Mysterious Case of Ronald Opus Once a man named Ronald Opus decided to take his own life by jumping off the top of a 10-floor building. But when a medical examiner received the body, he found that the man had been killed by a shotgun blast to the head WHILE committing suicide. Anyway, in most cases, the situation when a person committed suicide, even though the cause of death might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide. But in this case, there was a safety net had been installed on the 8-floor level to protect window washers from falling. Ronald Opus didn't know about it. As a result, that case could be defined as homicide. A further investigation appeared that the bullet that caused Ronald’s death was actually shot from the room on the 9 floor, which was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. The neighbors told that this couple used to fight all the time. The old man stated that he used to threaten his wife with the gun, but both he and his wife insisted that the shotgun remained unloaded all the time. While investigating the case, the examiner learned that a relative of the old couple saw their son loading the shotgun. It appeared that the old lady had cut off her son’s financial support, so he planned to get rid of his old parents. He loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother and would be jailed. So, during another fight, the old man was threatening his wife with the shotgun. He pulled the trigger, but he completely missed his wife, and the bullet went through the window hitting Ronald at the time when he was committing suicide. And the most interesting part of the story is that their son was in fact Ronald Opus. As a result, the medical examiner closed that case as a suicide. This is one of the famous fictitious stories that first appeared on the Internet in August 1994. It was told by the president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, Dr. Don Harper Mills in 1987 at a banquet for members of that organization to show “how different legal consequences can follow each twist in a homicide inquiry”.