Part 2 | The Chef of Portland

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning. Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey Y'ALLKJ back here with another episode of Unspeakable. Let me give you some shout outs to some of my new family members, my crime family members. Hey, real quick, remember crime family members.

1:08 That's the level that you get shout out. So if you want one, make sure you're on the right tier so that you don't think I'm skipping you, because I promise I'm not skipping you. But I'm gonna start right here in my backyard in Greenwell Springs, Louisiana, and I'm gonna tell KK also known as Karen le June, Hello, how are you right here? You're a neighbor. Thank you so much for supporting the show as well, as we're gonna go to north Fort Myers, Florida, where Carrie Gogolin is. Did I say that right? Carry I hope so Goglin. I've never seen that last name before. That's a first for me. But I hope things are going great in Florida. I actually have family in Fort Myers, Florida, so you might be my cousin and we don't even know it. And then we've got no address on file for this one. But miss Steph c Hey, Steph, how are you? You have the same first and middle initial as my mom?

1:53 So that's pretty cool. And then last, but certainly not least, is gonna be Miss Sarah Barnaby from pleasant Hill, Missouri. Howard things in Pleasantville, I hope they're pleasant. Oh it's going good. But I'm just so tickled to have all of y'all support my dream and to make this just become a reality. And I know I say the same thing, thank you so much every time I'm giving a shout out, but I don't know what other words to use to express but I'm beyond thankful for you. Now. We left off last episode with the first part of Dan Brophy's murder Chef Brofy was killed and I know y'all were like, wait, why did you do it in a two parter? I had to. I had to because I want to take you along the journey of this police investigation, because I think that they did a stellar job on this one putting these puzzle pieces together. So picking up from last week, Chef Dan was murdered at the school and everyone had been investigated. That police could think of students, coworkers, the homeless people in the area. Nothing seemed to pan out to any really good leads. Even when they and they found the homeless people in the area, they were tracked down.

3:04 They tracked down multiple homeless people to see what they were doing. Where were you, Why were you in the area, But it just it just did not pan out. One would come up and then it would just lead to nothing. So one person did come forward, I believe it was a student, and she said that there was one homeless person in particular that would always come up and bom use cigarettes off of students during the day. But when they questioned more about that one, no one ever felt that he posed a threat to them. He was never aggressive or violent. All he wanted was their cigarette butt. So he could continue smoking them, and so he was quickly ruled out as well. And by the way, a homeless person's weapon of choice. While I can't say this in one hundred percent certainty, Okay, there's always going to be an exception to every rule, but a homeless person typically is not going to have a gun as a weapon of choice when they go to commit a crime.

4:02 I mean, they tend to be more primitive in their tools, things like knives, a two by four pieces of metal that they could use to shank somebody or something of that nature. But being homeless in and of itself would imply that you didn't have many resources. So for them to just have a gun other than maybe stealing one, that just didn't seem to fit the bill here that a homeless person would have shot Chef Bropy. It was just too far fetched. So Chef Dan, we know, he was just so well loved and he was an amazing culinary instructor. He led a very simple life. He was not a high risk person, and so his murder, it just was stumping everybody. There was something that investigators were missing.

4:46 They just could not put their finger on it. And so what they decided to do was to dig deeper into Dan's personal life to see if that could maybe spark up just the smallest thing possibly that would bring about a lead. So they went and they spoke further with Dan's now widow, Miss Nancy, and in questioning they did find that Nancy and Dan did own a gun. Now that's eyebraising, eyebrow raising. Of course, we always were going to go, oh, really, you own a gun and your husband's dead. But I want to tell you that's going to quickly be a letdown. I'll just let you know now why. Because police accompanied Nancy to her home where she readily removed the gun from the closet that where she kept it, and it was still in the case, and she turned that right over to police immediately, no questions asked, and it had been kept there on that top shelf. Ever, since they originally bought the gun. Now, in doing their due diligence, police obviously had to inquire in depth about this gun. They couldn't just take her word for it and say, okay, this isn't the weapon.

5:51 The thing was that it was similar in caliber. Actually it was the same caliber as the weapon that was used to kill Chef Dan. But when they took it out of the casing, it still had the original zip tie around the trigger from when the weapon had been made safe, as it's called at the original sale. So real quick, if you're not a gun person, you're not familiar. Making a weapon safe is going to be when the slide is pulled back and then the slide catch leaver is going to lock it back and you can see into the chamber and see that there's no weapon and that it's not live. It's not a hot weapon at that time. So the question was, now, where did y'all get the gun? Well, Nancy said that she bought the gun at a gun show a while back for about five hundred dollars. So the obvious question now is, well, why did you buy a gun? And Nancy explained that with the recent rash of school shootings that had been going on in this country, they thought that maybe it would be a good idea to have some sort of protection while Dan was at school because schools seemed to be being targeted. But after she purchased the gun and she brought it home, they looked it over and they decided, look, we're just we're not gun people. They didn't like it.

7:03 They didn't feel like he would want to carry it, and it just would be more of an uncomfortable thing to force upon themselves than to than they were wanting. So the problem she had was that it was heavy. She said, it's ugly, it's kind of scary, and neither one just ever got really comfortable with the idea of carrying the weapon. But everyone they knew had weapons, and so they really just felt the pressure like we're the odd ones out. If everyone else thinks they need to be armed, we need to be armed. But after purchasing it, they just they couldn't do it. And that's okay. Not everybody's different, and everyone has different opinions on how they need to possibly defend themselves. Matter of fact, historically speaking, Nancy was more liberal, and Nancy spoke out against gun ownership.

7:48 I don't mean like on a platform like you know, no guns, but I mean, you know, family gatherings already, events with friends, if that would come up, guns just she didn't really think people should have guns. But again, after those school shootings, she specifically mentioned to police the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas shooting that that shooting specifically is the one that was the pivot in their minds where they just changed their opinion a bit. And by the way, if you don't know, if you're new to the show, I did cover the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas shooting and I even spoke to the father of one of the victims in prior episode. So go back if you're new, and you can go get a real personal insight from a father of a murdered child in a school shooting. But the world had basically gone crazy and they felt maybe they should have uped their game. Now I know what you're thinking, like I said, but I'm gonna dispel this really quickly. Doug Kelly, she shot her husband with that gun.

8:43 Well hold your horses, okay, cowboys and cowgirls, calm me down. Because the police didn't take her word for it. They did confiscate that weapon and they did have ballistics run on this gun at the crime lab and show enough, this gun was not the gun that killed Dan. So speaking to Dan's family, they were at a complete loss as to who would have done this to their son. Dan's parents were just literally out in left field, wide eyed, going, we can't even I can't believe this has even happened. He may have been an esteemed chef that everyone looked up to at that school, but to these two people, to his mama and daddy, this was their son. You know, I don't care how old he was. This was their baby boy. And to know that someone wanted him dead just it just blew their minds. These were not those types of people. And by the way, Dan's dad was a pastor, he was still involved heavily in the Baptist church.

9:46 Matter of fact, he too enjoyed helping to feed the homeless and the less fortunate, just like his son Dan did by cooking and delivering meals and doing the things that I believe he instilled in his son and made Dan, who he was helping others, was paramount. And so the culinary school, police would find, was used to help with this, And so the school was used to his father's appearance there as he would drive the church van up there pick up foods that they would then take and donate to the cause. Now, from what I gathered, this was not explicitly stated, but from what I gathered, rather than throw away the foods that the students would cook while they were learning, the school would take that product and use it for a great cause, helping their local community.

10:37 And Dan loved that idea as well. Food was life to him. He wanted to do sustainable things for the community. And I just I love that. I love that that they thought outside of themselves and don't throw this food away. You know, Let's use it for something useful. And the homeless are hungry, feed them. The food doesn't have to be perfect. And I want to talk to you for second about Dan's dad a little bit further. If you don't mind, this is gonna be just a personal thing here, but I absolutely adore this man. I cannot express to you how precious he is. And he's very hard of hearing.

11:18 He's in his late eighties now at this point. He's a bit dry, but so funny. He's one of those people that I don't even know if he's trying to be funny, but just the way he does things, it just tickles me, okay. And he told investigators that Dan, his son, was a messy guy. And when he was talking to investigators, he just shook his head back and forth, like, oh Dan, Dan, Dan Dan. It didn't matter that Dan was, you know, in his fifties, sixties, his dad still was like, oh, hell, this dude here, and what he called it was Dan debris, the Dan debris, which tickled me too. But basically what his daddy would say was that wherever Dan went, he made a mess and he left Dan debris. He was not a I'm not saying he's a dirty person, but he was not a organized person, so to speak. And so this thought seemed to be backed up to at school because Dan would often leave the roll up door open, even when that was a bit frowned upon. It wasn't like he was in trouble or anything, but it was kind of like, don't leave the door open, Dan, Like when you go and you open it, do what you gotta do and then shut it back. But Dan was always setting his stuff down opening the door because he was focused on the cooking. That was his passion. You know.

12:30 He wanted to get it done and to do it well. So while Dan was messy at home when it came to like setting up his cookstation, though his actual cookstation, he was rather meticulous at school. So he kind of rolled the door up and would throw his keys wherever, but his cookstation was meticulous. And I get that because it's different, and the standards are set, especially in a culinary setting where organization of your tools and your foods and your spices. When you're teaching, that's paramount. You've got to be organized in that respect. And so the dad of Dan also gave some insight to his son's home life and his financial life, because you know that was going to come into question. So Dan's home had burned at one point, not completely down, but it was damaged, and so Dan's dad did help his son to make repairs in the home and it was kind of funny, but his dad was like, yeah, man, we'd go to do a project and then I'd say, Dan, I need this tool and Dan would say, oh, yeah, Dad, I've got one. And then he said, but finding it was just another a whole different ordeal. Dan would say that maybe I should just go buy another one because they could never find it. It was such a mess. The garage was a mess, totally haphazard and organization. And Dan also was raising these chickens that he loved, and so he would kind of, I think it's called brood them. No, a broody chicken is sitting on it egg, isn't it?

13:56 What's the word, he would raise him up whatever. He would have the babies in the garage until they were old enough to go outside and be in the in the coop, so there was like chicken bedding in there, there was clothes, and his dad even would crack up at the thought of the mess. He's like, he's just a hot mess, you know, in that respect. But Dan was also kind of quiet. Okay, he wasn't a big talker. He would talk to his dad, obviously, but he didn't just go out giving all the personal details of his life out, you know. But he would talk with his dad, but Dad still didn't know much about his son's financial life. What Dad did know though, was that if they needed help, Dad was willing to financially give them some assistance, and Nancy would be more vocal of their needs. In my personal opinion, based on everything that I was researching about this case, Dan wouldn't necessarily be the one to ask for money because he, you know, money didn't really matter to Dan. He was chasing his cooking passion. So for example, they had a vehicle issue. Dan drove this older truck, and then Nancy had a van that she drove. Now before she drove the van. She had another vehicle that she had sold, but when that happened, she didn't have a car when she sold that first car. So Dan's father sold her his van, the one that he had used in the past to transport food and such for the church and to go feed the homeless. So if

15:28 you're following that whole the bacle there, he had also loaned them money a time or ten really when they needed it. So Dan only made about sixty thousand dollars teaching, but he also would make a little bit of money here and there selling spices that he would dry and grow and all of that on the side. Now to that note, his biggest month of sales I think was eighty dollars, So it was nothing that you would, you know, go report to the irs or run to report. It wasn't a lot of money, but he was proud to make his eighty dollars. That's a lot in little bottles of spices. Nancy had previously had a very successful catering business, but as I mentioned in episode one, she was the dreamer of the couple, so Dan was more practical. Nancy was the one that Moore wanted to run off and dream and chase down stuff. So when Nancy up and dropped her a successful catering company to take up another life's dream, this would affect their life. She took up a dream of becoming an author. She wanted to write, and specifically she dreamed of being published in her genre of choice, which was romance. She liked that dirty romance and she liked to write those books. And Dan never wanted to interfere with her dreams. He was very supportive, even though their income was drastically adjusted. I think I even mentioned in episode one that she was making, you know, like five hundred thousand dollars a year gross at this catering so she was doing well. And then she just

16:59 walked way to become an author and they gave up all of that income. Dan's only making about sixty grand. Now, Nancy did publish some books, but sales were extremely minimal, so publishing is one thing, selling them is another. So income that she was making so to speak, didn't cover the cost of doing so, so the dream was kind of losing money there. She really did try, though, and it was not for lack of trying. She had even joined a book club that met periodically to inspire herself and to inspire others in their writings. So these were all newer writers, not professional ones, and she over time would even be voted the president of the Rose City Romance Writers and that just was something she was extremely proud of. And she would make a sweet gesture to the writers whenever they would accomplish something like completing a novel or a book, she would give them a rose because of the Rose City Writers. You get it, okay, But it meant a lot to these women because you know, they're all aspiring writers, not full time or anything, and the gesture was just something special to them. Now in her group, she was the queen Bee because she was the one who had published the most books per se.

18:15 The fact that none of them really sold well, that wasn't directly mentioned, okay. So Dan and Nancy would even travel together to support this romance writer's dream of hers. They would even go on a cruise at one point where Nancy was going to hold a talk at this writer's conference on the cruise. So he supported this dream even though she was the proverbial starving artist in her art form. The change of profession, though, was affecting them a lot, especially in the year of twenty sixteen. But Dan didn't need money. I think I've made that pretty clear. He was just happy living their little life. They had a great marriage. They were loving to travel together, they loved to hang out together, and of course they loved looking together. That was their favorite pastime. Well, what about the son that Dan had had but been estranged from in his earlier years. First episode, I think I mentioned that he started really getting back in his life during his high school years. But some more research it did makes it seem like it's actually a little bit later, like maybe in the twenties era, but about that time. Well, looking at him, his name was Nathaniel. He was a stand up guy. Nathaniel was a good dude. He had gotten married recently around this time frame that uh that his dad was murdered. It was in like the last two years or so, and he and his wife, Kate had a child already, and now they were expecting another baby very soon. And the dread of knowing that Dan

19:46 would never meet this new grand baby, that's just sickening. You know that he loved these these grand babies, and he certainly would have taught this new baby all that he could about food and chickens and taking care of but that would just be stripped away. It would never be because Dan was now gone, and the loss was huge, even before this baby's life had even truly begun. And the reason I say that is I remember when my mother in law passed away, and my first thought, my very first thought once I realized this was real, was I didn't want to tell my child. I didn't want to be the person to have to look at her and say, your you know, your your grandma that you spend all your time with, left you, because that's what it felt like I was saying, even though that's not true.

20:36 She would have never left her on purpose. How do you I just felt like my kids were robbed when she passed away, and I'm sure that was the feeling here. So Nancy and Nathaniel's relationship, let's talk about that. Their relationship was great. So detectives are looking through all of this, and she had taken him in, you know, as her own even though she and Dan never had their own children, they had a great relationship together. She loved him and even in his adult life, she had hired him to work with her. At some point in time, I think for the catering company. So she was a doting grandmother to Nathaniel's child, as was dan adoting grandfather, and she was even refurbishing a toy chest for the child that they had when the murder was going down. Like in that same timeframe when the police initially investigated her or interrogated her, she even had paint on her hands because it was dried from the previous day when she was working on that toy chest. So all in all, the family was loving and this case just was frustrating given the kindness that they showed to others, yet now one of their own was dead and police couldn't figure this one out. There were multiple apartment complexes around the school that were also considered as possible sources of information, and although many of the people in the area were interviewed as they were coming and going, they all said the same thing. We saw nothing, we heard nothing. It was just another dead end. So narrowing down everyone's whereabouts and

22:08 what they knew of that morning, Nancy was asked what did Dan do that morning before he left for work, and she explained that she did not sleep well that night before, so she wanted to sleep in and she did wake up though. Whenever Dan got up because he was taking a shower, it woke her up for whatever reason, and she didn't follow him outside or anything. But his usual routine would be that he would walk their dogs, he would feed their chickens. They had a half acre of land, and then he would shower and he would go to work. Now he would sometimes bring the quantities of stuff that he would can or dry and all of that. He would sometimes bring that with him, and then those large plastic carts. He would load it on those and then push those you know, into the building whenever he got there. But she could only confirm that she did watch him leave the house around seven to ten a m. And based on the distance from the house to the school, it should have taken them him rather about ten minutes to get from the house to work.

23:12 So police decided to go back and review the cameras one more time from that Bellaggio's pizza shop to see what could we possibly see that we're missing. Is there something that we're not honing in on that we need to now, some uniformed officers at that exact time that they went to go review those cameras, they remained back at the Brophies home with Nancy, and they were still doing questions and you know, trying to figure out if anything they could, while these other detectives left to go drum up more leads, possibly from video. Now, the video from the pizza shop was reviewed again when a detective noticed a van that seemed very familiar. It was this grayish, brownish van and it looked just like the one that Nancy drove. One very very very similar at least to hers, passed by the pizza shop and was clearly seen during the video review. Now, again, don't feed into this, because the timing was the time that she would have passed by when she was driving to the school after the shooting to check on him would have taken place. Okay, Now, the video was a big grainy and you couldn't make out the driver or the license plate or anything like that.

24:33 So detectives kept watching the film and just nothing was coming about. But that was when it was brought to their attention that the timestamp on that video was actually wrong. And it wasn't wrong by one minute or thirty minutes, it wasn't even wrong by an hour. They realized it was actually three hours off, it was three hours fast, So this would change everything because this would mean that the van that they saw passed at seven eight am, not ten eight am as originally believed. That meant this van passed twenty minutes before Dan was murdered. So watching further with that now in mind, that same van then passed by again twenty minutes later, going in the opposite direction.

25:35 So wow, we see a van show up and then leave right in the timeframe that Dan is believed to have been murdered. But now the question became, well whose van is that? And they hated to point the finger, obviously at a grieving widow, but remaining objective, they were obligated to do so. Now, the van did seem similar in color to Nancy's, but their question now was is there anything that could possibly differentiate this van from Nancy's to rule it out? Now, Nancy's was for sure a two thousand and five gray Toyota Sienna, So when Nancy brought her bought it her van from her father in law, she bought it as is, and that meant that there was actually some damage to her van. Specifically, on her van, there was roughly a three foot long scratch down the side of the driver's side near the gas cap area.

26:31 So police spoke with Dan's father and asked him about the damage to that van since they knew that he had sold it to her, and he said, oh, yeah, that scratch was made by me whenever I had it. So what had happened was he had miscalculated the distance from a garbage truck when he was backing out, and he just scratched right on alongside down that one, that trash truck as he backed out. And he was doing this actually bringing food to the homeless when he did that booboo to the van. As matter of fact, that it had been years since that had been done, because the scratch was rusted. Now, okay, it had been that long. Well, again, the video was grainy from the pizza place, but there did seem to be a scratch on that van in the exact same spot as the van scratch that dad had mentioned. So this was obviously very eyebrow raising considering the totality of the circumstances at this point. Luckily, those officers were still back at the house with Nancy, and so detectives made a phone call and said, hey, go out to her van. And I want you to go right now and take some pictures all the way around the van. So yes, sir, they did what they were told. Now, Nancy followed them and was like, why are you taking pictures of the van? And they said, well, it's part of the investigation that we do this, and she became completely offended by that, and she looked at those officers and said, I did not kill my husband, and the officer just kind of looked back at her like, I didn't see you did. But she just got completely hurt

28:04 by that. Guys, this happens in investigations. If you're going to do a thorough investigation, you have to look at everything. So I understand she was hurt, but they're just doing their job. So comparing the known photographs of her van to the vehicle in question, lots of comparisons were able to be made. Both vehicles had the same roof racks, both vehicles had the same body style, both had the same wheel covers, and both had the same tent. Hmm, Well, this was not throwing a huge wrench in what would have been expected in this investigation. I mean, a nearly seventy year old woman that's devastated over the death of her husband. You know, is she actually capable of murder?

28:48 I mean, it's an old lady. So if the person that was driving this van was heading to work, let's say, the next question became, okay, well, why would that van then turn around and draw write back by the camera twenty minutes later. It was just a glaring obvious thing that they had to look further into. So police had recorded their discussion with Nancy and that included the very first that death notification confirming that it was actually Dan that got killed. And when that conversation went on, Nancy was very clear that she had never gotten out of bed that morning. So this is now begging the question of whether Nancy was lying about not having left the house or whether there was another van that was similar to hers. And this was just now there was so much left that would have to be explained at this point.

29:42 So just a day or so later, Nancy would then make a call to detectives and she had a very strange request for them. Basically, she had called to start the process of collecting the life insurance policy on Dan so she could pay for his funeral expenses and all of that, and the insurance a said that she would have to get a letter from detectives stating that she was not a suspect in her husband's murder to receive the payout. Those are her exact words. And the detectives were taken aback by the request. And I listened to the audio, and you can hear it in his voice, he almost chuckles. Okay, But Nancy starts laughing too, kind of nervously laughing, like, look, I mean, I know this sounds crazy, she said, but I even ran this past my sister. Her sister is an attorney, and she said, my sister's laughing at me too, But like, what do I do? Because that's what they told me to do?

30:37 And the detectives are almost rolling their eyes at this. Okay, detectives don't do that. They don't give you a letter absolving you from an investigation that that's never ever been done. They've never done that, and they're never going to do that. But Nancy said, okay, well, I mean, thank you anyway. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I'm just doing what I was told. Well, this in and of itself was comical, but you can't just jumped the gun in an investigation because guess what police called. They called the insurance company and guess what they did, in fact, ask Nancy to get a letter of not being a suspect. That blew my mind. What in the hell is that. I've never heard of that before, but they confirmed it. They sure did.

31:23 So if you're an insurance agent, I'm just curious comment on my Facebook or on my patron or something. I'm very curious if you sell life insurance and someone goes to collect, have you ever heard of that or have you ever done that? Because I mean, I'm not an agent, but that sounds wild. So while somewhat surprised at this request for a letter, what it did do at that point was alert detective to the fact that there actually was life insurance on Dan. So they needed to investigate that. So now here's what we all want to know. How much how much life insurance was being carried on him? Well, looking into that, police would find policies that totaled around eight hundred thousand dollars. That's a lot of money. So speaking with experts, though they wouldn't some financial experts were talked to. They said that the amount of coverage wasn't actually in excess considering their assets and such, like their property was valued. When I looked at their property value, it was valued at like five hundred and six hundred thousand dollars to boot though, because Dan was killed at work, this would add an additional workman's comp claim payout of another four hundred thousand dollars. So in total, roughly one point two million was in play here. Now, I know that makes all our eyebrows raise. I mean, but I'm insured for over a million dollars in life insurance. Sure.

32:41 I look at my husband and I go, You're not gonna knock me off, are you? And he laughs and we laugh. But you know, it's just something that we have. So it's not out of the realm of reality, is what I'm telling you. Now. Also, don't come kill me because no one is going to get that money except my husband. Thank you, all right now? Taking that into account, the experts, like I said, felt that it wasn't an excess amount considering all of their assets, but police wondered what the finances of the home looked like in conjunction with that. So, since the massive pay cut after Nancy's career change, money was becoming an issue as you can imagine, but they had taken steps to try and mitigate that shortcom or that shortfall in income for starters. They had taken out thirty five thousand dollars from Dan's four oh one K to pay for home renovations and a patio and landscaping updates, and also for a storage facility that they had rented when they were going to try to clean out. What was strange though, was that they didn't just take out the thirty five thousand from the four oh one K. This was actually a majority of the four to oh one K, so basically like draining their safety net for their later on in life expenditures. So being stupid financially isn't proof of murder, obviously, but it was interesting. So they did an audit of their finances

34:13 and they found that the Brophies hadn't been consistently able to pay their mortgage for the over the past year and a half, so they were paying it, but not consistently. So then the question was, okay, well how much was the house note. Their house note was one thy five and thirty dollars a month. Okay, well, people do fall into financial trouble and I'm not hating on that. But what was interesting in that regard was that the Brophies never missed a life insurance policy payment in all of that time. All right, now, police wanted to look further into this, into the financials of Dan and Nancy. They were struggling month to month, remember this, struggling month to month to make their ends meet, but they managed to pay one thousand dollars a month in life insurance premiums.

35:07 That should make everybody back up and I go with the fuck Like Ray Charles could see that that is strange. So you're not able to pay your fifteen hundred dollars house note, but you're gonna go ahead and pay one thousand dollars on a life insurance premium. That that's weird, okay. So on top of that, it wasn't just one policy that they carried. It was not five, it wasn't seven, it was ten. There were ten life insurance policies. So being objective, wouldn't you cancel at least some of those if you were struggling, like you need to pay for the roof of your head before insuring your life, right, Well, they paid over sixteen thousand dollars in insurance premiums while falling behind in mortgage payments around six thousand dollars. It just doesn't make sense. It doesn't make logical sense. Investigators would find that Nancy also sold insurance on the side as well as medicare, so obviously she believed in the mission of insurance. And looking into these policies, they would find that Dan himself was the owner of all of these policies on himself, not Nancy. So I know right now you're going, oh, she took out all these policies behind his back, and nope, Dan was the owner of all of the policies. But it was curious, you have to admit that. So forensic financial auditing would be done on all of their accounts, and based on the projections of the audits, the Brothies were soon to be in

36:39 serious financial ruin and they probably would be bankrupt by the end of that year that Dan was killed. So with no other real suspects, this became the biggest flag to investigators in that moment. It was really the only thing that they could think of, motive wise, that someone might want to kill Dan. So they did check Nancy's criminal history. That's what they found. Nothing absolutely nothing. She was a grandma with no criminal history. So police at this point, just based on the finances, were starting to kind of think, I don't know, man, the van, the finances, She's got to be involved in this murder somehow. But they definitely didn't have enough to solidify a conviction. This was just more of a gut with some pretty good evidence, but definitely not enough. So they went and they spoke with neighbors and one of the neighbors said that they saw Nancy outside the morning of the murder, but Nancy looked frantic, and so they asked, what do you mean she looked frantic and the neighbor said, oh, she was upset because she was looking for her dogs. Remember her dogs, they have PB and Ja the tuopops. Well, the dogs had gotten out and they were loose and she was not able to find them. And so, you know, did she ever find the dogs? Asked the neighbors, and they're like, no, we never saw the dogs. We never saw her find them, so we don't really know what happened to the pups. Well.

38:04 Detectives then contacted the original company that sold the gun to Nancy at the gun show. They wanted to look at this gun more in depth, and that company was Jay and B Firearm Sales, and so they were able to actually track down the man who literally sold the gun to Nancy, like put the gun in her hand at the gun show. And his name was Brett Glendening or Glenn Dining, however you wanna say it now. He said that he showed her the gun and then they discussed practicing at a gun range, and he said, I even recommended a few to her. I think he had written it down for her. We're some local ranges. And during that sale, he also showed Nancy how to break the gun down, how to take it apart, and how to clean it. He did the demo to show her that it could be done. So Nancy always came across to police as if she was scared of the gun, and she kind of gave the feeling she never really handled it that much. And she even told police during questioning that she never handled the gun. So this was in direct contradiction of what she had said. So she seemed much more in tune with the weapon, especially when you're asking about a firing range, and that's when detectives looked back at the gun when they originally photographed it and something was noted. The weapon was ever so slightly out of battery. Now, if you're not a gun person, I want to explain this to you. So you don't think that guns have batteries, Okay, they don't, all right,

39:35 So if you're a gun person, you know this. If you're not, i'll make it brief. But basically, when you're holding a pistol in your hand, the frame is the part that you're gripping, and then the slide is on the top and that's the part that functions and moves back and forth whenever the gun is firing. If Nancy never touched the gun, as she stated, then why was the gun slide not seated correctly in the frame? Because when a gun is out of battery, that means that the slide, well, it could mean a million things, but in this case, the slide would not have functioned properly on the weapon. So why does this matter. Well, the salesman certainly proved that the function of the gun and the slide was functioning properly during the sale of the weapon, and he was specific that they do not remove the plastic zip tie fed through the gun for safety reasons while they are showing the customer the weapon at the gun show. And this is going to matter because every single weapon before it is sold is test fired, every one of them. So they have to prove that the weapon is functioning properly. So why would the gun be out of battery if that were the case? Think about it.

40:53 It's a thought to ponder if he showed her how a weapon broke down, but not that weapon at the gun show, how a weapons break down to clean them. But that gun remained in working function order, and it had the zip tie fed through it. The zip tie, by the way, fed through the hole where the bullet comes out through the barrel and then back around through the through the trigger. It just it wouldn't have come off if she had never touched that gun. Why was it out of battery? It doesn't make sense. And so the cops were really stuck on that. This just doesn't make any sense. So police decided that in this instance they needed to put Nancy under surveillance to see what she was up to and if something else was going on here. Now there was a huge blunder when this was done. The team that was going to surveil her misunderstood.

41:49 They thought they were going in to effect an arrest. So on September fifth, twenty eighteen, Nancy Brophy was arrested for her husband's murder. And this is a massive mistake in this investigation. The case wasn't even yet built completely, and now she knew she was the main suspect. Big problem. Now the police would have to work at the speed of light to continue building the case, and they couldn't take their time because if she got released on bond or anything of that nature, she now knows to go get rid of anything that might be involved in this case, plus a million other compromises that could have happened. So the police were like, shit, this is not good. Well, what they did then was they said, all right, we got to get into game plan. We got to go into overdrive. We've got to build this case, and we've got to beat the grand jury date that she goes before the grand jury, and we've got to have solid evidence.

42:43 So they dove into her computer history, her financial history, as well as they executed the search warrant for the Brophy home and that storage facility that they had, and all of this would prove extraordinarily valuable in this case. Starting with the computer history, Nancy had been very very busy online in the prior year. Detective Anthony Merrill knew that on February seventeenth of twenty eighteen, Nancy had purchased a glock seventeen at a gun show, which is the one we've discussed. But two days later, on February nineteenth, they would find on that computer that Nancy signed up for an eBay account. That's when she started bidding on another gun. But that was quickly kind of poo pooed because they realized it wasn't for a whole gun. She was bidding on gun parts. Then, on February twenty third, Nancy won that bid on a glock seventeen slide and barrel, and those two pieces were delivered to their home three days later. She also searched YouTube videos on how to clean a glock as well as how to load one.

43:57 So this begged the question of why the already owned the glock that Nancy bought at the gun show, the one that they never used, so why would they be buying more parts for the gun. Well, Nancy, when asked, said she was purchasing gun parts for research on a book that she was writing, So why not just look at the original gun you had? Why would you buy more parts? By the way, these parts and things that she bought were to the tune of hundreds of dollars, Especially when you're in financial distress, that doesn't make any sense. So looking into her writings, by the way, Nancy was also writing blogs, and some of them just might make you go hmm. On her website, Nancy described her marriage as having ups and downs, but more good times than bad. However, one blog in particular caught the intention of investigators, the title how to Murder your Husband. She wrote this one in twenty eleven, and she gave lots of good tips in this writing things like go do his job, make sure there are no cameras, maybe find a hit man.

45:06 I mean, she was super super graphic in how to get this done. So this obviously didn't age very well, and one person even commented on that blog jokingly, I'm gonna check on Dan and make sure he's okay. Oof. That didn't age well either, So circumstantial, sure, but it also followed exactly what police are now believing that she did to her own husband. So is it that far fetched when executing the search warrants on September the eighth. They were in that storage unit that was rented by Nancy, and there were boxes filled with things. Things labeled like you would expect when you're moving, so pet supplies, kitchen, utensils, whatever, But one box was labeled scarves, purses, and then the initials g K. Now there's no one in the house with initials GK. So when they opened up that box, they found what those initials stood for, and they stood for gun kit the kicker. This is what was known as a ghost gun, and it was never mentioned to police by Nancy. So a quick lesson on ghost guns.

46:13 A ghost gun is basically a build kit that you can buy online and it's an incomplete gun, but it's basically eighty percent built. And this is kind of like a go around because it's not stamped with a serial number, nor is it tracked as an official sale because it's not a gun because it's only eighty percent. But it contains the magazine, the lower parts kit, eighty percent of the frame, the slide, the recoil spring, all of that is in there in and of itself. It wasn't a functioning gun, but again Why why would you buy this incomplete ghost gun? You already have a gun. They were missing something here, but what was it? And they're just looking at all of this information and they just were not one hundred percent sure yet. But that was until two laptops that were recovered from the Brophy residence had some interesting search history. So whenever they looked at these two laptops, one was an HP they found in Nancy's bedroom and the other one was laying near the bed as well. By the way, Nancy and Dan slept in different bedrooms. He slept downstairs, she slept upstairs. That's how they were able to really kind of confirm that these were Nancy's computers and one the hard drive of the HP.

47:31 Here are some of the internet searches they found ghostguns dot com, Kick back with a glock gun shops in Portland, Cost of a glock seventeen gunbroker dot com. When do you have to register a gun in organ? Glock seventeen slide for sale glock nineteen slide How to sell a gun in Organ. There were a whole bunch of other ones too, but they also saw one for weapons and police procedure. Nancy was researching that and that's when all of this gun research was realized and placed together with the timeline in conjunction with the Brophies' finances, And that is when a light bulb went off and the police had this aha moment. There were technically three guns at play here. Hear me out. Nancy admitted to buying the glock seventeen, which she said was for the protection of Dan.

48:32 That's the one that she had turned over. She never mentioned the gun parts that she purchased for the glock, nor the incomplete ghost gun purchase. Why because she didn't think that it would matter. They weren't actual guns. However, the police had now figured out her game. Nancy bought the ghost gun first before she bought any of the other guns or parts. That's why, or that when she started youtubing how to put it together. See, the untraceable gun could be bought almost complete, no registration record of it, and then in her mind she could complete building it a perfect six hundred and seventy six dollars and ninety nine sent gun that didn't exist if it weren't for the receipts. If it weren't for the receipts, it was perfect for her to kill her husband with. But that's in theory because in real life, she had too much trouble building the rest of the gun. She couldn't do it.

49:35 It was too hard for her, so she scrapped the ghost gun idea. That's when she started making plans for buying a complete gun, but she had to have a cover story first, hence writing about it that original how to Kill Your Husband blog that was written well before she realized she couldn't put the ghost gun together. Nancy now explained, Oh, I bought the ghost gun build kids because I was working on a story where a character receives a single gun part in the mail each time that their character develops. It's just part of the writing style. Okay, great, Well, then why is there a purchase history for an additional slide and barrel for the same make and model gun that you had already bought? Dan? Explain it, Nancy, Well, she didn't have to because the police had solved it.

50:24 She had switched the barrel and the slide to kill Dan. When she put the original slide and barrel back on the gun, she had trouble and it didn't seat correctly. Hence why the gun was out of battery, and that's why when the police test fired it, they had to manipulate it. They test fired it, that's why the ballistics didn't match the test fire done at the crime lab. The barrel and the slide used to kill Dan were dumped somewhere else, and the original barrel in was put back on the gun before she turned it over to police, but it was out of battery. I thought that was so fucking incredible that they were able to reverse engineer and figure that out, that there were technically three guns at play here, even though only one complete weapon was there.

51:19 That's good shit right there. Nancy thought she was clever, but she wasn't clever enough. Sorry, But why why would you kill your loving husband of twenty five years, who supports you even through your disastrous career decisions. Well, it's all about the money. See. Nancy was originally on the deed to their house, but they refinanced it in two thousand and four. Why did they refinance it because this was Dan's way of supporting Nancy's catering business when she first started it. He took that equity out to help his wife. That's what that man did. But here's The funny thing, here's the kicker that she didn't even know when they refinanced the house. She was no longer on the deed anymore. She didn't even own the home after killing Dan. It wasn't even hers. Sorry, bitch, you just got served. You got served by excellent police work. And now let me put it all in order for you so that it can make sense. Nancy was the person who handled all of the finances in the home. Dan just left it up to her. He loved his wife.

52:34 He trusted that she was making good decisions during this time brame. The truth, though, was that the Brophies were in serious financial trouble and it was soon going to boil to a head. Dan was gonna find out. Nancy wouldn't be able to continue doing what she wanted to do in life because there was no cash flow. She wasn't making money with her writing passion. So she, in that moment, decided that Dan's life was worth more. If he was dead, that would benefit her more, and that's when she began plotting from that point forward. She bought the ghost gun, figuring it wouldn't be tracked. She would finish building it after all of her online research and she would kill him with it, but she couldn't do it.

53:20 She then came up with the idea of getting the gun for Dan, quote unquote whether or not he knew of this gun, I'm actually not even sure. I'll let you decide. Okay, you'd be the thinker here if you think he knew about it or not. But records would show she bought that gun at the gun show while Dan was at work, so he certainly wasn't there. She also probably choked later on when she realized that one of her writing friends talked to police during an investig During the investigation and accidentally spilled the beans that she and Nancy they had gone together to a shooting range. Hmm. She wasn't expecting that, was she. She researched police procedure and weapons, which then enlightened her to the investigation practices, and that's when she created the eBay account and bought the extra slide and barrel with plans of switching them now that she understood how ballistics testing was done. On the day of the shooting, Dan got up early because it was what they called a live fire day, right where they're cooking live and completing the orders and she knew that he was going to have to be at work early that day because of this. Once he left the house, she jumped up and she got in the van and she headed downtown towards the school. At six thirty nine am is when Nancy arrived in the area of the school. She makes a first pass which is seen on camera, and then she makes a second pass on the video. Why because she was looking for a good spot to watch Dan from afar And let's make

54:50 no mistake here, she knew the area well, y'all. She's from there. She's been to the school a million times throughout the last twelve years. Why would she need to make so many passes? Not lost, you go there all the time. At seven eight am, that's when she's seen on the pizza store cameras in the van with the obvious scratch, headed towards the school at seven twenty Dan arrived at seven twenty two am. He opened the he turned off the alarm, and then he opened up the roll up door. Nancy was in and out of that roll up door in just seconds, just moments, within three minutes of him opening that door. It's estimated that Dan was murdered in cold blood by his own wife. Side note, she knew the layout of the school and she even had gone to use the bathroom there one morning in recent weeks. Right before his death. She said she made an excuse saying that she was waiting for a Medicare client supposedly, but the detectives believed that she made that excuse up to get in the building to verify her game plan because she never went on a bathroom break in the early morning before at the school. She knew Dan would be alone because it was this live fired thing that was taking place, and he would be there early early in the morning. Also fun fact, Dan's age was now coming into play because his insurance payout would soon lessen if he didn't die before his upcoming birthday.

56:16 I can't remember exactly what the age switch was, but I don't believe in coincidences on that either. Yes, Dan would was the beneficiary of his own ten policies. However, he would be dead. That's not even an argument here. Of course, the wife would collect like, get the fuck out of here. I don't care who signed it. You're gonna benefit he is dead. Why else do you have life insurance? At seven twenty eight am. Nancy's van has then seen leaving the area again on camera. An additional camera angle was later found and detectives were able to make out three of the letters on the license plate, so they took that and they ran it in conjunction with Nancy's van, color and model at the DMV. Guess what, She was literally the only person registered to that make, model and color van in the area, and the license plate letters they matched. The faculty started arriving just minutes later.

57:16 The students got there around seven point thirty. All the while Dan lay dying and then eventually dead by that point, and then Nancy rushed home frantic, freaked out. She just murdered her husband. And that's when she went over and she asked the neighbors, hey, have you seen my dogs? Why? She was establishing an alibi that she had been at the house. That was calculated. She needed someone to see her, and then she waited for her phone to ring. As expected. At nine p fifty four am, a friend called Nancy and said, oh my god, something's happened at the culinary school. Nancy then called Dan's phone twice and sent a text message feigning an attempt to get him and being worried. But guess what if she was that worried, why didn't she go down to the school. When you jump in your car to go down there immediately, I would She didn't do that. She played phone tag back and forth with that friend for an additional ten minutes before she called Dan's mother, explaining that something had happened. And that's when Dan's mom looks at her and go or says, why haven't you gone up there? What are you doing?

58:17 Why are you on the phone? And she says, I don't want to go down there because there's too much police activity. What the police would have to hold me back? Seriously if I thought that my loved one was in there. So realizing now that that looks really weird, that's when she drove down to the school and arrived at ten twenty eight a m. Now police pulled her aside, and I'm gonna put this on Patreon for you because I want you to hear it. Okay, they recorded it, Remember they recorded when they did the death notification and when they broke the news to her that her husband of twenty five years had just been gunned down in cold blood, her response was and in this same tone. Yeah, I figured that after everyone gave me this sad sack. Look what that's your response? That's ridiculous. In the moment, they thought she was in shock. No, she went in shock.

59:13 She knew what was going on. That's why she wasn't in shock. It took an additional ten minutes for her to ask what happened, and it took an additional few minutes for her to say, well, where is he? Wouldn't you want to know that first? Where is he? Is he at the hospital? Where is he? She didn't ask because she already knew he was laying on the ground. She then explained that she stayed home all morning and then she had gotten the news, but that was obviously a lie now per the video. That's when she, now with all of this coming to Fruition, realized, oh my gosh, I forgot I went out that morning. She forgot y'all.

59:53 She forgot she went out that morning. And so she now would claim as she goes to court that even though her normal routine, which was verified by multiple people, was that Dan would bring her a Starbucks every morning, that man went out and got her her favorite coffee every single morning and delivered it to her ass in bed so she could write from the comfort of her home. Even though that was every single morning. Nancy remembered that she went out and had to get her own coffee that morning, and then when confronted further with that, that's when she realized, oh, yeah, I went to go write.

1:00:35 I needed to get out of the house to go right. Do you believe that? Just going to throw that out there? Do you believe that? And it all went downhill from there, as you know, a couple other things. I just want to tell you because this case irked me so bad. Before Dan died, Nancy did less than seven thousand dollars worth of landscaping to the home, But right after he died, she hired this same man to come back and he did an additional six sixteen thousand dollars worth of updates to their home. I would not even be able to think about plants if my husband was murdered. I don't give a shit about plants. My life is over. You know you would feel like that in the moment the love of your life has been murdered and gunned down.

1:01:15 I would be so furious and sad and sick, all in the same moment, I couldn't even think about landscaping. I wouldn't care if the damn house burned down around me. I'd be so upset. And when she called for that insurance payout, she was also total to be at least sixty days, and she even told the insurance agent, I can't wait that long. I personally feel like Nancy was gonna flee. Here's why I did more research on her. And when she found out that she wasn't on the deed, okay, I think that stressed her out because she was a killer now and now she doesn't own the property, she can't sell it. She's done all these updates to it to try to take her money. They didn't have a substantial retirement plan, and Nancy vocalized on many occasions that she dreamed of being a writer, moving to Portugal. That's what she wanted to do, and that wasn't gonna happen now that she didn't have the house and she was broke and she murdered him. I think she needed that money now so she could jump and she could hit a jet. Personal opinion here, but making me even more disgusted at this woman is the fact that she then tried to imply on different occasions that other people murdered her husband, and she was more than willing to let these innocent people take the fall. She tried to insinuate at one point that the poor janitor could have done it.

1:02:27 His name was Ya Doo. Okay. She goes to police and says, oh, well, ya do could have done You know, y'a do he gets here in the middle of the night to clean That man had nothing to do with this. Nothing. She then switched her tune at another point and said, oh, well his ex wife, you know she could have done this, Miss Perla. She wanted revenge against Dan for being a bad husband and a bad dad. Twenty five years later, that woman doesn't give a shit, but she was willing to throw that up there. And then this brings me to her to Dan's poor son, Nathaniel. This horrid woman was willing to murder his father and then try to point the finger at his own mother for possible guilt.

1:03:10 Nancy is a sick and selfish woman, and the jury saw straight through her. After an eight week trial, the jury came back with a verdict of guilty in the second degree and they sentenced her to life in prison. So Nancy Brothy, if anything, has proven herself to be selfish, conniving, lying, and a talentless old bag. And I'm no literary genius, okay, but no wonder her books didn't sell. I mean, her basic elements of storytelling were subpar at best. Even when it came to try to save her own freedom, she left an evidence trail a mile long that led directly back to her as the villain, so the suspense was lacking, not to mention huge holes in her plot of lies that she attempted to construct. And don't even get me started on the conflict problems here, because we all love fighting on the side of right, but being the problem, well, that's just not good for anyone, which leads me to character development, of which Nancy has none. Dan's grocery lists probably had more emotional depth than that woman, and that's why this tale Nancy attempted to author just flat out sucks.

1:04:28 The good guy doesn't win, Nancy. Every real author knows that triumph in the end should be on the side of good. Otherwise, what's the point. I've had spam emails deliver a more convincing story than this woman ever could. So enjoy prison, ma'am. You'll have plenty of time to create more bullshit stories that no one's gonna buy. And in this case specifically, I'm convinced that if Dan were judging the detective's job on this one, he'd have no choice but to give them the chef's kiss of approval.