Some might have heard of this case but
if you haven`t I have to tell you I have seen and heard of it from two sources
so it must be true……..mustn`t it??????? For those who have served on jury...this
one is something to think about...Just when you think you have heard
everything!! Do you like to read a good murder mystery? Not even Law and Order
would attempt to capture this mess. This is an unbelievable twist of fate!!!
Are you sitting comfortably boys and girls and then I`ll begin.
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 10-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.
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 6 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 for 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 10 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.
I’m sorry to break it to you, but it false, it was written by Don Harper Mills, where he did tell this story at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.
ReplyDelete“I made up the story in 1987 to present at the meeting, for entertainment and to illustrate how if you alter a few small facts you greatly alter the legal consequences. In 1994 someone copied it on to the Internet. I was told it had already garnered 200,000 enquiries on the Net. In the past two years I’ve had around 400 telephone calls about it — librarians, journalists, law students, even law professors wanting to incorporate it into text books.”
I suppose it`s the old story; if it sounds too good to be true it is too good to be true but a little disappointing all the same
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