In 1994 at the annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science,AAFS.

The President Dr Don Harter Mills astounded his audience with legal complications of a bizarre death.

On March 23, 1994 a medical officer examined the body of Ronald Opus.

He concluded that Mr Opus had died as a result of a shotgun wound to the head.

Mr Opus had jumped from the top of a ten strory building intending to commit suicide. He had 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 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.

Ordinarily 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.

The fact that Mr Opus was shot on the way to certain death, but probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.

In the room on the ninth floor, where the shotgun blast eminated, was occupied by an elderly couple.

They were arguing vigorously and the husband was threatening the wife with a shotgun. The husband was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Mr Opus in the head, on his way down.

When one intends to kill a subject “A” but kills subject “B’ by mistake one is guilty of murder of subject “B”

When confronted with the charge of murder the old man and his wife were adamant and both said that they thought the gun was unloaded.

The old man explained that it was a long-standing habit to threaten his wife with an un-loaded shotgun during the course of their arguments. He had no intention to murder her.

Therefore the killing of Mr Opus appeared to be an unfortunate accident; that is, if the gun had been accidently loaded.

The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple’s son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the argument and fatal shooting.

It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son’s financial support and the son, knowing the ponpensity 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 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 comes the exquisit twist.

Further investigations 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 on March 23^rd 1994 he went to the the top of the ten story building and jumped off, only to be killed by a shotgun blast through the ninth story window.

The son had actually murdered himself.

A True Story.