Month: September 2022

Last week, I featured the case of Alan Berg, a popular but abrasive radio host murdered in his driveway. This week, we metaphorically journey to the heartland, In 2011, Brett Seacat, a police academy instructor and former deputy murdered his wife and staged the scene to look like suicide. To hide the crime, he set fire to the house.

Vashti and Brett Seacat

Brett Seacat formerly worked as a deputy with the Sedgewick County sheriff’s office (Sedgewick County includes Wichita). In 2011, though, he no longer patrolled the streets. His new job was teaching police recruits at the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center. His wife, Vashti, worked in human resources at Cox Communications in Wichita. Brett complained she devoted too much time and attention to her job.

Brett first met Vashti Forrest when both were still in high school. They split up and got back together several times before marrying in 2004 on a beach in Belize. The good times didn’t last; neither the beach wedding nor their two sons were enough to keep their relationship going. In the spring of 2011, their marriage sputtered out.

In April 2011, Vashti filed for divorce. Brett did not react well. He threatened to “go to the mat” with her. Brett also promised to do everything possible to prevent her from keeping their sons. But on April 29, he begged Vashti to let him stay in the house overnight to “say goodbye” to the boys. On April 30, he was supposed to be out.

A Fire—And a Death

The 911 call came in at 3:57 a.m. on April 30, 2011. Brett Seacat called to report a fire. When first responders arrived, flames completely engulfed the Seacat house. Brett managed, he said, to escape and remove his two sons to safety, but his attempts to rescue Vashti failed.

Later, at the police station, Brett told officers the fire was no accident. He said Vashti had started the fire before killing herself. He said she did it because Vashti had severe issues with depression. During the interview, he kept telling detectives his wife suffered from depression.

At the scene, investigators found a Ruger .44 magnum revolver underneath Vashti’s left hip. They found the melted remains of a plastic gasoline can nearby. In the driver’s seat of her car, they found a journal. The last page of the journal sounded like a suicide note. Perhaps Vashti did shoot herself. But why would she set fire to the house with her boys inside?

Brett Seacat Under Suspicion

Police soon decided something was fishy with Brett’s version of the fire and Vashti’s “suicide.” They found a neighbor who remembered hearing a gunshot at 3:15 a.m. on April 30, more than 40 minutes before Brett’s 911 call. If true, there was no way Vashti could have set the fire before shooting herself. The medical examiner did not detect any soot in Vashti’s lungs or carbon monoxide in her blood. The conclusion: Vashti died before the fire started.

Arson investigators determined the fire had at least two points of origin. It was doubtful she torched the house and shot herself without breathing in some combustion products.

The gunshot wound itself argued against suicide. The shot appeared to come from above, as though someone shot Vashti while she slept. It would be almost impossible for her to inflict such a wound herself. Furthermore, had Vashti shot herself, it is doubtful the gun would end up underneath her body.

Brett Seacat on Trial

Police arrested Brett Seacat on May 14, 2011, and charged him with murder, arson, and child endangerment.

At his 2013 trial, lead prosecutor Amy Hanley painted a picture of a controlling and manipulative husband. Hanley introduced evidence contradicting Brett Seacat’s version of events on April 30, 2011. In addition to the crime scene anomalies, Vashti’s family testified she was not overly depressed. Instead, they said, she was planning her future. Moreover, Vashti told them Brett had threatened her. At one point, the family learned Brett vowed to kill Vashti, burn the house down, and make it look like suicide.

Vashti’s journal was one of the critical pieces of evidence supporting the suicide theory. But a prosecution handwriting expert testified the relevant journal page was a forgery. Prosecutor Hanley introduced evidence showing Brett sought out an overhead projector—obsolete technology—at work. She implied he used the projector to trace Vashti’s handwriting.

The defense mainly consisted of trying to trash Vashti’s reputation. They continued to push the severe depression scenario. And they also claimed she had an affair with an executive at Cox Communications. However, they provided no evidence to support the claim.

Seacat’s attorneys also claimed police botched the investigation. Ironic since Seacat might have trained some of those same investigators.

Brett Seacat Convicted

The jury got the case on June 11, 2013. They deliberated for six hours before returning with their verdict: guilty on all counts.

At his sentencing hearing, Brett Seacat went on a bizarre tirade accusing Judge Larry Solomon of “ensuring” his (Seacat’s) conviction. He would up the rant by saying, “You are going to hell for what you have done in this case.”

Unimpressed, Judge Solomon sentenced Seacat to 25 years without parole for murder. He also added five years for aggravated arson and seven months each for two counts of child endangerment. He will serve the sentences consecutively.

Epilogue

In November 2013, the State of Kansas relocated Brett Seacat to an out-of-state correctional facility. Kansas does not house former law enforcement officials with criminals they might have sent to prison.

NBC’s Dateline aired Burning Suspicion, an episode about the Vashti Seacat murder in March 2016.

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In my last blog, I profiled the case of Eric Witte. When Witte was a teenager, his mother goaded him into killing his father. This week, we look at the case of Chef Dan Brophy. Culinary students found Brophy shot to death in a kitchen at the school where he taught. The person tried for the murder surprised many.

Dan Brophy

Daniel C. Brophy was a chef. But more than that, he was a chef instructor. For a dozen years, he taught at the Oregon Culinary Institute (OCI) in Portland, Oregon. He’d been on the faculty there since the school opened in 2006. In 2018, he was the lead instructor at the school. Chef Brophy was popular with his students, sometimes injecting humor into his lectures. For instance, he warned his students against grinning in the kitchen, saying that “smiling could sully the food.” He took classes foraging for mushrooms in the words and digging for clams on the coast.

Chef Brophy’s wife was 68-year-old Nancy Crompton-Brophy. Nancy was a native Texan who met Dan when she moved to Oregon in the 1990s. She took some classes at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts where Dan taught at the time.

The Chef’s Wife

Nancy Crompton was the daughter of two lawyers from Wichita Falls, Texas. After moving to Oregon and marrying Dan Brophy, she wrote a series of steamy romance novels, which often included crime themes. She published the books herself. According to an article in Portland Monthly, the books are replete with typos and overwritten pages. But they also had a brisk pace and many fans on Goodreads.

Nancy wrote about other things besides romances. In an online biography, she described the challenges of being married to a chef. “As a result there are chickens and turkeys in my backyard, a fabulous vegetable garden which also grows tobacco for an insecticide and a hot meal on the table every night.”

Chef Dan Brophy Found Murdered

June 2, 2018 was a Saturday. Chef Brophy arrived at OCI to prepare for a morning class. He disabled the alarm system at 7:21 a.m. At 7:30 a.m., another instructor arrived at the school. She opened the doors for students at 8:00. That’s when they found Dan Brophy lying on the floor in the rear kitchen, bleeding from two gunshot wounds. He’d been shot once in the chest and once in the back. He was still alive—barely—when students found him but died before paramedics could reach him.

Evidence Against Nancy

In murder cases, the spouse is always a person of interest, at least at first. In Nancy’s case, there were additional reasons for suspicion. Perhaps the first red flag was the special request she had for Portland detective Darren Posey. Three days after Dan’s murder, Nancy asked Posey for a letter confirming that she wasn’t a suspect in her husband’s death. This was, she said, to help her collect her on husband’s $40,000 life insurance policy. But that wasn’t all. Police later learned that Nancy stood to collect more than $1.4 million in life insurance.

Nancy claimed she was at home during the time Dan Brophy was killed. But surveillance cameras from businesses hear OCI contradicted her story. Video shows her vehicle near the school at about the time of the murder. Furthermore, she admitted to purchasing parts for a “ghost gun,” a Glock 9mm, similar to the murder weapon. Prosecutors alleged that she replaced the slide and barrel on a Glock she owned with parts she bought on eBay.

There was more evidence that was less tangible but definitely interesting. A search of Dan’s phone turned up a bookmarked article in an iTunes account the couple shared. Its title was “10 Ways to Cover Up a Murder.” She had also recently written an online essay entitled, “How to Murder Your Husband.”

Epilogue

On May 25, 2022, a jury found Nancy Crompton-Brophy guilty of second-degree murder. She is now serving a life sentence at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, Oregon.

In June 2022, NBC’s Dateline broadcast an episode about the case, Murder in Kitchen One.

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Last week’s case was the sad story of three Girl Scouts murdered on the first day of camp in Oklahoma. That case remains officially unsolved after 45 years. This week, our case comes from Indiana. There, in September 1981, 15-year-old Eric Witte killed his father. He said it was an accident, but that turned out to be untrue. The story took an even more bizarre turn from there.

Eric Witte Manipulated into Murder

Eric Witte was 15 years old in the late summer of 1981. His relationship with his father, Paul Witte, a volunteer firefighter, was complex. Although he had many good memories of his father, Paul would physically abuse the boy if he made the slightest mistake. It wasn’t difficult to convince the conflicted boy that his father had to die.

On September 1, 1981, Paul Witte was taking a nap in the family home in Beverly Shores, Indiana, just outside Michigan City. While he slept on a sofa, Eric shot his father in the head. He told police the gun accidentally went off when he tripped on a rug. Investigators at the time believed the story and ruled Paul’s death an accident.

Unknown to Eric, his mother, Hilma Marie Witte (she went by Marie) had been trying to kill Paul for some time. She’d been lacing his food with rat poison and Valium but had not been successful. Marie’s own mother, Margaret O’Donnell, had been helping her.

Eric Witte is Caught in a Web of Murder

One murder was apparently not enough for Marie. She soon began poisoning her mother-in-law, Elaine Witte. Eric, now eager to get away from his mother’s penchant for killing joined the Navy.

Poisoning Elaine didn’t work, or at least didn’t work fast enough for Marie. She then convinced her younger son, John “Butch” Witte to do the job for her. John later told investigators, “My mom said I could strangle her or use my crossbow. It was up to me.” He then fatally shot Elaine with a medieval-style crossbow in her Michigan City home. John was 14 at the time.

Marie and John didn’t report Elaine’s death to police, Instead, they dismembered her body and disposed it in various places around Indiana. They even hid parts of the body in Eric’s car before he drove back to San Diego. When he discovered the remains, he panicked and put them in a storage locker in California.

Life Unravels for Eric Witte

People with friends can’t just disappear without those friends becoming curious. Such was the case with Elaine. When her friends started demanding to know where she was, Marie panicked. She and John drove to California to enlist Eric’s help. Eric went AWOL from the Navy to help his family figure out what to do.

It all started to unravel when Marie forged a signature on one of Elaine’s Social Security checks. The forgery led to her arrest. It was during the forgery investigation that Eric and John spilled the story of how their mother had manipulated them into committing two murders.

Epilogue

Hilma Marie Witt was convicted of murder and received a 90-year sentence. She currently resides (2022) at the Indiana Women’s Prison in Indianapolis. She is due for release in 2027.

Marie’s mother, Margaret “Marcie” O’Donnell, served six years for her role in the murders. She died after serving her time.

John and Eric received 20- and 5-year sentences, respectively. Both were released in 1996. Eric is now married and has a family. John died from complications of diabetes.

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