Morbid Stories
The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal
embedded into the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of
a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it
was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. The lab
finally figured out what it was and what had happened.
It seems that a guy had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet
Assisted Take Off - actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give
heavy military transport planes an extra "push" for taking off from
short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert
and found a long, straight stretch of road. Then he attached the JATO
unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO!
The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the
1967 Impala hit JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles
from the crash site. This was established by the prominent scorched
and melted asphalt at that location. The JATO, if operating properly,
would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy
to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mp and continuing at full power
for an additional 20- 25 seconds. The driver, soon to be pilot, most
likely would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for
dog-fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, basically causing him
to become insignificant for the remainder of the event. However, the
automobile remained on the straight
highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20) seconds before the driver applied
and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick
rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an
additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of 125
feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.
Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable; however, small
fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater and
fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris
believed to be a portion of the steering wheel."
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 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 [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."
From Cape Times, 6/13/96; article title: "Cleaner Polishes Off Patients"
"For several months, our nurses have been baffled to find a dead patient in
the same bed every Friday morning" a spokeswoman for the Pelonomi Hospital
(Free State, South Africa) told reporters.
"There was no apparent cause for any of the deaths, and extensive checks on
the air conditioning system, and a search for possible bacterial infection,
failed to reveal any clues.
However, further inquiries have now revealed the cause of these deaths. It
seems that every Friday morning a cleaner would enter the ward, remove the
plug that powered the patient's life support system, plug her floor polisher
into the vacant socket, then go about her business. When she had finished
her chores, she would plug the life support machine back in and leave,
unaware that the patient was now dead. She could not, after all, hear the
screams and eventual death rattle over the whirring of her polisher.
We are sorry, and have sent a strong letter to the cleaner in question.
Further, the Free State Health and Welfare Department is arranging for an
electrician to fit an extra socket, so there should be no repetition of this
incident. The enquiry is now closed."
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