Disguising a Suicide as a Homicide

To the Editor: While reviewing the scientific literature concerning the Materia Medica contained in Sherlock Holmes' adventures, I have fallen upon 2 articles published 2 decades ago in The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. Both articles reported a case of suicide disguised as a homicide, one in Poland and the other in the United States. Correctly, authors pointed out that the modality of the 2 suicides was patterned on that described by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) in The Problem of Thor Bridge, a story published in The Strand Magazine in 1922. However, authors of both articles apparently missed the point, which still remains unfamiliar in the scientific literature, that Conan Doyle did not conceive the storyline of the tale, which instead was modeled on a real case described in 1893 by the Austrian criminal jurist Hans Gross (1847–1925), in his famous compendium of criminal cases collected for the use of magistrates, police officers, and lawyers. A grain merchant, whose business was hopelessly ruined, shot himself on a bridge with a gun tied to a stone with a rope. The moment he fired, he let go off the pistol,