[13233] in APO-L
Warning: Bizarre Humour (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Reid Stanley)
Mon Nov 13 01:35:39 1995
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 1995 01:32:27 -0500
Reply-To: Reid Stanley <rstanley@AWOD.COM>
From: Reid Stanley <rstanley@AWOD.COM>
To: Multiple recipients of list APO-L <APO-L@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU>
I just wanted to share this with all of you. It was forwarded to me and
I found it worht a chuckle or two. . .
In Leadership, Friendship, and Service,
Reid Stanley
Public Relations Director, Upsilon Rho
Coordinator, Charleston Alpha Phi Omega Network
Coordinator, Alpha Phi Omega Section 77 Network
Internet Address: rstanley@awod.com
---------- Forwarded message ----------
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 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
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 a 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."
