that you just wrote about. The link led him to a site titled See Jane Publish. That included a handful of romance mystery writers in the Portland area who all blogged and wrote about their work and their craft and their lives. One essay immediately caught Shane's attention.

It had been written by Nancy seven years earlier. And it was titled...

Wait for it. How to murder your husband. How to murder your husband. As a romantic suspense writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about murder and consequently about police procedure. In the post, Nancy went on to list, well, all the ways to kill your husband and get away with it. Poison, considered a woman's weapon.

And really going into the weeds and details with how you would do this, how you would plan it out, what you would need to do in order to, you know, pull off the perfect crime and not get caught.

I probably shouldn't have, but I believe I laughed. The connection was just...

in many ways, too good to be true. A writer who publishes the very type of stories that all of a sudden it appears that her life is beginning to take on. There was a question forming in Shane's mind, a question that many others would soon be asking. How did Nancy go from writing about murder to committing one? And if you were going to kill someone...

Why the hell would you publish an essay about it? Have you ever covered a carpet stain with a rug? Ignored a leaky faucet? Pretended your half-painted living room is supposed to look like that? Well, you're not alone. We've all got unfinished home projects. But there's an easier way. When you download Thumbtack, it's easier to care for your home from top to bottom. Pull out your phone and in just a few steps, you can search, chat, and book highly rated pros right in your neighborhood.

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Nancy often drew from her own life to write her characters. And that was especially true for the main character of The Wrong Hero, Abby Brooks. Travis Stevens would always remember the first time he met Abby. He had just walked into the elevator of a bank lobby. Before the elevator doors shut, a young woman with curly blonde hair walked in. She wore sunglasses and was holding a white-tipped cane. Floor? Floor?

20. Her perfume smelled sultry. Probably one he'd seen advertised with a come-on name like "Hot Desire" or "Do Me, Daddy." This was his floor. But before the door was completely open, she raised her palm in the universal symbol for "stop." Travis's senses tingled while his brain worked to put pieces into place.

She discreetly dropped her hand to push the closed door button. "How many were there?" Why the hell was he asking a blind woman a visual question? "Two." She answered, without pausing, tossing her dark glasses into her bag. "Okay... not so blind." The white cane snapped into pieces like a carpenter's ruler. Her blonde curls turned out to be a wig, which disappeared along with the cane into her oversized purse.

The blonde, now brunette, transformed. Had the transformation not happened in front of him, he would never have guessed the women were one and the same. He grabbed her arms and whipped her body against the wall. Who trained you? Perspiration beaded above her upper lip. Trained me? No one. I'm a mystery writer. We think about these things. I practice to get the details right.

Getting the details right. It's important for any writer, and it was especially important to Nancy and the members of our writing group. If you want to understand why Nancy wrote that essay, and then why it split our community in two, you have to go back to where it all began, the Rose City Romance Writers. We met once a month in a community college classroom.

It was usually stadium-style seating, with those little desks that squeak when you swing them up or down. I joined the group a few months before the publication of my fourth romance novel, and I was so excited to show it off. I held up the cover like a kid at show-and-tell. It was everything you'd expect. A hot model, shirt strategically unbuttoned to show a chiseled chest, and a nipple piercing. I thought I'd nailed it.

Instead, I was told all the things that my cover could do better. Nancy led the charge. She told me the title was wrong. The colors needed more contrast. I needed to completely change this and that. At the time, I felt attacked. But I took the feedback, made the changes, and that novel made me enough money to buy a brand new car in cash.

This wasn't a group that was afraid to dish out some tough love. We took our writing careers seriously. I wanted to make a business out of it. Carolyn Zane joined the group because of an article she'd seen in The Oregonian. The very last line that The Oregonian writer wrote was, "So, if you start your novel now, you could have $10,000 by tax day." Romance novels are a billion-dollar industry.

Harlequin, the most famous romance publisher, sells two books every second. If I'm doing the math right, that means they've sold about a thousand books just since I started talking. The Rose City writers wanted a piece of that pie. We hosted plotting parties to outline our stories. We went to workshops and conferences around the country. And we constantly brought in speakers to our meetings, not just fellow writers.

You know, all kinds of people who will give you information on whatever kind of thing you might be interested in tackling as far as your plot goes. We're talking horse trainers, Navy SEALs, weapon experts. I even attended a workshop on 18th century dressing, all the way down to the undergarments. We strive as writers to make things as authentic as possible, and so research is critical if you really want people to respect you.

For one of my novels about a rock star, I spent hours on Zillow, stalking the real estate listings of the rich and famous. I wanted to know exactly what the chandelier looked like in a million-dollar lobby, or how the elevator opened directly into a penthouse.

Nancy's research looked different. She did a police ride-along, she read up on poisons, and she filled her Pinterest board with pins like, "'How Criminals Are Caught,' the difference between direct and circumstantial evidence, and "'Plotting a Fictional Murder.'"

But like most writers starting out, Nancy's stories needed a lot of work. She didn't like to be told when her work was needing work, so she would argue with you and argue with you about it. I think she was like a lot of writers where she felt her words were the best, and it was hard for her to take criticism.

And there was a lot to criticize. Cliched characters, jarring twists and turns, the typos. Perhaps the biggest problem was that Nancy was what we writers call a pantser.

There are plotters who plan out every story beat in advance. And pantsers, like Nancy, who write by the seat of their pants and just kind of see where the story goes. Nancy was funny that way because she often knew what her ending would be. But what she didn't know was... How you got from the beginning to the ending. When Nancy sent her manuscripts to publishers...

She got back letters like, thanks, but this isn't for us, or not this time, but keep writing. The politeness almost made it worse. But Nancy didn't stop writing. She just took a new approach. This was in the early 2010s, the heyday of Fifty Shades of Grey. I need you to show me what you want to do to me.

But what became a huge novel and movie franchise began as an obscure e-book on a fan fiction site. At one point, its author was selling over 5 million books each month, making nearly $200,000 a day. It proved to the world that there was more than one way for authors to find their audience.

So Nancy took a page from that book. She ended up self-publishing. Nancy released digital versions of her books for free on Amazon. And Nancy, Kim Wallenberg, and another writer from the Rose City Romance Writers formed a little side group. We started to call ourselves the Hooligans. The Hooligans.

I want to say that was a Nancy name, but I can't remember for sure where it came up from. But it sounds totally like a Nancy name. They started the blog See Jane Publish to drum up more publicity. Instead of drawing from their lives to write their fiction, they were going to try to sell their fiction by writing about their lives. We three Janes are intrepid authors ready to step into the unknown.

Nancy regularly posted thoughts about her writing process.

And why romance novels are actually a feminist enterprise. And she wrote a lot about Dan. And final, trust me, marriage.

We vowed, prior to saying I do, that we would not end in divorce. We did not, I should note, rule out a tragic drive-by shooting or a suspicious accident. We love being married. We love being married to each other, just not every day. In reality, I love my husband and the way he can make me laugh when I'm really angry. And how, when I least expect it, he can say the perfect thing.

But one last word of caution. If I ever take a swan dive off a high building, investigate, investigate, investigate. In November of 2011, Nancy posted the essay, How to Murder Your Husband. To her fellow writers, it wasn't different from the way Nancy usually wrote. It was a hilarious essay.

totally Nancy article. It's kind of goofy. It's kind of silly. I thought it was tongue in cheek. It was just our Nancy being our Nancy. So when she wrote that blog post, she shared it with Dan first before she posted it for us. And he thought it was funny. Dan loved Nancy's humor.

She would tease him about sleeping with one eye open because, you know, she was a romantic suspense writer, so she knew all the ways to get away with stuff. And he would just grin at her. He thought it was hilarious. He knew Nancy just had that goofy, bizarre sense of humor. After Nancy posted the essay, the comments came pouring in.

Really? Who hasn't had that stray thought about murdering a spouse or lover? Every time he leaves the toilet seat up? I love, love, love writing a mystery where I get to virtually kill my enemies. I'm calling Dan to make sure he's all right. Smile emoji. Kim also left a comment. Oh my gosh, Nancy, I just love your mind. You are so wickedly ornery. I think this should be your next book.

Nobody took it seriously at the time because, of course, it was just Nancy. But seven years later, that article would resurface. And this time, nobody would be laughing. Do you know where your box of old home movies is? When was the last time you made sure the box they're in isn't too hot, damp, or moldy?

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New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500. That's audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500. Shane Cavanaugh put the finishing touches on his second article about Nancy Brophy. This one had an even more eye-catching headline than the first. Romance novelist accused of killing spouse published How to Murder Your Husband essay.

He sent it off to his editor and leaned back in his chair. I knew this was going to go from a crime and murder story that had a certain level of interest in Portland to becoming something that was going to quickly get national and international attention. And just as Shane had predicted, the story quickly made the leap from the local news... An essay she wrote seven years before he was murdered details a lot of different... ...to national news...

68-year-old romance novelist Nancy Brophy published an essay writing The Thing I Know About Murder. Videos popped up all over YouTube. Dr. Grande, today's question is, can I analyze the case of Daniel and Nancy Brophy? True crime enthusiasts. Rule number one of the Cashew Criminalists, do not write down your crimes. We'll add to that.

Do not write a novel about your crimes. And others who just leaned into the undeniable irony. My wife actually is a screenwriter, and this weekend I am going to be combing through her scripts very carefully, just in case there's something to worry about. That was kind of my reaction, too. Like it felt too ridiculous to be real.

I mean, if I submitted a pitch to an editor, hey, here's a story about an author who writes an essay titled How to Murder Your Husband, and then 10 years later murders her husband, they'd go, yeah, I don't buy it. Which is also what Nancy's friends and fellow writers were saying.

None of this added up. I knew she loved Dan. I had no doubt in my mind that she loved that man. No doubt. But people seemed set on turning a seven-year-old blog post into a confession. This is one of the things that has been really infuriating, that they could tie that stinking blog post to what happened. It was a shock to all of us, an absolute shock.

Anybody ever actually looked at the research I did for my stories, they would think I was a demonologist or a witch. They glommed on the fact that she writes these stories like this, so that must mean she was thinking about doing this. A few weeks after the arrest, Nancy's best friend, Tanya Medlin, took a seat across from her at the Multnomah County Inverness Jail.

Nancy was wearing a blue prison jumpsuit. Nancy always kept her hair nice. You know, she always had a little bit of makeup on. And, you know, she didn't have any of that on. She looked like she had lost a little bit of weight. Tonya picked up the telephone on the wall. She'd seen Shane's article about Nancy's old blog post, and she had questions.

I asked her point blank at the jail. I'm like, "I don't understand this." I was like, "Why are they bringing up this frickin' new essay you wrote?" And she laughed. Nancy's reaction didn't sit well with Tanya. I was more pissed, and she was laughing. I'm like, "I don't understand this. Why is this funny to you?" She goes, "I wrote it as a joke." I said, "I know, but you see how frickin' funny it is now, don't ya? 'Cause they're using it against you." Before Tanya could get all her questions out, it was time to go.

And she's like, well, when we get this all proved that I'm innocent and we're out of here, she goes, we can all sit back, laugh and have a drink and laugh about it. And I'm like, OK, I at this point see nothing funny. But yeah, let's hope that day comes.

Shortly after Tanya's visit with Nancy in jail, she received a message from one of her vendors at work. He doesn't want to sharpen my knives anymore. And I'm like, what the hell is your problem? Word had spread through the culinary circles in Portland, of which Dan had been a beloved member. He's like, I can't support anybody that supports Nancy. Tanya was shocked. And so he then says to me, if you're going to continue to be her friend, then I don't want to do business with you anymore.

Oh, it's fine with me if you want to lose your income. Whatever. Shit, dude, that's your problem. I don't know what the hell happened. And I'm going to wait till I see evidence. I want to see the evidence. But the messages kept coming.

Nathaniel, Dan's son, also reached out. You should know that she's guilty. Tanya was adamant. How do you know? How do you know? Like, the only person who knows who shot Dan Brophy is the person that shot him and Dan Brophy. For Dan's family, the blog post went beyond coincidence. Did she get confused with, like, writing and real life? Did she think that she could act out?

you know, as one of her characters in her book and that, you know, it would be just as simple as a plot line. Nathaniel sent Tanya links to the police footage of Nancy's van circling the crime scene. To him, it was clear evidence that Nancy was guilty, but Tanya didn't want to watch it.

Can anybody say without a shred of doubt that that's her face in the van? I got this person saying she's guilty. I got these people saying she's innocent. I got her writing people saying she's innocent. I got her lawyer calling me, telling me without a shred of a doubt she believes in Nancy wholeheartedly. But nobody will tell me why they believe in her or why they didn't believe in her. And that's what I wanted. That's what I needed. Nathaniel didn't want to hear it. Nathaniel went off on me. It became you're either on this side or you're on that side.

A few weeks later, People magazine published a story on Nancy with a quote from Tanya. She wrote about murder mysteries and people are spinning it way out of control. I don't believe she's capable of this. I've known her. I know him. They were in love. Nathaniel kicked Tanya out of the private Facebook group for Dan's friends and family. Two camps were forming, Team Guilty and Team Innocent.

Nancy's friends and fellow romance writers picked their side. As the pressure mounted, detectives Merrill and Posey stayed focused on one goal: find the evidence to keep Nancy behind bars.

And they knew exactly where to begin looking. We all took different quadrants of the house and focused on those areas. But they had no idea what they'd find within those walls. We definitely didn't rule out that this possibly was a red herring that she had created. Or how many twists and turns were waiting for them. That's on the next episode of Happily Never After,

Dan and Nancy.

From Wondery and The Oregonian, this is episode three of six of Happily Never After, Dan and Nancy. Happily Never After, Dan and Nancy is hosted by me, Heidi Trethewey. This series is reported by Zane Sparling. Additional editing by Margaret Haberman. Senior producer is Tracy Egbos.

Senior Story Editor is Natalie Shisha. Associate Producer is Sam Hobson. With writing from Nicole Perkins. Casting by Rachel Reese. Voice talent by Kristen Eggermeyer, Dustin Rubin, and Kristen Price. Sound design, mixing, and additional composition by Daniel Brunel. Sound supervisor is Marcelino Villalpando.

Music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Freesound Sync. Fact-checking by Annika Robbins. Senior managing producer is Lata Pandya. Managing producers are Olivia Weber and Heather Beloga. Executive producers for Advanced Local are Richard Diamond and Selena Roberts.

Executive producers are Nigery Eaton, George Lavender, Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent for Wondery. Wondery.

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