It’s hard to find a person that doesn’t love a thrilling crime novel.
But what happens when the killers aren’t found in the pages of a juicy thriller – but rather – behind the keyboard?
Woman’s Day is taking a look at some storytellers whose crime stories became real prison sentences.
NANCY BROPHY
In her 2011 essay titled How To Murder Your Husband, Nancy Brophy wrote that “adultery, greed and family violence” could push someone to kill their spouse.
Ultimately it was greed, according to prosecutors, that motivated her to kill husband Daniel Brophy, 63, at his workplace in Portland, Oregon, on June 2, 2018.
She was arrested after surveillance footage saw her driving around the scene at the time of the crime.
With her series of self-published romantic thrillers not selling as well as she’d hoped, prosecutors claimed Brophy fatally shot Daniel to receive a $2 million life insurance payout.
After a seven-week-long trial, she was found guilty of second-degree murder in 2022, and was sentenced to life in prison.
A neighbour, Don McConnell, said her reaction to the death was chilling.
“She never showed any signs of being upset,” he said.
DELIA OWENS
Known for her bestseller Where The Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens, alongside her husband Mark, was accused of being involved in the death of a poacher in the North Luangwa National Park, Zambia, in 1996.
At the time, the pair, who are also zoologists, were in Africa studying hyenas, elephants and lions.
Delia and Mark were being followed by a film crew at the time of the alleged murder, which was caught on camera.
The identity of both the murdered poacher and the killer were blurred out and have never been revealed.
The filmmakers were asked to hand over the footage to investigators but they refused and the couple have always strongly denied having anything to do with the death.
“We were not involved in this incident, or in any other incident of this nature,” they said in a statement at the time.
KOURI RICHINS
When 35-year-old mother-of-three Kouri Richins wrote her book Are You With Me? she was hoping to help her children cope with their father Eric passing away.
However, prosecutors now claim she could be responsible for his death.
On March 4, 2022, it’s alleged Kouri laced a Moscow Mule cocktail with a lethal dose of fentanyl and gave it to her husband, 39, while they were celebrating a property purchase.
A spokesperson for Eric’s family, Greg Skordas, says the family was immediately suspicious.
“[Eric] told his family, ‘If I die, you need to take a look at her becuase I think she’s trying to kill me.'”
Kouri, who lived with Eric and their three sons, Carter, then nine, Ashton, seven, and five-year-old Weston, in Kamas, Utah, pleaded not guilty to 11 charges of attempted murder, forgery, intent to distribute a controlled substance, mortgage fraud and insurance fraud in 2024.
But this May, Richins was sentenced to life in prison without parole after being found guilty of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder for earlier attempts on Eric’s life as well as insurance fraud and forgery.
“A person convicted of those things is simply too dangerous to ever be free,” judge Richard Mrazik said during the sentence hearing.
During the trial, prosecutors argued Richins killed Erin for financial gain becuase she was $2.6 million in debt and would have received nearly $3 million in life insurance payouts.
They also alleged Richins previously attempted to kill Eric with a fentanyl-laced sandwich in 2022.
A person only referred to as CL in the investigation reportedly told detectives Kouri asked them to get her “the Michael Jackson stuff”, referring to the drug.
ANNE PERRY
British author Anne made a name for herself writing detective mysteries but as a teenager she was convicted of murder.
Then known by her birth name Juliet Hulme, the 15-year-old and her friend Pauline Parker bludgeoned Pauline’s mother Honorah to death in a park in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Juliet’s brother, Jonathan Hulme, says the girls killed Honorah because they didn’t want to be separated and Pauline wanted to move with Juliet and her parents to England.
Both girls were sentenced to five years in prison in August 1954 and the case inspired 1994’s Heavenly Creatures starring Kate Winslet.
After serving her sentence, Pauline also changed her name and became a recluse.
