A Good Murder Mystery

[gozza]

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.

[kyro_02]

I thought that was fake when I first read it... I still dunno .. do you have a link ?? good read too

[RG]

: Now that is so screwed up that I believe it. It's gotta be true, no one could make that up. How odd.

[King Nothing]

An oldie but a goodie :

[gozza]

I don't know if its true.....It was sent to me in an email...Clever even if its made up

[Falcon_Phill]

The odds of that happening are pretty slim.

[LTDHO]

That is an ooollddd storey..

Pretty sure it won the darwin awards.

[uranium_death]

Originally Posted by Falcon_Phill

The odds of that happening are pretty slim.

Agreed.

If it did happen, it is a pure fluke.

Unless the murderer/victim/tool is extremely good at writing scripts.

[gozza]

What happened to enjoying a good yarn without worrying about semantics......

[punx_298]

Also turned up on a csi episode a while ago

[Falcon_Phill]

Originally Posted by gozza

What happened to enjoying a good yarn without worrying about semantics......

Because it tries to sound factual at the beginning then says its a true story.

[pb02]

For those wondering the story is false. Here is a snippet of info from the urban legends website which sums it up.

As you might imagine, Dr. Mills has been queried thoroughly and frequently regarding the Opus case since the story broke on the Internet in 1994. In 1997 he came clean to the press about it:

"I made up the story in 1987 to present at the meeting," he told the London Daily Telegraph on March 2, "for entertainment and to illustrate how if you alter a few small facts you greatly alter the legal consequences."