Better than Agatha Christie A friend sent this to me.

[waynieZ]

This is incredible:


Better than Agatha Christie




Do you like to read a good murder mystery? Not even Law and Order

would attempt to capture this mess. This is an unbelievable twist of

fate! 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.

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 not

loaded. 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,

assuming 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 murder on 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, Ronald Opus, had actually murdered himself. So the

medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.



A true story from Associated Press.

[glassman]

There is an old sayin that goes "truth is stranger than fiction"

But the story does seem far fetched for me, too simple to be that complicated, but ya never know....

[waynieZ]

It ended up being fiction. But it was fun to read.