There was an import/export business in Australia that was run by two business partners. Their names were Philip and George. One day when Philip was checking their business account to see if the money from a recent transaction was transferred. But he noticed that the money never reached the account and that all the money that was previously in the account was gone. They had no money in their account. He was very confused and picked up his phone and called his partner George. However the call did not go through and he could not find George anywhere. He was very furious that he had been betrayed by George.

Next thing he knew it, a handful of officers rushed into the company led by George’s wife. She then pointed at Philip and said “My husband was murdered by this man.” The police immediately arrested him. He was very confused and did not even know what had happened. He was indeed very angry at George, but he did not even have any contact with him recently. The police never found George’s corpse.

There was a trial held for the case of George’s murder. Even though there was not sufficient evidence, they ruled him guilty. But since the corpse was never found, they charged him for manslaughter and sentenced him to twenty years in prison.

Twenty years later, Philip was released from prison. He was very unsatisfied and held a grudge. So he set off to search for George. After many months of searching, he finally found him in South Africa. It turned out that before George had disappeared, he was already having an affair with someone. He wanted to divorce his wife, but she did not agree to the divorce. So he decided to just run off with all the money in the account with his mistress and ended up in South Africa.

After many hours of persuasion, George agreed to return to Australia with Philip. Immediately Philip took him to his prosecutor and said “Hey! This is George, the man you accused me of murdering! He is still alive!” He then pulled out a gun and shot George to death in front of everyone.

What exactly happened? There are many questions in the story. Starting from the beginning, why did George take the money from the account and run off with his mistress? The reason was because he was greedy and not satisfied with his wife and needed money to live with her somewhere else. Why did George’s wife accuse Philip of murdering George? Apparently she realized that George ran off with a large sum of money with his mistress. She felt very embarrassed. Therefore she decided to accuse Philip of murdering him so that she could get money from their insurance company. Therefore, she reported the case to the insurance company. Since the insurance company’s policy for payout for murder is substantially lower than the amount for accidental death, they released the information to the media. It became a huge scandal in the news. Everybody knew about it from the news, newspapers, magazines, etc. Why did the prosecuting attorney help George’s wife in accusing him of the murder? He did it for the money and the fame. Why did the court rule him guilty even though there was not enough evidence? That was because the jury and judge were affected by all the rumors spread by the media. They just wanted to get it done and over with to become famous. Why did Philip end up killing George? Because he already served the punishment for it, therefore he might as well commit the crime so he would not feel like he wronged. Also, it was to make the prosecutor regret the mistake. Because Philip felt that if the prosecutor had simply apologized, he would probably forget his own wrong doings in a few days or months when Philip had suffered twenty years in prison. So he killed George so that it would have a large impact on the prosecutor and all of the people that convicted him of murder. That way they could remember it for the rest of their lives.

How could this all have been prevented? Even if George’s wife had lied and the police arrested Philip, it did not necessarily have to turn out that way. If the judge or the jury party had been fair, they would have released him as innocent due to lack of evidence. If they had done that, then Philip would not have been in prison for 20 years for nothing and ended up killing George in front of his face.

Many times in life people make similar mistakes, maybe not as extreme as to murder. But, they relate in terms of the psychologically and responsibility. For example, with George’s wife, she did not want to admit that George left her for another woman due to reputation and shame; she pushed off the blame to Philip. Many people do things to make themselves look good and often times when things go wrong refuse to take the blame. Because of that people make the mistake of pushing the blame on other innocent people. Also because of her greed, she reported it as murder to the insurance company. The insurance company due to the fact they did not want to pay as much for the death, so they gave out information to the media. Since the media was only doing their job, they made a big fuss out of it. That relates to business people that practice business wrongfully to scam others and maximize their profits. As for Philip actually killing George in the end, everyone kept insisting he did it, so he did it. That relates to us because many times when people repeatedly wrongfully accuse someone of doing something that they did not do, they might just get angry and do it. That is with the thought “You said I did so therefore I will do it.” Either that or if people keep saying that someone cannot do something, that person will work twice as hard to prove them wrong.

 In life, many people make mistakes, but just one person can simply change the cycle by doing the right thing. If just the jury or the judge had rightfully done their job, then the whole wrongful cycle would not have occurred. In general all of the selfish deeds that each person had committed, they all share one common point. Everyone ended up hurting someone else because they wanted to either protect themselves or not take responsibility for their own actions.