Guy is a probation officer. Has two friends on his case load. They don't want him to go to work one particular day , for fear that if he does, he'll start a chain of events rolling that'll see one or both back in prison. (Drug testing? Can't remember the exact motive.) So they go to his home address meaning to scare him, late one night. His fear is supposed to make him call in and not go to work the next day, the day they don't want him at the P& P office. He answers the door, one brandishes a pistol, and fires, missing the man. They run away.
Only, it wasn't the probation officer-he'd moved from the apartment about a month earlier! The new tenant is a manager of the meats section of a Price Chopper, and the spit of the PO : White, heavyset, short, dark hair and beard. And the two parolees didn't hit him-but the bullet richochets off a lamp in the apartment foyer or entryway, enters his skull , and kills him, giving him just enough time to stagger back to his kitchen, shout,"What the f--- was that!!???!!" and die in his roommate's arms.
Stupid plot, no? Full of idiotic coincidences...But it happened. My husband's best friend was friends with the murdered man, and called pretty much hysterical, asking my husband to meet her because she was all torn up over this death. She was a cop, and she went to that Price Chopper on her rounds and met the murdered man there, becoming friends with him. No one who saw a photo of the intended victim could believe how much he looked like the murdered man "like brothers" was a common remark. The two friends (who may have been related , too...Cousins?) were picked up and tried, and their plea that they never meant to shoot, much less kill anyone, was accepted , but they both wound up in prison anyway.
This was in KC/Raytown, 1989-1992.
That bit about the ring is a puzzle. I can only account for it--assuming the story is correct--with the theory that the contract killer shot the wrong woman, and then the husband took matters into his own hands and fixed the mistake. But a newspaper article isn't enough to go on, because they are usually riddled with errors.
Pass the donuts, please.