New-York Gold Digger 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐭𝐬 Husband Twice for $1M Life Insurance —He Survives & Gets Revenge | HO!!

PART 1 – The Flowers, the Bullets, and the Lie Called Love

At 7:42 p.m. on a cold November night, the security camera in the hallway of an Upper West Side apartment building captured something that, at first glance, looked ordinary.

A man in a suit walked down the corridor, humming to himself, a bouquet of white roses in one hand, keys in the other. His name was Nathaniel Breerlin, 34, senior consultant, marathon runner, meticulous saver, and the kind of man who believed that if you worked hard and loved right, life would more or less cooperate.

He had no idea he was walking into an ambush planned by the woman he married.

Seconds later, two gunshots echoed through the eighth-floor hallway.

The roses hit the carpet.
The keys slid from his hand.
And the man who thought he was coming home to his wife collapsed in a spreading pool of his own blood.

To neighbors and colleagues, Nathaniel’s shooting looked like a brutal but random hallway attack — the kind of senseless violence New Yorkers whisper about and then try to forget.

It wasn’t random.

Prosecutors would later say it was Day 63 of a murder plot, engineered not by a stranger in the shadows, but by the woman waiting behind his front door: his wife, Veronica Ashford-Breerlin.

To her, the email that started it all wasn’t just a corporate update.

It was a dollar amount.

It was an opportunity.

It was a number with six zeros:
$1,000,000 in employer-backed life insurance.

And the man who earned it.

A Husband Built for Stability

To understand how this case detonated public opinion and divided legal experts, you have to start with the man at the center of it.

Nathaniel James Breerlin was born in Albany, New York, in 1985, the middle of three children in a working-class household.

His father, Frank, worked construction.
His mother, Marianne, taught third grade.

There was never much extra, but there was always enough. They paid their bills, packed school lunches, bought second-hand Little League gear, and taught their kids the same rule over and over:

“You don’t borrow what you can’t pay back. You don’t take what you didn’t earn.”

Nathaniel absorbed it all.

He was the kid who kept his sneakers clean, who saved gift money instead of spending it, who balanced a paper-route notebook like a miniature accountant. In high school, he wasn’t the funniest, richest, or most popular, but he was dependable. If he said he’d be somewhere at 7:00, he was standing outside at 6:55.

After graduating near the top of his class, Nathaniel attended State University of New York, majoring in accounting. He was the guy who actually read the syllabus, knew every deadline, and could explain compound interest at a party if anyone was unlucky enough to ask.

By his early 30s, he’d done what a lot of Americans dream about but rarely pull off:

Senior consultant at a Manhattan financial consulting firm
$185,000 annual income
Consistently saving 30% of his pay
A carefully built investment portfolio approaching $400,000
Weekends spent training for marathons, not partying

Friends describe him as “boring in the best way.”
Steady. Predictable. A long-term guy in a short-term world.

He wasn’t flashy. He didn’t drive a sports car or wear a watch that cost more than his first car. He cooked, did his own laundry, and made a chicken parmesan his friends still talk about.

In other words, he was exactly the type of man someone like Veronica Ashford had been waiting for.

Not a soulmate.

A target.

A Childhood that Turned Money into Obsession

If Nathaniel represented stability, Veronica represented hunger.

Born in Queens in 1988, Veronica grew up in a two-bedroom apartment that always felt one bill away from disaster. Her father cycled through small businesses that never worked; her mother held down a department-store job that barely kept the family afloat.

From their living room window, Veronica could see something that haunted her: other families — wealthier ones — stepping out of town cars, carrying shopping bags, returning from vacations.

At eight years old, she asked her mother the question that, according to her sister, defined the rest of her life:

“Why can’t we have nice things?”

When she was 12, her father’s latest venture collapsed. The family almost lost the apartment. Collection notices appeared. Phone calls came at all hours. Veronica listened from the hallway as her parents argued in low, scared voices about money they didn’t have.

For a lot of kids, that’s where the fear starts.

For Veronica, it’s where something else started: calculation.

By her teens, a pattern had formed:

She dated boys with cars, not bikes.
She preferred the guy whose parents had a business over the one with a part-time job.
When the money or status dried up, so did her interest.

At 14, she made a pact with her then-10-year-old sister, Lily:

“We’ll never be poor again.”

Lily thought it meant working hard, going to college, building careers.

Veronica meant something different.

Early Relationships: Practice Runs

In high school and college, Veronica honed a particular skillset: romantic leverage.

Her first serious boyfriend was a senior whose family owned several car dealerships. When he told her he was choosing an affordable state school over an expensive private university, her attitude shifted. Within weeks, the relationship was over.

In college, it was Derek Patterson, an engineering student from a wealthy family. They were together for 14 months — long enough for her to become a fixture in his social circle, long enough for his friends to start warning him.

“She’s high-maintenance, man.”
“She likes your dad’s money more than your personality.”

Derek eventually ended it, telling a roommate:

“She wants a bank account, not a boyfriend.”

He had no way of knowing that years later, that same woman would drag him into a murder plot that would land him in prison.

After graduation, Veronica bounced between entry-level marketing jobs and a string of boyfriends who had one thing in common: they all made significantly more money than she did.

The pattern was always the same:

Charm and intensity at the beginning.
Escalating demands — better restaurants, better gifts, better apartments.
Withdrawal and contempt when the spending flattened out.
A clean break when there was nothing left to gain.

By the time she was 27, Veronica had refined what she wanted and how she planned to get it.

She didn’t just want comfort.

She wanted guaranteed security.
And security, in her mind, didn’t come from building savings — it came from attaching herself to someone who already had them.

That’s when she found the man she later called “the ticket.”

“Accidentally” on Purpose: The Coffee Shop Meet-Cute

On paper, it was a meet-cute straight out of a romantic comedy.

June 2015.
A busy Manhattan coffee shop near Nathaniel’s consulting office.

He walked in for a client meeting, laptop bag over his shoulder, folder in hand. She stood near the pickup counter. As he passed, her cup “slipped,” splashing coffee across his documents.

She apologized, mortified, grabbing napkins, offering to pay for new copies. He brushed it off, smiled, told her it was no big deal. They started talking. He was polite, a little shy. She was warm, a little flustered, effortlessly charming.

He walked out thinking he’d met someone by chance.

It wasn’t chance.

Later, investigators pulled security footage and transaction logs from that café.

Veronica didn’t live or work nearby. Her office was six blocks away, with three closer coffee options. Yet she’d been in that same café 14 times in the month before the “accident,” often at roughly the same time Nathaniel stopped in before meetings.

She wasn’t just getting coffee. She was studying a routine.

By their first official date — a modest Italian dinner in Little Italy that Nathaniel chose because it fit his budget — Veronica already knew his job title, approximate salary range, and employer benefits structure. She’d looked up the consulting firm. She understood roughly what senior associates earned.

Every question she asked about his career and future goals felt organic to him.

It was a checklist to her.

“Do you see yourself staying in consulting long-term?”
“How do bonuses work for you guys?”
“Are there partner tracks?”

Nathaniel thought he’d found someone who shared his obsession with planning and stability. He told his friend Oliver:

“She gets it, man. She actually cares about saving and security.”

She cared. Just not in the way he thought.

Phase One: Gain His Trust, Study His Wallet

The first year of their relationship looked, from the outside, almost ideal.

Veronica played the part perfectly:

She offered to split bills, at least at first.
She showed interest in his marathon training, even showing up at the finish line with handmade signs.
She praised his discipline with money.

Behind closed doors, her language with her sister was different.

According to Lily, in statements later provided to investigators, Veronica referred to Nathaniel as “the ticket” from almost day one.

“He’s the ticket out,” she texted.
“He’s safe. He’s predictable. He’ll never cheat, and he’ll never leave.”

By Christmas 2015, Veronica was sitting around the Breerlin family table in Albany.

Nathaniel’s mother thought she was “sweet, but… something in her eyes.”
His brother noticed how quickly conversations drifted toward Nathaniel’s work, his bonuses, his long-term plans.

“You’re lucky,” Veronica said more than once that holiday. “You’ve really built something.”

She meant it.

She just hadn’t built any of it herself.

Moving In, Moving Up, and Moving the Goalposts

About eight months in, Veronica floated what sounded like a romantic next step:

“We’re basically at your place all the time. Why don’t we just move in together?”

Nathaniel’s existing apartment was a practical two-bedroom in a decent neighborhood — about $3,200 a month. Nothing fancy, but clean, safe, and affordable, given his income.

That wasn’t enough for Veronica.

“You work this hard,” she told him, “and you’re still living like a grad student. We should get something that reflects where you are in life.”

“Something” turned out to be a high-end place at $5,800 a month.

Nathaniel hesitated. She pushed.

When he worried about cost, she reframed it as a question of affection:

“Don’t you love me enough to give us a nice home?”

It was the first of many times she weaponized his love against his better judgment.

He signed the lease.
He picked up extra consulting work.
He started clocking 60-hour weeks to keep up.

Friends like Oliver watched, uneasy.

“You used to be proud of saving, man,” Oliver told him over beers. “Now every time I see you, you look fried.”

Nathaniel brushed it off.

“She deserves nice things. I can handle it.”

The Engagement: $18,000 on Her Finger, Debt on His Back

By spring 2017, Nathaniel had convinced himself this was it. He was 32. She was 29. They’d been together nearly two years. Flaws aside, he believed love meant working through problems, not walking away from them.

He spent six months saving for an engagement ring.

His original budget: $8,000–$10,000.
Veronica’s “casual” Instagram likes and forwarded links: $15,000 and up.

He broke his own rule and stretched to $18,000.

On a rooftop in Manhattan, with the skyline spread out behind them, he proposed. She said yes through tears, and that night she texted her sister:

“Got the ring. Phase one complete.”

Wedding planning was where the financial abuse sharpened into something unmistakable.

Nathaniel suggested a $30,000 budget, which was already generous given his other obligations.

By the time the reception lights dimmed on their October 2017 Hudson Valley estate wedding, the bill had ballooned to $87,000:

$8,000 designer dress
200 guests
Expensive venue, catering, open bar
Live band because, as Veronica put it, “We’re not doing a cheap DJ.”

Nathaniel drained savings and took out a loan to cover the gaps. When his family couldn’t contribute much, Veronica made small, cutting remarks about “people who don’t know how to plan for the future.”

In their wedding video, there’s a moment that would later make prosecutors freeze the frame for a jury:

During the vows, Veronica tweaks the traditional line:

“I promise to cherish you forever, in wealth and in health.”

Everyone laughs.

No one realizes they just heard the most honest sentence she’d speak that day.

Life After “I Do”: The Lifestyle Becomes the Leash

If Nathaniel thought the spending would ease once the wedding was over, he was wrong.

The honeymoon — a $22,000 trip to the Maldives — was supposed to be the last big splurge. Instead, it was the start of a new baseline.

Back in New York, Veronica began pushing again.

The $5,800 apartment? “Too cramped.”
She wanted the Upper West Side — and she wanted it in one of the “good buildings.”

Rent jumped to $8,500 a month, swallowing 55% of his take-home pay.

When he balked, she delivered the line that, in hindsight, captures the entire marriage:

“Then make more money.”

So he did.

He took more clients. Worked more nights. Skipped more runs.

Health slipped. Stress built. The man who once prided himself on balance was now chasing the income needed to prop up a life Veronica curated and he financed.

Then came the car.

They lived in Manhattan. Nathaniel liked the subway and hated traffic. But Veronica “needed” a luxury SUV.

“Everyone at my office has one,” she complained. “You’re telling me the man I married can’t provide a decent car?”

The lease: $1,200 a month, on top of parking and insurance.

The spending became a treadmill he couldn’t get off:

Designer shopping sprees: $3,000–$5,000 a month
Regular $300–$500 dinners
Spa days
Furniture upgrades

Debt climbed toward $45,000.
Savings fell from $400,000 to $180,000 in less than two years.

When her sister Lily quietly asked if maybe she was pushing too hard, Veronica’s answer was chillingly simple:

“He can afford it. That’s what husbands are for.”

The Email That Turned a Greedy Wife into a Would-Be Killer

If the marriage had stayed at financial abuse and emotional manipulation, this story would still be tragic.

But on August 15, 2019, something arrived in Nathaniel’s inbox that turned greed into a motive for murder.

It was routine, corporate, and exactly the kind of thing he usually skimmed and filed away:

Subject: Annual Benefits Review – Life Insurance Coverage Update

He never saw it. He’d rushed out that morning, late for a meeting, leaving his phone on the kitchen counter.

Veronica did see it.

Standing in their high-end kitchen, in an apartment they couldn’t really afford, she opened the email and read the line that changed everything:

Because of Nathaniel’s recent promotion to senior consultant, his employer-provided life insurance had automatically increased.

New death benefit: $1,000,000.
Beneficiary: Spouse – Veronica Breerlin.

Building security cameras show Veronica leaving the apartment at 8:47 p.m. and returning 36 minutes later. Where she went, no one knows for sure.

What is certain is what she did after she got back.

Within hours, at 2:34 a.m. on August 16, her search history lit up with a new set of queries:

“How long after death can life insurance be claimed?”
“Life insurance payout spouse no suspicion”
“Do police investigate all deaths”
“Accidental death versus murder investigation difference”

The shift was immediate and unmistakable.

Sometime between that email and that first late-night search, her husband stopped being a person in her mind.

He became a payout.

He became a solution.

He became a million-dollar problem that needed to die.

PART 2 – 63 Days to Murder: Dark Searches, a Burner Phone, and a Hallway Ambush

By the time the sun came up on August 16, 2019, the shape of Veronica Breerlin’s future had changed.

Not outwardly.

To Nathaniel, nothing seemed different.
He kissed her goodbye, grabbed his briefcase, and ran for the subway.

But his laptop, his email, and — most importantly — his employer benefits had just turned his wife into something far more dangerous than a high-maintenance spouse.

Inside her head, a clock had started.

Not a countdown to an anniversary, a vacation, or a baby.

A countdown to his death.

From Late-Night Curiosity to Cold-Blooded Planning

The first search could have been dismissed as morbid curiosity:

“How long after death can life insurance be claimed?”

The second could not:

“Life insurance payout spouse no suspicion”

Veronica wasn’t googling grief.

She was googling logistics.

For the next several days, the pattern intensified. Always late at night. Always when Nathaniel was asleep, exhausted from the 60-hour weeks he worked to support the very lifestyle that was now being used to justify his execution.

Her search history read like a roadmap to murder:

“Do police investigate all deaths”
“Accidental death vs homicide investigation”
“Insurance fraud spouse death how often caught”

By August 17, curiosity gave way to tactical research:

“Home invasion statistics New York”
“Random shooting survival rate”
“Gun purchase without license NY”

Then, more chillingly specific:

“How many shots to ensure death”
“Where to shoot someone in back to kill instantly”
“Gunshot back recovery chances”

On August 20, at 11:47 p.m., she manually cleared her browser history.

She didn’t realize that forensic teams, months later, would recover every query.

To her, wiping the browser was like wiping her conscience.

To detectives, it was a neon arrow pointing toward intent.

The Burner Phone and the Double Life in Plain Sight

Planning a murder in 2019 without leaving a digital footprint is nearly impossible.

Veronica tried anyway.

On August 21, building security cameras captured her leaving the Upper West Side apartment and taking the subway downtown — not toward her office, but toward Brooklyn.

There, cameras at an electronics store recorded her buying a prepaid phone. She paid in cash. No loyalty card. No email receipt. Just a locked jaw, sunglasses, and the tense impatience of someone who wants to be untraceable.

That burner phone would become the spine of the conspiracy.

Over the coming months, it would connect her to:

An unidentified number pinging off cell towers in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx
A man she hadn’t seen since college: Derek Patterson
A schedule — Nathaniel’s schedule — that she studied like a blueprint

Meanwhile, at home, she slipped back into her role.

To Nathaniel, the next 72 hours after that fateful email felt like a miracle.

The wife who’d recently seemed distant and irritable turned suddenly affectionate. She cooked his favorite meals again. She initiated intimacy after weeks of coldness.

He told his best friend, Oliver:

“I think we’re turning a corner. Things feel… good again.”

He didn’t know that the night she made his favorite chicken parmesan, she’d already been searching:

“Acting normal after trauma tips”
“How to cry on command”

She wasn’t reconciling.

She was rehearsing.

“We Should Start a Family” – A Future He Believed In, a Deadline She Heard

In September, with the holidays coming and his savings bruised but not broken, Nathaniel began thinking about the future again — the future he thought he was building with his wife.

On September 14, over dinner at home, he said the words that would make her accelerate the timeline.

“I’ve been thinking… maybe it’s time we started a family.”

He envisioned two kids. Soccer practice. College funds. Stability.

Veronica heard something else:

Pregnancy
More scrutiny
More financial responsibility
A delayed or complicated insurance claim if she waited too long

She smiled anyway.

“That sounds perfect,” she said.

That same night, the burner phone lit up:

10:18 p.m. – Text to unknown number:
“He’s talking about kids now. Need to move faster.”

This is where the story shifts from emotionally abusive marriage to full-blown conspiracy.

Rehearsing the Crime Scene

October was about logistics.

Her searches refined:

“Life insurance investigation timeline after death”
“Family reaction to sudden death how to behave”
“Spouse death notification process employer”

She started paying closer attention to Nathaniel’s routine:

What time he left for work
Whether he walked or took the subway
When he got home
Which neighbors were usually around at different times

She studied the building itself:

Angles of the hallway security cameras
The location of the stairwells
The blind spots not visible on video

On October 20, her sister Lily stopped by.

She found Veronica at the kitchen table, staring not at her own calendar, but at Nathaniel’s work calendar, open on his laptop.

“Why do you have his schedule?” Lily asked.

Veronica didn’t miss a beat.

“I’m planning a surprise for him,” she said. “Don’t be nosy.”

Lily felt a flicker of unease. The big sister who once defended her on playgrounds now felt… unfamiliar. Harder. Sharper.

She pushed the feeling down.

Later, she would tell detectives:

“I saw the signs. I just never imagined murder.”

The Cash, the Accomplice, and the Final Rehearsal

In early November, things moved from planning to execution.

Phone records from the burner show:

Multiple calls to the same unknown number across several days
Patterns of contact clustered around late evenings when Nathaniel was working

On November 10, they spoke for nearly 17 minutes.
No one knows exactly what was said, but within 48 hours, the money moved.

On November 12, Veronica spent the day in motion.

ATM cameras captured her at three different machines across Manhattan, withdrawing a total of $15,000 in cash. The withdrawals were structured to avoid automated flags — none too large, but together a significant amount.

In security footage near the last ATM, a man appears:

White
Mid-30s to 40
Work boots, worn jacket, construction-style clothing
Constantly scanning the street, fidgeting

Veronica walks into the frame. They do not hug. They do not linger.

She hands him a thick envelope.
He pockets it.
They walk away in opposite directions.

The official narrative of that envelope — from Derek later, under questioning — would go like this:

Veronica didn’t say “kill him.”

She said:

“I need him scared. I need him taught a lesson. Two shots in the back. Nothing messy. Nothing obvious. You’ll get the rest when it’s done.”

But the searches on her laptop told a different story. She wasn’t planning to scare anyone.

She was planning a death she hoped would look like the terrible but simple headline:

“Man shot in random hallway robbery.”

November 14, 2019 – Two Paths Toward the Same Door

The day that almost ended Nathaniel’s life started out dull.

His routine, preserved in digital trail and eyewitness accounts, reads like any overworked Manhattan professional’s Thursday.

6:45 a.m. – Alarm.
Short run, slower than his pre-debt-marathon days.
Quick shower.
Coffee at home, made by Veronica — an unusual gesture that he read as affection and detectives later read as choreography.

“Late meeting tonight,” he told her, checking his phone.
“Might be home around 7:30.”

“I’ll wait for you,” she answered, kissing him lightly.
“Be safe.”

He left, thinking he was coming home to a wife and dinner.

She stayed, thinking she was counting down the last hours of his life.

Nathaniel’s day was documented by:

Office keycard swipes
Emails sent
A lunch receipt with his best friend Oliver

“You seem happy,” Oliver told him. “Considering everything.”
“Life is good,” Nathaniel said. “Really good.”

At 5:30 p.m., he wrapped up work. At 6:15, his MetroCard was recorded entering the subway system.

At 7:28 p.m., a corner store camera filmed him buying white roses — Veronica’s favorite.

The receipt was timestamped 7:29 p.m.

While he moved through this predictable routine, Veronica’s day looked very different.

At 9:00 a.m., building cameras recorded her leaving the apartment.
At 9:15, her cell phone went dark.

No calls. No texts. No GPS pings.
Nearly 10 hours of digital silence.

For someone who lived on her phone, friends later said, that kind of blackout was deeply out of character.

At 6:45 p.m., her phone came back online — pinging from the cell tower nearest their building.

By 6:47, neighbor accounts and video place her inside the apartment.

Whatever she’d been doing all day, by early evening she was exactly where she wanted to be:

Inside the home.
Near the front door.
Out of the camera’s line of sight.

The Ambush in the Blind Spot

At 7:31 p.m., lobby cameras captured Nathaniel entering the building.

He looked tired, but content, balancing the briefcase and the flowers. He nodded to the doorman, pressed the elevator button, and rode up to the eighth floor.

The hallway camera — fixed, low-resolution, capturing only a segment of the corridor — picked him up at 7:33 p.m. walking toward Apartment 8D.

In one hand: the bouquet of white roses.
In the other: his keys.

He slowed as he approached the door, glancing down to find the right key.

He never reached it.

From the blind spot near the stairwell — an alcove just outside the camera’s frame — a figure waited.

Later, that figure would be identified as Derek Patterson, the desperate former boyfriend whose life had spiraled into addiction and petty crime.

But on the tape, you never see him.
You see only his work.

The first shot came at 7:33:14 p.m.

The bullet entered Nathaniel’s right shoulder blade, shattering bone and spinning him forward. The flowers exploded out of his hand, scattering white petals across the carpet in a spray that crime scene photos would later capture with disturbing clarity.

His briefcase dropped with a metallic thud.

Instinct made him try to turn, to see what hit him.

The second shot came within three seconds.

It entered his lower back, near the left kidney, tearing through tissue before lodging dangerously close to his spine.

He hit the floor.

A dark stain began to spread beneath him.

Out of frame, the shooter bolted toward the stairwell, taking the escape route Veronica had explained, one that avoided the elevator cameras but left behind something no professional hitman would ever allow:

Two spent 9mm shell casings, gleaming on the carpet.

For nearly 30 seconds, nothing else moved.

No doors opened.
No neighbors appeared.
No wife rushed out.

The only evidence of life on that footage is the slow, agonizing crawl of a wounded man dragging himself closer to the door of the home he thought was safe.

At 7:35 p.m., he reached it and managed a weak knock — more a thud of his hand against wood than a coherent sound.

It might have been what saved him.

The Wife in the Doorway

At 7:36:43 p.m., the door of 8D finally opened.

The camera, positioned near the elevator, captured a jagged frame through the doorway: Veronica dropping to her knees, grabbing at Nathaniel, her mouth open in a scream.

On audio recovered from 911:

She sounds hysterical.
Her voice cracks. Words rush together.

“My husband! He’s been shot! There’s blood everywhere! Please, please, hurry!”

The dispatcher tries to calm her.

“Ma’am, is he breathing?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, there’s so much blood—”

In the background, almost inaudible, you can hear it:

A wet, choking cough.

Nathaniel was still alive.

To detectives later, what stood out about that call wasn’t the hysteria. It was the timeline.

About 30 seconds between the shots and her opening the door.
Then another 43 seconds between opening the door and dialing 911.

In a life-or-death situation, 73 seconds is a lifetime.

What was she doing in that gap?
Why didn’t the door fly open the moment the shots rang out?

Neighbor Patricia Montgomery, 67, from nearby Apartment 8B, told police:

“I heard two loud pops — like fireworks but sharper. Then… nothing. Maybe half a minute. Then I heard her door open and screaming.”

It was one of several details that didn’t sit right with the lead detective, Sarah Rivera.

But in those first chaotic minutes, the official narrative was simple:

Husband shot in his hallway.
Unknown assailant fled.
Wife discovered him and called 911.

At 7:42 p.m., officers arrived.
At 7:44, paramedics followed.

They found:

Two gunshot wounds
Weak, thready pulse
Blood soaking the hallway carpet
Veronica covered in his blood, sobbing, holding his hand

She rode in the ambulance to Mount Sinai Hospital, clutching his wedding ring and her phone.

By 8:14 p.m., surgeons were cutting into Nathaniel’s back, fighting to repair what bullets and greed had torn apart.

In the waiting room, surrounded by his family, Veronica wept.

She called friends. She called his office. She called her sister.

She said all the right things.

What she didn’t say — not once, according to those who were there — was:

“Who did this?”
“Why would someone shoot my husband?”

Shock can manifest in strange ways, experts later cautioned.

But to Detective Rivera, one thing about Veronica’s reaction stood out:

She seemed devastated.

She did not seem surprised.

A Detective’s Suspicion

In those first 24 hours, the case was technically open but directionless.

No clear suspect.
No apparent motive.
No sign of forced entry.

On paper, it was a textbook “attempted robbery/assault” case.

But Rivera, a veteran of domestic-violence and homicide units, had seen enough to know something smelled off.

“A professional hit?” she told her partner, Detective James Campbell.
“They don’t miss vital organs from eight feet away. They don’t leave shell casings. And they sure as hell don’t pick a hallway with cameras unless someone inside that home is helping them.”

Still, suspicion wasn’t evidence.

Not yet.

So while surgeons worked to keep Nathaniel breathing, Rivera started her own kind of surgery:

On their finances
On their digital lives
On the marriage everyone thought they understood

What she was about to uncover would turn a hallway shooting into one of the most chilling cases of spousal betrayal-for-profit New York had seen in years.

And at the center of it all was a simple, devastating truth:

The man lying in a hospital bed believed his wife saved his life.

He would soon learn she nearly ended it.

PART 3 — The Conspiracy Unravels, the Confrontation Turns Deadly, and the Jury Delivers Its Verdict

When Nathaniel Breerlin woke up in the ICU after four surgeries, his world existed inside a narrow frame of pain, machines, and medications strong enough to blur memory. He didn’t remember the shooter. He didn’t hear footsteps. He couldn’t explain why two bullets had torn into his back outside his own apartment door.

But Detective Sarah Rivera wasn’t satisfied with “random hallway attack.”

And she wasn’t buying the grieving-wife performance.

Because the deeper she looked, the clearer the motive became:

$1,000,000 life insurance
Crushing debt
A wife whose spending far exceeded her means
And research into murder — starting the day the insurance policy increased

Rivera followed the money first.

What she found wasn’t marital stress.

It was financial catastrophe disguised as lifestyle.

Credit card balances near $45,000.
A personal loan of $30,000.
Rent at $8,500 per month swallowing Nathaniel’s income whole.
Designer purchases. Luxury SUV payments. Weekly restaurant charges.

Then came the digital forensics report — and it changed everything.

Hidden beneath cleared browser history were the searches that made the case shift from “possible robbery” to premeditated murder conspiracy.

There it was.

Timestamped.

Dated.

Undeniable.

All beginning within hours of the insurance email.

The prosecutor would later say:

“The internet became the diary of a killer.”

And he wasn’t exaggerating.

The Shooter Gets a Name

The burner phone found hidden in Veronica’s closet became the golden thread.

FBI analysts traced call patterns. One number appeared repeatedly — a number bouncing between Brooklyn and Queens.

They matched that number to a man who used to be part of her life:

Derek Patterson.

Her college boyfriend.

Now unemployed.

Addicted.

Living in a halfway house.

And very, very broke.

When detectives sat him down on March 19, 2020, Derek held out for as long as he could.

Then the façade cracked.

The confession came in a flood.

He said:

Veronica contacted him in September 2019
She promised him $20,000
She gave him $15,000 cash upfront
She provided the 9mm handgun
She mapped the stairwell blind spot
She told him the exact time Nathaniel came home
She instructed him to fire twice and leave

He claimed she said it was “to scare him.”

But his tone made it clear he knew exactly what she wanted.

And then came the detail that froze detectives:

She stopped answering his calls when Nathaniel survived.

He spent months trying to reach her.

By February 28, 2020 — the night everything imploded — she called him back, furious.

According to Derek:

“She said the insurance company was getting suspicious.
She said he was supposed to die.
She told me to finish the job.”

This call happened minutes before Nathaniel overheard her whispering in the living room.

The same call that led to the confrontation.

The same confrontation that ended with Veronica dead.

“He Was Supposed to Die”

Imagine waking up every night screaming from pain — nerve damage in your shoulder, a bullet still lodged near your spine — but still believing your wife saved you.

Imagine looking into her eyes and trusting her again.

Then imagine hearing her say:

“I can’t believe he survived two shots.”

That’s what happened on February 28, 2020.

Nathaniel pretended to be asleep.

He heard her talking in hushed tones.

He heard the words that detonated the illusion:

Two shots.
Insurance.
Needs to look natural.
I’ll figure it out.

He stepped into the living room.

Her face drained of color.

She tried to delete her call log.

He grabbed her wrist.

And the mask fell all the way off.

The argument that followed wasn’t about marriage anymore.

It was about life and death.

About betrayal in its most violent form.

The struggle escalated.

She lunged for the phone.

He pulled her back.

She lost her balance.

Her skull struck the sharp edge of a built-in cabinet.

She fell.

Silence swallowed the room.

Blood spread beneath her head.

And just like that —

The woman who had tried to arrange her husband’s murder was dead on her own living-room floor.

Three months and 14 days after the ambush.

A Victim — Or A Killer?

Police arrived minutes later.

They saw:

A dead wife
A bleeding head wound
A traumatized husband covered in blood

They charged Nathaniel with second-degree murder.

Because they didn’t yet know the truth.

He sat in a cell repeating the same four words:

“Check her phone. Please.”

Detectives did.

And the story flipped.

Completely.

The Case Against Veronica

Digital forensics showed:

Life-insurance policy became $1M
Browser searches for murder
Burner-phone call logs with Derek
ATM withdrawals totaling $15,000
Multiple meetings caught on camera
Insurance claim filed two weeks after shooting
Complaints about delay in payout

Her sister Lily confirmed:

Veronica called Nathaniel “the ticket”
She said “two bullets should have done it”
She was terrified Nathaniel might find out

The State concluded:

This wasn’t passion.
This wasn’t panic.
This was profit-driven murder-for-hire.

Only the victim didn’t die.

And when the conspiracy began collapsing, Veronica started planning Attempt Number Two.

That’s when fate — and physics — stopped her.

The Trial: Who Killed Whom?

By the time the courtroom doors opened in October 2020, the media had christened it:

“The Life-Insurance Marriage Murder Case.”

The jury had to answer one question:

Was Veronica’s death:

A murder?
Self-defense?
Or a tragic accident during a life-or-death struggle?

Prosecutors presented:

Derek’s testimony
The burner phone
The insurance documents
Browser searches
The ATM footage
The recorded timeline of the shooting

They argued:

“This man did not kill his wife.
He survived her killing him.”

The defense argued:

“He panicked. He pushed. She fell.
That’s not murder. That’s physics.”

The jury agreed.

Nathaniel was acquitted.

He walked free.

But free didn’t mean whole.

It meant:

Bankrupt
Traumatized
Permanently injured
Jobless
Alone

The million-dollar policy that inspired the plot was voided for fraud.

No one got the money.

Derek went to prison.

Veronica went to the morgue.

And Nathaniel went back to a life rebuilt from rubble.

The Aftermath: A Life Saved — But Not Repaired

Today, Nathaniel lives quietly.

He works as a bookkeeper.

His shoulder will never fully heal.

The bullet still sits near his spine — too risky to remove.

He wakes from nightmares he can’t outrun.

And he asks himself the question no judge or jury can ever answer:

Did she ever love me at all?

He once said in an interview:

“For two years, I thought I was building a marriage.
Really, I was financing my own murder.”

That’s the kind of truth you don’t recover from.

You just learn to live beside it.

The Lesson Nobody Wants to Learn

Experts now cite this case when teaching about:

Financial abuse
Domestic manipulation
Insurance-motivated homicide

Because this wasn’t a crime of passion.

It was a crime of accounting.

Red flags were everywhere:

Sudden large insurance policies
Spouses obsessed with money
Isolation
Escalating demands
Browser history full of “accidental death” research
Burners and cash withdrawals

And the darkest truth?

It often isn’t strangers who see your life as a dollar figure.

It’s the person who shares your bed.

The person who says,

“I love you.”