A 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 to 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 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 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 one 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, one 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.
W H Y C O P S H A T E Y O U <<<<&l <
-if you have to ask get out of the way-
Have you ever been stopped by a traffic cop and, while he was
writing a ticket or giving you a warning, you got the feeling that
he would just love to yank you out of the car, right through the
window, and smash your face into the front fender?...
