Stranger than Fiction | 5
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Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Happily Never After, Dan and Nancy, early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Sean Overstreet looked like he could have stepped off of one of Nancy's novel covers. He was broad-shouldered with dark blonde hair and a square jawline. If Nancy ever wrote The Wrong Lawyer, he'd be perfect for it.

And that's the role he wanted, the district attorney who got Nancy locked away. She refused to take a plea deal or talk to the detectives. But that didn't mean Nancy wasn't talking. Since she'd been arrested, she'd had a steady stream of visitors and phone calls. Nancy was just very, very social.

And once a month, an investigator dropped off a compilation of Nancy's calls for Sean to listen to. So let me tell you about the meals here. 25 years with Dad did not help me. So nothing is hot. So when they serve you oatmeal or they serve you cream of wheat, it's already developed that little skim over the top. If you didn't know that they were jail calls, you wouldn't suspect that she's making them from...

while being held for murder. We're playing Scrabble here with some of the most interesting words you've ever seen in your entire life. And I keep saying, what is this word? What is this word? And it's very optional. I listen to a lot of jail calls and not everybody talks about their case, but, you know, they're depressed or they're upset or they're, you know, sad about their situation. They miss their family and friends and they, uh,

feel bad about what is happening and the position that they're in.

We started thinking, like, does she have some sort of mental illness? I mean, is there something wrong here?

She doesn't think that she's going to actually be held responsible for this. She thought she was smarter than everybody. And she thought she can get away with it. So Saturday night, we all got searched and our wrists got dropped. And I got in trouble for too many books. I said, oh, I suppose that's not the worst thing I could be in trouble for. She says, yeah, you could be in trouble for murder. Oh, wait. Oh, wait.

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From Wondery and The Oregonian, I'm Heidi Trethewey. If they ask me, I could write a book. And this is Happily Never After, Dan and Nancy. And the simple secret of the plot. This is Episode 5, Stranger Than Fiction. Stranger Than Fiction

Detective Posey's search through Nancy's internet history had turned up some interesting results. Now, writers joke about their browsing all the time, like, if you see my search history, I'm going down for murder. But if you see my search history,

My writer friends are researching bombs and witchcraft and international espionage. Nancy had been doing a lot of searching about guns. You know, as far as how to manipulate them and use them. Starting in late 2017, Nancy became especially interested in one particular kind of gun, the unregistered, untraceable kind, ghost guns.

She finally bought one on Christmas Eve, a little stocking stuffer for herself. I'm going to speak with Mr. Dove, please. The detectives found the name of Kermit Dove, a local gunsmith, in Nancy's search history. I'm Mr. Dove. This is Detective Anthony Merrill with Portland Police Bureau Homicide Detail. It wasn't hard for Kermit to remember Nancy. She'd called him to ask about building a gun from a kit...

She wanted to know if she got stuck, could she get help from a professional like me? Kermit told her no. He could lose his license for helping someone build an unregistered weapon. I have had several calls from people like that. But I remember this particular one because I don't have many females call me about building guns serialized or unsterilized. Kermit couldn't give Merrill much information about that gun kit.

But what Kermit did tell them helped them piece together what had likely happened in the months leading up to Dan's murder. Christmas Eve of 2017, Nancy purchases a gun kit online. Maybe she thought the ghost gun was going to be the perfect weapon because it was untraceable. But then when she opened it up and realized all the work that went into putting this thing together, maybe it was beyond her capability.

Then she reaches out to a gunsmith and learns she's on her own with it. So that February, she changes course and buys a licensed gun at a local gun show. The theory is she came up with a plan to buy a gun that would be all legit, that would be, there would be paperwork showing her purchase of it. She had a reason because there were school shootings and Dan worked at a school. Then, on the day of the murder, Nancy freely hands over that licensed gun to the police.

She tells Meryl and Posey that she and Dan had bought it, but never used it. They got it, they looked at it, and they were just like, oh my God, what did we do? I can't even touch it. This thing is too dangerous. Meryl and Posey went back through their earlier conversations with Nancy. Some of the ways she reacted at certain questions were strange to us. And so it's still on my closet shelf, and it still has that little plastic band around the...

Shooter thing? Yeah. Shooter thing. There's a name for this. There's a name for this? I've read Nancy's books. She knew it was called a trigger. At the time when we first gave the death notification, we thought, this is a poor older lady that just learned her husband of 20-some years was brutally shot to death at his place of work. Believe me.

It seemed okay because we know everyone reacts differently to extreme stress.

But she had some weird responses to certain things. I remember she laughed a couple of times. I thought at the time it was like nervous laughter. We went back and listened to it over and over.

And then when you put it together with all these other pieces that we've assembled up to this point,

It's super weird, and everything looks very suspicious. Have you done enough things that you really think you know, or you think you've got the potential to solve it at this point? Even if he finds who shot him, he's not going to bring him back. And I want him back. That's the part I want. I don't care about who shot him. I just want him back. I don't want him dead. You start peeling away the layers, and that's how you discover that something much more nefarious is going on.

About a month after Nancy's arrest, detectives Merrill and Posey were burning the midnight oil at the office. Most everybody's already gone home from the detective division. I'm on the computer looking through stuff. Posey was scouring through Dan and Nancy's electronic records. I want to get it. I want to get that piece of evidence. Merrill was across the room working at a different cubicle. I had another homicide that I'd just gotten reported.

after the Brophy case. So I was slammed over there trying to figure things out. Suddenly, Merrill heard something. It was coming from Posey's direction. Darren would do this thing. He'd get this thing where he's...

excited about something and he'd go, phew, phew, phew. That's the sound of Detective Posey's finger guns. Merrill hurried over. I'm like, what are you doing? What's going on? Right? And he's all smiling ear to ear. Posey showed Merrill his computer screen. In Nancy's inbox, there was an email from eBay. It contained a receipt from a purchase. A Glock 9mm barrel and slide.

A separate barrel and slide for a Glock handgun. I was like, okay, this is it. This person has done this and I've found how she did it.

All right, so here's a little anatomy of a gun for you. Picture a typical semi-automatic pistol. When you take a shot, there's a part on the top half of the gun that springs back during the recoil. That's the slide. Now, the barrel is housed inside of the slide and is the long metal tube that the bullet travels through to hit the target.

What's really interesting about this part of a handgun is that it's completely detachable. You can switch out the slide and barrel of one gun of the same or similar model with another. You can take this barrel and slide by itself. Then you can go and take the receiver of another Glock handgun, just the bottom part with the handle. You could put two of those items together and that'll be a functional handgun. And here's the real kicker.

The barrel from the gun Nancy had given them is what their forensics team used to rule it out as the murder weapon. They looked at the markings and indentations on each spent shell casing and treated them kind of like a fingerprint. Their working theory was every single gun would leave a different pattern, and that pattern was specifically created by the barrel of the gun.

So you change the signature if you have a different barrel and slide on the receiver of that gun by switching them out. Pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. Nancy bought the unregistered ghost gun, couldn't put it together, and then bought a fully assembled gun at the gun show. Only problem was, it's a registered weapon, which can be traced back to her.

So she got creative. The theory was she used the receiver from the gun show gun. That is, the bottom half of the gun. Went out and got this barrel and slide, switched them out, committed this murder. And then Nancy replaced the new slide and barrel with the original one. She handed over the gun on the day of the murder, knowing that the shell casings wouldn't match. She thought she was smarter than everybody else. She thought, I can get away with this because I'm smart.

And it was possible she still could get away with it. All we have at this point is a purchase of a Barron slide. And seeing that it had been mailed and paid for by a credit card by Nancy Brophy...

If you do not have the correct slide and barrel, you do not have the evidence needed for that forensic lab scientist to make the comparison to those impressions on the casings. There's a big difference between a smoking gun and a receipt for one. It was one of those cases where we knew we had to try to think a little bit like we believed maybe Nancy had been thinking. She started to seem like one of the characters in her books to me.

Fortunately for them, assistant DA Nicole Herman had just gotten back from her honeymoon. She talked about one of her books, that one of the characters in the book had hidden a piece of evidence in a wall in their house. Meryl was all ears. It was like we were trying to think outside of the box and be creative. Or, in this case, maybe they needed to take the whole box apart and look inside. ♪

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Chloe thinks we'll find money and drugs stashed around the house, so look for hiding places. He stripped the bed, hoisted the mattress, followed by the box springs. Gordy wasn't hiding his money under the mattress. Glynn pulled clothes out of the dresser drawers. There was a common theme in Nancy's books. You know, secret compartments, hiding stuff, whether it's in a trunk or a secret room.

I think one book has some mention of there being like a hidden alcove under some stairs. Nicole also knew that after Dan's murder, Nancy had done a lot of work on the house, trying to get it ready for sale. So she's not only clearing stuff out, putting stuff in storage units and pods, but she is like doing work on the yard, doing work on the house. And so we got concerned that perhaps

Given the combination of her mind, what she's written about, and the fact that she's done work on the house, is it really that far removed to think that she may have hidden the murder weapon, which is really what we are looking for, right, in a wall or somewhere else in her house? Posey and Merrill started their search in the master bedroom. They slowly walked the perimeter of the room, then inspected the walk-in closet. ♪

And that's when they saw it. It looked like a section had been cut out and somebody had drywalled it. They got right to work. Posey and another member of the team began cutting into the sheetrock. And they're searching all through the wall and, you know, trying to get in there and they're just digging, digging.

And they find absolutely nothing. They moved their search to the kitchen. Some of her characters hid components of weapons and stuff in and around the voids around kitchen appliances. They searched every inch and crevice of the dishwasher, checked around the fridge, opened up the stove. We looked at all kinds of things. Then we started thinking, well, maybe that garage again had some hidey hole spot that we didn't see.

It didn't. There was no hidey hole spot. And there was no sign of that slide and barrel. She had plenty enough time to be able to dispense of that item. They'd been hoping her books would lead them straight to it. But in this case, Nancy had kept her fiction and her real life separate. And we know that people can get rid of guns fairly easily if they really put their mind to it. You could throw them in the ocean, you could throw them in the river, and they may never be found ever again.

They had to come to terms with the fact that they might never find the murder weapon. It had been over three years since Nancy's arrest. The pandemic had put the trial on pause over and over again. But now, in January of 2022, DA Sean Overstreet and Assistant DA Nicole Herman were just weeks from the trial's start date. Nicole kept asking herself, Do we have enough?

We obviously believed without a doubt that she killed her husband. That was never a question in our minds. But without that murder weapon, did they have enough to convince a jury? There's always a little bit of, I think, worry when you don't have evidence

It's not on video. You don't have someone's like, yep, I watched the whole thing and this is exactly who did it. And they're caught with the murder weapon. It's not that kind of case. They had their work cut out for them. They were going to have to weave thousands of hours of investigation and interviews into a story.

And it would need to be clear enough, persuasive enough, that everyone in the courtroom could follow along. Am I connecting the dots for them? Can they see it all there? So they did what a lot of writers do when we're trying to craft a story. They broke out the post-it notes. And so we would say, okay, murder scene was one post-it note up at the top. They added post-it notes for witnesses. Who's going to tell this part of the story? Who's going to tell us about the insurance? Who's going to tell us about the guns?

The grid on the wall kept growing. But there was one man that kept coming up again and again. Someone who'd been close to both Dan and Nancy. Someone the defense was probably eyeing, too. Tanya Medlin opened the door to find Lisa Maxfield. She was this little old lady.

Nancy's defense attorney. She didn't really come across as a lawyer. She almost came across as like, I felt like she was Nancy's friend. Like, I can't imagine this woman getting up there and getting down fighting with another lawyer. But Lisa had come prepared. Tanya showed her into the living room and Lisa handed her a handwritten letter. It was from Nancy. Dear Tanya, I was so glad to hear from you and really glad to know you still support me.

Nancy had seen the People article where Tanya had spoken out in her defense. I thought you did a good job. It wouldn't surprise me for you to be contacted by other news organizations as this drags on. I hope you're doing well. I miss talking to you. I miss our coffee dates. I love you. I miss you. I'm, you know, I'm thinking about you. Tanya had been thinking about her friend, too.

She had a lot of questions for Nancy's lawyer. They said, "All we can tell you is that Nancy's innocent and that it'll come out at trial." But we, without a doubt, believe she is innocent, Tanya, with all our heart. Nancy's lawyer also had a special request. The defense wanted Tanya to testify on Nancy's behalf. They wanted me to be a character witness for Nancy. So, months later, when the subpoena arrived at her door,

Tanya knew what she had to do. Nancy was a close enough friend of mine. Nancy's never done me wrong. Like, she's always looked out for me. Soon after, Tanya was asked to come downtown to meet with Sean and Nicole. It was pretty apparent to Nicole that Tanya didn't want to be there. She was very clear with us. I am going to be honest. I am going to tell the truth about Tanya.

Everything I know, whether it helps the case or doesn't help the case, because I'm just, that is who I am. I'm going to tell it all. Maybe Tanya was hoping her honesty would turn them off, but it didn't. My luck is going to be, I'm going to probably get served on both sides, which is exactly what happened. And as much as she wanted to believe her friend was innocent, she still had questions. Why was her ban at the school if she didn't do this?

Like, I asked her where the hell she was. She said she was at home in bed sleeping. How can you be at home in bed sleeping and your van be around the school at the same time? Like, just answer me. Because I feel like I deserve an answer. Behind bars, Nancy seemed to be sorting through a few questions of her own. I'm kind of stunned because, you know, my response is, you know, I'm on TV. That must mean I'm guilty. No, you're not. No, you're not. Do not do that. Do not do that.

As weeks in jail became months and then years, Nancy was changing. Some people certainly don't believe it. You know how Dan and I were. I know, you guys loved each other. Yeah. Okay. And it's being recorded, so I'm staying on record how much I know you guys loved each other and I know that you're innocent and that your friends love you. She began to sound more worried.

Sad, even. Over the crackle of the prison phone, family and friends delivered more bad news. I was hoping, Nancy, that I wasn't going to have to share this with you until you were out.

I need you to know that PB passed several months ago. PB was Nancy's beloved dog, Peanut Butter. And I'm so sorry, Nancy. That is just one more thing. She'd lost relatives, and she'd also lost the support of friends. Kim never came, and so I kind of dropped her from the list.

One of those friends was Nancy's writing partner, Kim Wollenberg. I thought Kim would be there for you. One of the things somebody said to me yesterday, they said, one of the things you find out in jail is who stands with you and who doesn't. I could have written her more, but I just didn't know what to say to her. What do you say to somebody like that? I thought, well, I don't want to tell her about my life that I felt was going well.

When she's where she's at, I thought, how fair is that? So it's like, well, what do I say? So I just didn't say anything. But there was one thing that hadn't changed. Nancy was still writing. I'm about halfway through it on the first draft. She'd been scribbling page after page and passing them along to her friends on the outside to type up.

Interesting. But Nancy's mind wasn't just on her latest book.

She was also thinking about the most important story of her life, the story her lawyers would tell about her and Dan at her trial. And for that story, she was also going to introduce a twist, something that no one in the courtroom would see coming. ♪

If you like Happily Never After, Dan and Nancy, you can binge all episodes ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

From Wondery and The Oregonian, this is episode five 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 Egbas. 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 Latha Pandya. Managing Producers are Olivia Weber and Heather Beloga. Executive Producers for Advanced Local are Richard Diamond and Selena Roberts. Executive Producers are Nigeri Eaton, George Lavender, Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent for Wondery. Wondery.

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