Do you like to read a good murder mystery?



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 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 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 ninth 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.

All's well that ends well, eh?

You just can't make this stuff up

Alan

Sounds like an urban ledgend to me.
The timing would be down to a split second.
The odds are infinity to one.
Good story for TV though.

True or not, it's a lot of fun to read.   Thanks.

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but it's not true.  See the following:

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/opus.htm