PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — For each day of her murder trial, Nancy Crampton Brophy has sat at the end of the defense table, just a few feet away from witnesses testifying for the prosecution as they make the case she killed her husband Daniel Brophy at the Oregon Culinary Institute on June 2, 2018.
That’s where she sat Monday as the trial entered its ninth day and the prosecution called Megan Light to the stand.
Light said she knew both Nancy Crampton Brophy and Daniel Brophy. She was a culinary student of Daniel’s in the late 1980s. She later met Nancy in the ‘90s when she worked for Nancy’s catering company.
Previous KOIN Coverage: The murder trial of Nancy Brophy
When she testified Monday, Light talked about contacting a detective in early 2019 to describe some things Nancy said during Daniel’s wake.
Nancy had been arrested in September 2018, so Light’s conversation with the detective took place after Nancy’s arrest. The wake Light refers to took place just a couple of days after Daniel’s death.
While speaking to the detective, Light recalled a conversation she had with Nancy at the wake.
“I said something like, ‘I hope they figure out who did it,’” Light recalled, “and I remember pretty much exactly [Nancy] said, ‘I just want to know how it went down.’”
There was a memorial service scheduled for later that week and Light offered to help Nancy in any way or cook for the event. She said Nancy told her, “Apparently when someone gets killed at the culinary school, they put on quite a spread.”
The second person to testify Monday was Brett Glendinning, the person who sold Nancy the handgun that detectives recovered the day Daniel was killed.
Glendinning said he remembered selling Nancy the handgun at a gun show in Portland. He doesn’t remember anyone being with her when she purchased it.
He remembers she seemed to have a general interest in owning a handgun and getting into shooting.
“As far as the transaction goes, it was like any other transaction,” he said.
He recommended she purchase a Glock handgun because the firearm can be adapted as its user’s shooting abilities develop.
He also provided her with two suggestions of places she could go to fire the gun, one was an indoor range in Portland and the other was the North Fork Wolf Creek Public Range, which is located on public land off of Highway 26 between Beaverton and the Oregon coast.
At the gun show, Glendinning said either he or a coworker would have taught Nancy how to clean the gun. He said a zip tie is required to remain around the slide and barrel when a customer is handling a gun at the show and he recognized the zip tie in the evidence photos of the gun as the zip tie his company used at the time.
In the evidence photo of the handgun, which was taken when detectives collected it, Glendinning noticed the slide and barrel was not seated correctly on the gun frame. He said he’s never tried it, but he imagines the slide and barrel could be removed from the frame without breaking the zip tie and that even with the zip tie on, the slide and barrel could be fully seated on the frame.
When detectives found the gun, they thought it was unusual that the slide and barrel was not fully seated on the frame, especially since Nancy had told them the gun had never been used.
Detective Anthony Merrill was called to testify for a third time Monday. In his brief testimony, he explained that a search warrant was served on the Brophys’ home on Sept. 5, 2018, and that investigators collected two laptops from the home and another search warrant was obtained and executed to have the laptops analyzed.
He also said the Portland Police Bureau obtained search warrants for storage units Nancy was renting. In one, they found a ghost gun build kit.
Nothing else noteworthy was found in the storage units, he said.
Detective Eric McDaniel from the Portland Police Bureau was the final witness to take the stand Monday morning. He was the detective who discovered the ghost gun build kit in the storage unit. He said it was in a cardboard box labeled “Scarves, Purses, GK.”
Immediately when he saw it, he knew it was a handgun case. He left it where it was for criminalists to take pictures, but never opened the case himself.
McDaniel also assisted Detective Travis Law, who testified Tuesday, with examining all 2004-2005 Toyota Sienna minivans with Oregon license plates that were in the local area at the time of Daniel’s death.
Law and McDaniel were comparing the minivans to one that was seen on surveillance video near the crime scene at the time of Daniel’s murder, which resembles the minivan Nancy Brophy drove at the time.
McDaniel said of the 9 minivans on his list to look into, none matched the vehicle in the surveillance video.