Cluedo - Murder She Wrote....

Micheal Wittman

Very funny ( if not sad ) story

Murder Mystery

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 ten-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. "Ordinarily," Dr Mills continued, "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."

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 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 unloaded.
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, if the gun had been accidentally
loaded. The continuing investigation turned up a
witness who saw the old couple's son loading the
shotgun about six 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 murderon
the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

Now comes 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 ten story building on March 23rd,
only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through
the ninth story window. The son had actually murdered
himself, so the medical examiner closed the case as a
suicide.

(A true story from Associated Press, Reported by Kurt Wester)

Repli

That really is going against all odds - the man being in the exact position falling from the roof the split second the shotgun was fired
Technically the elderly man killed opus, the rest is just legal mumbo jumbo

Redleslie2

Magnolia.

smoke.me.a.kipper

hahaha, excellent. very funny, if tragic.

dahamsta

Amusing, but unfortunately untrue.

adam