Prosecutors said the 71-year-old writer, who wrote novels Wrong never felt so right, The Wrong Husband and The Wrong Lover, was in financial trouble when she shot her husband twice in the heart in June 2018 at the culinary institution where he worked. However, according to the author, the hundreds of thousands of dollars in life insurance she would receive upon her husband’s death were not a motive for murder. Also, the images from security cameras that placed her at the crime scene would only show that she was looking for writing inspiration. According to her, the murder weapon was only bought for research for a novel.
Free to read
In 2011, Crampton Brophy published the now infamous essay How to murder your husband on the website See Jane Publish, which can still be read online for free. She discusses reasons and methods for killing your husband. She mentions financial reasons as her main motivation, in addition to being in love with someone else or because “it’s your profession”. She first mentions the use of a firearm as killing methods to consider, noting that firearms are “loud and messy” and “require some skill.”
Elsewhere in the essay, she writes, “What I know about murder is that each of us has it in us, if you’re pushed enough in that direction.”
Crampton Brophy was arrested in September 2018 and has been in jail ever since. The writer, who risks lifelong, will be told at a later date by the judge what her sentence will be.