Ronald Opus

Ronald Opus is the subject of a fictional murder/suicide case, often misreported as a true story.
The case was originally told by Don Harper Mills, then president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, in a speech at a banquet in 1987. After it began to circulate on the internet as a factual story and attained the status of urban legend, Mills stated that he made it up as an illustrative anecdote "to show how different legal consequences can follow each twist in a homicide inquiry".
The story first appeared on the Internet in August 1994 and has been widely circulated since, on webpages, in chat rooms, and even print publications. The reprints often include Mills's name and place it at a 1994 event, or attribute it to a supposed Associated Press report of the banquet. Mills expresses little surprise, calling it "a fabulous story" and has fielded numerous inquiries about it over the years.
The incident has been adapted for various media, notably the Paul Thomas Anderson film Magnolia in which the protagonist is reimagined as "Sydney Barringer".

The case

The popular account of the story is told as follows:

In popular culture

The case has appeared in the following media:

In the TV series Homicide, episode 6.11 - "Shaggy Dog, City Goat".
The case was reported as true on Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM in 1995.
Law & Order, in which District Attorney Ben Stone merely offered a hypothetical example of a man who jumped off the Empire State Building because he wanted a ham sandwich and was shot on the way down by someone who thought he was committing suicide.
Law & Order, episode 13.18 - "Maritime" Medical Examiner Elizabeth Rodgers talks briefly about a man who jumped off a building and was shot by a bullet on the way down, the medical examiner did not know whether to rule it as a suicide or homicide.
In Australian TV show Murder Call, in a 1998 episode.
In the 1999 film Magnolia, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, although in this version some parts of the story are changed and several details are added to give more consistency to the plot.
In the CSI: Miami episode "Spring Breakdown", a man was pushed off a building and was shot by a flare gun on the way down.
The video game Hitman: Blood Money includes a news article about a man who committed suicide after failing to kill two Russian exchange students by poisoning their drinks and loading their gun with a bullet in hopes they will shoot each other during a Russian roulette. After failing to do so, he then tried to commit suicide by jumping from the 8th floor of his apartment building but was shot by said students during their Russian roulette game and subsequently died from the shot before falling towards the safety net below.
The first track on the 2013 album Etiquette by Silvery is entitled "The Ronald Opus" and references the story.
Sunday magazine edition of Pakistani newspaper Dunya featured it in its Sunday edition on 26 March 2016.
In Part 6 of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean, an antagonist, Thunder McQueen, was sentenced to prison for murder after trying to commit suicide due to his crippling depression, but ended up misfiring the shotgun he was using which struck a woman who had jumped from the top of the building he was in, resulting in the misfire striking and killing her.