Story documented by US forensic science

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Here is an actual story that was told by the president of a noted US forensic science body:

On March 23rd 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he had died from a shotgun wound of the head.
The deceased had jumped from the top of a ten storey building intending to commit suicide (he left a note saying so).

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 deceased 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 because of this.

Ordinarily a person who sets out to commit suicide ultimatly succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended. That Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine storeys 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 where the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife.
They were arguing and he was threatening her with a shotgun. He was so upset that, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife and the 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 gun.
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 the murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

There was an exquisite twist.

Further investigation revealed that the son was actually Ronald Opus who had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his own attempt to engineer his mother's murder.
This led him to jump off the ten storey building on March 23rd, only to be killed accidentally by his own father through a window as he fell, with the shotgun he had loaded in order that his father should accidentally kill his mother.

The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide - Shit happens.