Plot Twist | 1

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Nicole Herman was lounging on a beach in Croatia with a perfect view of the ocean.

It looks a lot like Oregon, with the exception that the water is like turquoise.

It was nice and sunny exactly how Nicole pictured her honeymoon. Nicole's new husband got up to take a swim, but she didn't join him. She was in the middle of a novel. The man on the book cover had a square jaw and a come-hither stare. All day, Nicole had just been waiting to get back to him.

Scandalous. I was probably reading anywhere from 150 to 300 pages a day.

Nicole had been laid out on the beach for hours reading. She was already on book number two in the Wrong, Never Felt So Right series, and she was determined to get through all five books by the end of her trip. Every book was more or less the same. Burley, former Navy SEAL, comes to the rescue of beautiful young woman on the run from her dangerous husband. It was an odd choice of reading for a honeymoon.

was a deputy district attorney. Those are things, as a prosecutor, that you sometimes want to get.

ahead of and in front of. And for months, she and her team had been trying to solve a murder. But progress had been slow. Direct evidence kept eluding them. As the pressure mounted, Nicole and her team had turned to An Unlikely Lead, a series of romance novels written by the.

dead man's wife. It was a little bit meta in terms of what we were dealing with. Her books were packed.

with details borrowed from their own lives as a local Portland chef and a romance novelist. Details that the DAs had no other way to get their hands on. So now Nicole was doing homework.

on her honeymoon. I wasn't so sure there would truly be anything, but it was sort of in the back of my mind, what if something similar to this has played out in one of her novels, and it's all.

written right there for us to find. More shirts were going to be unbuttoned. More dresses were going to get unzipped. And every new chapter, every new scene, could potentially be the one to crack the murder case that was waiting for her back home.

She was very popular because she was out there. And she put herself out there. And she wasn't one to sit in the back of the room, timid and, you know, afraid. She'd walk right up to you and

kind of introduce herself. She didn't have a shy bone in her body about, you know, forking up things she did that were silly or goofy.

She even had a thing where she would hand out roses to writers for finishing their novels, like she was on The Bachelor. Nancy had real main character, energy. And true to form, she also had a real-life love story that came straight out of a romance novel.

She came home from school one day, and I remember this like it was yesterday.

Tonya Medlin first met Nancy in the early 90s. Nancy was in her 40s and recently divorced. She was looking for a fresh start in Portland, Oregon, where she enrolled in culinary school. She found an apartment with Tonya, who'd just graduated. One evening after school, Nancy walked in as Tonya was making dinner.

She goes, hey, I got a question. I said, yeah. And she goes, what do you know about Chef Brophy?

Chef Dan Brophy was one of the instructors at the culinary school. He had a handlebar mustache and ran his kitchen with military-style precision. The carrots had to be diced exactly a quarter inch on each side. The bacon had to be the exact right level of crisp.

I said, Chef Brophy, I know he's married. And she said, she just kind of looked at me. She goes, yeah, I ain't going to last. And I went, oh, really? I said, OK, Nancy, watch your shit.

But once Nancy put her mind to something, she didn't stop until she got it. After she graduated from the year-long program, she stayed back at the school, working for Ramsey Hayden at the deli.

She said, the minute I was in his class, I was like, this guy is just awesome. His personality, his, you know, his charm, his sense of humor, and he obviously was attracted to her because it was a, it was, it moved fast.

By this time, Dan and his ex-wife had officially filed for divorce, and Ramsey began hearing rumors about something between Dan and Nancy.

They definitely kept it on the low. You never made it obvious that they had a thing going. They never, like, held hands or hugged or went to visit each other.

Ramsey just suddenly began seeing a lot more of Dan.

I noticed that he was making a little more visits to the deli. He would come to the deli and pour himself a hot water to make a tea and walk in just to be, just to see her and then walk out.

A couple years after that conversation with Nancy, Tanya was sitting in a hall attending the wedding reception of Nancy and the now-divorced Dan Brophy.

They were in love. They were very happy. They're, you know, giggling all the time.

By the year 2000,, Dan and Nancy had settled into their own place, a modern four-bedroom home in the suburbs. Tanya was happy that Nancy was happy, but, Chef Brophy? Tanya still didn't get it.

He was so serious. He was so freaking serious.

Nancy's close friend and fellow romance writer, Kim Wollenberg, would drop by their place for lunch or dinner. And there were entire meals where Dan barely said a word.

He was very quiet, you know. He didn't engage a lot.

Dan wasn't into small talk. He was the kind of guy who liked to spend weekends deep in the woods foraging for rare mushrooms. Ramsey went with him a couple of times.

He would just be like a kid at Disneyland, you know. He was just excited to, you know, his feet would start moving before he hit the ground out of the car. And, you know, he'd say, spread out. Don't walk by me. I'm finding my own.

Dan would come back home with his haul and meticulously clean them with a little mushroom brush.

He'd sit and brush the mushroom really nice and clean and gently, and he would hold it and look at it and admire it.

When Dan wasn't teaching or foraging, he had his nose in a book on marine biology or composting. Dan was a big no-waste guy. He made sure the extra food from the culinary school went to the homeless in the area. Back at home, he turned his half-acre backyard into a science project where he grew things like edible flowers and thornless blackberries. And then there were the chicken coops.

With the orange legs and everything like that.

Just to make her friends laugh.

She would tell the story about the chickens doing something. Whether they got out of their pen, whether they were running around the yard, whether Dan had too many or not enough. They were opposites that attracted. She was more outgoing and active, and he was a homebody.

But even her friends had to admit it seemed to work.

I was jealous of their relationship. I thought they were so close together and they seemed to be complete partners.

I can't tell you when I fell in love with my husband. But I relate the moment I decided to marry him. Nancy often wrote about Dan in her romance blog. I was in the bath. It was a big tub.

Hey, you want to have sex? And they would have sex and then she would go back to working. I mean, I was like, Nancy, I really don't want to hear about your sex life.

Romance writer meets chef husband. Things probably got very spicy. Here's the thing no one tells you about marriage. Marriage provides you with the best sex of your life. Learning the ins and outs of what a stranger likes is hard work.

I recall seeing all the students with their chef jackets on, the white jackets, you know, milling around outside, people, hysterical, a lot of emotion, a lot of people crying and hugging each other and consoling one another. Media was all around already setting up.

Even in a big crowd, it wasn't hard for Merrill to spot his partner, Detective Darren Posey. He looked a lot like, well, like Merrill. Both detectives were middle-aged, same height, both bald, with shaved heads and mustaches. But Posey was new to the homicide detail. He'd transferred over from robbery just a few months ago and so far Merrill had been taking the lead on their cases.

I was kind of looked to, you know, sort of mentor Darren in the homicide way of doing things.

But today it was Posey's turn to be the lead. Merrill joined his partner and got caught up on what they knew so far. That morning, as students arrived for class, they'd found Dan Brophy collapsed in one of the classrooms. They assumed Dan had a heart attack and began giving chest compressions. It wasn't until they saw the blood on their hands that they realized he had been shot.

There was an entire school of people and a whole community of people that knew the victim, cherished the victim.

Media vans kept pulling up. The crime scene. tape covered a three-block radius around the school.

You know, as a homicide detective, a lot of times our scenes are in the middle of the night and there's nobody there. There's no media. It's three in the morning. Maybe media arrives up a little later, but you know, this scene was gigantic.

Posey looked a little uneasy.

I think I would have been nervous too just in that moment.

But Merrill stuck by his side.

Here's our process. Here's what we're going to do. We're just going to take this one step at a time.

Step one was for Posey to inform the victim's widow that her husband had been killed. This was one of the toughest parts of the job. And when Nancy Brophy arrived on the scene and Posey laid eyes on her, it got even harder. Nancy was now in her late 60s. She had big round cheeks and curly white hair.

She looked like a nice older lady that, you know, baked cookies for her grandkids.

He walked up to Nancy and asked if he could talk to her. The detectives led Nancy to a cargo van on the side, where they were conducting interviews and speaking to witnesses.

It's a terrible thing to tell somebody that their loved one is dead and they're never going to see them again. And that's bad in and of itself. Then I have to explain to them that they were murdered.

The detectives sat across from Nancy and turned on their tape recorder. What happened next was just as hard as Posey thought it would be.

So Nancy, I know that,

I think some people kind of notified you that something's going on. Just what they heard on the news. Oh, okay.

So Dan, is your husband, is that correct?

Uh-huh. And his name's Daniel.

C for Craig, Rosie.

So I just want to let you know that, you know, we believe, you know, Dan, we believe it's Dan, that's.

Yeah, I kind of got that when everybody gave me the sad sack.

We just felt a lot of grief for her, because you're looking at this woman that is just learning, her whole life got turned upside down.

Yeah.

I am sorry.

Anybody that would, you know, that wanted to do something to this, to Dan.

The only people I know who have ever hated him.

was his ex-wife,

and who's ex-wife doesn't hate the husband?

You know, and I can't believe after 25 years.

she'd be motivated, you know? So yeah, I mean, short of that.

All right.

We never, we haven't, we. just, we live a quiet life.

So I was going to ask you, does Dan own any kind of guns at all? Or does he carry a gun at all? For any reason?

For protection.

Okay. You're going to be so embarrassed.

if I'm found with fears.

After, after the Marjorie Douglas.

Stoneman shooting in February.

Nancy told them that following a school shooting in Florida the past February, they decided to buy a gun. But when they brought it home... We looked at it,

and neither one of us wanted it.

And so it's still on my closet shelf, and it still has that little plastic band.

around the shooter thing. Yeah, the shooter thing. There's a name for this. Yeah.

And because we've never even

bought bullets for it, you know?

Detective Posey and I thought, well, you know, you're sure it's there now? And she wasn't. Perhaps Shep Brophy decided to carry the gun on him for some reason that he didn't tell his wife for protection that day, and somebody stole it from him and shot him with his gun.

Posey told Nancy that they'd have officers escort her home and check on that gun.

We're going to be working real hard on this right now. You know that.

But if you need anything.

Even if you find who shot him, it's not going to bring him back.

And I want him back. That's the part I want.

I don't care about who shot him.

I just want him back.

I don't want him dead.

Darren and I both were choked up. I mean, you know,

After the interview, one of the detectives led Nancy to her minivan across the street. Another cop followed behind to make sure she got home safe.

She was supposed to let me know.

what she found out. Finally, the phone rang.

She said it was Dan.

And it's the part that's difficult for me because of the fact that I wasn't brave enough to go. I knew I couldn't go down there. I knew I could not face that. I couldn't, you know, even though I had had the feeling.

that it could be him,

I wasn't willing to face that.

She's like telling me, pull over, pull over.

Kim Wolenberg, Nancy's writing partner, was driving when someone else in the writing group called her up.

She told me that there had been a shooting at the school, and Dan was dead. Dan had been killed. Just knowing what she was going through, because, you know, she loved him. So I knew it was, she was going through a lot.

I almost, like, I didn't believe it. It didn't make any sense.

I was in shock and denial.

Eric Stromquist was one of the founders of the culinary school, and had been close friends with Dan for more than a decade.

It wasn't until the end of the day that it really sunk in that Dan had been murdered, and we didn't know who.

It was the question all of Dan's friends and loved ones were asking. Who would murder Dan Brophy? And as Posey began searching through the contents of Dan's phone, he stumbled upon something that made the case even stranger. There were emails, class schedules, the usual mundane stuff. Then he saw a website in the search history.

Ten ways to cover up a murder.

Wait, what?

I was like, what's that? Why would that be on Daniel's phone? That makes no sense whatsoever.

Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast Against the Odds. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who live to tell the tale. In our next season, it's July 6th, 1988, and workers are settling into the night shift aboard Piper Alpha, the world's largest offshore oil rig. Home to 226 men, the rig is stationed in the middle of the ocean. In the stormy North Sea, off the coast of Scotland.

People who don't read a lot of romance are sometimes surprised to learn how many kinds of romance stories there are. There's historical romance, paranormal romance, Amish romance. Yeah, that's a real thing. And then there's the kind of story Nancy wrote, romantic suspense. What makes romantic suspense unique is that while there is a love story developing, there's also a mystery unfolding.

Which I thought was odd. I mean, just because of, you know, the amount of stuff that they had in there.

It was going to make their job way more challenging. They headed back to the classroom where Dan Brophy's students had found him earlier that morning.

When you first walk in, there's all these different apparatus that are in there.

They weaved through the maze of tables and equipment, until they got to Dan's body. He was still on his back, wearing his dark chef uniform pants and a jacket over a t-shirt. Merrill crouched down to take a closer look. There were two bullet holes in his body. One on the back and another in the chest.

He had no defensive injuries on his hands, his fingernails, anything that you would suspect that maybe he was resisting or fighting with somebody.

And there wasn't any sign of a struggle in the room.

Didn't look like there was a fight between the chef and anyone. Broken items or things that looked knocked over.

The only thing out of place was an ice scoop near Dan on the floor. Merrill had been told that Dan liked to have coffee and ice water waiting for his students. when they arrived. When his students found him, the kitchen sink was still running.

It doesn't take a brilliant person to understand what's going on here. He's working at the sink, with his back to whoever's behind him.

The killer walked in from behind and shot Dan in the back.

He likely collapsed immediately from that first gunshot.

And then the killer stood right over Dan as he struggled on the ground and shot him again in the chest.

And finished him off with that second shot.

It was a brutal killing. And the fact that nothing on the scene had been taken made it even more chilling. This didn't look like a robbery gone. bad. Dan's wallet still had cash in it.

I think it was upwards in the amount of 60-some dollars. He had credit cards, all of his IDs, his truck keys, an iPhone. Everything was intact.

It's more mysterious, in a sense, right? Because it's like there's two casings and a dead person and you're like going, oh, what happened here?

But the lack of clues.

There's no disturbance here, no forced entry.

was a clue in itself.

There was intention. Somebody meant, to do this.

While the detectives checked out the crime scene, other officers began canvassing the area, speaking to students who were there that morning.

The police had all the students separated. They had taken photos of each student, identified their name. Was there anything going on with Chef Brophy and anybody in his class, any relationships? that seemed unusual?

He was equally kind to all of us.

And specifically, I'll just say it, do you suspect he was having an affair with anybody in your class?

Oh, God, no.

What about any drug activity between either of them?

No, but Dan could be.

A sense of humor could be very cruel.

It raised another possible theory.

Could it have been a student who, you know, was just upset?

The students either loved him or hated him.

There just wasn't a lot in between.

He could, on occasion, rub students the wrong way.

Eric Stromquist, the president of the school, had hired Dan after tensions with a student had gotten him fired from a previous school.

He was very dry and sarcastic in that, you know, occasionally students didn't understand where he was coming from.

So there was the vengeful student theory. And then there was another lead developing.

We're people that, you know, hung out, you know, in the neighborhood. We really, we had to shoo people off the front door, stoop from time to time. or, you know, people rummaging through our garbage and recycling.

Dan Brophy had created an outreach program for the homeless folks in the area.

He would take the extra food that were no longer going to be used at the Culinary Institute, and he would take that and do stuff with his mom and dad's church.

Maybe Dan encountered a situation that morning that somehow escalated. If so, there could be someone out there with a weapon. As the hours went by, the police started feeling desperate. They knocked on doors, spoke to neighbors, looking for anyone who might have seen or heard something.

We have no eyewitnesses to the incident. We have no information in that vicinity of anybody coming forward to say, hey, you know, we heard a gunshot. We saw a car leave the area or a person run away. Nothing, zero.

Every available officer joined in the canvassing of the area. It was all hands on deck. Even the prosecutors who'd been assigned to the case were pounding the pavement.

It'd been now several hours as well into lunchtime, and none of us had eaten.

A few months later, Nicole would be desperately flipping through romance books on the beaches of Croatia. But right now, she was in full work mode, helping the team canvass the neighborhood. She began walking toward a pizza shop across the street.

I remember it smelled wonderful.

But that wasn't what made her start walking toward it. The pizza shop had a security camera. It was a real law and order moment as the detectives and the district attorneys piled into the pizza shop's tiny security office. The senior deputy district attorney, Sean Overstreet, stood in the back, squinting at the monitor.

It wasn't the highest quality camera, but it was good enough.

They knew Dan Brophy was killed shortly before 7.

What we did is we went back to earlier in the morning to see if we could see anything suspicious, somebody running from the scene, anything like that. Somebody driving away quickly, just anything.

All eyes stayed glued to the tiny, grainy monitor.

Everything seemed to be normal. Every once in a while, somebody would walk by.

Random cars driving down the street.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Then, close to the time of the murder, Posey saw something strange.

And I'm like, oh, wait a second.

Earlier that morning, he'd noticed the car. Nancy drove, a beat-up silver minivan.

We're looking at the video at that time, and we see a minivan drive by.

It looked just like Nancy's. They paused the video. Wait a minute.

Maybe the time is really wrong.

Nope, it wasn't.

We're looking at that, and I'm like going, wow, that's odd, because if that's her van, it shouldn't be there.

Because Nancy had told them she had been in bed all morning. They huddled around the tiny screen and leaned in closer.

Just her profile, her age, the clothing. It all seemed that that was Nancy that was driving in that morning.

We thought, this doesn't fit. Something is wrong here.

A new story was unfolding before their eyes, one that would change the very nature of their investigation and blur the line between fact and fiction.

Nancy often knew what her ending would be because she was a writer.

She just lost her husband. She's got no money coming in. They could take her house.

We know she lied about being downtown. Is this enough to arrest her?

Pass her point blank. I don't understand this.

I said, why are they bringing up this fucking essay you wrote?

She goes, I wrote it as a joke. It was supposed to be funny.

She just pretty much said, well, you know,

if there's one thing I've learned in 15 years of marriage,

you have to treat every day like it might be your last.

Anybody ever actually looked at the research I did for my stories, they would think I was a demonologist or a witch.

Desperately to believe that there was some homeless mushroom hunting psychomaniac on the loose gunning for chefs.

I'm kind of, I'm freaking out at this point. Like, I have sold this person a handgun and they're being charged with a murder.

But everyone had a different version. Everyone had a different story there. And I don't know how many of her friends, how much they really knew.

That's on this season of Happily, Never After, Dan and Nancy.