Medicine: Misfire

Carl Herried was a frail old man of 73, but he was still working part-time as a Christmas-card salesman. His wife Elizabeth was only 64, but she was so ill that he had to take her to Wisconsin’s Vernon County Memorial Hospital. One day last week he went to visit her there. He carried a suitcase, which he shoved under her bed. Then he stood back and listened while the doctors and the county judge gave their verdict. Elizabeth, he was told, was incurably ill of heart trouble and drifting into senility. She would have to be confined for the rest of her life in the state mental hospital. The doctors walked out, to let the couple say goodbye.

Carl and Elizabeth had been married for 50 years; he did not see how he could get along without her. He reached down and opened the suitcase, and took out the .32-caliber revolver he had hidden there. He put the muzzle against his wife’s temple and pulled the trigger. The shot killed Elizabeth instantly.

Then Carl put the pistol to his own temple, but three times it misfired. He walked to a nearby sporting-goods store and bought a new box of cartridges. In the basement of a nearby grocery, he reloaded and tried to kill himself once more. Again the gun missed fire.

When the police finally found him, Carl explained that his wife had begged him to end her suffering. He was only sorry that his pistol had let him down before he finished the job. “It wouldn’t fire again,” he said sadly. “I even bought new bullets for it, but it wouldn’t fire again.”