Writer of How To Murder Your Husband on trial for killing her husband

LOS ANGELES • A writer who penned a piece titled How To Murder Your Husband is on trial in the United States - for killing her husband.

It is a case that has all the hallmarks of classic detective fiction - a huge insurance payout, an impecunious suspect who claims to have amnesia, a missing weapon, and surveillance footage that seems to have caught the culprit red-handed.

But for novelist Nancy Crampton Brophy, it is not the plot of her latest book; it is real life in an Oregon court room.

Crampton Brophy, whose Wrong Never Felt So Right series of novels include The Wrong Husband and The Wrong Lover, stands accused of shooting Mr Daniel Brophy, using a gun with a now-missing barrel that she bought on eBay.

Prosecutors say the 71-year-old writer was struggling to make payments on her mortgage, but kept up multiple life assurance policies that would pay out a total of US$1.4 million (S$1.95 million) in the event of her husband's death.

"I do better with Dan alive financially than I do with Dan dead," she said as she took the stand in Portland this week, The Oregonian newspaper reported. "Where is the motivation I would ask you? An editor would laugh and say, 'I think you need to work harder on this story, you have a big hole in it.'"

Prosecutor Shawn Overstreet said security camera footage had captured Crampton Brophy's minivan outside the Oregon Culinary Institute on June 2, 2018, at almost exactly the time her chef husband was killed in one of the school's classrooms.

Crampton Brophy told the court she has no memory of being there, though she acknowledges she must have been, insisting the closed-circuit TV images show her in the area because she was driving around getting inspiration for a story.

Mr Daniel Brophy, 63, was found dead that morning by students getting ready for a class. He had been shot twice.

Investigators say the barrel from the Glock handgun used in the slaying was purchased by the suspect on eBay. That barrel - which would contain damning forensic clues - has never been recovered, despite an exhaustive police search.

Crampton Brophy admits having bought a Glock pistol, which she says was for her husband to protect himself when he went mushroom hunting in the woods, but says the missing barrel was purchased as part of research for an unfinished novel. "There was a big separation between what was for writing and what was for protection," she told the court.

Prosecutors say Crampton Brophy, whose How To Murder Your Husband remains accessible online and whose books can be bought on Amazon, was facing financial ruin before her husband's death, but continued to pay into 10 separate life insurance policies.

The trial, which began early last month, is ongoing.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE