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This message has been passed around a bit, and I do not know the origin.
I believe that it originates in Australia. The case, however, happened in
California (where else?).

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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's the story.

"On 23 March 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and
concluded that he died from a shotgun wound of 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 homicide on his hands.  "The room on the
ninth floor 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 a 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 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 son's name....Ronald Opus

"The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide."
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