Bizarre Suicide

1994's 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 whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by and
  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 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 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.