Skydive Murder

Here's a story about a woman who sabotaged the main and reserve chutes of a fellow skydiver who was a rival for the man she loved.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101021/ap_on_re_eu/eu_belgium_parachute_killing

It's tragic that someone would go to that length, but passion drives so many people. Where would mystery writers be without that kind of passion?

As a mystery writer, my interest is in the method. This is a terrible way to die so that makes it interesting from a story standpoint. On the other hand, from a story standpoint, I think this is a cop-out. I considered a method like this when I wrote Drop Dead Zone, which you can read on my website--http://www.marktroy.net. After thinking about it for awhile, I decided it was a trite method (even though there are very few skydiving murder stories). Trite, because it's so obvious and clearly points to another skydiver as the culprit. It would also be clear that the death was no accident, but was premeditated.

It took awhile, but I finally came up with a method that could be construed as an accident, which did in fact happen in the skydive, and which required the murderer to actively lure the victim into a dangerous situation and then precipitate his death.

I won't give it away, but it was a crime of passion.