PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Nancy Crampton Brophy didn’t waste much time in preparing her home to sell after the death of her husband, Daniel Brophy, according to Daniel’s father who took the stand in Crampton Brophy’s murder trial on Thursday.
Crampton Brophy has been charged with murdering her husband at the Oregon Culinary Institute on June 2, 2018. Thursday marked the fourth day of her trial.
Two former coworkers who worked with Daniel at the Oregon Culinary Institute testified Thursday, along with Daniel’s father, Jack Brophy. Karen Brophy, Daniel’s mother, returned to the stand. She previously testified Wednesday.
Here are six takeaways from Thursday’s testimony:
1. There were no surveillance cameras in the Oregon Culinary Institute
On June 2, 2018, the date of Daniel’s death, there were no surveillance cameras inside the Oregon Culinary Institute, according to former OCI facilities manager Paul Woodson Bailey who was called as a witness Thursday. He said there was a two-way mirror left in the corner of a room from the building’s last tenant and he would sometimes make an act of cleaning the glass to fool the students into thinking there was a camera, but there wasn’t one.
After Daniel’s death, he said the school installed exterior cameras. It also installed a lock for the hatch door that accesses the roof of the building.
He said every instructor had a code to disarm the security alarm for the doors and that the security company was Philips Electronics.
2. Faculty weren’t receiving raises
Woodson Bailey said he was close with Dan and the two would spend time together outside of work. They would talk about Dan’s hobbies, gardening and projects he had in mind for students at the school. However, the topic of finances never came up, Woodson Bailey said. Dan never talked about his mortgage, retirement plans or money being tight for Nancy and him.
At the time before Daniel’s death, Woodson Bailey said Pioneer Pacific College, which owned Oregon Culinary Institute, became more involved with the school and the budget grew tighter. He said faculty members weren’t getting raises and were choosing to stay because they liked their jobs, even though some probably could have made more money elsewhere.
3. “Dan didn’t like guns.”
All four witnesses who testified Thursday agreed: Daniel was not the type of guy to own a gun.
Woodson Bailey was certain when he said Daniel had never mentioned guns to him. “Dan didn’t like guns. Dan did not have a gun,” he said.
Daniel’s parents agreed their son did not seem like the type of guy who was interested in guns. Jack Brophy said he was not aware either Nancy or Daniel owned a firearm.
Karen Brophy said her son, who loved to hunt for mushrooms, told her that mushroom hunting could at times be dangerous and that sometimes other mushroom hunters were armed to defend their territory. Daniel, however, never expressed a desire to purchase a gun for this purpose.
Karen did recall having a conversation with Nancy about guns. She said Nancy had told her that she’d been asking her friends about owning a gun at a dinner party. She said she’d been considering it after hearing news of a mass shooting in 2017. Karen thinks that the conversation occurred less than a year before Daniel’s death.
4. A $50,000 loan
Jack and Karen Brophy said they gave Nancy a $50,000 loan about 6-8 years ago to help her open up a sandwich shop. Jack said they’d set up a repayment plan and that Nancy and Daniel had paid back about 25% of the loan, but eventually, the payments stopped coming and Jack and Karen told Daniel and Nancy to forget about the loan.
Jack thought Nancy was running her catering business at the time and that the sandwich business would be something she’d run in addition to it. He said he didn’t hear much about how the sandwich shop idea turned out. He figured it must not have been as successful as Nancy had hoped.
In addition to that loan, Jack and Karen also gave Daniel and Nancy $2,000 at one point and they gave them their Toyota minivan after the Prius Nancy had “disappeared.” Jack said Nancy had told him she’d sold the Prius to a friend, but Jack later found out that was not true. He did not elaborate on what actually happened to the Prius and how it disappeared.
5. Nancy wanted to sell the house
Karen said Nancy had been talking about selling the house before Daniel’s death and once he died, she wasted little time in trying to get the house ready to sell.
Jack said it seemed like she was pushing Daniel to sell the property because Daniel seemed content with his garden and chickens and the messy parts of the property. Karen agreed she did not get the sense Dan really wanted to sell the house.
After Daniel died, Nancy asked Jack to come over to help clear out the garage.
“We went over fairly quickly because Nancy was sort of pushing to sell the house,” Jack said.
He said Nancy also got rid of Daniel’s chickens quickly. Karen said the chickens “disappeared.”
6. Dan had changed
Daniel was never a sports guy, his mother said. He was a child and later an adult who always had his nose in a book. He had a lot of hobbies, such as gardening, cooking and raising his chickens, and he also enjoyed traveling. But sports were never his thing.
About a year before Daniel’s death, Karen remembers a conversation with Nancy. It was the third time Nancy had mentioned that Daniel had changed. She said all he wants to do is lie on the couch and watch sports. Karen knew it was not like Dan to do that, but the third time Nancy mentioned the change, Karen said she suggested that it was because Daniel was over 60 and working two jobs and might just be tired.
In his testimony, Jack said he believed Nancy and Daniel had been sleeping in separate bedrooms. He said Daniel was not a tidy person and he’d notice, when visiting the house, that there was a lot of “Dan debris” in the downstairs bedroom, indicating that Daniel was sleeping there. He said the upstairs bedroom was tidy and he didn’t see Daniel’s things lying around in that bedroom, which led him to believe it was only Nancy sleeping upstairs.