"At the 1994 annual awards dinner given by the American Association for Forensic Sciences, AAFS President Don Harper Mills astounded his audience in San Diego with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story. . . ."
So begins one version of a text that has become an enduring Internet favorite since it first began circulating in 1995, cropping up again and again on mailing lists and in Usenet newsgroups, almost always accompanied by the claim that the story is actually true. Even now, years after its online debut, search engines continue to pull up hundreds of websites where "1994's Most Bizarre Suicide" can still be found in more or less its original form.
Is it just another Internet-enhanced urban legend, or is the tale of Ronald Opus based on fact?
Let's investigate.
