A good murder mystery...
Do you like to read a good murder mystery? Not even Law & 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-story building intending to commit suicide. He
left a note to the effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past the
9th 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 8th 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 9th 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 the unloaded 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-story
building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through
the 9th story window. The son, Ronald Opus, had actually murdered himself.
So the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.
A true story from Associated Press
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Originally Posted by lady_zana
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