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Friday, March 24, 2006

I don't care if this email is true or not. (ty J.C.)

In 1994 at the annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science,AAFS. President Dr Don Harter Mills astounded his audience with legal complications of a bizarre death.

On March 23, 1994 a medical officer examined the body of Ronald Opus. He concluded that Mr Opus had died as a result of a shotgun wound to the head. Mr Opus had jumped from the top of a ten story building intending to commit suicide. He had 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 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 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. The fact 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 couple. They were arguing vigorously and the husband was threatening the wife with a shotgun. The husband was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Mr Opus in the head, on his way down.
When one intends to kill subject "A" but kills subject "B' by mistake one is guilty of murder of subject "B". When confronted with the charge of murder the old man and his wife were adamant and both said that they thought the gun was not loaded. The old man explained that it was a long-standing habit to threaten his wife with an un-loaded shotgun during the course of their arguments. He had no intention to murder her. Therefore, the killing of Mr Opus appeared to be an unfortunate 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 argument and fatal shooting. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her Son's financial support and the Son, knowing the pompensity 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 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 investigations 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 on March 23rd 1994. He went to the the top of the ten story building and jumped off, only to be killed by a shotgun blast through the ninth story window. The Son had actually murdered himself.
A True Story?

7 comments:

Barbara Bruederlin said...

That's incredible! I don't care much if it's true or not either, it makes for a great story either way.

Anonymous said...

I saw that on a tv show...It was CSI or Law and Order-
Barb, it must be your day off- Mom told e that you don't want to move to Toronto...but it's 6 degrees and sunny..

Barbara said...

I have not made up my mind about Toronto at all. Mum is just giving you her impression of what I want. I don't know what I want. I look in on Toronto every day now. Still taking it's messure. Still weighing it all up.

Anonymous said...

Hey Barbara! Just so you know, you don't have to have an msn passport to leave a message on my space. You just have to uncheck the use profile information box!

Barbara said...

Monica. I tried it won't let me.
You must sign in using a Microsoft .NET Passport to publish a comment to this website.

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Use my profile information
it wont let me click this box
here are my 5 least fav songs
Muskrat love
Sexual Healing
My humps (Black Eyed Peas)
Afternoon Delight
Donner moi l'oxygen (Celine Dion)
is there a trend in my most disliked songs?

Anonymous said...

Hmmm...well that sucks. I TRIED to make a blog on here but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make links or add pictures or anything so I gave up on it. I'm not computer savvy!

Barbara said...

monica,
it took me a bit to figure that out too. I am still figuring stuff out. The pictures you add through the editor, {ctrl} while you click on the pic icon then it brings you to the pic upload menu. Make your selections on how big and where you want it, then you select a pic from your own computer and upload it.
The links, you have to go into your template and copy paste the html codes, then change address and discription. am I explaining this right? It took me time to figure that out. lots of practice copying and pasting then moving the line in to aline it.