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Date:    Mar  1 13:59
From:    firebird
Subject: The World's Most Bizarre Suicide!  (True Story)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given by the American Association for 
Forensic Science, AAFS president Don Harper Mills astounded his audience in 
San Diego with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the 
story:

On 23 March 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and 
concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. The decedent had 
jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide (he 
left a note indicating his despondency). As he fell past the ninth floor, 
his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, which killed 
him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety 
net had been erected at the eighth floor level to protect some window 
washers and that Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide 
because of this.

Ordinarily, Dr. Mills continued, a person who sets out to commit suicide 
ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he 
intended. That Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below 
probably would not have changed his mode of death from suicide to homicide. 
But the fact that his suicidal intent would not have been successful caused 
the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.

The room on the ninth floor whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied 
by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing, and he was threatening 
her with the shotgun. He was so upset that, when he pulled the trigger, he 
completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking 
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 this charge 
the old man and his wife were both adamant that neither knew the shotgun was 
loaded. The old man said it was his long-standing habit to threaten his wife 
with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her, therefore the 
killing of Opus appeared to be an accident. That is, the gun had been 
accidentally loaded.

The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's 
son loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to the fatal incident. 
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. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son 
for the death of Ronald Opus. There was an exquisite twist. Further 
investigation revealed that the son, one Ronald Opus, 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 
23, only to be killed by a shotgun blast through a ninth story window. The 
medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

"Died from a shotgun wound..."

"As he fell past the ninth floor..."


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