Prosecutors drilled down into the amnesia defense, missing gun barrel and the emotional temperament of Nancy Crampton Brophy as the Oregon romance writer’s trial in the killing of her chef husband reached a crescendo Tuesday.

A combative three-hour cross-examination featured both the accused and her accuser raising their voices at times, with Crampton Brophy rapping the witness box for emphasis and appearing to tear up.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Shawn Overstreet confronted Crampton Brophy about her explanation for why security camera footage captured her minivan outside the Oregon Culinary Institute about 7:28 a.m. June 2, 2018.

That was within minutes of instructor Daniel Brophy’s murder in one of the school’s classrooms, investigators testified.

Crampton Brophy and a psychologist called by the defense said she suffered retrograde amnesia from the later trauma of learning her husband had been killed. The condition erased Crampton Brophy’s memory that she had driven on streets directly adjacent to the school at the time, they said.

How then, Overstreet asked Crampton Brophy, could she be sure she didn’t shoot her husband and then simply forget that, too?

“At the critical moments,” he said, “you were there at the same time that someone happens to be shooting your husband, within a six-minute window, with the exact type of gun that you own and which is now mysteriously missing.”

Crampton Brophy replied that she couldn’t have possibly forgotten the killing.

“I see Dan every day. I talk to him every day,” she said. “This is not a man I would have shot because I had a memory issue. It seems to me if I had shot him, I would know every detail.”

Crampton Brophy said Monday on the stand that she surmises she was driving around the area jotting down ideas for a story — a pure coincidence — because she liked that neighborhood for inspiration.

Records presented in court show Brophy, 63, had deactivated the school’s alarm in the same timeframe as the surveillance video showed his wife’s minivan nearby. He was discovered dead a short time later by students preparing for a restaurant kitchen simulation. He had been shot twice.

Prosecutors allege Crampton Brophy, now 71, murdered her partner of nearly 25 years to collect $1.4 million from 10 life insurance policies and stave off financial ruin. The couple was paying more than $1,000 a month for life insurance while missing mortgage payments, prosecutors have said, and had drained nearly half of Brophy’s retirement savings to pay down credit card debt.

Overstreet put a spotlight on the writer’s demeanor, noting Crampton Brophy had never expressed visible emotion before taking the witness stand and has at times chuckled when other witnesses reminisced about the Brophys’ happier days.

Defense attorney Lisa Maxfield has argued that Crampton Brophy’s childhood in Wichita Falls, Texas, instilled a stiff upper lip that made her uncomfortable crying in public.

Overstreet, however, played part of a jailhouse phone call recorded earlier after Crampton Brophy heard trial testimony from Clarinda Perez, a cooking student who broke down sobbing while recounting her unsuccessful efforts to revive Brophy.

“They had all these little girls that cried today,” said Crampton Brophy, according to the recording. “I’ve seen the Spanish girl cry three times now, she cries on cue.”

Under cross-examination, Crampton Brophy said she felt sympathy for Perez and her “bone- jarring experience” but believed the student was ultimately crying for herself, not for a man she hardly knew.

“Her life went on,” Crampton Brophy said.

The prosecutor also keyed in on the disappearance of a Glock handgun barrel that records show Crampton Brophy bought on eBay on Feb. 28, 2018. Investigators allege Crampton Brophy attached that barrel to another Glock pistol she bought at a gun show.

They theorize that Crampton Brophy used the hybrid gun to kill her husband, then discarded the eBay barrel to hide tell-tale forensic evidence. Police haven’t recovered the missing barrel.

Crampton Brophy previously said she bought the gun show Glock for her husband to protect himself when he went mushroom hunting in the woods.

The barrel purchased on eBay — as well as a separate unregistered “ghost gun” kit that Crampton Brophy never assembled — were props to add realism for an unfinished novel, she testified.

“There was a big separation between what was for writing and what was for protection,” Crampton Brophy said.

But she admitted she had removed the barrel of the Glock purchased at the gun show on another occasion while “playing” with it.

“Oh, it’s terribly hard, I broke two nails doing it that way,” she said. “I didn’t think that was a secret.”

Overstreet said detectives ripped open the walls of the couple’s Beaverton home and even disassembled some of their appliances during a fruitless search for the eBay barrel. He noted that one of Crampton Brophy’s self-published novels features a character hiding a weapon in an appliance.

Crampton Brophy said she has no idea what happened to the missing barrel. She last saw it on the floor of her closet near her armoire in February or March of 2018, she testified.

Overstreet alluded to Crampton Brophy’s now notorious 2011 essay “How to Murder Your Husband,” which explores methods of killing and discounts some of them, including using poison or hiring a hitman. Crampton Brophy submitted the essay as a writing sample while applying to a writers group and later published it on a small blog.

Circuit Judge Christopher Ramras has excluded the essay from trial, but the prosecutor quoted its themes without mentioning it by name, before posing his final question.

“If there was one thing that you know about murder, is it that anyone is capable of doing it?” Overstreet asked.

Yes, said Crampton Brophy, to protect a loved one, but her case was different.

Their financial woes were over by 2018, Crampton Brophy said, and that period was one of the couple’s “happiest times.”

“I do better with Dan alive financially than I do with Dan dead,” she said. “Where is the motivation I would ask you? An editor would laugh and say, ‘I think you need to work harder on this story, you have a big hole in it.’”

The cross-examination ended at noon. The defense called several more witnesses and is expected to rest its case soon.

The trial began April 4 but was interrupted by an 11-day hiatus when Overstreet contracted COVID-19. The court set a tentative estimate for concluding the trial by this Friday but the judge said it can go as long as needed.

After Crampton Brophy finished Tuesday, the jury left the room and she walked back to the defense table. She conferred with her attorney, briefly laughing at something in the exchange, as deputies prepared to escort her out of the courtroom in handcuffs for lunch.

— Zane Sparling; zsparling@oregonian.com; 503-319-7083; @pdxzane

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