When True Crime Hits Too Close to Home by Sarah E. Burr

I recently discovered Dateline in podcast format, which means every spare, quiet moment I have, I am listening to a twisted real-life mystery. The more I think about it, the more I realize this habit is probably not great for my mental health. Once you reach the end of this article, you'll understand why.

A 2022 episode called "Murder in Kitchen One" really stuck with me, so much so that I must puzzle it out with you here.

The broadcast features the death of an Oregon chef and professor, Dan Brophy. His wife, Nancy Brophy, was ultimately charged and convicted of his murder. Typically, when I listen to these shows, I reach the end of the episode and think, "Oh good, they got the bad guy." Yet, when this particular podcast wrapped, I had a nagging question: Did they?

In all honesty, I believe they did. The police had security cam footage placing Nancy driving her distinctive minivan near her husband's work minutes before he was shot. The minivan is not captured going anywhere on camera during the very short time Dan Brophy was killed. Add the fact he was shot by the same type of gun owned by the Brophys, which Nancy had purchased on the Internet, and case closed.

However, the defense painted a very different picture of the circumstances, a picture that left me a bit terrified.

You see, Nancy Brophy was a crime writer. According to her defense lawyers, every single one of her "incriminating" actions could be explained away by her creative process. For someone who isn't a crime writer, this stance might sound like some desperate attempt to generate doubt in jurors' minds. However, to me, these explanations made complete and utter sense. It truly frightened me.

Take, for instance, Nancy's search history. Months before her husband's murder, Nancy's computer activity revealed that she'd been researching "ghost guns." Ghost guns are nearly untraceable because they come as kits that the buyer assembles. The prosecution took this to mean that Nancy was trying to find sneaky, undetectable ways to kill her husband. The defense's response? Nancy was working on a domestic suspense manuscript and trying to determine if the main character, an abused wife, could easily access a weapon if the need arose. Hence, her online activity.

As Dateline reporters explained this, I could not believe what I was hearing. This woman was on trial for murder, and one of the biggest pieces of circumstantial evidence was her search history, the search history of a mystery writer.

Goodness, we all joke in this community about being on government watch lists because of what we're looking up online, yet Nancy Brophy's search history was considered blockbuster evidence in her trial.

But it wasn't just her search history that proved Nancy's guilt to jurors beyond a reasonable doubt. No, it was the video of her driving her minivan around town after she informed detectives that she didn't go anywhere the morning her husband died. While the prosecution said this was the smoking gun—the only one they had because they never found the murder weapon—Nancy's lawyers also had an explanation for this suspicious drive. Nancy claimed she went to grab coffee at Starbucks and just got lost in thought, driving around, thinking about the plot for her book. She testified she often "spaces out" while puzzling through a storyline and may have gone near her husband's work without consciously realizing where she was.

Now, to a non-writer, this might sound like someone is grasping at straws, and even as a writer, I find it all a bit too convenient. Yet, I can't help but think of all the times I've been lost in the plot of a mystery, whether it be on a walk with the dog or wandering around the grocery store, only to "wake up" from my musings feeling disoriented as to where I am or how I got there. Suddenly, Nancy's testimony doesn't seem so outlandish.

Yet, with these items, she was convicted of her husband's murder. There were no forensics putting her at the crime. The gun ballistics didn't match, but because Nancy had Googled "tracing ballistics" in her search history, the prosecution pointed out she knew how to adjust a gun barrel so the bullets wouldn't match.

Her search history and routine coffee run were enough. As a crime writer, this rattled me to my core. And definitely has reminded me to switch to Incognito mode for all my research-themed searches.