November 19, 2025 • 53 mins
KJ explores the murder of Chef Daniel Brophy, a cherished educator at the Oregon Culinary Institute.
Chapters
01:34 Chef Daniel Brophy
08:46 The Day of the Incident
12:17 Emergency Response
18:42 A Shift in Focus 32:58 The Search for Answers
43:40 The Ex-Wife's Insights
53:01 The Clues Unravel
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Chapters
01:34 Chef Daniel Brophy
08:46 The Day of the Incident
12:17 Emergency Response
18:42 A Shift in Focus 32:58 The Search for Answers
43:40 The Ex-Wife's Insights
53:01 The Clues Unravel
Unspeakable Listener Deals!
Eric Javits
Chic, Provactive, and Iconic-Eric Javits hats are the essence of designer elegance. Made famous by sex and the city and worn by Melania, these travel friendly sun hats and accressories are known worldwide. 20% off for my listeners by using the code UNSPEAKABLE via the link below
Eric Javits Designer Hats and Accessories
Follow “Crime Wire Weekly” on it’s new channel HERE:
Apple Podcasts
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-crime-wire-weekly/id1815864889
Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/3zyrgjtW6gLUVbicJaYXV9?si=0dbf4983938344a2
Amazon Music
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/3738411d-828e-4138-9976-223ab5de2c87/the-crime-wire-weekly
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell
stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are
so shocking that many are left wondering how is this
even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections,
and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator,
(00:28):
dig deep into complex cases of evil acts.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Some so evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended,
then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey,
y'all's kJ here back with another episode of Unspeakable. What's
going on with you? I have got an episode today
that's gonna take us straight to Portland, Oregon, where a
more organ people at I'm waving at you.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
How are y'all doing? But I'm gonna tell you this
right now.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Everybody knows for a fact that I am a girl
from South Louisiana, and I know good food, King cake, gumbo,
and crawfish. Those are God's gift to us as far
as I am concerned. Now that said, a professional chef
may beg to disagree with me on this. And while
(01:36):
you know, there's no set way to become a chef.
Becoming a respected chef, that's gonna take time and experience,
everything from culinary school to getting a degree, different certifications
or a combination thereof. So much is involved in becoming
a respected chef. And if anyone was a respected chef
(01:57):
in Portland, Organ it was sixty three year old Daniel Brothy.
Now he worked as an instructor at the Organ Culinary
Institute and he was seriously and I'm not just saying this.
I know it gets posed this way a lot when
you're listening to stories, but he was seriously one of
the most beloved members of their faculty, the students, and
(02:20):
I think this is a testament to him.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
The students of.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
All races, all ages, different cultures, all of them felt
like he was basically a father figure to them and
having him as your instructor was considered a privilege on
that campus. He knew what he was doing and he
was good at it. He truly had a passion for cooking,
(02:44):
but also everything that came with it. He was like
a walking encyclopedia of food knowledge and the students, if
they had any questions whatsoever, he wasn't someone that would
have to go look it up.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
He just knew.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
And that's where this respect really was founded in. It
was because he wasn't just someone who read a book
and then just repeated out what he had learned.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
No, this man knew it.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
He knew it intrinsically because he spent so much time
with the foods, cooking the foods, researching them, growing them
all aspects of food.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Now.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
He loved, though, to get outside of the classroom with
his students. He would take them places on field trips
in culinary school places like mushroom farms, because he was
a mushroom expert, and he really wanted his students to
get a holistic understanding of where the food came from
and how it was grown, so that when they used
(03:41):
it in the kitchen, they had a full, a full
scope of understanding of why the foods were cooked the
way that they were and how to bring out the
most in the flavor. His love for the food really
was rooted in his upbringing. He grew up in North Dakota.
He was a preacher's son, and growing foods at his
home that was the norm for them. He was taught
(04:03):
to grow, to cook and to eat the fruits of
his own hard labor, and so this was really ingrained
in who he was. He appreciated all that it took
to create a meal, which led to him having a
love for the entire process of creating what you eat.
So he and his wife Nancy, now that he's an adult,
(04:25):
they had lived in this rural neighborhood where he continued
forward in his adult life with that same concept. So
he enjoyed raising chickens and raising turkeys, and he did
just basically what he did as a kid. He had
two pups too, And you know, I think an animal
a pet A lot of times it says something about
a person. I don't know why, Maybe I read too
(04:46):
much into it, but this tickled me. He had two
pups and they were affectionately yet humorously named after food.
And their names were none other than Peebee and Jay,
and I thought that was so sweet, right, So as
you can ta well, Chef Brofy's humor and his wittiness
was undeniable. He was known for his so called brofeisms,
(05:07):
and one of his most famous brofeism when he was
teaching was this is like an example, but he would say,
the best cure for a sick chicken, it's a shovel.
So he was funny the way he approached everything. But
something else that made him an amazing leader was his
belief in helping the less fortunate. He would hold contests
(05:28):
and these bakeoffs is what they would call him, But
he would pick a winner, but everybody in the class
would participate in this. And then after it all was
said and done and a winner had been chosen and
all of that, well, the food wasn't going to go
to waste because he would himself hand deliver all of
the goods to the homeless in the area. And it
(05:49):
was something that the homeless really appreciated.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
It was heartfelt.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
The whole reason he put on these bakeoffs was for
that end result. Not only did the kids get to practice,
but then someone benefited from their practice. And the school
where he worked, they offered programs in everything from baking
and pastries to restaurant management. It was really a whole
learning cycle here in the food industry, and the focus
(06:17):
was hands on training in a realistic environment. So, with
the tuition at this school costing anywhere from eighteen to
thirty three thousand dollars, the school consisted of a ten
thousand foot it was actually ten thousand, three hundred and
one if you want to be really specific, but a
ten thousand square foot campus with lecture rooms, computer labs,
(06:39):
and it also had kitchens, multiple kitchens in it, so
the students would have their own workstations or cooking stations,
and that's where they would have to prepare and get
ready before class would begin every day at their own
little stations that were set up.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
So classes usually.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Began around eight am, but students and faculty alike were
expected to be ready at eight am, not arriving at
eight am, so most would arrive around seven point thirty
and they would start getting prepared for the day. And
that was exactly the case on June second, twenty eighteen.
It was a pretty day outside and there was a
(07:19):
lot to get done before class started, so Chef Brofey
arrived at the school. He parked his truck on the
side of the street before he opened up the employee
door that was right where he had parked his truck
and it faced the street. To the right of that
employee door was a large metal roll up door, so
(07:40):
he went inside. He disarmed the alarm, and then he
opened up the metal roll up door as well. Right
after he'd turned off the alarm, and he did so
to go grab some larger items from his truck that
he wanted to bring inside before starting his prep work. Now,
inside the kitchen there were these large metal tables and
(08:02):
large fridge fridges, all this huge industrial freezer, basically everything
that you would expect to use when cooking. And there's
a lot of people involved. And a few moments later
after he started getting his stuff together, students would begin
arriving as well. Now, Dan always thought it was important
to provide for his students, and so one thing he
(08:24):
would always do was he would fill up a large
water jug with ice and then you know, water from
that industrial sink right there in that area where he
had pulled up the roll up door and all those things.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Well, this day, in particular, this.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Was sure to be a really stressful but also exciting
day because it was what they called live fire day,
and this was where the students would come in and
they would be simulating a restaurant cook line and they
would have to make the orders that the chef would
write down for them. So this was kind of like
(09:00):
the equivalent of a final exam. That's kind of the
level of what this would be, and so it was
that important of a day. The students knew that when
they had when they got there, they had to have
their heads on straight. They needed to be not goofing around,
get everything ready because they were going to be judged
based on how well they did. So when the students
started to arrive, they couldn't get in the front door,
(09:22):
and they thought that that was odd. You know, the
door should have been open, they should have been able
to come in to get going. So they all kind
of congregated outside of the front door waiting for it
to be unlocked. A couple of them left, I know
one said she walked down and got a Starbucks and
then came back, and by that time the door would
eventually be unlocked by a different chef, and this was
the pastry chef. So she unlocked the door and then
(09:45):
they all went going into this student area and then
eventually we're going to their assigned workstations to begin set
up and the preparation tasks. Following the mentality of everything
in its place, okay, and that means.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Your workflow is everything.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
When you're in a cooking environment, you need to know
where everything is. It needs to be set up properly,
sharpen your knives, grab a kitchen towel, set up your bowls,
stabilize your cutting board, not to mention, you know, grabbing
any ingredients that you might need to get. So, as
the hustle on the bust of the day was starting,
yelling isn't something one would expect to hear from the
(10:22):
kitchen area, at least in the school.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I know right now, someone who's worked in the cooking
industry is like, what over? They always yell in the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
That's not what I mean, just in this school environment,
that wasn't what was going to take place here. And
so when raised voices, matter of fact, this was not
just a raised voice that was heard. This was a shriek,
a fearful and scared, near guttural scream erupted from the
(10:51):
back area of the building. And so Clorinda Perez, she
was a student, and she had gone back into the
kitchen area because she heard water continuously running and that
wasn't normal. So when she went back there, she turned
the corner and there she came upon her instructor on
the ground not moving, and that is why she yelled
(11:13):
out she needed help. Oh, my god, Chef Brothy is down.
So student heads popped up and they're kind of looking
in the direction of the scream. But they did recognize
the word help, and so once it set in and
was quickly recognized, oh, they're yelling for help, people started
running towards the kitchen to see what was going on,
and there they all saw the same thing. Their beloved
(11:34):
chef was on the ground. He was lying on his back,
and he was kind of in front of an ice machine,
but his feet were near the sink where the water
had been running. So the immediate understanding was and something
that I think all of us would probably go to
if you go in and you find a sixty something
year old man on his back on the ground, is
that he seemed to be suffering a heart attack. That's
(11:56):
what it looked like. And so immediately, and kudo to
these students man, but they jumped right into action. Some
of them tore off, running to go get other faculty members.
But Clorinda, she jumped in to try to give CPR
to her instructor. So people were running trying to help.
Finally an instructor came. She jumped on the phone and
(12:19):
she dialed nine to one one at eight twenty four
a m. The call came in for an unconscious, not
breathing person, which is considered a serious call. It's going
to have a rapid response because if you don't breathe,
you die. So the call itself, I was gonna play
it for y'all, but listen, seriously, it's not one that
I think would make or break the episode. And there
(12:41):
was a lot of kind of downtime in the call,
so I'm not going to play it for you.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
I don't think that it affects this case that much.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
The call itself isn't something I think you would necessarily
be impressed by. But there was one thing that I
heard in the nine one one call that really I
wanted to focus on. Whenever they called in. The feeling
you get is that, like I said, this is a
heart attack situation, and when you're listening to the dispatcher,
(13:09):
it seems that she kind of is on board with
that as well. But one statement a few minutes in
a few minutes in to the call was perplexing because
CPR was started, EMS was en route, and CPR was
being performed consistently on Chef Brophy, Yet at one point,
(13:29):
the caller mentions that there was a small amount of
blood on his shirt.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
This is minutes in to compressions having been started.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
So a heart attack, you don't expect that to cause
blood to be on someone's shirt. But then again, you know,
this is a non visual environment that the dispatcher is in.
They're just going off of what they're being told, and
so you know, maybe he fell and when he fell
he hit his nose or something along those lines. Well,
(13:59):
the student who's doing the CPR then says, I think
I broke a rib that came out. So it took
responders minutes to get there. But then they were directed
to the building and they got in there and got
to work pretty quickly after the onset of the initial call.
So when they got there though, and then they actually
made it into the kitchen area where Chef Brofy was
(14:20):
on the ground, by that point, the compressions had been stopped.
So why did they stop the compressions. They weren't directed
to stop compressions, but Chef Brofy wasn't showing any signs
of life, like nothing, absolutely nothing. Now I'm not giving
medical advice right now. I am not a doctor, but
(14:41):
I can tell you this. A lot of people expect
for some reason that when you are doing CPR, it's
going to be like in the movies, where you know,
you pump the chest three times, you give a breath,
and then all of a sudden someone coughs up and
then they spit out some liquid and then you know.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
They sit up and oh my god, you know, thank
you you.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
And that's just not real life. That's not how that works.
So you don't want to stop compressions until help arrives.
But in this instance, they felt like he was gone, gone.
The compressions weren't seeming to do anything, and the more
they did compressions, the more blood was coming out. So
his arms were up above his head right whenever ems
(15:24):
was getting there, the way he was laying on the ground,
and that female instructor who had called nine to one one,
they stopped CPR, but she didn't want to leave him,
and she reached up and she grabbed his hand and
she kind of clasped it in hers and she just
wanted to comfort him. And her thoughts here were she
(15:45):
didn't know this chef very well. Okay, it was a
big facility and there was lots of people coming and going.
But she didn't know him very well, but just in case,
just in case, by some chance, he were able to
feel her, she didn't want him to think that he
was alone. And so she sat there and she clasped
(16:05):
his hand because even though she didn't know him very well,
just the humanity in her knew that human touch matters
when someone is dying. And so as she held his hand,
she kind of stared at his watch on his wrist,
just not believing what she was experiencing could even be real.
How did this happen? It's eight thirty in the morning.
(16:26):
What is going on here? But when EMS got in there,
they made them all clear the room, and so she
had to let go of his hand, but she left
the room just devastated for this other instructor. So the
responders they jumped in and they began to work on
him immediately. They cut off his shirt and they placed
pads for an electric shock, and another worker was going
(16:47):
to start putting in the IV whenever they got a
shock of their own because when they removed his shirt,
a bullet casing clinked on the ground. So MS kind
of stops for just a second to try to take
in what's going on here? So this is not a
heart attack situation. This is a shooting, you know, And
(17:08):
so they're kind of stunned and they're looking around like, okay, well,
hang on a second. Was this a suicide attempt? Has
this guy killed himself? Because people do make terrible decisions,
and they do that in abnormal places for sure, but
just wow, why would you go to work and then
kill yourself when you knew students would be coming in?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
But when the responders kind of momentarily stopped, they kind
of shifted back a bit and started looking around to
take this in and understand what they were dealing with.
And then further assessment of their victim on the ground
showed that he had not only been shot once, but
he was shot twice.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Okay, so this is crazy.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Basically, when the clothing was still on him and this
girl was doing CPR, the blood eventually was rising up.
But I have a medical explanation for that later on.
But that's why there wasn't blood everywhere. It kind of
seemed to stay within the chest cavity and not come
out like you might would expect. Not to mention though,
if this was a suicide they couldn't find a gun
(18:12):
near him, So they're looking around the body like, right, wait,
we need to locate the gun, we.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Need to make the scene safe. But they couldn't find
the gun. There was no gun. This was not a suicide,
and they quickly could figure that out. Number one, there
was no gun.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
But number two, when EMS was looking around for the gun,
they saw just a few feet away that there was
a bullet casing another one on the ground just some
distance away. So someone had come in and shot this
man on purpose. And as all of this is taking place,
you know, he's dead. There's no coming back from this.
EMS was going to start these resuscitative efforts, but he
(18:48):
was beyond gone at this point, and so the shift
now went from oh my god, you know, we have
a man down, he needs help, to this guy's dead,
but someone in this building is hiding a gun. That
means we have an active shooter in this building and
he hasn't been found. This is fricking scary. So immediately
(19:09):
law enforcement placed the building on lockdown and everybody that
was within the building was directed to go into this
side room. There was like a student lounge, and so
everyone that was inside was directed to go in there,
but they were told, specifically, specifically by police and with purpose,
everybody sit down at these tables, do not move, place
your hands on top of the tables, and leave them there.
(19:32):
None of the faculty or the students inside understood the
entire situation in that moment necessarily, but they did as told.
So as traumatic as this morning had started for all
of them, you can imagine their shock when now a
swat team entered the building and these poor people I
can just see, you know, they're devastated, shock that they've
(19:53):
just found their beloved instructor on the ground. Now they're
sitting at tables, eyes wide, hands on top, and a
SWAT team comes in, guns drawn, tactical gear, everything like, oh.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
My god, what is going on here?
Speaker 1 (20:07):
So unable to move and directed to stay put, they're
all just sitting there looking at each other, going what
the fuck is going on here? But the building was
eventually cleared, so they were able to call off the
active shooter response. It was the right thing to do,
I will tell you that, because they didn't know who had.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Shot this man.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
But eventually everyone that was there was they were search
checked out. No gun was found on anyone within the building.
That's when detectives came in, and now they had a
lot of questions that needed answering. So students were outside
in the parking lot. They were crying, shaken by everything
(20:49):
that had taken place. The people that were inside were
now released to go back outside, and word began to
spread and assumptions of tragedy were now going to be confirmed,
as crime scene tape was being rolled out by an
officer around the building, from the street outside, around the building,
(21:09):
around the cars parked nearby, and obviously inside. This was
now a murder scene. So questions began with number one
who was on campus that morning. Those students and faculty
that were there that morning were extensively questioned and most
of them, actually all of them echoed the same sentiment.
(21:32):
Students were stunned. Everyone loved this chef, His students thought
very highly of him. Those that were there that morning.
In terms of the students and faculty, they were all
ultimately cleared of anything to do with the shooting. But
around ten thirty am that morning, an officer that was
(21:56):
outside of the secured area notified detectives that Dan's wife
was now on scene and she was looking for him.
Apparently someone had called her about an incident they had
seen on TV that happened at the school, and she
had tried calling his phone, texting his phone. He wasn't answering,
and so she got in the car and she drove
(22:16):
up to the school. Now, his wife is this sweet
looking little old lady, and having to break this news
to her was just gut wrenching. So as detectives walked
outside to speak with her, there stood a woman looking
like everyone's grandmother. You know, she's got on her little
sweater and if I have to give you something to
(22:39):
focus on, you know, she looks like missus Claws. It's
almost Christmas the time I'm recording this. She looks like
missus Claws. It was pitiful to think about her heart
being shattered in just moments. She and Dan had been
married a long time and they were just each other's world,
so they talked constantly. They depended on one another, and
(23:02):
he jokingly was known for saying, let me check with
management whenever decisions were to be made in life.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
They were a.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Team and she was his keeper and his confidant. But
she was about to be crushed. So meanwhile, inside the scene,
it was being documented, and much of what was seen
there actually did make sense. So Dan was a very
methodical man, very routined and disciplined in his day. He
(23:31):
always arrived to work about thirty minutes early. He would
park his white truck on the corner near seventeenth Avenue,
So the building sat on a.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Corner of a block.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
So you know what I'm saying, there's two frontage sides
to the building if you're on the roadway, and so
he would park right there and then just outside where
he would park the building for the employee entrance was
right there and he would go straight in to that
door and then he would opened the roll up door.
But he was famous for leaving that roll up door
(24:04):
open while he prepared for class. And this made detectives
wonder if that was possibly the way that the killer
had entered the building, because no one else saw a
stranger in the building that morning through the main entryways.
So looking about the building and in that area, there
was a thick, gray plastic kitchen rolling cart, one of
(24:27):
those huge rubber made industrial type carts, and on top
of that, detectives located his glasses, his car keys, and
there was a cup there with his drink in it,
so it was very obvious. He opened that employee door,
he set all his things down on that rolling cart,
and he turned off the alarm to the building. Now,
as far as the layout was concerned, the building was
(24:49):
basically a huge square. But within this square, obviously there
were a lot of rooms. There were three separate kitchens,
different ones for specific levels of cooking and equipment, and
then there were multiple classrooms. So if you didn't know
the layout of the building, the reason I'm telling you this,
if you didn't know the layout of the building, this
(25:11):
wouldn't have been a quick and easy shooting. So let
me explain, and I want you to envision this in
your mind's eye from an aerial perspective. You're looking down
at a square on the far right side. Midway of
that square, that's where this employee door was that Dan
entered through. Once inside, he then would turn right and
(25:34):
he would go down a small hall which would lead
directly to the storage room where that roll up door was.
So that roll up door is on the same wall
as that employee door, just further up the right side
of the square. Now, the kitchen that Dan was standing
in when he was shot was to the complete left
(25:54):
side of the huge square of a building, so that
means he was clear across the entire building. And I
have photos on Patreon for you if you want to
go see what I mean if you're having trouble envisioning this.
But the shooter basically would have had to have gone
down two separate halls, passing through or passing passed two
different classrooms. There were two other kitchens to get where
(26:17):
Dan was. And this wouldn't have been by accident, is
my point. When you came in this building, you would
not have accidentally come across Dan. This wouldn't have been
just a randomized thing. A few knownes so far though,
were that Dan was shot with a nine millimeter handgun.
He turned off the school alarm at exactly seven twenty
(26:38):
two am, but the nine to one one call was
made at exactly eight twenty four am. Basically one whole
hour had passed since the alarm was off, he was shot,
and then the nine one one call was made, so
he lay there. My point is this, he lay there
(26:58):
for almost an hour before or even receiving CPR, and
he had basically been dead from the jump from the
time that the call was made. Some other firm findings
were that no one in the building heard a gun
shot let alone two. You would hear a nine millimeter
in a metal building, come on, you would hear that
go off. Other instructors were on campus as well at
(27:21):
the same time, so there was also some students too.
So instructors and students had gotten there just before eight am,
so even if they were outside the building, they would
have heard two gunshots go off. So this made the
shooting time frame even smaller. So police now felt that
Dan was shot within ten to fifteen minutes of turning
(27:42):
off the alarm, specifically between seven twenty two am and
seven thirty two am. This was their estimate of when
the shooting took place, and this also meant that someone
came in with direct purpose of murdering Chef Dan. So
was this a burglary or robbery gone bad? They also
(28:03):
needed to check this out well. Detectives decided that they
would quarter up the building and each detective searched. The
searched their quadrant for maximum coverage to locate any stolen
items from.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Throughout the campus. Well, nothing was stolen from the school. Nothing.
They even had a restaurant in this school. This was
pretty cool. They had a restaurant opened to the public
in this school, and so people could come in and
they could have, you know, get lunch or whatever, and
the kids would get a full experience of serving.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
And cooking and all of that. Well, they kept money
on site. Nothing was taken from a register. No expensive,
you know, thousand dollars of equipment was taken. And when
Dan's body was searched, he still had his wallet on him.
It was in his front right pocket. He had cash
in it, he had credit cards in it. In one
(28:55):
of his pockets he had seventeen dollars and a pocket knife,
and the other one he had sixty dollars. And he
also had a little IOU note written handwritten on a
piece of paper in that pocket. So he had money
on him and nothing was taken from him. Robbery just
wasn't the case here. There was also no fight, there
was no struggle, none of that. It seemed he was
(29:15):
shot and he collapsed, So burglary and robbery were also
ruled out as motive. Dan never realized that an armed
murderer was approaching from behind him before he was attacked.
This was basic fact. Now here's another kicker. You might
not even believe this, but it's true. There were no
cameras in or on the outside of the building. None.
(29:40):
I mean, this isn't an old case, but there were
no cameras. There was no footage that police could review.
But the medical examiner's findings would support their theory of
what I just said. They believed happened because Dan had
been shot in the back first from about a I
guess two to three foot distance, don't quote me on that,
but it was close range. And what was believed to
(30:03):
have happened is while Dan was standing at the sink
filling the water jug for the students, he was facing
away from the shooter, and when the shooter walked up
and pulled the trigger, that bullet traveled into his back
and paralyzed him instantly as it traveled through his spine.
This caused him to collapse. He just dropped right then,
and he was unable to move or run away from
(30:24):
his assailant. And within seconds of his collapse, the killer
stepped forward and stood over him, pointing the gun down
at him. All Dan could do was look up at
his killer because he couldn't move. He was paralyzed and
that killer looked at him, pointed that same gun down
at his chest, and fired a shot straight into his
(30:47):
center chest, confirming that an execution would take place.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
There was a.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Circular hole in the center front of his chest clearly
and an entrance wound. The shot that went into his
chest was likely the second shot. But that bullet traveled
through his heart, it pierced a piece of a lung,
and it partially exited through his back, But when they
(31:14):
rolled him over to look, the bullet was still lodged
there and it could be seen in the wound that
kind of busted open on the back, but the bullet
was still in it. Then on the back there was
another gunshot wound, which was probably the first shot he took,
and it was in Dan's center back as well. It
(31:34):
was a circular hole and clearly an entrance wound, So
the bullet traveled through his spinal cord. It also went
through his heart and ruptured his aorta before coming to
a stop via a partial exit in the front of
his chest. So basically what I'm telling you is there
was two holes in the front, two holes in the back,
one entrance wound of each, and a partial exit of
(31:55):
each with the bullet still in his body. Now, in total,
because of the massive destruction that was done internally to him,
there was a total of roughly two leaders of blood
that had just collected in his chest cavity, and two
leaders of blood.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
By the way, that.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Accounts for roughly forty percent of what would have been
his total blood volume, not to mention the blood that
he was losing through the wounds that was going out
of his body. So this man suffered, maybe not for
an hour, but he suffered. And the ending of this
beloved man's life it took less than a minute to complete,
(32:35):
and it was done with absolute precision. So police now
had the daunting task of breaking the news to his wife, Nancy,
who you remember, it was waiting outside the taped off building.
She was still unaware that her husband was dead. So
police went outside and they took her aside from the
(32:56):
group to speak to her privately. They brought her into
I believe you would call it a mobile command center
that showed up, but basically a police SUV trailer type thing,
but they brought her in there. She was visibly shaken
and she knew something was wrong. I mean, you just
know these things and that's when the police broke the
news that it was Dan that was inside and Dan
(33:18):
was dead, and she just could not fathom it. She
just could not fathom it. He didn't have an enemy
in the world, her own words, he didn't hold a grudge,
he didn't bad mouth people. He lived such a simple
and wholesome life. Y'all can't be serious. You're not serious.
(33:39):
Right now, he's fine, he is not dead. This cannot be.
This isn't real. But they were serious.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
It was real.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
And Dan's body was still laying on the floor inside
the building being collected and photographed and bags being put
over his hand. So as she's processing this news, the
shock is just overwhelming. The new question detectives had was
if anyone was there that morning that may have already
(34:13):
left the building. Basically summing it up, was there a
disgruntled student who came shot the chef and then ran off.
So detectives went and grabbed the attendance logs of the school,
and any missing student that should have been there that
day or came and left was tracked down and they
were all interviewed again. Same thing. All of them said
(34:35):
they loved him, they thought he was great. One student
said that he was basically a father to this guy.
He was an encouraging and inviting instructor, so having hate
for him was almost unbelievable. They just couldn't understand this.
It did not fit. And after investigating all of them,
they too were all cleared. So if no one from
(34:58):
work was respon responsible for his murder, detectives would try
now to follow down any additional information that witnesses there
that morning may have seen, and this included that there
were some students who mentioned a dark suv parked in
the area right before the shooting, not only that that
same suv sped away quickly right after the time frame
(35:23):
believed that the shooting would have taken place. So investigators
obviously they wanted to track down this lead, but with
no cameras on the building, they didn't really have much
to go on, Like.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Where do you start. I don't even you know, you
don't even know what that dark suv make and model
would be.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
So detectives kind of looked around the area, went and
spoke to some local businesses, and it was noted that
there was a car dealership nearby, so when the investigators
went there to kind of inquire about any possible dark
SUVs that they may have seen or whatever in the
area they struck gold. It turned out the dealership had
(35:59):
a fleet of cars, a lot of them dark cars
SUVs that were being moved in and out that morning.
So following up on the lead, this looked like it
was going to be a super hot one when a
worker admitted, yeah, I was driving these SUVs and yes
I did park a dark suv right there in that
(36:20):
area that morning. So further questioning of all of this, though,
would reveal something they weren't quite expecting. It was that
this was a common occurrence for this dealership because the
workers would shuffle cars around using that street for parking. So,
with no connection whatsoever to Dan or the school, detectives
(36:41):
really went through all of this, that lead was dead
before it even really got started. All right, So the
question comes, now, who is in Dan's life that may
want to hurt him? Was he known to be in
any way problematic to somebody? And everyone would say no,
But my answer is going to be, well, sorta. He
was actually now physically he was an unassuming man, he
(37:06):
was older, he was balding on top, he was almost
in a seventies, y'all. He had a mustache, these small
little beady eyes and glasses, and absolutely known to just
be a lovable person. However, no one's perfect, none of
us are perfect. And detectives found out that he had
been married before his current wife, Nancy. That's right, we
(37:30):
have an ex wife. And usually if you divorce someone,
it's because you can't get along with them. So, as
you all know, because you've been following true crime for
a long time, I'm sure this was of great interest
to these detectives. Who was this ex wife? What is
the deal here? Well, they were able to find her,
and her name was Pearla, which, by the way, just
(37:51):
off key here, but I think that is the cutest name, Pearla.
My dog's name is Delilah Pearl, so you know, like
the name pearl. But anyway, her name was Pearla Stillwater
and she was also the mother of Nathaniel, who was
Dan's son. So when they had gotten married, obviously they
had a son named Nathaniel, and that marriage had turned
(38:14):
out to be very tumultuous, and things got so bad
that Dan just one day got up and left. It
was so tense that he even I mean, he wasn't
able to be the dad he wanted to be during
the younger years of Nathaniel's life due to the severity
of all of the conflict. He was not even directly
(38:35):
involved in his son's life from the day he left
forward really until Nathaniel was in high school. Now, I
want you to know this, I'm not faulting him for that,
but I am telling you that the fighting and the
bickering was so intense that it just almost he just
he wasn't up for the fight. But time and distance
(38:57):
seemed to work their magic. Things seem to be calming
down between the ex spouses. Sure at this point, now
that Dan's been murdered, it had been twenty five years
since they divorced, and their son was now a full
grown man. But y'all, anybody can hold a grudge, shit
be mean to my kids. See if I forget that,
(39:18):
you know what I mean. So Pearla was brought in
for questioning, and she agreed that after the initial divorce proceedings,
things were really, really, really bad between them, but over time,
she said, Look, but we've softened our positions against one another.
We have been co parenting fine, Nathaniel's grown now. I mean,
(39:39):
things are much better. The hate that we had for
each other was real at first, but we according to Pearla,
she says, we were now in a healing phase in
our lives and that we just weren't each other's mortal
enemies anymore. We've grown, we've matured, We've gotten to a
better place. They weren't best friends, but they weren't haters
of each other. So when they were asked about their
(40:01):
current relationship today, right now, what is it like, her
answer was, I feel like it's rather decent considering. So
a great deal of questioning was done. They were looking
into an alibi that she gave and basically they were
able to verify everything that she said for the day
in question. Ex wife Perla was also now cleared from
(40:25):
being considered a suspect. So some days later, a vigil
was held in memory of Chef Dan and the school
really did put on a.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Beautiful event for him.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Students and faculty showed up and it was bittersweet, but
the event was so beautiful. They all took turns talking
about him and their favorite stories about him. Lots of
support and a very loving event and examples of his loveability.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
This is so cute.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
But he once dressed up as a cow, Okay, put
on a cow costume, and then he got up on
a table on all fours in this cow costume, and
he had velcrow all over the cowsuit. And he had
these labels and it had the cuts of meat on
them on the table and it had velcrow on it too,
And basically he's up on all fours on the table
(41:18):
and the students are going to pin the label on
the cow for what cut of meat. It was so
funny yet so effective for learning. And I have pictures
of him doing this, by the way. It's really funny.
So just beautiful stories of just the impact that he made.
And Nancy was there, his wife. She's smiling the best
she can through her tears, but just simply heartbroken. But
(41:43):
the show of support was so great, it was so
needed and it was very uplifting. Not only did this
school do the vigil for him publicly, but then they
also held another event later that week just for the
close family and friends and faculty. So eventually, as time progressed,
(42:06):
you'll understand this, but Nancy's sadness shifted into anger.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
The phases of grief.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
If you've ever been through grief before, you'll know it
hits us all differently and at different times. But I
can't blame her for this display of emotion. She was pissed.
Why weren't there cameras on this building? She even confronted
the president of the school with these questions. I mean,
in today's times, everyone has cameras, and with the tuition
(42:33):
costs being as high as they were, you should have
been able to afford cameras. So we have no suspects
and the police are nowhere closer to solving this. And
you understand this. She needed someone to blame, and so
right now there was no suspects. So the school was
the first one on her list, and she went after
them hard.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
She was pissed.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Now this president of the school, Just so you know,
he wasn't a complete stranger to her. They didn't socialize
outside of school together much. I think over the last
you know, twenty something years, he had attended two events
that were actual event events with Nancy there. One of
them was Nancy and Dan's wedding in the nineties because
(43:14):
they all knew each other from another cooking school, so
he was at their wedding reception, and then he also
went to an open house in years past because they
had done a huge remodel after their home had caught
on fire, and so he went to kind of support
the home remodel. But they were not friends outside of school,
but they certainly knew each other from you know, history,
(43:34):
like I just told you, but also from work events.
Certainly because she would come up there, she would drop
off things for her husband, She would have launched there periodically,
and so her anger was just likely justified because she
expected her husband, who was dedicated to this school, to
be better protected, even if it was just by video. Okay, Well,
the truth was that there were a I don't want
(43:58):
to say a lot, but there were plenty of no
own shady characters staying in and around that immediate area,
and this came to the attention of detectives. Homelessness was
a pretty big issue in that area, even the local
high school who was having an issue because the homeless
transients would often make up their camp under the bleachers
(44:19):
of the high school. We can all see how that
would be problematic, and so it was an absolute issue,
but people seemed to kind of tolerate it, although it
was annoying. So they even found out that the issue
had kind of progressed in and outside of the building
right by the school. They had found used needles outside
(44:41):
of the school in the bushes. They even had to
repair broken windows at the school courtesy of the homeless
folk in the area coming by and breaking their windows
and just being problematic. But Chef Dan, he had taken
it up as his cause to help those very people,
as I mentioned, but even more than the bake offf
sh as a favor to another friend who had a
(45:02):
restaurant down the way. He would cook twice a week
at that business and then they would feed the homeless,
so they knew him. He would hand deliver treats to them.
So then the question became, okay, well, did Chef Dan
maybe have a run in with one of those people
and they had come back for revenge. No one knew
of anything, but crazier has happened? Well that said, Oh,
(45:27):
student witness came forward and said, look, I saw a
homeless guy right there on campus that morning, and he
was digging in our recycling bin. And at one point
he even peeked around the corner like and looked at
me before he took off. So police wanted to know
more about this, But how do you track down a
guy with no known address nor any first or last name.
(45:49):
Description was homeless guy. Well, a local camera was found
on a pizza shop that would prove a very helpful
thing in that endeavor. So they pulled the tapes from
this security camera, and the police were in luck because
the cameras faced the road. Now, the shot was from
inside the pizza building, but you could see straight through
(46:13):
the building front windows. They had these big, big windows
on the front, so the shot was a little further
away than you would hope, but you could see clearly.
And when they were reviewing the tapes that morning of
the murder, a familiar face was recognized by investigators. The
same people tend to commit the same crimes over and
over again in our communities. I've said this over and
(46:35):
over again, the same twenty percent of the population are
committing one hundred percent of the crimes. And this person
that they recognized was none other than a local homeless
man named Oscar Taylor. In the video, he happens to
just saun her by in front of the pizza store
windows at the exact time they would have expected there
(46:55):
he was. Now, who was Oscar Taylor? He was a
blackmail I would get. He's in his late forties, early fifties,
and he was a known problem in the area. Historically speaking,
his criminal record was worrisome deboot. Okay, he had been
to prison before. He had fifteen felonies, but he was
definitely known as a thief and he had been in
(47:15):
trouble for it before. He was no stranger to police,
So was it possible that he had killed the chef? Well,
watching him for the brief time that he passed in
front of the camera, they noticed that he was pulling
a large blue can behind him. This was like a
large blue trash can on wheels. Well, he had taken
(47:36):
that because he was known to collect cans for money,
and that was kind of his hustle on the streets.
But this alone begged the question, how would he have
even had a gun if he had no money? And
then he's out collecting cans that morning. So they watched
it again and again and again as he went by,
and they also noticed he wasn't running. He wasn't like
(47:59):
running for his life for anything.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
He was chill.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
He was just walking about picking up random fines on
the roadway. Other cameras on other buildings in the area
showed him casually pulling that same can, and you can
see him peek into trash bins and just being what
you expect a homeless person to be. Everything considered, it
was far fetched to think that he would be involved.
(48:22):
He may have been a thief, but he certainly didn't
seem to have murder on his mind that morning. But
police followed up with it. But he too, would be
cleared of any involvement in this murder. He just happened
to be on camera at a really inconvenient time. But
in that same regard, police watched video until they were
blue in the face, but no one was seen speeding
(48:46):
from the area nor running. Hell, there wasn't even anybody
briskly walking in the area that morning that caught their
attention during the time of the murder. So there's little evidence,
no gun found, no witnesses, and only two bullet casings
as evidence. So police in this moment were really stumped
(49:07):
as to where to go next. They certainly weren't throwing
their hands up, but I mean, what the hell where
do they go with this? So they decided we need
to go back and speak with his wife, Nancy, and
let's see if we can figure out any small things
that might could drum up a new lead. So they
do this, and their relationship was a precious one. Dan
and Nancy had met because he was her instructor in
(49:29):
culinary school back in the nineties. That's where they had
first met. She was originally from Texas wichital Texas Whichita Falls,
Texas actually to be exact, and she had had dreams
when she was younger of becoming a caterer, and after
meeting Dan, she learned everything she could ever imagine to
make that dream a reality. He was a walking food
(49:49):
encyclopedia after all, so this was a match made in heaven.
And Dan was so passionate about food and creating food
sustainability for others. Catering wasn't a f far off branch
from that concept, and in relatively short time, not only
did their relationship take off, but Nancy would build a
successful catering business. And when I say successful, I want
(50:12):
y'all to know I'm serious. The annual gross income of
the catering business, from what I remember, don't quote me
on the number exactly, but it was like in the
tune of five hundred thousand dollars a year. She really
was making it. And as in most relationships, you know,
one's usually a dreamer and the other one's more practical.
That's my life. I'm the dreamer, my husband's the more
(50:33):
practical one. Well, Nancy seemed to be the dreamer of
the two. She was willing to take chances and just
leaps of faith, while Dan was much more meticulous. He
liked to think before he acted. He liked to do
research and make educated decisions on things. Dan was safe.
Dan was simple.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
He grew spices. He took pictures with his chickens. I mean, hell, y'all.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
The lock screen on his photo in the crime scene pictures,
the cell phone lock screen photo is him holding one
of his chickens, a red one. That tells me so
much about this man. Nothing about their lives jumped out
to detectives, but Nancy said, look, there had been other
school shootings in recent history, and it really had a
(51:17):
lot of the faculty and teachers alarmed. Horrible actions we
all know can inspire others to do horrible things if
they have evil on their mind. And Nancy was able
to give a little more insight on that. See, when
all these shootings happened, it really got them nervous, and
so the Brophies had gone and purchased a gun. Now,
(51:37):
anybody who knew them would have scoffed at this. If
you asked them, they would say, I don't believe that,
but it was true. Nancy confirmed it was true. And
since the gun used to shoot Dan was missing, police
wondered if possibly he had brought it to school with
him and then maybe been overpowered and shot with it,
and then the killer left with the gun. But Nancy
quickly dashed that theory and she said, no, that can't be.
(52:00):
That just can't be. And when they asked why, she said, well,
the gun that we bought is still at home. It's
never been used. And so police said, hey, Nancy, can
we go back to the house and see it. She said, absolutely,
no problem, and so they jumped in her van together
and they drove down to the house, and sure enough,
there it was. There was a zip tie still in
(52:20):
place around the trigger pool. It was right where she
said it would be. So every lead led to a
dead end. But someone had killed Dan. There had to
be answers somewhere anywhere. But there had to be answers.
So police kept talking to people, They kept asking questions,
(52:41):
They went back over surveillance tapes over and over and over,
and that would bring about a first, really really solid
lead that would raise eyebrows. Was it possible that a
simple scratch on a vehicle would bring this case to
humbling down around someone. Well, you're gonna have to wait
(53:03):
until next week for the conclusion, but it is so
deep I'm gonna need a whole ass episode to explain
it to you. Dan may have been a master chef,
but the police had something cooking too. A simmering romance
novel is going to take center stage and detectives are
about to serve up a killer on a platter.
Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell
stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are
so shocking that many are left wondering how is this
even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections,
and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator,
(00:28):
dig deep into complex cases of evil acts.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Some so evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended,
then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey,
y'all's kJ here back with another episode of Unspeakable. What's
going on with you? I have got an episode today
that's gonna take us straight to Portland, Oregon, where a
more organ people at I'm waving at you.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
How are y'all doing? But I'm gonna tell you this
right now.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Everybody knows for a fact that I am a girl
from South Louisiana, and I know good food, King cake, gumbo,
and crawfish. Those are God's gift to us as far
as I am concerned. Now that said, a professional chef
may beg to disagree with me on this. And while
(01:36):
you know, there's no set way to become a chef.
Becoming a respected chef, that's gonna take time and experience,
everything from culinary school to getting a degree, different certifications
or a combination thereof. So much is involved in becoming
a respected chef. And if anyone was a respected chef
(01:57):
in Portland, Organ it was sixty three year old Daniel Brothy.
Now he worked as an instructor at the Organ Culinary
Institute and he was seriously and I'm not just saying this.
I know it gets posed this way a lot when
you're listening to stories, but he was seriously one of
the most beloved members of their faculty, the students, and
(02:20):
I think this is a testament to him.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
The students of.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
All races, all ages, different cultures, all of them felt
like he was basically a father figure to them and
having him as your instructor was considered a privilege on
that campus. He knew what he was doing and he
was good at it. He truly had a passion for cooking,
(02:44):
but also everything that came with it. He was like
a walking encyclopedia of food knowledge and the students, if
they had any questions whatsoever, he wasn't someone that would
have to go look it up.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
He just knew.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
And that's where this respect really was founded in. It
was because he wasn't just someone who read a book
and then just repeated out what he had learned.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
No, this man knew it.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
He knew it intrinsically because he spent so much time
with the foods, cooking the foods, researching them, growing them
all aspects of food.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Now.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
He loved, though, to get outside of the classroom with
his students. He would take them places on field trips
in culinary school places like mushroom farms, because he was
a mushroom expert, and he really wanted his students to
get a holistic understanding of where the food came from
and how it was grown, so that when they used
(03:41):
it in the kitchen, they had a full, a full
scope of understanding of why the foods were cooked the
way that they were and how to bring out the
most in the flavor. His love for the food really
was rooted in his upbringing. He grew up in North Dakota.
He was a preacher's son, and growing foods at his
home that was the norm for them. He was taught
(04:03):
to grow, to cook and to eat the fruits of
his own hard labor, and so this was really ingrained
in who he was. He appreciated all that it took
to create a meal, which led to him having a
love for the entire process of creating what you eat.
So he and his wife Nancy, now that he's an adult,
(04:25):
they had lived in this rural neighborhood where he continued
forward in his adult life with that same concept. So
he enjoyed raising chickens and raising turkeys, and he did
just basically what he did as a kid. He had
two pups too, And you know, I think an animal
a pet A lot of times it says something about
a person. I don't know why, Maybe I read too
(04:46):
much into it, but this tickled me. He had two
pups and they were affectionately yet humorously named after food.
And their names were none other than Peebee and Jay,
and I thought that was so sweet, right, So as
you can ta well, Chef Brofy's humor and his wittiness
was undeniable. He was known for his so called brofeisms,
(05:07):
and one of his most famous brofeism when he was
teaching was this is like an example, but he would say,
the best cure for a sick chicken, it's a shovel.
So he was funny the way he approached everything. But
something else that made him an amazing leader was his
belief in helping the less fortunate. He would hold contests
(05:28):
and these bakeoffs is what they would call him, But
he would pick a winner, but everybody in the class
would participate in this. And then after it all was
said and done and a winner had been chosen and
all of that, well, the food wasn't going to go
to waste because he would himself hand deliver all of
the goods to the homeless in the area. And it
(05:49):
was something that the homeless really appreciated.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
It was heartfelt.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
The whole reason he put on these bakeoffs was for
that end result. Not only did the kids get to practice,
but then someone benefited from their practice. And the school
where he worked, they offered programs in everything from baking
and pastries to restaurant management. It was really a whole
learning cycle here in the food industry, and the focus
(06:17):
was hands on training in a realistic environment. So, with
the tuition at this school costing anywhere from eighteen to
thirty three thousand dollars, the school consisted of a ten
thousand foot it was actually ten thousand, three hundred and
one if you want to be really specific, but a
ten thousand square foot campus with lecture rooms, computer labs,
(06:39):
and it also had kitchens, multiple kitchens in it, so
the students would have their own workstations or cooking stations,
and that's where they would have to prepare and get
ready before class would begin every day at their own
little stations that were set up.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
So classes usually.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Began around eight am, but students and faculty alike were
expected to be ready at eight am, not arriving at
eight am, so most would arrive around seven point thirty
and they would start getting prepared for the day. And
that was exactly the case on June second, twenty eighteen.
It was a pretty day outside and there was a
(07:19):
lot to get done before class started, so Chef Brofey
arrived at the school. He parked his truck on the
side of the street before he opened up the employee
door that was right where he had parked his truck
and it faced the street. To the right of that
employee door was a large metal roll up door, so
(07:40):
he went inside. He disarmed the alarm, and then he
opened up the metal roll up door as well. Right
after he'd turned off the alarm, and he did so
to go grab some larger items from his truck that
he wanted to bring inside before starting his prep work. Now,
inside the kitchen there were these large metal tables and
(08:02):
large fridge fridges, all this huge industrial freezer, basically everything
that you would expect to use when cooking. And there's
a lot of people involved. And a few moments later
after he started getting his stuff together, students would begin
arriving as well. Now, Dan always thought it was important
to provide for his students, and so one thing he
(08:24):
would always do was he would fill up a large
water jug with ice and then you know, water from
that industrial sink right there in that area where he
had pulled up the roll up door and all those things.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Well, this day, in particular, this.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Was sure to be a really stressful but also exciting
day because it was what they called live fire day,
and this was where the students would come in and
they would be simulating a restaurant cook line and they
would have to make the orders that the chef would
write down for them. So this was kind of like
(09:00):
the equivalent of a final exam. That's kind of the
level of what this would be, and so it was
that important of a day. The students knew that when
they had when they got there, they had to have
their heads on straight. They needed to be not goofing around,
get everything ready because they were going to be judged
based on how well they did. So when the students
started to arrive, they couldn't get in the front door,
(09:22):
and they thought that that was odd. You know, the
door should have been open, they should have been able
to come in to get going. So they all kind
of congregated outside of the front door waiting for it
to be unlocked. A couple of them left, I know
one said she walked down and got a Starbucks and
then came back, and by that time the door would
eventually be unlocked by a different chef, and this was
the pastry chef. So she unlocked the door and then
(09:45):
they all went going into this student area and then
eventually we're going to their assigned workstations to begin set
up and the preparation tasks. Following the mentality of everything
in its place, okay, and that means.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Your workflow is everything.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
When you're in a cooking environment, you need to know
where everything is. It needs to be set up properly,
sharpen your knives, grab a kitchen towel, set up your bowls,
stabilize your cutting board, not to mention, you know, grabbing
any ingredients that you might need to get. So, as
the hustle on the bust of the day was starting,
yelling isn't something one would expect to hear from the
(10:22):
kitchen area, at least in the school.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I know right now, someone who's worked in the cooking
industry is like, what over? They always yell in the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
That's not what I mean, just in this school environment,
that wasn't what was going to take place here. And
so when raised voices, matter of fact, this was not
just a raised voice that was heard. This was a shriek,
a fearful and scared, near guttural scream erupted from the
(10:51):
back area of the building. And so Clorinda Perez, she
was a student, and she had gone back into the
kitchen area because she heard water continuously running and that
wasn't normal. So when she went back there, she turned
the corner and there she came upon her instructor on
the ground not moving, and that is why she yelled
(11:13):
out she needed help. Oh, my god, Chef Brothy is down.
So student heads popped up and they're kind of looking
in the direction of the scream. But they did recognize
the word help, and so once it set in and
was quickly recognized, oh, they're yelling for help, people started
running towards the kitchen to see what was going on,
and there they all saw the same thing. Their beloved
(11:34):
chef was on the ground. He was lying on his back,
and he was kind of in front of an ice machine,
but his feet were near the sink where the water
had been running. So the immediate understanding was and something
that I think all of us would probably go to
if you go in and you find a sixty something
year old man on his back on the ground, is
that he seemed to be suffering a heart attack. That's
(11:56):
what it looked like. And so immediately, and kudo to
these students man, but they jumped right into action. Some
of them tore off, running to go get other faculty members.
But Clorinda, she jumped in to try to give CPR
to her instructor. So people were running trying to help.
Finally an instructor came. She jumped on the phone and
(12:19):
she dialed nine to one one at eight twenty four
a m. The call came in for an unconscious, not
breathing person, which is considered a serious call. It's going
to have a rapid response because if you don't breathe,
you die. So the call itself, I was gonna play
it for y'all, but listen, seriously, it's not one that
I think would make or break the episode. And there
(12:41):
was a lot of kind of downtime in the call,
so I'm not going to play it for you.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
I don't think that it affects this case that much.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
The call itself isn't something I think you would necessarily
be impressed by. But there was one thing that I
heard in the nine one one call that really I
wanted to focus on. Whenever they called in. The feeling
you get is that, like I said, this is a
heart attack situation, and when you're listening to the dispatcher,
(13:09):
it seems that she kind of is on board with
that as well. But one statement a few minutes in
a few minutes in to the call was perplexing because
CPR was started, EMS was en route, and CPR was
being performed consistently on Chef Brophy, Yet at one point,
(13:29):
the caller mentions that there was a small amount of
blood on his shirt.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
This is minutes in to compressions having been started.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
So a heart attack, you don't expect that to cause
blood to be on someone's shirt. But then again, you know,
this is a non visual environment that the dispatcher is in.
They're just going off of what they're being told, and
so you know, maybe he fell and when he fell
he hit his nose or something along those lines. Well,
(13:59):
the student who's doing the CPR then says, I think
I broke a rib that came out. So it took
responders minutes to get there. But then they were directed
to the building and they got in there and got
to work pretty quickly after the onset of the initial call.
So when they got there though, and then they actually
made it into the kitchen area where Chef Brofy was
(14:20):
on the ground, by that point, the compressions had been stopped.
So why did they stop the compressions. They weren't directed
to stop compressions, but Chef Brofy wasn't showing any signs
of life, like nothing, absolutely nothing. Now I'm not giving
medical advice right now. I am not a doctor, but
(14:41):
I can tell you this. A lot of people expect
for some reason that when you are doing CPR, it's
going to be like in the movies, where you know,
you pump the chest three times, you give a breath,
and then all of a sudden someone coughs up and
then they spit out some liquid and then you know.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
They sit up and oh my god, you know, thank
you you.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
And that's just not real life. That's not how that works.
So you don't want to stop compressions until help arrives.
But in this instance, they felt like he was gone, gone.
The compressions weren't seeming to do anything, and the more
they did compressions, the more blood was coming out. So
his arms were up above his head right whenever ems
(15:24):
was getting there, the way he was laying on the ground,
and that female instructor who had called nine to one one,
they stopped CPR, but she didn't want to leave him,
and she reached up and she grabbed his hand and
she kind of clasped it in hers and she just
wanted to comfort him. And her thoughts here were she
(15:45):
didn't know this chef very well. Okay, it was a
big facility and there was lots of people coming and going.
But she didn't know him very well, but just in case,
just in case, by some chance, he were able to
feel her, she didn't want him to think that he
was alone. And so she sat there and she clasped
(16:05):
his hand because even though she didn't know him very well,
just the humanity in her knew that human touch matters
when someone is dying. And so as she held his hand,
she kind of stared at his watch on his wrist,
just not believing what she was experiencing could even be real.
How did this happen? It's eight thirty in the morning.
(16:26):
What is going on here? But when EMS got in there,
they made them all clear the room, and so she
had to let go of his hand, but she left
the room just devastated for this other instructor. So the
responders they jumped in and they began to work on
him immediately. They cut off his shirt and they placed
pads for an electric shock, and another worker was going
(16:47):
to start putting in the IV whenever they got a
shock of their own because when they removed his shirt,
a bullet casing clinked on the ground. So MS kind
of stops for just a second to try to take
in what's going on here? So this is not a
heart attack situation. This is a shooting, you know, And
(17:08):
so they're kind of stunned and they're looking around like, okay, well,
hang on a second. Was this a suicide attempt? Has
this guy killed himself? Because people do make terrible decisions,
and they do that in abnormal places for sure, but
just wow, why would you go to work and then
kill yourself when you knew students would be coming in?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
But when the responders kind of momentarily stopped, they kind
of shifted back a bit and started looking around to
take this in and understand what they were dealing with.
And then further assessment of their victim on the ground
showed that he had not only been shot once, but
he was shot twice.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Okay, so this is crazy.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Basically, when the clothing was still on him and this
girl was doing CPR, the blood eventually was rising up.
But I have a medical explanation for that later on.
But that's why there wasn't blood everywhere. It kind of
seemed to stay within the chest cavity and not come
out like you might would expect. Not to mention though,
if this was a suicide they couldn't find a gun
(18:12):
near him, So they're looking around the body like, right, wait,
we need to locate the gun, we.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Need to make the scene safe. But they couldn't find
the gun. There was no gun. This was not a suicide,
and they quickly could figure that out. Number one, there
was no gun.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
But number two, when EMS was looking around for the gun,
they saw just a few feet away that there was
a bullet casing another one on the ground just some
distance away. So someone had come in and shot this
man on purpose. And as all of this is taking place,
you know, he's dead. There's no coming back from this.
EMS was going to start these resuscitative efforts, but he
(18:48):
was beyond gone at this point, and so the shift
now went from oh my god, you know, we have
a man down, he needs help, to this guy's dead,
but someone in this building is hiding a gun. That
means we have an active shooter in this building and
he hasn't been found. This is fricking scary. So immediately
(19:09):
law enforcement placed the building on lockdown and everybody that
was within the building was directed to go into this
side room. There was like a student lounge, and so
everyone that was inside was directed to go in there,
but they were told, specifically, specifically by police and with purpose,
everybody sit down at these tables, do not move, place
your hands on top of the tables, and leave them there.
(19:32):
None of the faculty or the students inside understood the
entire situation in that moment necessarily, but they did as told.
So as traumatic as this morning had started for all
of them, you can imagine their shock when now a
swat team entered the building and these poor people I
can just see, you know, they're devastated, shock that they've
(19:53):
just found their beloved instructor on the ground. Now they're
sitting at tables, eyes wide, hands on top, and a
SWAT team comes in, guns drawn, tactical gear, everything like, oh.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
My god, what is going on here?
Speaker 1 (20:07):
So unable to move and directed to stay put, they're
all just sitting there looking at each other, going what
the fuck is going on here? But the building was
eventually cleared, so they were able to call off the
active shooter response. It was the right thing to do,
I will tell you that, because they didn't know who had.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Shot this man.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
But eventually everyone that was there was they were search
checked out. No gun was found on anyone within the building.
That's when detectives came in, and now they had a
lot of questions that needed answering. So students were outside
in the parking lot. They were crying, shaken by everything
(20:49):
that had taken place. The people that were inside were
now released to go back outside, and word began to
spread and assumptions of tragedy were now going to be confirmed,
as crime scene tape was being rolled out by an
officer around the building, from the street outside, around the building,
(21:09):
around the cars parked nearby, and obviously inside. This was
now a murder scene. So questions began with number one
who was on campus that morning. Those students and faculty
that were there that morning were extensively questioned and most
of them, actually all of them echoed the same sentiment.
(21:32):
Students were stunned. Everyone loved this chef, His students thought
very highly of him. Those that were there that morning.
In terms of the students and faculty, they were all
ultimately cleared of anything to do with the shooting. But
around ten thirty am that morning, an officer that was
(21:56):
outside of the secured area notified detectives that Dan's wife
was now on scene and she was looking for him.
Apparently someone had called her about an incident they had
seen on TV that happened at the school, and she
had tried calling his phone, texting his phone. He wasn't answering,
and so she got in the car and she drove
(22:16):
up to the school. Now, his wife is this sweet
looking little old lady, and having to break this news
to her was just gut wrenching. So as detectives walked
outside to speak with her, there stood a woman looking
like everyone's grandmother. You know, she's got on her little
sweater and if I have to give you something to
(22:39):
focus on, you know, she looks like missus Claws. It's
almost Christmas the time I'm recording this. She looks like
missus Claws. It was pitiful to think about her heart
being shattered in just moments. She and Dan had been
married a long time and they were just each other's world,
so they talked constantly. They depended on one another, and
(23:02):
he jokingly was known for saying, let me check with
management whenever decisions were to be made in life.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
They were a.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Team and she was his keeper and his confidant. But
she was about to be crushed. So meanwhile, inside the scene,
it was being documented, and much of what was seen
there actually did make sense. So Dan was a very
methodical man, very routined and disciplined in his day. He
(23:31):
always arrived to work about thirty minutes early. He would
park his white truck on the corner near seventeenth Avenue,
So the building sat on a.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Corner of a block.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
So you know what I'm saying, there's two frontage sides
to the building if you're on the roadway, and so
he would park right there and then just outside where
he would park the building for the employee entrance was
right there and he would go straight in to that
door and then he would opened the roll up door.
But he was famous for leaving that roll up door
(24:04):
open while he prepared for class. And this made detectives
wonder if that was possibly the way that the killer
had entered the building, because no one else saw a
stranger in the building that morning through the main entryways.
So looking about the building and in that area, there
was a thick, gray plastic kitchen rolling cart, one of
(24:27):
those huge rubber made industrial type carts, and on top
of that, detectives located his glasses, his car keys, and
there was a cup there with his drink in it,
so it was very obvious. He opened that employee door,
he set all his things down on that rolling cart,
and he turned off the alarm to the building. Now,
as far as the layout was concerned, the building was
(24:49):
basically a huge square. But within this square, obviously there
were a lot of rooms. There were three separate kitchens,
different ones for specific levels of cooking and equipment, and
then there were multiple classrooms. So if you didn't know
the layout of the building, the reason I'm telling you this,
if you didn't know the layout of the building, this
(25:11):
wouldn't have been a quick and easy shooting. So let
me explain, and I want you to envision this in
your mind's eye from an aerial perspective. You're looking down
at a square on the far right side. Midway of
that square, that's where this employee door was that Dan
entered through. Once inside, he then would turn right and
(25:34):
he would go down a small hall which would lead
directly to the storage room where that roll up door was.
So that roll up door is on the same wall
as that employee door, just further up the right side
of the square. Now, the kitchen that Dan was standing
in when he was shot was to the complete left
(25:54):
side of the huge square of a building, so that
means he was clear across the entire building. And I
have photos on Patreon for you if you want to
go see what I mean if you're having trouble envisioning this.
But the shooter basically would have had to have gone
down two separate halls, passing through or passing passed two
different classrooms. There were two other kitchens to get where
(26:17):
Dan was. And this wouldn't have been by accident, is
my point. When you came in this building, you would
not have accidentally come across Dan. This wouldn't have been
just a randomized thing. A few knownes so far though,
were that Dan was shot with a nine millimeter handgun.
He turned off the school alarm at exactly seven twenty
(26:38):
two am, but the nine to one one call was
made at exactly eight twenty four am. Basically one whole
hour had passed since the alarm was off, he was shot,
and then the nine one one call was made, so
he lay there. My point is this, he lay there
(26:58):
for almost an hour before or even receiving CPR, and
he had basically been dead from the jump from the
time that the call was made. Some other firm findings
were that no one in the building heard a gun
shot let alone two. You would hear a nine millimeter
in a metal building, come on, you would hear that
go off. Other instructors were on campus as well at
(27:21):
the same time, so there was also some students too.
So instructors and students had gotten there just before eight am,
so even if they were outside the building, they would
have heard two gunshots go off. So this made the
shooting time frame even smaller. So police now felt that
Dan was shot within ten to fifteen minutes of turning
(27:42):
off the alarm, specifically between seven twenty two am and
seven thirty two am. This was their estimate of when
the shooting took place, and this also meant that someone
came in with direct purpose of murdering Chef Dan. So
was this a burglary or robbery gone bad? They also
(28:03):
needed to check this out well. Detectives decided that they
would quarter up the building and each detective searched. The
searched their quadrant for maximum coverage to locate any stolen
items from.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Throughout the campus. Well, nothing was stolen from the school. Nothing.
They even had a restaurant in this school. This was
pretty cool. They had a restaurant opened to the public
in this school, and so people could come in and
they could have, you know, get lunch or whatever, and
the kids would get a full experience of serving.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
And cooking and all of that. Well, they kept money
on site. Nothing was taken from a register. No expensive,
you know, thousand dollars of equipment was taken. And when
Dan's body was searched, he still had his wallet on him.
It was in his front right pocket. He had cash
in it, he had credit cards in it. In one
(28:55):
of his pockets he had seventeen dollars and a pocket knife,
and the other one he had sixty dollars. And he
also had a little IOU note written handwritten on a
piece of paper in that pocket. So he had money
on him and nothing was taken from him. Robbery just
wasn't the case here. There was also no fight, there
was no struggle, none of that. It seemed he was
(29:15):
shot and he collapsed, So burglary and robbery were also
ruled out as motive. Dan never realized that an armed
murderer was approaching from behind him before he was attacked.
This was basic fact. Now here's another kicker. You might
not even believe this, but it's true. There were no
cameras in or on the outside of the building. None.
(29:40):
I mean, this isn't an old case, but there were
no cameras. There was no footage that police could review.
But the medical examiner's findings would support their theory of
what I just said. They believed happened because Dan had
been shot in the back first from about a I
guess two to three foot distance, don't quote me on that,
but it was close range. And what was believed to
(30:03):
have happened is while Dan was standing at the sink
filling the water jug for the students, he was facing
away from the shooter, and when the shooter walked up
and pulled the trigger, that bullet traveled into his back
and paralyzed him instantly as it traveled through his spine.
This caused him to collapse. He just dropped right then,
and he was unable to move or run away from
(30:24):
his assailant. And within seconds of his collapse, the killer
stepped forward and stood over him, pointing the gun down
at him. All Dan could do was look up at
his killer because he couldn't move. He was paralyzed and
that killer looked at him, pointed that same gun down
at his chest, and fired a shot straight into his
(30:47):
center chest, confirming that an execution would take place.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
There was a.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Circular hole in the center front of his chest clearly
and an entrance wound. The shot that went into his
chest was likely the second shot. But that bullet traveled
through his heart, it pierced a piece of a lung,
and it partially exited through his back, But when they
(31:14):
rolled him over to look, the bullet was still lodged
there and it could be seen in the wound that
kind of busted open on the back, but the bullet
was still in it. Then on the back there was
another gunshot wound, which was probably the first shot he took,
and it was in Dan's center back as well. It
(31:34):
was a circular hole and clearly an entrance wound, So
the bullet traveled through his spinal cord. It also went
through his heart and ruptured his aorta before coming to
a stop via a partial exit in the front of
his chest. So basically what I'm telling you is there
was two holes in the front, two holes in the back,
one entrance wound of each, and a partial exit of
(31:55):
each with the bullet still in his body. Now, in total,
because of the massive destruction that was done internally to him,
there was a total of roughly two leaders of blood
that had just collected in his chest cavity, and two
leaders of blood.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
By the way, that.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Accounts for roughly forty percent of what would have been
his total blood volume, not to mention the blood that
he was losing through the wounds that was going out
of his body. So this man suffered, maybe not for
an hour, but he suffered. And the ending of this
beloved man's life it took less than a minute to complete,
(32:35):
and it was done with absolute precision. So police now
had the daunting task of breaking the news to his wife, Nancy,
who you remember, it was waiting outside the taped off building.
She was still unaware that her husband was dead. So
police went outside and they took her aside from the
(32:56):
group to speak to her privately. They brought her into
I believe you would call it a mobile command center
that showed up, but basically a police SUV trailer type thing,
but they brought her in there. She was visibly shaken
and she knew something was wrong. I mean, you just
know these things and that's when the police broke the
news that it was Dan that was inside and Dan
(33:18):
was dead, and she just could not fathom it. She
just could not fathom it. He didn't have an enemy
in the world, her own words, he didn't hold a grudge,
he didn't bad mouth people. He lived such a simple
and wholesome life. Y'all can't be serious. You're not serious.
(33:39):
Right now, he's fine, he is not dead. This cannot be.
This isn't real. But they were serious.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
It was real.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
And Dan's body was still laying on the floor inside
the building being collected and photographed and bags being put
over his hand. So as she's processing this news, the
shock is just overwhelming. The new question detectives had was
if anyone was there that morning that may have already
(34:13):
left the building. Basically summing it up, was there a
disgruntled student who came shot the chef and then ran off.
So detectives went and grabbed the attendance logs of the school,
and any missing student that should have been there that
day or came and left was tracked down and they
were all interviewed again. Same thing. All of them said
(34:35):
they loved him, they thought he was great. One student
said that he was basically a father to this guy.
He was an encouraging and inviting instructor, so having hate
for him was almost unbelievable. They just couldn't understand this.
It did not fit. And after investigating all of them,
they too were all cleared. So if no one from
(34:58):
work was respon responsible for his murder, detectives would try
now to follow down any additional information that witnesses there
that morning may have seen, and this included that there
were some students who mentioned a dark suv parked in
the area right before the shooting, not only that that
same suv sped away quickly right after the time frame
(35:23):
believed that the shooting would have taken place. So investigators
obviously they wanted to track down this lead, but with
no cameras on the building, they didn't really have much
to go on, Like.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Where do you start. I don't even you know, you
don't even know what that dark suv make and model
would be.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
So detectives kind of looked around the area, went and
spoke to some local businesses, and it was noted that
there was a car dealership nearby, so when the investigators
went there to kind of inquire about any possible dark
SUVs that they may have seen or whatever in the
area they struck gold. It turned out the dealership had
(35:59):
a fleet of cars, a lot of them dark cars
SUVs that were being moved in and out that morning.
So following up on the lead, this looked like it
was going to be a super hot one when a
worker admitted, yeah, I was driving these SUVs and yes
I did park a dark suv right there in that
(36:20):
area that morning. So further questioning of all of this, though,
would reveal something they weren't quite expecting. It was that
this was a common occurrence for this dealership because the
workers would shuffle cars around using that street for parking. So,
with no connection whatsoever to Dan or the school, detectives
(36:41):
really went through all of this, that lead was dead
before it even really got started. All right, So the
question comes, now, who is in Dan's life that may
want to hurt him? Was he known to be in
any way problematic to somebody? And everyone would say no,
But my answer is going to be, well, sorta. He
was actually now physically he was an unassuming man, he
(37:06):
was older, he was balding on top, he was almost
in a seventies, y'all. He had a mustache, these small
little beady eyes and glasses, and absolutely known to just
be a lovable person. However, no one's perfect, none of
us are perfect. And detectives found out that he had
been married before his current wife, Nancy. That's right, we
(37:30):
have an ex wife. And usually if you divorce someone,
it's because you can't get along with them. So, as
you all know, because you've been following true crime for
a long time, I'm sure this was of great interest
to these detectives. Who was this ex wife? What is
the deal here? Well, they were able to find her,
and her name was Pearla, which, by the way, just
(37:51):
off key here, but I think that is the cutest name, Pearla.
My dog's name is Delilah Pearl, so you know, like
the name pearl. But anyway, her name was Pearla Stillwater
and she was also the mother of Nathaniel, who was
Dan's son. So when they had gotten married, obviously they
had a son named Nathaniel, and that marriage had turned
(38:14):
out to be very tumultuous, and things got so bad
that Dan just one day got up and left. It
was so tense that he even I mean, he wasn't
able to be the dad he wanted to be during
the younger years of Nathaniel's life due to the severity
of all of the conflict. He was not even directly
(38:35):
involved in his son's life from the day he left
forward really until Nathaniel was in high school. Now, I
want you to know this, I'm not faulting him for that,
but I am telling you that the fighting and the
bickering was so intense that it just almost he just
he wasn't up for the fight. But time and distance
(38:57):
seemed to work their magic. Things seem to be calming
down between the ex spouses. Sure at this point, now
that Dan's been murdered, it had been twenty five years
since they divorced, and their son was now a full
grown man. But y'all, anybody can hold a grudge, shit
be mean to my kids. See if I forget that,
(39:18):
you know what I mean. So Pearla was brought in
for questioning, and she agreed that after the initial divorce proceedings,
things were really, really, really bad between them, but over time,
she said, Look, but we've softened our positions against one another.
We have been co parenting fine, Nathaniel's grown now. I mean,
(39:39):
things are much better. The hate that we had for
each other was real at first, but we according to Pearla,
she says, we were now in a healing phase in
our lives and that we just weren't each other's mortal
enemies anymore. We've grown, we've matured, We've gotten to a
better place. They weren't best friends, but they weren't haters
of each other. So when they were asked about their
(40:01):
current relationship today, right now, what is it like, her
answer was, I feel like it's rather decent considering. So
a great deal of questioning was done. They were looking
into an alibi that she gave and basically they were
able to verify everything that she said for the day
in question. Ex wife Perla was also now cleared from
(40:25):
being considered a suspect. So some days later, a vigil
was held in memory of Chef Dan and the school
really did put on a.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Beautiful event for him.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Students and faculty showed up and it was bittersweet, but
the event was so beautiful. They all took turns talking
about him and their favorite stories about him. Lots of
support and a very loving event and examples of his loveability.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
This is so cute.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
But he once dressed up as a cow, Okay, put
on a cow costume, and then he got up on
a table on all fours in this cow costume, and
he had velcrow all over the cowsuit. And he had
these labels and it had the cuts of meat on
them on the table and it had velcrow on it too,
And basically he's up on all fours on the table
(41:18):
and the students are going to pin the label on
the cow for what cut of meat. It was so
funny yet so effective for learning. And I have pictures
of him doing this, by the way. It's really funny.
So just beautiful stories of just the impact that he made.
And Nancy was there, his wife. She's smiling the best
she can through her tears, but just simply heartbroken. But
(41:43):
the show of support was so great, it was so
needed and it was very uplifting. Not only did this
school do the vigil for him publicly, but then they
also held another event later that week just for the
close family and friends and faculty. So eventually, as time progressed,
(42:06):
you'll understand this, but Nancy's sadness shifted into anger.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
The phases of grief.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
If you've ever been through grief before, you'll know it
hits us all differently and at different times. But I
can't blame her for this display of emotion. She was pissed.
Why weren't there cameras on this building? She even confronted
the president of the school with these questions. I mean,
in today's times, everyone has cameras, and with the tuition
(42:33):
costs being as high as they were, you should have
been able to afford cameras. So we have no suspects
and the police are nowhere closer to solving this. And
you understand this. She needed someone to blame, and so
right now there was no suspects. So the school was
the first one on her list, and she went after
them hard.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
She was pissed.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Now this president of the school, Just so you know,
he wasn't a complete stranger to her. They didn't socialize
outside of school together much. I think over the last
you know, twenty something years, he had attended two events
that were actual event events with Nancy there. One of
them was Nancy and Dan's wedding in the nineties because
(43:14):
they all knew each other from another cooking school, so
he was at their wedding reception, and then he also
went to an open house in years past because they
had done a huge remodel after their home had caught
on fire, and so he went to kind of support
the home remodel. But they were not friends outside of school,
but they certainly knew each other from you know, history,
(43:34):
like I just told you, but also from work events.
Certainly because she would come up there, she would drop
off things for her husband, She would have launched there periodically,
and so her anger was just likely justified because she
expected her husband, who was dedicated to this school, to
be better protected, even if it was just by video. Okay, Well,
the truth was that there were a I don't want
(43:58):
to say a lot, but there were plenty of no
own shady characters staying in and around that immediate area,
and this came to the attention of detectives. Homelessness was
a pretty big issue in that area, even the local
high school who was having an issue because the homeless
transients would often make up their camp under the bleachers
(44:19):
of the high school. We can all see how that
would be problematic, and so it was an absolute issue,
but people seemed to kind of tolerate it, although it
was annoying. So they even found out that the issue
had kind of progressed in and outside of the building
right by the school. They had found used needles outside
(44:41):
of the school in the bushes. They even had to
repair broken windows at the school courtesy of the homeless
folk in the area coming by and breaking their windows
and just being problematic. But Chef Dan, he had taken
it up as his cause to help those very people,
as I mentioned, but even more than the bake offf
sh as a favor to another friend who had a
(45:02):
restaurant down the way. He would cook twice a week
at that business and then they would feed the homeless,
so they knew him. He would hand deliver treats to them.
So then the question became, okay, well, did Chef Dan
maybe have a run in with one of those people
and they had come back for revenge. No one knew
of anything, but crazier has happened? Well that said, Oh,
(45:27):
student witness came forward and said, look, I saw a
homeless guy right there on campus that morning, and he
was digging in our recycling bin. And at one point
he even peeked around the corner like and looked at
me before he took off. So police wanted to know
more about this, But how do you track down a
guy with no known address nor any first or last name.
(45:49):
Description was homeless guy. Well, a local camera was found
on a pizza shop that would prove a very helpful
thing in that endeavor. So they pulled the tapes from
this security camera, and the police were in luck because
the cameras faced the road. Now, the shot was from
inside the pizza building, but you could see straight through
(46:13):
the building front windows. They had these big, big windows
on the front, so the shot was a little further
away than you would hope, but you could see clearly.
And when they were reviewing the tapes that morning of
the murder, a familiar face was recognized by investigators. The
same people tend to commit the same crimes over and
over again in our communities. I've said this over and
(46:35):
over again, the same twenty percent of the population are
committing one hundred percent of the crimes. And this person
that they recognized was none other than a local homeless
man named Oscar Taylor. In the video, he happens to
just saun her by in front of the pizza store
windows at the exact time they would have expected there
(46:55):
he was. Now, who was Oscar Taylor? He was a
blackmail I would get. He's in his late forties, early fifties,
and he was a known problem in the area. Historically speaking,
his criminal record was worrisome deboot. Okay, he had been
to prison before. He had fifteen felonies, but he was
definitely known as a thief and he had been in
(47:15):
trouble for it before. He was no stranger to police,
So was it possible that he had killed the chef? Well,
watching him for the brief time that he passed in
front of the camera, they noticed that he was pulling
a large blue can behind him. This was like a
large blue trash can on wheels. Well, he had taken
(47:36):
that because he was known to collect cans for money,
and that was kind of his hustle on the streets.
But this alone begged the question, how would he have
even had a gun if he had no money? And
then he's out collecting cans that morning. So they watched
it again and again and again as he went by,
and they also noticed he wasn't running. He wasn't like
(47:59):
running for his life for anything.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
He was chill.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
He was just walking about picking up random fines on
the roadway. Other cameras on other buildings in the area
showed him casually pulling that same can, and you can
see him peek into trash bins and just being what
you expect a homeless person to be. Everything considered, it
was far fetched to think that he would be involved.
(48:22):
He may have been a thief, but he certainly didn't
seem to have murder on his mind that morning. But
police followed up with it. But he too, would be
cleared of any involvement in this murder. He just happened
to be on camera at a really inconvenient time. But
in that same regard, police watched video until they were
blue in the face, but no one was seen speeding
(48:46):
from the area nor running. Hell, there wasn't even anybody
briskly walking in the area that morning that caught their
attention during the time of the murder. So there's little evidence,
no gun found, no witnesses, and only two bullet casings
as evidence. So police in this moment were really stumped
(49:07):
as to where to go next. They certainly weren't throwing
their hands up, but I mean, what the hell where
do they go with this? So they decided we need
to go back and speak with his wife, Nancy, and
let's see if we can figure out any small things
that might could drum up a new lead. So they
do this, and their relationship was a precious one. Dan
and Nancy had met because he was her instructor in
(49:29):
culinary school back in the nineties. That's where they had
first met. She was originally from Texas wichital Texas Whichita Falls,
Texas actually to be exact, and she had had dreams
when she was younger of becoming a caterer, and after
meeting Dan, she learned everything she could ever imagine to
make that dream a reality. He was a walking food
(49:49):
encyclopedia after all, so this was a match made in heaven.
And Dan was so passionate about food and creating food
sustainability for others. Catering wasn't a f far off branch
from that concept, and in relatively short time, not only
did their relationship take off, but Nancy would build a
successful catering business. And when I say successful, I want
(50:12):
y'all to know I'm serious. The annual gross income of
the catering business, from what I remember, don't quote me
on the number exactly, but it was like in the
tune of five hundred thousand dollars a year. She really
was making it. And as in most relationships, you know,
one's usually a dreamer and the other one's more practical.
That's my life. I'm the dreamer, my husband's the more
(50:33):
practical one. Well, Nancy seemed to be the dreamer of
the two. She was willing to take chances and just
leaps of faith, while Dan was much more meticulous. He
liked to think before he acted. He liked to do
research and make educated decisions on things. Dan was safe.
Dan was simple.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
He grew spices. He took pictures with his chickens. I mean, hell, y'all.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
The lock screen on his photo in the crime scene pictures,
the cell phone lock screen photo is him holding one
of his chickens, a red one. That tells me so
much about this man. Nothing about their lives jumped out
to detectives, but Nancy said, look, there had been other
school shootings in recent history, and it really had a
(51:17):
lot of the faculty and teachers alarmed. Horrible actions we
all know can inspire others to do horrible things if
they have evil on their mind. And Nancy was able
to give a little more insight on that. See, when
all these shootings happened, it really got them nervous, and
so the Brophies had gone and purchased a gun. Now,
(51:37):
anybody who knew them would have scoffed at this. If
you asked them, they would say, I don't believe that,
but it was true. Nancy confirmed it was true. And
since the gun used to shoot Dan was missing, police
wondered if possibly he had brought it to school with
him and then maybe been overpowered and shot with it,
and then the killer left with the gun. But Nancy
quickly dashed that theory and she said, no, that can't be.
(52:00):
That just can't be. And when they asked why, she said, well,
the gun that we bought is still at home. It's
never been used. And so police said, hey, Nancy, can
we go back to the house and see it. She said, absolutely,
no problem, and so they jumped in her van together
and they drove down to the house, and sure enough,
there it was. There was a zip tie still in
(52:20):
place around the trigger pool. It was right where she
said it would be. So every lead led to a
dead end. But someone had killed Dan. There had to
be answers somewhere anywhere. But there had to be answers.
So police kept talking to people, They kept asking questions,
(52:41):
They went back over surveillance tapes over and over and over,
and that would bring about a first, really really solid
lead that would raise eyebrows. Was it possible that a
simple scratch on a vehicle would bring this case to
humbling down around someone. Well, you're gonna have to wait
(53:03):
until next week for the conclusion, but it is so
deep I'm gonna need a whole ass episode to explain
it to you. Dan may have been a master chef,
but the police had something cooking too. A simmering romance
novel is going to take center stage and detectives are
about to serve up a killer on a platter.
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