I agree with you but I would like to add the possibility of a negligence suit against the park if the incident was ruled accidental. I would hate to think it was a consideration at all, but we all know that it very well may have been.

Most suits are dismissed but there are many that the park has to deal with:


The park is subject to litigation for perceived acts of negligence; an average of 50 claims are filed each year. While most are for small amounts, a man injured in a snowmobile accident outside the park near West Yellowstone filed a claim for $40 million, contesting the medical aid provided by park rangers who assisted U.S. Forest Service employees.

http://www.yellowstonenationalpark.com/sopmanaging.htm

and
http://www.chalatlaw.com/recreation.php

In a winter accident in Yellowstone National Park, a child fell 400 feet to his death. The parents filed a claim for wrongful death, asserting that the park ranger was negligent for failing to close the trail on which the child was snowmobiling. The Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit held that whether to mark or close a trails was a discretionary function, and therefore the National Park Service was immune from liability. See Childers v. United States, 40 F.3d 973 (9th Cir. 1994).


As others have posted, we never will truly know what happened. We won't know the state of mind of either of them at the time. I do know that one was an innocent child (regardless of what transpired) and the other most likely an innocent adult as well. We don't know if the suicide comments were real, hearsay, or jokes taken seriously. We just will never know. I find it inconceivable that the ruling is what actually occured. Not even a possibility in my mind and I refuse to entertain it. Of course, I am pragmatic enough to realize that anything could be the reality.

I chose to believe as others do that an accident occurred and the park came to the wrong conclusion.

Also, accidents, mishaps, and worse are not uncommon at yellowstone (a historical perspective, not a gory book):
http://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217

>>Theories aside - the only fact we know is that a murder suicide ruling by the coroner, in which a parent is accused of murder and suicide, means that the insurance companies will not have to pay any benefits.
>
>Not necessarily true. The possibly relevant issues are:
>
>1) a murderer can't benefit from his crime--irrelevant here (and we don't even know whether there was insurance on Brent).
>
>2) exclusion on benefits in case of a suicide--most often, such exclusions are time-limited, so that someone contemplating suicide can't go out and get insurance that then pays off. We have no idea if that's relevant here.
>
>
>Tamar