Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
When we left Abby Brooks, the heroine of Nancy Brophy's book The Wrong Hero, she'd just learned that her husband was a dangerous assassin. Travis Stevens, the handsome and sexy former Navy SEAL, was a dangerous assassin.
took a seat next to her. He had more bad news to share. "Not only is he an assassin, he's trained by Quantico. Operates under the code name, The Reaper." "She fought to control her pulse pounding in her ears. She'd known for years her husband had nefarious dealings, but the facts hadn't smacked her in the face until today." "He's been married several times, at least four that we know, all under different names.
But the obituary photo is the same. The wives... died each time? Even she could hear the panic in her voice. Her life had changed. No longer could she fool herself into believing her life needed to be dictated by others. Time was at hand for her to take charge. She had enough squirreled away to carry her through an extended rough period.
If she could sell the house, she would get rid of the last thing that bound her to a life she didn't want. Then, she'd move to a place where no one knew her. In every romantic suspense novel, there's a moment known as the call to adventure. It's when the heroine comes face to face with some kind of danger that forces her out of her ordinary life and into a new adventure.
It's when the story really begins. In Nancy's book, The Wrong Hero, that moment comes when Abby Brooks learns that her dangerous husband is coming after her. She has to sell her house and run. And in Nancy's real life, that was also at least partly true. She needed to sell the house.
Following Dan's murder, Nancy told Tanya that she discovered she was on the deed of the house, but not on the mortgage. When your spouse dies, the bank has the option to come in and run a credit report on your ass to see if you can make the payments. And if your credit's not good enough for what they think it should be,
They can foreclose on you. They can take your house. Nancy was trying to sell the house as quickly as possible. And so her friends and family were hard at work getting the house into shape. I wanted to make sure that however we could be helpful, you know, we were available. Nathaniel, Dan's son, drove down in his pickup truck to haul boxes.
Nancy's friend Tanya spent hours in the basement sorting junk into piles. Things in the dumpster, things that went to Goodwill, things that were put aside that went to storage. Nancy's niece and her niece's boyfriend, Chris, tackled the backyard. I didn't know about the Portland blackberry vines. The blackberry patch had been one of Dan's many special projects. But it had quickly taken on a life of its own. You're talking, I mean...
Blackberry vines with the base of them being about as big around as an orange or a grapefruit. And eight to ten feet tall, wrapped around everything. While Nancy and the others were working around the clock to get the house cleaned up and ready for sale, what they didn't know was they were being watched.
On the day of Dan's murder, detectives Merrill and Posey had discovered footage of a van that looked a lot like Nancy's, driving by the scene right around the time Dan was killed. Now they needed to find out exactly who Nancy was. A grieving widow struggling to get her affairs in order, or a murder suspect about to fly the coop? ♪
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.
Plus, you'll know what to tackle next because Thumbtack is the app that shows you what to do, who to hire, and when. So say goodbye to all those unfinished home projects and say hello to caring for your home the easier way. Download Thumbtack and start a project today.
Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two-year contracts, they said, what the f*** are you talking about, you insane Hollywood a**hole?
So to recap, we're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 up front for three months plus taxes and fees. Promote it for new customers for a limited time. Unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month. Slows. Full terms at mintmobile.com. From Wondery and the Oregonian, I'm Heidi Trethewey. If they ask me, I could write. And this is Happily Never After, Dan and Nancy. And the Simpsons.
This is Chapter 2, Stupid Question of the Day. Nancy Brophy climbed into the passenger seat of Nathaniel's Chevy Silverado pickup truck. It was four days after Dan's murder. Normally, Nathaniel would be at his job at the local Wings joint, but he'd taken time off to be with Nancy. I was offering myself to help her out.
We wanted to make sure that she was okay. Nancy had asked Nathaniel for help that day with a special project involving Dan's beloved chickens. Nathaniel was used to helping out with his dad's chickens. Some of them, like Jerry the rooster, could be vicious. They were particularly ornery and may have wounded him physically and emotionally at times.
And they required constant attention. So letting chickens out in the morning, collecting eggs, you know, providing food and water every day. Everyone knew Nancy had never been the biggest fan of the chickens. I mean, she would do it if she needed to go out and put some food for them or fresh water or collect eggs. But she certainly wasn't going to carry that legacy forward.
She was a writer, not a farm girl. And with Dan gone and efforts to sell the house ramping up, Nancy had her hands full.
So today, Nathaniel wasn't there to feed them or collect their eggs. He was there to take them away. A friend of hers had a farm and was keeping birds as well. One by one, Nancy and Nathaniel carried the squawking chickens into the back of the truck and then set out on the hour-long drive to Nancy's friend's home outside the city.
On the way, Nancy and Nathaniel talked about the investigation. What possibly could have happened, what next steps looked like. You know, I wanted to make sure that she had what she needed to make sure that she was financially stable. They dropped off the chickens and on the way back, pulled over at a grocery store. We stopped to maybe get some water, use the restroom or something. Nancy's phone rang.
This is Nancy. Can I help you? Hi, Nancy. It's Detective Posey. Detective Posey was in the office doing some paperwork when he learned that Nancy had been trying to reach him. So he gave her a call back. But even at that point, I was kind of like going, there's something going on here with Nancy. In the days following Dan's murder, Detective Posey had requested more footage from around the area.
Footage that could help them confirm if the van driving around Dan's school was really Nancy's. You go, I've talked to this person. You know, you've looked at this person. You go, this doesn't look like somebody who's out to commit a murder. Nathaniel stepped away to give Nancy some privacy.
Now, I don't want to do, but this may give you a laugh this afternoon. I don't want to be the stupid question of the day, but I think I need to be the stupid question of the day. So my insurance company said, just have the detective write a letter that you're no longer a suspect. And I said, man, I just don't know that he's there. And I'm not sure that he looks at it that way. But if you do, I'd get you to write the letter. So.
Why would you need that? Because...
You know, I just hadn't had anybody ever ask me something like that in that way. This is, I mean, we're talking four days and we're asking for letters of exoneration. It just seemed way out of place.
Nancy told Posey the insurance payout was only about $40,000. She was frustrated that the insurance company was making her jump through hoops for such a small amount.
And as my sister said, you know, usually when they do that, it's for millions. And I said, yeah, we weren't sure for millions. So let me ask you my next question, which I know you're going to give me a vague answer, so I don't know why I'm asking.
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? We are looking at a lot of stuff. Yeah. And I think that's what I told you before is that there's a lot of things to go through and review because given the nature of what took place and how it took place, you know, there's just a lot of...
people to talk to and a lot of, of, um,
You know, it's just a lot of information to process because, you know, when we have something like this take place, we cast a wide net. Thank you, and thank you for your information, and really take your time. Do not let me get neurotic on you. Just slap me around and I'll go away. No, that's fine. We're just, you know, like I said, we're just, you know, we've got to work through things, so it does take time sometimes. All right. Okay. Okay, thank you. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
After the call, Posey just sat there, thinking. That was a weird conversation. I was like, kind of like, I didn't know exactly how to answer, who thinks about stuff like that? And so I'm suspicious, right? It wasn't the only thing that was making Posey suspicious. There was that video footage of a van that looked like Nancy's. Then he'd learned that she was trying to sell the house.
which struck him as a little odd. How immediate she was at getting things cleaned up and moving on with her life. There was also the gun Nancy had handed over to them on the day of the murder, a Glock semi-automatic, the same caliber of weapon as the shell casings left on the scene. But nothing they had was solid enough of a lead.
The video footage wasn't very clear, not enough to see who was driving or get the license plate number. And it would be weeks, maybe even months, before the lab report on the gun would come back. Still, that didn't mean the only option was to sit around and wait. Posey had questions about that gun. I want to say it was 10.30, 11 o'clock in the morning.
Tanya Medlin was in the middle of lunch prep at Avomere Rehabilitation, a nursing facility about 15 minutes from downtown Portland. Lunch was always one of the busiest times of day. Tanya was ladling out mashed potatoes and running between the fridge and the serving station. And that's exactly when Detective Posey showed up unannounced. Tanya gave her kitchen crew their marching orders.
Then led Posey to the tiny storeroom in the back that doubled as her office. They sat down at a desk covered with papers and folders, squeezed between two rows of shelves. "12 people interrupting me."
Posey asked Tanya what she knew about Nancy and Dan owning a gun. Tanya remembered Nancy talking about buying a gun the past Christmas. And she said, it's for Dan. And I said, what the hell does he need with a gun? And she said, Tanya, he's out in the woods all the time mushroom hunting. And it made sense. Tanya knew firsthand how dangerous mushroom hunting could be.
Once, Dan had given Tanya the location of one of his special foraging spots out by the coast. She followed his directions, which took her up a hiking trail through a dense forest. You get into the woods and you're surrounded and it's dead, eerie quiet. But all of a sudden you hear a twig snap. Well, something broke it and you don't see anything. And I was all of a sudden looking around going, wow, I don't know what we're into, but there's bones everywhere.
When Tanya got back to the city, she told Dan about those bones she'd come across. He was like, that sounds like a feeding den. Like, it sounds like a mountain lion den, like where they drag their kills and eat them. So it didn't surprise Tanya that Nancy would buy Dan a gun for protection.
He always did that shit by himself because he liked the peace and quiet and solitude of being by himself in the woods. Nancy had mentioned her fear of school shootings to the detectives. But the gist was the same. She'd been concerned for Dan's safety. So they went together to a gun show in February and bought a gun.
Posey asked Tanya if Dan was someone who would use a gun. If this was like he was at the school and say somebody came in and startled him, you know, or threatened him. And I'm like, bottom line, Dan Brophy would probably cook him breakfast while he's talking him out of a life of crime. Like that's who he was. Detective Posey had one more question for her. Did Nancy know how to use a gun? I'm like, oh God, no. I've never seen her with a gun.
And she fumbles and she shakes. She has diabetes. Like, she drops her car keys when she's trying to get them out of her pocket. God forbid that woman has a gun in her hand. I mean, at the writing group, we all knew Nancy as the lady in the front of the room, wearing a polyester blouse and sensible shoes. And even in those, she probably couldn't run a mile. The only threat Nancy posed was to the keyboard she was writing on.
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?
Not to alarm you, but all of that old media breaks down over time. And if not preserved, will be lost forever. That's where Legacy Box comes in. Legacy Box is the simplest and easiest way to convert your recorded media to digital. And with Legacy Box's Save Your Tape Sale, you can easily access those memories and protect them forever for only $9 a tape.
Here's how it works. Load LegacyBox with your old tapes, film and pictures, and send it back. You'll get it back on a thumb drive or cloud, ready to watch and easy to share.
It's so simple, it's like magic. Don't let this summer's heat age your videotapes, film reels, and fade your photos. Visit LegacyBox.com slash Wondery to shop their $9 tape sale. That's LegacyBox.com slash Wondery to unlock this incredible offer.
Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Maybe you'll find inspiration in the incredible true story of black female mathematicians at NASA in Hidden Figures, or the
fantasy world of Throne of Glass. There's more to Imagine when you listen. As an Audible member, you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. 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.
Next, detectives Merrill and Posey met Dan's son, Nathaniel, at Fire on the Mountain Buffalo Wings, a casual bar and restaurant with brick walls and wooden booths. The centerpiece on every table was vinegar and hot sauce. Nathaniel wore several hats throughout the day as a manager, meeting vendors, bookkeeping, supporting the staff. But it was a midday shift, and things were slower than usual.
He led the detectives upstairs to a private room overlooking the restaurant. We're here talking with Nathaniel, who's the son of Daniel Brophy. And Nathaniel, your last name's Stillwater, right? Correct. Okay. But that was changed back when you were age 19, maybe? I believe 19 or 20. Nathaniel told the detectives about the strained relationship with his father. Dan had had an affair while married to Nathaniel's mom.
Not with Nancy. This was somebody else. Nathaniel didn't talk to his dad for many years. They eventually reconnected about 10 years before Dan died.
In the time he'd been in their lives, Nathaniel knew Dan and Nancy to have a good relationship. They've always seemed really great together. Then, Detective Merrill told Nathaniel about the gun Nancy had handed over to them. Did Nancy ever bring that up? Are you surprised by that, Dan? I am pretty surprised. Sorry to hit you with that, but again, this is something we need to kind of figure out. Yeah, I mean... It seems strange the way it was brought up to us, so... I never would have considered him to be a gun owner.
Nathaniel himself owned guns, but his dad had always given him a hard time about it. He honestly couldn't make sense of why his dad would buy a gun and not tell him about it. But then the detectives threw another curveball at him, something he really didn't know what to make of. After being informed by the police that they did own a pistol, they asked me to not share that question with Nancy.
Hey, Brett, it's Detective Posey. Posey got the guy on the phone who had sold the gun to Dan and Nancy. You had worked a gun show back in February of this year. Yeah. And...
What I was kind of hoping was to see if you remembered a particular sales transaction that took place at that time with a lady by the name of Nancy Brophy. Somebody wrote on the back of the receipt about some places to be able to go shoot or to learn how to shoot. Yeah, no, I remember that because we had this whole conversation because she was relatively new into handguns. Okay.
Do you remember why she was interested in buying a gun? And you don't remember anybody being with her?
I don't think she was with anybody. I'm pretty sure she was by herself. That's not how Nancy had described it. Because she made it sound like it was sort of a mutual endeavor that they had followed up on. But it turns out Dan hadn't been there at all. Dan wasn't there talking about how he's scared of a school shooting and we need to arm ourselves. She was alone. It was just Nancy buying this gun. While waiting for more footage from around Dan's school and the results on the gun...
The detectives were also following up on other leads. I couldn't just completely focus on just this one thing. I still had to keep my perspective open to other possibilities, right? Because you just don't know. They tracked down homeless people around Dan's school. We went and interviewed all those people because some people were saying, well, there's a lot of homeless people in there and that they might be dangerous.
One by one, they confirmed each person's alibi. They even tracked down Dan's former students. We went back and found students that had gone to his school 10 and 15 years before because we heard they had an argument with him or he got a bad grade. But that was another dead end. I mean, we were searching for anything and everything. There was no motive. There was no one that had an ax to grind with Chef Brophy.
While Detective Posey was working on search warrants and following leads, Detective Merrill had been tracking down bits and pieces of video footage from around the Goose Hollow area where Dan's school was located. From some of the apartment complexes, a church, different businesses, and it was a sandwich shop across the street, the Starbucks. Several hours worth of footage. And so we start to try to...
Go through all that over the course of the next few weeks. You just sit there and analyze it for hours and hours. Play, pause, play, pause, play, pause, play, pause. From the footage, they had begun to piece together the movements of that silver minivan on the morning of Dan's murder. It showed the van arriving about an hour before Dan got to the school. Then it drove into the area.
coming in from the direction of what would have been her house. Then it drove down Jefferson right near the BMW car lot and then turned on one of the streets to the south. And it was very unusual. It was a dead-end street.
So we don't know exactly why that was. Then it pulled back out and drove into the street, stopped at a red light. You could see the person in the van. Again, it resembled the body composition, the hair, the physique of Nancy Brophy as the driver. We didn't see anybody else in the van. And then the van began driving around Dan's school. It circled around the area, disappeared for a while. Then it showed back up at the top of the hill on Southwest Jefferson Street.
And at that perspective, if you parked where that van was, you can look straight down the Southwest Jefferson Street to see Southwest 17th Avenue, and that's the cross street that went right into Oregon Culinary Institute. You could surveil, basically, if someone was going to arrive or leave that area from there. The minivan paused there for a short while.
And then, about 15 minutes before the murder, drove right by the school again. It almost reminded me of like what a police tactical mission would be like, where you're doing surveillance on a house and you slowly move in, you do a couple of pass-bys to get an eyeball. And it went directly towards Oregon Culinary Institute. And then we have no camera footage. And then there was the footage of the minivan from the pizza shop, driving by the school again.
driving off minutes after the murder. So for months and months, we thought that's all we had. Detective Merrill was sitting in the office doing what it felt like he'd done a thousand times, going through more footage. He was watching more angles of the minivan sitting at that red light
when he noticed something. And I realized there was a frame that showed a partial license plate on the back of the van that you could actually make out letters and numbers. The numbers and letters were blurry and too small to read. But Merrill knew that one of the other detectives at the office always had a magnifying glass on his desk. So I was just like, why not? I'm going to try this.
The Portland Police Bureau did not have the same tech as CSI. Got his magnifying glass, put it up to the monitor, and kept, you know, zooming in and zooming out. And I could tell, like, these letters and numbers were, they were visible. They had just enough detail to make out the first three letters of the license plate. But it was enough. And they were an exact match, an exact same position on the license plate of Nancy Brophy's.
It was a big moment. Once we got to the point where we had the license plate, the partial plate, we knew that the van was 100% the van. We knew that that van was down there at the time frame when the murder occurred right during that window. But they didn't want to jump to conclusions. Is she involved? Is she a suspect? Is there a misunderstanding? The footage itself was a pretty compelling lead.
But all it was was proof that Nancy had lied about where she was that morning, not that she'd shot Dan. We had no direct video of what happened that day. We had no eyewitness to what happened that day. It was certainly not enough for a conviction. In early September, three months after Dan's murder, the lab result on Nancy's gun finally came back. That it was not our murder weapon.
Still, they were hoping they had enough to get Nancy to start talking. Maybe Nancy would actually interview with us. The plan was to bring the older woman to the station.
tell her what they knew, and get her to maybe fess up. People do say things because it's weighing on them. And culturally, you know, people have this need to get it off their chest sometimes, right? Because it's just eating them up inside. The next day, a team of undercover detectives was waiting for Nancy at her home.
So they could watch each drive angle that she could come in from either side of the streets and just to be prepared when she arrives or when she leaves. They watched Nancy drive up in her silver minivan, pull into the driveway. She got her things together and stepped out of the car. And that's when they approached her. Nancy seemed taken aback as the detectives surrounded her, put handcuffs on her. And she sort of
Kind of moving around in a circle as she's saying these things. Kind of, I think, just maybe in sort of a state of shock that it was all happening. This must be because you think, you guys think I killed my husband. I'm not a murderer. They put Nancy in the back of the car and drove her down to the station. But they'd overlooked one small detail. Nancy wasn't new to police interrogations. Her books were full of them.
Even if Nancy hadn't seen the arrest coming, she was prepared. You could almost say she already knew her lines.
Let's face it, we were all that kid. So first call your parents to say I'm sorry, and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee for your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 per order. Additional terms apply.
High up on the 13th floor of the Portland Central Precinct, Detectives Merrill and Posey led Nancy into a windowless interrogation room. We were very hopeful that we would get a genuine statement from Nancy. We were very hopeful we'd get that interview with her. Nancy looked as grandmotherly as ever in her dark blue slacks and matching cardigan. Her hair was fluffed out in silver curls.
All right. So I'm sure you have some questions and, you know, we're kind of at this place where, you know, there's a lot of information. Nancy sat calmly with her hands clasped on the desk in front of her.
She politely interrupted. Detective Merrill went off to fetch the glasses, leaving Posey and Nancy alone. Nancy's eyes moved around the room, then landed on Posey.
Posey fumbled with his pen. That's Nancy saying, in this situation...
Posey wasn't sure how to respond to that. Finally, Merrill returned with the glasses. Posey read Nancy her rights. And they got down to business.
Posey laid it all out.
And the information's clear. It shows your vehicle. It shows you—it even captures your license plate. Nancy sat listening, one hand cradling her face. I just want you to understand that it's like, this is, you know, we have a lot of information, and we don't just get buried for any reason. We know that you're involved with your husband's death. Nancy barely moved. She certainly wasn't confessing to anything.
Detective Merrill decided to give it a shot, direct and straight to the point. When we look at this video, it's so vivid, the video showing your vehicle, your license plate. It shows you make the wrong turn down one street, look like you were either confused or maybe trying to wait a little bit. It shows you in that exact area during the critical time when he is killed. I mean, the video in this case...
They'd also cracked the mystery behind that strange webpage on Dan's phone.
being identified as a murderer. Turns out Dan and Nancy's accounts were linked. And it was actually Nancy who'd been looking up that article. So there's some things there too that stick out like a red flag. One of the things I told you is, you know, we're here to provide justice for Daniel and his family. And this is part of the process. There it was. They gave her a moment to take it all in.
But Nancy looked completely unfazed. And the detectives knew a dead end when they saw one. They weren't going to get a confession out of her. They hadn't been able to get a single word out of her since she'd been read her rights. And, you know, without that piece, it is, it's frustrating. Without her perspective, her direct information, it's very frustrating.
They ended the interview and escorted Nancy down to the holding cell. Over a live video feed, prosecutor Sean Overstreet watched Nancy as she sat alone in the cell. She just sat very stoically, just like she was sitting at home. But then she asked for a pen and paper. Once she got the paper, she started scribbling. She wrote all on this piece of paper.
And she takes that piece of paper and she folds it up and she sticks it in her bra. And then she starts furiously scribbling on another sheet of paper. And Nancy kept scribbling and scribbling until they came to get her from the holding cell. She tried to stash the pieces of paper in her clothes, but the officers seized them. And she leaves that second piece of paper behind in the cell.
Sean Overstreet went into the holding cell to grab the note. I remember sitting down and looking at this piece of paper that she had left in the cell. It was very hard to read. But what we could make out on the paper was, they say that I was driving around downtown that morning. I don't think so. The news of Nancy's arrest spread quickly.
My husband was watching the 11 o'clock news, and he called out to me to come quickly. She's accused of killing her husband, Daniel Craig Brophy, age 63, at the Oregon Culinary Institute. Now, three months later, she is charged with murdering him. Dan was shot multiple times inside the cooking school. I hadn't seen Nancy in years.
But there she was on the evening news, the president of my old romance writing club, accused of murdering her husband. It felt kind of creepy to know that this woman who'd handed me a red rose for finishing my book could be a killer.
In the writing community, Facebook messages were flying. People were shocked, confused. No one could believe what they were hearing. Oh my goodness, what a bombshell. Shockwaves. I almost fell out of my chair. I said no. What? No. Um, scared. Hurt.
I know enough about the legal system to know that they wouldn't have arrested her if they didn't think they had something. But whether it was strong enough, that I didn't know. We thought, okay, well, they're going to find out that they're barking up the wrong tree because clearly it's some other thing. Dan's parents, Jack and Karen Brophy, were home when they got a phone call. And it was a man's voice and he said, I'm...
Karen hoped they'd made a break in the case or even caught the killer. I couldn't believe it.
Dan's parents and son headed down to the police station. They were led into a small conference room with Sean Overstreet, Detectives Merrill and Posey, and a victim's advocate. They sort of just started at the beginning in terms of what had transpired the day of my father's murder. Nathaniel tried to follow along, but it was hard to understand what he was hearing. His grandparents were also struggling.
Meryl could see it in their faces. For shock and disbelief. But then the detectives showed Dan's family the footage of the minivan, and the look on Karen Brophy's face changed. It had this, had a sticker, a parking sticker from our church up in the windshield. About a year and a half before Dan's death, Karen had given that minivan to Nancy.
They knew the church sticker because it was their church. And they knew when they looked at the van and they looked at the image of the person in the van, they said, it looks just like Nancy. And that's our van. They started to understand that something really bad happened here, something really horrible happened. It was flabbergasted. From the moment she received news of Dan's death, Karen couldn't understand why anyone would want to hurt her son.
But as detectives laid out the photographs of Nancy's vehicle leaving Dan's school and shared details about the gun, memories began to flash through Karen's mind. Nancy telling Karen about writing her murder mystery novels. I do a lot of investigation into how police operate.
Nancy, standing in her kitchen, right after the news of Dan's murder, wondering if his killer could have been someone he knew well. And she said, oh, I certainly hope not. Suddenly, it felt like puzzle pieces coming together. And as she sat before the detectives, the blood drained from Karen Brophy's face. I said, do you think she's living in her book? ♪
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 two 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 Edboss. 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 Freesun 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 Nigeri Eaton, George Lavender, Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent for Wondery.
Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast, Against the Odds. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who live to tell the tale. In our next season, it's July 6th, 1988, and workers are settling into the night shift aboard Piper Alpha, the world's largest offshore oil rig.
Home to 226 men, the rig is stationed in the stormy North Sea off the coast of Scotland. At around 10 p.m., workers accidentally trigger a gas leak that leads to an explosion and a fire. As they wait to be rescued, the workers soon realize that Piper Alpha has transformed into a death trap. Follow Against the Odds wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app.
