PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Prosecutors heard from the forensic scientist who examined Nancy Crampton Brophy’s guns on the 10th day of her trial Tuesday. They also learned more about where she may have gone to practice shooting.
Nancy is accused of murdering her husband, Daniel Brophy, at the Oregon Culinary Institute on June 2, 2018. She was arrested Sept. 5, 2018 and her trial began April 4, 2022.
On Tuesday, forensic scientist for the Oregon State Police Leland Samuelson took the stand, along with Officer Aaron Sparling, analyst Kelsey Guay, Glock regional sales manager Carl Hopp, Detective Anthony Merrill, Sgt. Jeffrey McDaniel, and Detective Darren Posey.
The prosecution is expected to rest its case Wednesday.
Here are six takeaways from the 10th day of the trial:
Neither of Nancy’s guns fired the bullets that killed her husband
Leland Samuelson, a forensic scientist with Oregon State Police, testified Tuesday saying he fired both the Glock 17 handgun and the slide and barrel from the Glock 19 ghost gun build kit that detectives found in Nancy’s possession. The markings from the bullet casings Samuelson fired did not match those on the casings found at the crime scene.
Samuelson said he feels confident the casings at the scene were also fired from a Glock pistol, just not one of the two he was asked to examine. Samuelson told the prosecuting attorney Shawn Overstreet that it was possible someone could have put a different slide and barrel on one of the gun frames and used it to fire the shots that killed Daniel, but without that slide and barrel, he’d never be able to confirm.
Prosecutors have said Nancy purchased another slide and barrel on eBay before her husband died and detectives never found that slide and barrel.
Nancy looked up more YouTube videos on using a Glock handgun
Officer Aaron Sparling returned to the witness stand Tuesday to further explain what he discovered on a laptop found inside the Brophys’ home.
He said someone using the account called “nancy” on the laptop, visited links on YouTube for videos on “cleaning a Glock17,” “Glock 17 Gen 4 DETAIL STRIP,” and “loading a 9 mm glock” in March 2018.
On Monday when Sparling testified, he said someone using the same use account searched for things like “Does a Glock pistol have a big kickback,” “Kick back with glock,” “gun shops in Portland,” and “Portland expo gun show 2018” in January and February 2018, just before Nancy purchased the Glock 17 from the Portland gun show.
Nancy may have visited a shooting range
When Nancy purchased a Glock 17 handgun at a Portland gun show in February 2018, the person who sold it to her recommended two places she could go to practice shooting the gun. One of them was the North Fork Wolf Creek Public Range west of Beaverton on Highway 26.
On Tuesday, the prosecution brought Portland Police Bureau analyst Kelsey Guay back to testify again about the Brophys’ phone records. She said the records she analyzed showed that on March 26 and 27, cell phone data showed that Nancy Brophy was in the area of the shooting range while Daniel Brophy was near where he worked at the Oregon Culinary Institute.
On the 26th, she was not in the area of the shooting range for very long at all, likely less than 10 minutes. On March 27, she was in the area at least between 10:38 a.m. and 11:04 a.m. By 11:08 a.m. she was heading back toward Portland.
When Detective Anthony Merrill testified, he said he visited the shooting range and said a person would not need to spend much time at the range to practice shooting. He said someone could set up a target in a minute or two and a beginner shooter could fire off two magazines’ worth of bullets within a few minutes.
Nancy spoke to neighbors about selling the house
Merrill said he spoke to neighbors of the Brophys, Mr. and Mrs. Singh, who told him they’d spoken to Nancy about possibly buying her home. The Singhs said they had this conversation with her about a week before she was arrested.
Mr. Singh told Merrill that Nancy had spoken to him about selling her house and he told her that he might be interested. He told Merrill that Nancy told him she didn’t want to sell it for $425,000; she wanted to sell it for more like $600,000. Singh said he didn’t want to pay that much and wasn’t interested in the house any more after he heard that price.
Mrs. Singh told Merrill she checked the tax assessment for the house online and saw it was estimated to be worth between $600,000 and $700,000. She also spoke with Nancy about the house and Nancy reportedly told her that if she offered $425,000, Nancy would not accept the offer.
More resemblance between Nancy’s van and the van in surveillance video
Prosecutors once again asked Merrill about Nancy’s van. Merrill said detectives received a search warrant to seize her van and brought it to a police facility for further examination.
At that time, Merrill said he noticed a white church parking sticker in the lower corner of the windshield on the driver’s side. He said the van captured in surveillance video near the Oregon Culinary Institute at around the time of Daniel’s death also had a similar white sticker in the same spot. Merrill said he can’t decipher the sticker exactly in the surveillance video, but it appears to resemble the one in Nancy’s van.
This photo submitted as evidence in the Nancy Crampton Brophy trial shows a white parking sticker in the lower corner of the windshield of Nancy Crampton Brophy’s van. A detective says a minivan caught on camera near the crime scene at the time of Daniel Brophy’s murder has a similar white sticker in its windshield. (KOIN) 
This photo was submitted as evidence in the Nancy Crampton Brophy murder trial. It shows a scrape above the rear driver’s side wheel well of Nancy Crampton Brophy’s minivan. A detective says a minivan caught on surveillance video near the crime scene at the time Daniel Brophy was killed had a similar scrape. (KOIN)
He also repeated that the van seen in surveillance video from the Goose Hollow Bellagios Pizza has a rusty scrape above its rear driver’s side tire and Nancy’s van has an identical scrape.
‘You must think I murdered my husband’
The prosecution called Sgt. Jeffrey McDaniel to the stand to describe what he heard when Nancy was arrested.
McDaniel was present at the time of her arrest. As a detective was placing Nancy into custody, McDaniel said he walked up to her to make sure she was OK.
“She said something to the effect of ‘You guys think I murdered my husband’ or ‘You must think I murdered my husband,’” McDaniel recalled.
He said that line has stuck with him and he thought it was an odd reaction.