Re: Murder by Suicide -- Fort Cobb Chat

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Date Posted: 20:30:03 06/17/02 Mon
Author: katie
Subject: Re: Murder by Suicide
In reply to: Kodie 's message, "Murder by Suicide" on 11:32:44 01/11/02 Fri

>Murder by Suicide
>
>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. The decedent had jumped
>from the top of a ten story building intending to
>commit suicide. He left a note to that 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 decedent was aware that a safety net
>had been installed just below at 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, "a person 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. Mr.Opus was shot
>on the way to certain death nine stories below, but
>his suicide attempt probably would not have been
>successful because of the safety net. This caused the
>medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his
>hands.
>
>The room on the ninth floor from whence 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. They both said they
>thought the shotgun was unloaded. 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 Mr. 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 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.
>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 both the loss of
>his financial support and 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 had actually murdered himself so
>the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide."

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