Nancy Brophy - Prosecution closing arguments, Part 2

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: all right all right please be seated and before we call the jury back just so the sides sort of know what I'm thinking logistically I'm not sure oh the jury all right then never mind actually before you do I mean this is nothing that needs to be secret from the jury anyways what I was thinking is that likely depending on when the state concludes their closing argument whether it be before or afternoon we'll likely take our lunch break then and have defense give their closing argument after lunch all right go ahead thank you judge [00:00:51] Speaker 2: all right so before the break I started to talk to you about now that we know that Nancy has the knowledge and we know that she has the opportunity we're talking about planning and how we got to where we are and I talked to you about Nancy being known for a planner I want to walk you through a timeline though and what's going on with the bro fees at this time so before we get to December 24th 2017 remember what you heard the bro fees started having their financial struggles really the real financial struggles and in June of 2016 they started having problems paying their mortgage things weren't looking so good for them at that time and as Nancy put it that was the worst financial struggles that she's ever experienced in her life so think about that for a second 65 years old having the worst financial struggle she's ever experienced in her life and you're not thinking that that's going to cause some extreme stress she's got a problem and remember Nancy's a problem solver so she's gonna have to solve this problem of their finances now in October of 2017 remember what the big plan was we're gonna borrow against her 401k that's not the first time they borrow against something to fix their financial struggles Nancy draws against an insurance policy she takes the maximum allowed out against that insurance policy think about that she's saying I'm paying into this particular type of insurance policy because it's a it's forced it's for savings but then they're just drawing the money out against it it's because they're desperate and in that desperation when they realize that's not enough money they have to draw out this $35,000 off the 401k we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute but I just want you to understand what's going on with them as Nancy's really starting to feel the struggle really starting to feel the desperation even with that $35,000 they got in October Nancy can see the writing on the wall it's not going to get better in fact because they're drawing on these long drawing these loans things are just going to get worse they're going to be in a worse financial situation when that money is gone and Nancy knows that so what does she do in November of 2017 she gets online she has an idea in her head she starts looking for guns now once she's thought about this idea that well there's a lot of life insurance money here I'll get the house you know you know maybe this idea of killing Dan it is something she's going to look into but it's not that simple you can't just do it if if you want to go undetected so she gets online she starts researching ghost guns now what is she not doing she's not talking to friends and family about ghost gun purchases or what ghost guns are or the fact that they're unserialized and unregistered she's not talking about that she thinks that Nathaniel in fact has built one of these ghost guns before she doesn't start there so right from the get-go this idea that it's research doesn't really add up she's looking for a gun that can be bought that is not going to be traced back to her so she finds herself on this ghost guns website she goes there several times in fact between November and the time she purchases it on December 24th she goes to this website and this is what she sees they're advertised unserialized unregistered she bounces around that website a little bit back and forth over the over that month and then finally on December 24th she decides I'm gonna buy this gun and it gets shipped to their house and she gets it in early January and as we stand these pictures one thing to keep in mind she paid over six hundred dollars for this ghost gun a gun that she could have walked down to the gun show she wanted a complete gun or a gun store and as she showed you she bought a Glock 17 fully intact for about $500 so she's overpaying for a gun because it's unserialized and unregistered and where did we find that gun Nancy said she packed this box and inside this box are scarves purses and GK there's a couple takeaways from this photo one is it clearly says purses and the detective said I found purses in there I think about back to Nancy's testimony when I asked her a pretty innocuous question do you carry a purse seems pretty simple doesn't seem loaded at all does it but Nancy was thinking two steps ahead of me because she's intelligent she wants to manipulate the situation so what does she do she jumps ahead and says well nope I don't carry a purse very adamant very adamant to you that she does not carry a purse she just keeps everything in her bra now one she clearly has purses doesn't mean she carries one every day I'm not saying that she clearly has purses but why didn't she want you to think that she carries a purse because she's thinking ahead and she doesn't want the implication to be that she walks into the culinary institute with a gun in her purse because that's how she could carry that in there without anybody seeing it which is precisely probably what she did but she wanted to make sure that you didn't think that this is a person that carries a purse and so how could she walk into the culinary institute with a gun and have it go unseen the second takeaway from this photo is she marks the box gk now on its surface i'm assuming before this trial if you saw a box and it said gk you wouldn't have a slightest clue what that meant could mean all kinds of things nancy said she marked this box for law enforcement in reality nancy marked it for herself in code in an acronym to ensure she knew where that was when she needed to go back to it that's why it's marked she didn't mark this for the police what kind of ridiculous proposition was that the police might need it why if this is a gun she bought never built and is just using it for research why would the get why would the cops be interested in this gun kit but in her mind she's thinking well they might come knocking and i'm gonna have to give them this gun kit it doesn't make any sense now she's doing that for the police's benefit she said but later on when she gets the ebay gun or slide and barrel she'll know where that is why isn't that important to the police why didn't she mark that one for the police just doesn't know where it is we'll talk more about that in just a second now what's going on with the ghost gun what how is this fitting into the plan well in nancy's mind this is great i'll get this ghost gun it's unserialized unregistered the only way police would ever know i had it is if they tracked down my banking somehow but why would they do that unless there's some other evidence so i can just build this ghost gun i have a murder weapon i can get rid of it if somebody finds it there'll be no way to tie it back to me if somebody finds this completed gun in a river a field buried somewhere in the trash they pick it up because it's unserialized and unregistered it's tied to no one it's a great plan the problem for nancy is she underestimated how difficult it was going to be to build as you saw when we passed around that baggie of parts that was just one baggie there are several in that box now the sliding barrel is completely intact but she had to build that lower unit she didn't have the equipment she said i don't have the drill press and dan said we don't have the drill press and she didn't have the skills she just didn't possess the skills now she doesn't need to abandon the ghost gun completely she can then switch gears because now she has an unserialized and unregistered slide barrel that's fully intact she can switch gears and say well i'm going to go and buy legitimately a full firearm now what she's doing in the meantime before she buys that full firearm and this is very important she's doing some google searching look at january 29th kickback with glock now at this point she doesn't own a fully a full gun yet right she just has the gun kit that she did not build so on january 29th she's googling kickback with glock now what is she what is going on with nancy at that time that she's googling this she sat up here and told you i bought that gun kit but i wasn't ready to write yet she wasn't doing any research towards that book so googling kickback with glock is not research now is it because she's about to buy a full gun well she told you that she didn't decide to buy a full gun until the parkland school shooting on february 14th so why is she searching kickback and kickback with glock in january in fact searching two times for kickbacks and kickback with glocks on january 29th now what did she tell you she learned about the kickback with glocks she told you that she learned at the gun show that the glock 17 has less of a kickback easier to handle better for a woman that's what she said now she probably didn't actually learn that at a gun show though there may have been some discussion about it because she's already googled it she knows back on january 29th that a glock 17 is going to have less kickback if she goes to those websites that are coming up she is probably learning the glock 17s have less kickback why does that matter because when she goes to the gun show although she says i'm looking for a glock 19 she's probably looking for a glock 17 because now she knows it has less kickback and she thinks that's the difference between the glock 17 and a glock 19 not realizing that the barrels are slightly different length as you saw i held these up in court when nancy was testifying they are nearly identical the width when you look at it they are nearly identical so if nancy has now decided well i'm just going to buy a glock 17 it has less kickback it makes more sense for me as a not a avid gun person and i'll just put this sliding barrel on there it looks the same so she heads to the gun show i'm sorry i want to look at a couple searches first so as she's doing this research learning how the kickback of the glock 17 is less so now she's thinking well i'm going to get a glock 17 that's the gun i'm going to purchase now again pointing out the time february 1st this is not after february 14th after the school shooting she's doing this research before that she's intending to buy a glock 17. she wants to know how much they cost and she wants to know what the registration requirements are in oregon now again they offered no explanation in this courtroom as to why she's doing those searches defense alluded to some sort of research after hearing about the las vegas shooter that's not evidence nancy didn't tell you that she had all the time in the world to sit up there and have that question poised to her and she never said to you why she's doing that research then on february 15th still now this is a day after the parkland school shooting but before she goes to the gun show she's doing that research right how to how much does a glock 17 cost when do you have to register it and what she's realizing when she visits a site called gunbroker.com she visits that site on the 15th and what she realizes is that you can't buy a complete gun online at this point nancy is wanting to keep her purchases online she doesn't want to go to a gun store she doesn't want to go to a gun show she wants to keep her purchases online more anonymous so she's searching and she goes to gunbroker.com she's realizing you can't buy a full gun online so now what if i can't buy a full glock 17 online to put my ghost gun sliding barrel on what do i do now well she turns to the gun show i'm sorry actually go back to that one i'm sorry she does later search how to sell a gun in oregon but that's not done until the 20th so i'm going to go back to the gun show on this on the 17th she visits the gun show now think about her plan at this point it's okay for nancy to go to the gun show and buy a gun it's not going to necessarily raise any red flags she goes through the background check she gets her gun she can take that home she's going to switch out the slide and barrel from the ghost gun not knowing that it doesn't fit now even if you believe what miss brophy said about what was said at the gun show she said even they told her that the glock 17 had less kickback it's the gun that makes the most sense for her so when she gets home with that glock 17 remember this is a saturday dan's at work when she goes to the gun show presumably dan worked on sunday as well nancy brophy has the opportunity to come home get the ghost gun out take the sliding barrel off of this gun and realize it doesn't fit it's a half inch too short everything else is the same but it doesn't fit she has to abandon the plan with the ghost gun now while these pictures are up i just want to point out that she made it a point with detective baniga when they were back at the house when she said here here's the gun he takes a picture she tells him to flip it over to make sure that he sees the zip tie that's still intact her whole plan is to switch out the slide and barrel it's been the plan even though it went through different iterations that's been the plan so she wants to make sure that detectives know that this isn't the murder weapon here's the only gun i've ever bought and it's not the murder weapon here you go what's interesting about miss brophy's whole plan in her story about they just she buys the ghost gun for research then as she's going through this process she realized they want to buy a gun and they realized that after the parkland school shooting that's the time to do it and i asked her you know the defense established that miss brophy is sort of a left of center leaning individual seemed to be a bit of a joke maybe a little farther left than than they let on and her response to gun violence in this country was for her to buy a gun okay but it wasn't for dan to take to work they never had a plan according to miss brophy to take this gun to work they didn't even buy bullets for it it's just at home how is that protecting you now she said she's mad at the gun because it didn't do its job a bunch of stories a bunch of things that are said designed to distract you to confuse you but you have to understand what's going on at the time that miss brophy is doing this again she's not doing research she was very clear i'm not researching at this time now there's a couple possibilities right plan number one and she was just going to use the ghost gun outside plan number two get a glock 17 put the ghost gun slide and barrel on it that didn't work so now i have to move to plan three even if you don't think she was going to use the ghost gun slide and barrel and she just abandoned that all together and decided to go with glock 17 fine doesn't really matter but the plan's the same but i think it's likely that miss brophy tries the glock 19 slide and barrel from ghost guns puts it on the gun or tries to realizes it doesn't happen and now she needs a new plan so what does she do on the 19th and on the 20th she starts looking online again now she's looking for just a glock 17 slide and barrel she doesn't go back to the gun show and buy just a slide and barrel as they told you they sell or wait till the next gun show i suppose that one would be over by then she doesn't go into a gun show gun store and just try to buy a slide and barrel nope she returns to the internet she's back online she's researching and looking for glock 17 slides and barrel for sale now she tells you now we're back to writing right because whatever benefits miss brophy in this courtroom here she's going to bounce around writing i'm preparing for my own safety and then i'm back to writing just days later but she just told you i'm not researching so what's interesting about this theory right she has this gun she has a fully intact slide and barrel that she told you she removed so she knows how to do it and she has a slide and barrel that she can manipulate all she wants but she said she doesn't want to use this one really without much of an explanation something about didn't want to take it apart because she wouldn't be able to put it back together something like that i think she's more or less talking about the lower frame that is very complicated but why not the slide and barrel it's metal what is she going to do to it so because of that because it's such they just want to leave this one alone i'm just going to buy another identical piece of firearm part she's doing that while she owns this right here in the kit and what are you going to do with this what are you going to do with this that's it that's what she was so afraid of doing she was going to ruin it you're going to ruin this this is what she wanted to buy she had to spend another 300 something dollars so that she could have another one of these and she owns two of them and what did she tell you at that point because that doesn't sound good right doesn't sound good for nancy well i was obsessed with guns at this point so this person went from hating guns so much so that when she was married to a cop she didn't allow a gun in the house now that was a long time ago fair enough fast forward never owned a gun didn't have any desire to own a gun didn't talk to friends and family about guns didn't go to family members who had guns and ask them for help and maybe show me some guns doesn't go to uh the friends that clearly have guns that could have shown her she doesn't go to the gun stores to look at guns she didn't just go to the gun show to look at guns she went there just to buy one she doesn't go to threat dynamics where they have 75 guns available for rental to check out what kind of gun you would want she just goes zero to a hundred now i'm buying guns now i'm buying gun parts because i'm obsessed with guns it makes no sense that at 67 years old she decided to become a gun nut just like that spending over fifteen hundred dollars in gun parts and guns when they don't have any money making sure she's paying those insurance premiums but they don't have any money they're not paying their mortgage but she's buying guns it doesn't make any sense and why are you buying the exact same parts that you already own and oh it's the one part that haven't has not been recovered the one piece what does nancy have to say about that don't know don't remember you know where all your other gun parts are you're a gun nut you know what's going on but you just don't i haven't seen it didn't bother asking questions hey who took that call up your friends and your family who were in the house hey somebody take a gun part it's missing the police might want it like she said about the ghost gun maybe they might want to see that so what's going on at the time that she buys this slide and barrel what's happening remember she goes on a retreat we're on a treat retreat to rockaway beach where she discloses to her friends on that drive that she's developing some story even though according to her on the stand she was not she's developing some story and she bought a ghost gun the big revelation she bought a ghost gun and the defense is asserting well why would she tell anybody she had a ghost gun if it was part of the murder plan because by the time she's going on the retreat it's not it's not part of the plan at all anymore she's abandoned it by the time she's on that retreat she has purchased the gun at the gun show and she's actively bidding in nearing completion of the slide and barrel on ebay new plans in place she can disclose the ghost gun probably pretty smart too right what if the cops do discover that purchase that might look really bad so you tell friends about it hey i bought this ghost gun but she doesn't do it before that she doesn't tell people after she bought it hey i bought this ghost gun for a present for myself on christmas eve while my husband's at work she didn't tell anybody about it until that retreat and then she didn't tell anybody else about it until sometime between i think the testimony was between march and may that's the only time she discloses the ghost gun at that point after that retreat she's now not only has the knowledge and the opportunity but now she's got a pretty solid plan she can take this gun swap out the sliding barrel shoot her husband swap out excuse me swap out the sliding barrel again with the original knowing that it's not going to be traced back and just get rid of it just get rid of the slide bro from ebay it doesn't require a background check it's not registered anywhere just like the ghost gun it's not traced anywhere so if somebody finds that sliding barrel in the bottom of a river somewhere else nobody's gonna know who it belongs to decent plan so when we look forward to what that plan finally looks like you go back to the timeline she's got the knowledge she's got the motive i'm sorry the opportunity and she's got this plan that's developing and it's nearing completion the only thing nancy doesn't have is really any experience with firearms she said she doesn't handle them her whole life and she's never sought out really any uh plan to to use firearms she got to practice you can't just walk in the first time shooting somebody in the back and it'd be the first time you're pulling the trigger she's got to practice now she told you i never bought any ammunition she told the police she never bought any ammunition so she just put it away and never never used it however her research would suggest that she did a lot of searching for youtube videos on how to disassemble clean load a firearm load a glock specifically now there was a search term on june i'm sorry on march 26 that came up that appeared that miss brophy was searching for how to load a glock nine millimeter now you heard the defense expert say well not sure she was actually searching that at that time because it was like this download of a thousand items about the same time and so i asked well it doesn't mean she didn't search for it right it just means it happened sometime prior yes okay fair enough i'm not asking you to believe that that search happened at 10 13 a.m on march 26 i'm not asking you to do that it probably happened sometime prior but the bottom line is the takeaway point here is it happened she searched to have a loaded glock nine millimeter also she probably didn't need to i mean magazines are pretty simple you put a bullet in push it down put another one in it's not that hard but assuming she didn't know how to do it she at least had the opportunity at sometime prior to this march 26th and before this on march 11th that's when she was going to those youtube videos right those youtube videos that we watched some of them in here and the defense expert said well i can't tell you exactly how much they watched she watched but she spent this much time on each of those videos and so what i asked you to take away from that is we don't know which part of the video she was watching she could have clicked around through and watched it but one of the videos that you did watch was i think it was 49 seconds and the first 49 seconds was how to take off the slide and barrel very quick she doesn't need to watch these full videos she has a very specific purpose that she needs to spend time online researching she needs to know how to take off the sliding barrel she needs to know how to load it that's really all she needs to know so it doesn't really matter how much time she spent on these videos but nonetheless she's researching it she's searching for them and again not for her research for her book because she's not doing that at that time so you get to march 26th she's done this research she's been told by the gun show gun sellers that this is a place that you can go out and shoot it was written on the back of that receipt you have that receipt and evidence you can take a look at it it's very scribbled kind of hard to read but nonetheless it's directions to this shooting also on that same receipt is a recommendation to go to threat dynamics but nancy doesn't go to threat dynamics a place where she could use the simulator to practice a place where she could brought her own firearm to practice with at a firing range right there she didn't do that why because she has to check in she has to give him her id there'll be evidence that she went to a place to go practice shooting and that doesn't fit with her narrative that she hated the gun and she didn't want it anymore and that she just put it away so she can't go somewhere where she's going to have to check in so she goes out to this place on the 26th now it's pretty obvious her phone is tracking out highway 26 as it heads out to this area but i will say she didn't spend enough time there on the 26th to shoot a gun it appears from her phone records that she drove out there turned around and drove back and went and met that friend at lunch but what do we know about nancy she's a planner and a researcher she drove out there saw where it was saw where she needed to go saw what the conditions were up that road saw that she could get out and not have to interact with anybody and she could go shoot her gun there's enough time to do that and remember this is a monday when dan's at work she doesn't go on a day that they could both go up there and shoot the gun or even just check it out she does it when dan's at work now tuesday rolls around she knows where this is she knows what it looks like she knows what she needs to do throw some rounds in that magazine head on out there you don't need to be there very long at all detective merrill and i went through some exercise about what it would take how long it would take to shoot we got a little crazy with it on how much you could actually shoot but the point was you don't need much time to shoot a few rounds i mean in the kit itself she has three magazines she could have easily loaded five or six rounds each magazine not taking much effort and she could have went out there six rounds boom boom boom boom boom boom boom let me show you how hard it is to switch magazines you hit the button it comes out the other one you slide it in and you're ready to go seconds another six rounds switch it out another six rounds i don't know how many she shot maybe she only shot a couple maybe she shot three full magazines but i'm guessing that she wanted to make sure that she wasn't really seen by many people that's why she goes out on a tuesday morning at that point to the public range she knows she doesn't have to check in with anybody she can fire off a few rounds now she's got the practice and she can leave okay seems pretty straightforward but nancy didn't acknowledge that that's what she did nancy told the police never shot it never shot the gun she sat here on the stand and said what about that i don't remember she once again doesn't remember a critical time now what did she say well i don't remember but we were looking for property we weren't working with the realtor i just go and drive around without dan just go drive around because i know he likes that area problem with that is it was pretty well established that's state forest land what kind of land are you going to buy in state forest land unless the state decides to sell you a piece of it i'm guessing none but that's her reason that's why i'm out there i like that area i go to vernonia all the time i think was the exact quote now we know she's not in vernonia on the 26th and 27th because she's not heading off any towers near vernonia we also know that she's lying to you she didn't go to vernonia all the time and remember the phone records that were checked went back to december is it possible she went to vernonia all the time before that sure but this time frame the six months between uh december and june of 2018 that's when this plan's in place right that's when we're going to get ready to sell the house and we're going to move isn't that when she's going out and looking isn't she driving around vernonia and driving around out uh in in that area looking at that time problem is she's not if she doesn't go to vernonia a single time and what did kelsey guay tell you first or second time she testified nancy brophy's phone often goes to the coast in that same six month time frame the only time it doesn't go all the way to the coast when it heads out highway 26 is on march 26th and 27th so this idea that she's out there driving around being her own realtor just looking at property it's a lie just just a bold-faced lie so what does nancy have at this point because nancy's got a research nancy's got a plan so what does she know now she knows how to load a glock 17 she knows how to handle a glock 17 shows how to fire a glock 17 she knows how to disassemble a glock 17 she knows how to clean a glock 17. and above all else she knows that she has to get rid of that sliding barrel the plan is in place she's ready two critical puzzle pieces for your picture is right here it became simple once she got worked through it but simply swap out the sliding barrel why because as leland samuelson our expert told you slide and barrel is what leaves the markings on the shell casings not the lower half of the gun lower half doesn't matter it's the upper half it's the slide and barrel that leaves the shell casing markings nancy knows that and nancy knows that if she just gets rid of that the shell casings that they're going to find at the crime scene which she left undisturbed are not going to match her gun she also knows that they're not going to match the ghost gun slide and barrel and they didn't why she doesn't get rid of them what does she know they're going to match the ebay slide and barrel she can't remember what happened to it it's gone [00:37:12] Speaker 1: all right [00:37:33] Speaker 2: that's all it took for nancy to carry out that plan that we just discussed seconds she did it in two different parts right switch out the slide and barrel before she heads down to the culinary institute and then switch it back when she gets home not hard then after she does that switch she can get in her van drive around the neighborhood and have the neighbor see her her plan's complete now i'm going to go back to the charge we talked about how it's actually fairly simple right two elements most of it not in dispute but what's not on there what defense is going to spend i'm sure is what is quite a bit of time in their closing argument motive motive is not on here the state does not have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt doesn't prove any motive at all i could stop my closing argument right now and say i showed you all of the proof that you need to prove that nancy brofie murdered her husband that could be that i don't have any other obligation but motive is something we as human beings want you want to know why why would nancy do this that's a natural feeling i'm not going to argue with you about that just because the law doesn't require me to prove it it doesn't mean that it's not a natural feeling that i understand you want to know why and what the why does help you conclude is that if you understand the motive it will help you understand that nancy brofie absolutely committed this crime without any doubt but one word of caution motive to nancy brofie might not mean motive to you it might not be enough to say well i wouldn't do that i'm sorry i wouldn't do that that's not enough for me you have to put yourself in nancy's shoes is it her motive is it motive that makes sense to her why she would do this so we're going to talk about motive we're going to go through the why why would nancy brofie feel so desperate in their situation that the only way out was to murder dan and what i will say right up from the front it's not just about money it's not defense council has argued i believe in their opening and i believe they'll probably argue it again here that we are coming from the position that nancy brofie only murdered her husband because of life insurance and that's not true i'm not putting that forward that was a piece of it but there's so much more to it than just the money so i'm going to briefly talk about life insurance i'm sure you are all sick of hearing of life insurance so i am not going to belabor it i promise you but i do have to point out a couple of things and some that aren't necessarily even related to life insurance but within the life insurance context so the first thing is what kicks off this idea that there's life insurance at all go ahead [00:41:26] Speaker 3: okay i don't want to do but this may give you a laugh this afternoon uh i don't want to be the stupid question of the day but i think i need to be the stupid question of the day uh so my insurance company said just have the detective write a letter that you're no longer a suspect and i said man i just don't know that he's there uh and i'm not sure that he looks it that way but if you do i get to write the letter my sister when i told her this as a lawyer laughs so hard she's done all the chairs so why why would you need that because they don't want to okay if it turns out that i secretly went down to the school and shot my husband [00:42:21] Speaker 2: there's more it's okay so one thing i wanted to point out there is you listen to nancy calling detective posey only disclosing the 140 000 policy that's part of it she doesn't disclose the other policies despite the fact that she called all the other insurance companies the same day she only points out the 40 000 policy why because it's the smallest one it's at least suspicious now what we know oh and she says my insurance company my insurance company not one of them not one of the many life insurance companies that i deal with or dealt with today one of them is requiring this letter now what do we know about the life insurance after a lot of testimony to get to a pretty easy point and we're just going to show you states exhibit two i'm sorry defense exhibit 288 the agreement upon everybody all experts is that there was about eight hundred and fifteen thousand dollars in life insurance policies and what was available to nancy upon dan's death was about 809 because of that loan that they had previously taken out against one of their life insurance policies so this is not in dispute there's eight hundred and nine thousand dollars in life insurance available to nancy upon dan's death so if you look at the fidelity policy one thing you heard from defense counsel that turned out to not be true is that this was a policy where pearla stillwater was the beneficiary which never was don't know why they said that don't know what that's supposed to mean but who it really was was nathaniel daniel's son until nancy decided that nathaniel shouldn't get any death benefit if dan were to die and she changed it to her own name in 2015. so now nathaniel gets nothing and nancy gets another hundred thousand dollars you go to the foresters policy as i mentioned earlier real briefly this is the policy that they claim to have cash value forced them to save for retirement and had that forced savings component and this was going to be part of the big plan first of all it's a forty thousand dollar policy for it to really be of any value even even though it's not a lot ninety one thousand dollars dan had to live to 90. that can't be part of the retirement plan and even if he did it's just not that much money and they mishandled it nancy would draw loans against this and what did she tell you about those loans i just didn't pay them back so then you look at the americo policy now this is the one that was a hundred thousand dollars had a twenty five thousand dollar accidental death rider on it and this is the one that seemed to be the biggest part of the retirement plan supposedly and the reason it was part of the big retirement plan was because if dan were to live to 78 they would get their premium back that's it sixty three thousand dollars they would get it back so you have to keep this policy for 19 years to get your money back and that's the savings plan that they chose not to take that money and put it into an interest-bearing account where it would actually be worth something and not be at risk for losing it this was the plan now what's interesting about that is if dan did live to 78 they did get their premiums back that policy goes away their own expert testified to that if you want to get those premiums back policy's gone you don't have any more coverage what kind of plan is that what kind of retirement plan is that it doesn't make any sense and so the idea that was being asserted from defense is well she's not going to kill him there's money in it for her what getting your money back in 20 years or if he's dead you get 125 000 now not much of a plan at all and nancy apparently didn't even know that nancy the insurance salesman nancy the person who sold her that her own policy she didn't know that that policy went away if you were to collect the premiums that's what she said on the stand when i asked her does that policy go away i don't think so i think i can continue that for as long as i want so either she's a horrible life insurance salesman because she can't even sell herself a policy that she understands or she's lying to you again so then you look at the lincoln financial the only thing i want you to show here this is the one that was provided by uh the school this is one that nancy said this wasn't part of the plan because what what if the school goes away we lose this coverage okay but in 2017 you might remember what she started planning in 2017 she applies for an increase in coverage on this policy now applying for an increase in coverage on a policy probably isn't nearly as suspicious as pulling out new policies right before you murder someone what's also interesting about this she says this isn't part of the plan for retirement but it certainly is part of the plan when nancy decides to murder her husband she knows she's going to get that hundred thousand dollars now mutual of omaha i told you in opening i stood up here and i said after dan's death it appeared nancy had attempted to claim 10 policies at 1.4 million dollars i believe that's exactly what i said and we just talked about how there's eight hundred and fifteen thousand dollars in money available to her and there's a difference between the two obviously besides the money it was what i said was that she appeared to attempt to collect on those 10 policies and she did you can see from mutual of omaha on their records on june 6 2018 who reported nancy brophy who reported relationship spouse deceased date of death june 2 2018 that's nancy calling in and reporting the death in an attempt to claim the death benefit so it appeared like everything was normal but what did the experts find out both of them what did they find out three of these policies weren't in place at the time of death so although it appeared she attempted to collect this money it wasn't there it wasn't available and the experts told you well it could have been an auto generated thing from the company that auto filled in these other policies to say that this death claim was made so the bottom line is did nancy know about the 815 000 absolutely did nancy try to climb 1.4 million i don't know maybe maybe she did call and try to claim i don't know probably not probably not but she certainly tried to claim the 815 thousand now again this isn't all about the life insurance as i said you have to think in the terms of what was happening in their life at that time and they were having serious financial problems they were spending more than their income listen to both experts their own expert who came in here and had some kind of crazy numbers that she ultimately fixed she agreed that they were overspending they were spending more money than their income was than they had they weren't making their mortgage payments everybody agrees about that they were spending over a thousand dollars on life insurance premiums and then when they took that 401k to fix everything they quickly just spent that down and using their own defense exhibit how does that look good they made this exhibit now the numbers don't lie you look at this the only spike up is that 35 000 and where's it going right back down and all they did to spend to get the house ready was some yard work it's the only thing that money went to to help get the house ready now is it fair to say that they were awful with finances yeah clearly spending money on guns spending money on vacations spending money on other things not paying down high interest credit card debt with this loan so where are they headed with this well as you heard from the defense expert when they did the prospectus for the rest of the year they still were in trouble they were just going to make it a little bit longer so when bob azor took a look at those numbers and said well those aren't right i'm going to do some other calculations i'm going to see what the prospectus actually should be came up with two-thirds of what their defense expert told you and bob azor sat up here and told you they were going to be out of money by august at the rate they were going down if significant money didn't come in or they didn't change their spending habits they were going to be broke again by august and nancy knew that they had significant financial struggles defense seemed to allude that well because they had eleven thousand dollars on june 2nd why would she decide to kill him on that day she didn't decide to kill him on june 2nd the decision was not made on june 2nd the decision was made long ago looking at the bigger picture that they were in serious financial trouble nancy didn't want to live like this anymore the worst financial struggle she's been in her life she's 67 years old nothing's changing everything looks bleak and now they're in more debt than ever because now they're taking out loans just to cover their mortgage so nancy needs solutions what's the solution it's quite simple she knows she's going to get 809 000 after that loan's paid back she knows that if dan is killed at work she's going to be getting workers comp to the tune of 438 000 that's paid out over time it's an annuity but she's going to get that money comes directly to her she knows she thinks that that house is worth seven hundred thousand dollars so if it were to sell for seven hundred thousand dollars by time you pay fees and everything you're probably going to get about four hundred thousand she knows there's still 34 000 in dance 401k that she's going to get dan is worth 1.682 million dollars approximately to nancy if he dies specifically if he dies in a shooting because that's considered an accident and will pay out all those accidental death policies and if he's shot at the school because then she gets the workers comp 1.68 million dollars now why is that important because they brought an expert in here to tell you well if dan had lived they would dan had a value that he would bring in in his income and in the services that he provided in the home and he was worth about 1.3 million dollars that's what he told you but it would take 17 years for nancy to realize that value that's how long it would take given the amount of income that he's bringing in and the value that he brought into the home 17 years for nancy to realize 1.3 million dollars worth of benefit but if she kills dan now he's worth 1.68 million dollars 1.2 of that coming to her right now and then an annuity that will pay out over time and her social security payments she's going to be fine that lifestyle that she is dreading is going to change now she's the only one that wanted that not dan dan was a simple guy he liked his life he loved nancy he didn't want to change that he liked his chickens as you heard many times loved his garden probably was open to getting the garden cleaned up probably was open to getting the yard cleaned up so he can go back to gardening sarah gitchell even sat here and told you that he wanted a few more years in that garden he had good soil he wanted to keep going even after they cleaned up that yard a little bit right back to gardening dan loved those coastal trips he loved mushroom hunting most of all he loved teaching loved his students was a mentor to how many people loved in the community dan didn't want to leave that you didn't hear from a single person who sat up here and said dan wanted to change dan wanted to leave teaching dan couldn't do it anymore nobody said that in fact you heard the opposite nancy wanted all this for them nancy didn't want this lifestyle she wanted to be an expat she wanted to move to portugal not dan in fact nancy wanted something so differently something that dan couldn't give her she had him take on another job not to help out a friend for money nancy knew there's financial struggle she saw an opportunity for dan to work more and bring in more money to maybe alleviate the finances and so dan goes to work at avamir he's working both jobs what did you hear what did that do to him it was running him into the ground he was exhausted nancy even commented several times to people that dan was changing yeah he's tired working all the time so yeah does he come home and lay on the couch a little bit more watch a little bit more tv probably is that what nancy wants no she wants dan to do stuff for her maybe dan wasn't cooking as much for her as she liked maybe dan wasn't giving her enough attention this wasn't working for nancy dan was a problem this isn't just about money it's about the lifestyle and dan couldn't give it to her and almost to a stopping point i promise you no one said that nancy didn't love dan we didn't bring any witnesses in here to say we don't think she loved him it must have been a problem nobody said that i'm not asserting that she probably did love him but she wasn't getting the lifestyle that she needed she had to make a change defense made a big deal about compromises well if nancy wants to move to portugal dan doesn't maybe they'll just take some trips more trips that was the compromise i think once we finally got to an understanding of what compromise meant if you remember we think that that's probably the final compromise and that's what was going to save this whole situation so we got this money now we got this plan and we're going to uh we're going to compromise those trips aren't portugal those aren't lavish trips out of the country the farthest they went out of the country was to vancouver then they went to malibu or monterey bay went to an aquarium took a cooking class and then their next big trip was to mount rushmore that's not good enough for nancy nancy needs portugal nancy wants more these little trips aren't going to do it as i said this murder is not entirely motivated by money it's that lifestyle change that she needed to that nancy needed to have and as you heard from dr warford as i've mentioned several times nancy is a problem solver and dan has become a problem in her life she needs to change it and there's no other way and divorce is not an option nancy even said that on the stand we talked about divorce divorce is expensive what is nancy going to get after a divorce they split half their earnings or i'm sorry half their stuff the house sold for 565 000. it ultimately sold for that after you pay realtor fees and after you pay off the mortgage there's maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars left they're going to split that so she gets a hundred grand that's her plan she's not going to get the lifestyle she wants that's all she gets is a hundred grand out of this divorce was not an option for nancy the only way that she could live the lifestyle that she wanted was to murder dan and be entitled to upwards of 1.6 million dollars i will save my next section for after lunch if you'd like to break it on unless you'd like me to count how much further you think it'll take rough estimate 30 minutes 20 30 minutes um [01:01:00] Speaker 1: all right we'll take our lunch break then let's plan to be back at 140.