a true story

Very BIZARRE but TRUE Story (well, so they say)

This is one you gotta read. A bizarre twist of fate. Not even “Law and
Order” would attempt to capture this mess. This is an unbelievable
twist of fate!!! At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic
Science, AAFS President Dr. Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the
legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story:
On March 23, 1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald
Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. Mr. Opus
had jumped from the top of a ten-storey building intending to commit
suicide. He left a note to the effect indicating his despondency. As he fell
past the ninth floor his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing
through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the
deceased was aware that a safety net had been installed just below the eighth
floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not
have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.

“Ordinarily,” Dr Mills continued, “Someone who sets out to commit
suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be
what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide.” That Mr. Opus
was shot on the way to certain death, but probably would not have been
successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel
that he had a homicide on his hands.

The room on the ninth floor, where the shotgun blast emanated,
was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously and
he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset that, when
he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife and the pellets went
through the window, striking Mr. Opus. When one intends to kill subject “A”
but kills subject “B” in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject “B.”

When confronted with the murder charge the old man and his wife
were both adamant and both said that they thought the shotgun was not
loaded. The old man said it was a long-standing habit to threaten his wife with
then loaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her. Therefore the killing
of Mr.Opus appeared to be an accident; that is, assuming the gun had
been accidentally loaded.

The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old
couple’s son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal
accident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son’s financial
support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun
threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot
his mother. Since the loader of the gun was aware of this, he was guilty of
the murder even though he didn’t actually pull the trigger. The case now becomes
one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

Now comes the exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the
son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the
failure of his attempt to engineer his mother’s murder. This led him to
jump off the ten-storey building on March 23rd, only to be killed by
a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window. The son had actually
murdered himself so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

A true story from Associated Press, Reported by Kurt Westervelt
Mark C.Anderson Director, Materials Handling Room 101A, Park Avenue
Warehouse Bowling Green State University Bowling Green,