[1020] in Humor
HUMOR: To be or not to be...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (jon davison)
Thu Aug 24 13:36:39 1995
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 95 13:33:11 EST
From: "jon davison" <jon_davison@cchbspub.harvard.edu>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
______________________________ Forward Header __________________________________
Subject: BIZARRE STORY
Author: Brian Kokernak at HBSPG-PO2
Date: 8/24/95 11:55 AM
Mail*Link(r) SMTP Suicide or Homicide?
Bizarro!
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1994's MOST BIZARRE SUICIDE
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 of 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
decendent 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 anyway 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 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 that 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
[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."
