I would really love to find out so much more about Nancy, from people who knew her at every stage of her life. I doubt if we will ever hear the truth from her. Best friends? Old boyfriends? Teachers? Did she really attend the University of Houston? It's pretty hard to get into. Did Dan actually believe they were married, but she hadn't sent in the paperwork? Did that benefit her in some way? If Nancy ever writes an absolutely truthful autobiography, I for one will be queuing up to buy it. She might finally have a best-seller! OTOH, it would probably just be more lies
Some answers:
Marriage: yes, it benefited NB hugely. She was able to file her taxes jointly and write business losses (which she said on the stand were substantial after her catering company bit the dust) and her pitiful insurance commissions against DB's salary. With interest and penalties, this would have been huge...I'm guessing far into 6 figures. The irony: NB's fraud liability was way larger than AJ's (the cellie), even though defense was hell bent on vilifying AJ for fraud.
AFAIK, there wasn't a matter of DB thinking they were married and NB not sending in the paperwork. You actually have to go to the clerk's office. The reason I know this is that back in the day, I had to make a business visit to an OR county clerk's office with my business partner. We got to the counter, and the clerk said, "You wanna get married? Sit down." lol So, yeah, it wasn't possible for DB to believe they were married if he'd never gone to the county clerk with NB.
In her professional website and on her Amazon biography, NB says it took her 4 1/2 years to convince DB to marry her. So, clearly she was into the marriage thing. It actually took something like 24 years.
DB's so said on the stand that NB had defrauded her employees of SS and wages.
NB's ex was a police officer. She wouldn't allow him to bring his weapon into the house. Per prosecution in cross and in closing statements. It's interesting to me that he wasn't otherwise a feature in this trial.
Unlikely NB is writing a book. She would not be able to profit from it AFAIK because of the murder conviction, and as we know from trial, she's all about money. Plus, she can't write to save her life, and has only ever published one essay, and that was in 2005, per her testimony in cross. Anything else was self-published. She called herself a "writer", but it was all a scam; IMO she like the idea of being a writer.
How do I know NB can't write? I looked at her professional website.
NB claimed on the stand she could "write whole books in her head" (viz. her cross). Ummmmm....if it's all in your head, you're not a writer. A writer actually writes.
NB comes from a family of basically all attorneys. She verified this on the stand, and the prosecutor brought it up more than once (e.g. in DB's son's direct, cross of NB's nieces, cross of NB). They are criminal defense attorneys and ambulance chasers (this, BTW, is more circumstantial evidence that she was familiar with insurance death benefits, accidental death, worker's comp, etc., all issues in DB's murder).
The TX cousin and niece tried to pedal fast past this, but they hadn't seen or communicated with NB for a long time before the murder. In one case, it was 10 years or something (cross of the cousin).
All in all, though, the problem with "knowing" anything about NB's life if it's her talking about it: there's no telling what the truth is. The trial had DAYS of this stuff in her direct and cross. Her own expert psychology witness said NB speaks about herself in glowing terms and won't take any accountability. And then, from the cross, it became clear that she can't speak truth. This was true in the death notification, too. She volunteered stories anticipating what she would have to defend herself against. This included a bathroom trip into OCI (likely a dry run, since it was same time and day as the murder), the story about the gun, the chronology of her morning....
If NB hadn't been convicted of murder, IMO prosecutors had other items to charge her with: the tax fraud would have been easy pickings. There was also the piece we discussed just a few posts ^^^ about how she was committing crimes behind bars.
The whole presentation of NB on the stand made me wonder what other nefariousness she might have been involved in over the decades....
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