Ronald Opus is the subject of a fictional murder 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".