Brian Peterson looked at the return on his desk. It was cut and dried, the lady died in a car accident in 2010. He looked at the death certificate and saw Laura Holden’s signature at the bottom, he smiled and looked in the desk drawer at the diamond ring he had bought her when he proposed which was on Friday night. He noticed at that point the third contributing cause of death, suicide. He picked up the telephone and called her. “Hi, honey this is Brian, how’s the smartest most attractive coroner doing?” “Flattery will get you everywhere,” Laura cooed. “This is kind of a business call”, Brian said hesitantly. “What’s up?” Laura replied. “I’m looking at a death certificate for Bea Gooding and your signature is on it, could you pull your file on that case?” Brian asked. “Sure”, Laura answered. She pulled the file and came back to the phone, “Brian, yea, it was a single car accident, no witnesses, drove right into a concrete barrier, died of trauma shortly after the accident, never regain consciousness. I put suicide as a possible contributing cause, because single car accidents are almost always suicides. Why are you interested in my autopsy?” Brian cleared his throat. “Its possible, that her suicide could be grounds to assert tax fraud, we’ve never tried it, but it means about $150 Million of difference taxwise”. “Wow”, Laura replied. “The problem is that its only a hunch on my part”, Laura said. “For all I know she could have dozed off, it was late at night, or she could have been blinded by a car light, or dropped something on the floor and reached down to pick it up. How right do you want me to be on this?” Brian thought for a moment and asked, “Did anyone find a suicide note?” “No, not that I am aware of”, Laura replied. “You need to ask the family that question”.

No her daughter was not pregnant. Bea’s attorney filed the Federal Estate Tax return. Her net estate after funeral expenses and debts was $299,985,000. The Estate tax bill was zero since she died in the year 2010. (Nota Bene this is still currently the law which could be changed at any moment). The return was filed with the Internal Revenue Service and marked for prompt assessment. As required by the regulations a copy of the death certificate was appended to the return. (At this point the story could go in two directions – namely if Congress retroactively reimposed an estate tax and the other if Congress did not, we will follow the later assumption). By filing a request for prompt assessment, the Service has nine months to audit the return or the Executor is personally off the hook for the tax.

A minute later a motorist passed by and saw the smoking car and called 911 on her cell phone. She stopped but was afraid to go near the car. Shortly thereafter a trucker came by, pulled over and ran to the vehicle. He looked into the vehicle and saw a grisly scene. There was a woman pinned in the driver’s side, blood dripping from her mouth and she was unconscious. He could not tell if the bottom half of her body was still attached to the top half and there was blood pooling on the floor of the car. He reached in through the smashed side window and put his hand on her neck to feel for a pulse. The skin was cool to the touch, as though, the spirit had departed from the body. He frantically felt the bloody throat before him for a pulse and found none. A policeman, a fire truck, an ambulance all rolled up in about a minute. The paramedic approached the car with his stethoscope to see if there was even a faint pulse for if there was a massive rescue would ensue.