Murder

this is strange,kinda long but an interesting story.
Do you like to read a good murder mystery? Not even Law and Order would
attempt to capture this.

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, (Reported by Kurt Westervelt)