101 Funny Jokes
A true murder story
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. The
decedent
had jumped from the top of a ten story building intending to commit
suicide. He left a note to that 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 decedent was aware that a safety net had been installed just
below
at 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 nine stories below at street level, 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.
The room on the ninth floor from whence 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. They both said they
thought the shotgun was unloaded. 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 Mr. 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 about six weeks prior to the fatal accident. It
transpired that the old lady had cut off her sons 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.
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. Very tidy of him.
(A true story from Associated Press, by Kurt Westervelt)
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