Amy bishop serial killer

Steven Taylor, is now desperately back-tracking after the additional evidence Dr. Joyner was asking for has proved Bishop's critics right. I am not sure where I am back-tracking or doubling-down. As faculty you know full well that student evals are to be taken with a grain, if not shaker, of salt. To base much of anything off of one comment on RateMyProfessors.

Beyond that, I have seen nothing that suggests her actions were politically motivated or that her politics were at all relevant which we really don't know what they were in the first place. Even if she was a card-carrying member of the Socialist Party of America, I see no evidence that the murders she committed were about politics. As I note at this post: "And frankly, my initial post was a cut-and-paste job with no original commentary.

Being "Harvard-trained" is almost clue enough as to Professor Bishop's ideology, and while a posting or two at RateMyProfessors is statistically insignificant, that fact alone doesn't preempt discussion of her political positions.

And yes, you downplay RateMyProfessors. Beyond any of that, I still don't see any evidence of a political motive for the attack and I maintain what I say over at my site: trying to make this into partisan politics is petty and cheap. I am not sure how I mis-characterized your first post--I linked to it as example of a reaction to the shooting that tried make a political point.

The title of that post calls her "left wing" which not only assumed facts not in evidence, but irrelevant ones at that. How any of this, by the way, is whining is beyond me. Let me ask directly: do you think that a political motive is evident here?

Don, thanks for the hat tip. Maybe the pipe bomb she sent one of her profs there scared the cowardly craven socialists on that august institution's faculty [of which my brother-in-law is one] into giving her the doctorate.

As I said previously, I don't expect Delahunt to get in any trouble over his slipshod handling of the killing of Bishop's brother. Amy Bishop was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on September 24, In March , Bishop had been denied tenure at the university and was beginning her last semester there per university policy. Due to the attention Bishop has attracted as a result of the shooting, previous violent incidents that were somehow related to her have been reevaluated.

She previously drew the attention of law-enforcement officials in when she shot her brother to death in Braintree, Massachusetts, in an incident officially ruled an accident. She, along with her husband, were questioned in a pipe-bomb incident directed toward her lab supervisor. The day of the shooting, Bishop taught her anatomy and neurosciences class. According to a student in Bishop's class, she "seemed perfectly normal" during the lecture.

She then attended a biology department faculty meeting in Room on the third floor of the Shelby Center for Science and Technology, which houses the UA Huntsville Biology and Mathematics departments. According to witnesses, 12 or 13 people attended the meeting, which was described as "an ordinary faculty meeting. She sat quietly at the meeting for 30 or 40 minutes, before pulling out a 9 mm handgun "just before" p. CST, according to a faculty member. Joseph Ng, an associate professor who witnessed the attack, said: "[She] got up suddenly, took out a gun and started shooting at each one of us.

She started with the one closest to her, and went down the row shooting her targets in the head. According to another survivor, Debra Moriarity, dean of the university's graduate program and a professor of biochemistry, "This wasn't random shooting around the room; this was execution style. After Bishop had fired several rounds, Moriarity said that Bishop pointed the gun at her and pulled the trigger, but heard only a "click," as her gun "either jammed or ran out of ammunition.

Ng said "Moriarity was probably the one that saved our lives. She was the one that initiated the rush. The suspected murder weapon, a 9 mm handgun, was found in a bathroom on the second floor of the building. Bishop did not have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, as required by state law.

She was arrested a few minutes later outside the building. Shortly after her arrest, Bishop was quoted as saying, "It didn't happen. There's no way. They're still alive. Police interviewed Bishop's husband, James Anderson, after it was determined that she had called him to pick her up after the shooting; they did not charge him with a crime. In addition, a neighbor revealed, in later interviews, that he saw the couple leaving their home with duffel bags on Friday afternoon, prior to the shooting.

Anderson revealed that his wife had borrowed the gun used in the shooting, and that he had escorted her to an indoor shooting range in the weeks prior to the incident. Shortly after Bishop's arrest, people at the university's biology department expressed concern to police that she had "booby trapped the science building with a 'herpes bomb'" intended to spread the virus. She had previously worked with the herpes virus while completing her post-doctoral studies, and a novel she wrote described the spread of a virus similar to herpes throughout the world "causing pregnant women to miscarry.

Three faculty members were killed, and three others were injured. Only a few students were present in the building at the time of the shooting, and none were harmed. A memorial service was held at UA Huntsville on Friday, February 19, , with 3, people in attendance. Amy Bishop born: April 24, age 44 at the time of the shooting is married to James Anderson and is the mother of four children.

She grew up in Massachusetts, and completed her undergraduate degree at Northeastern University in Boston where her father, Samuel Bishop, was a Professor in the Art Department. She earned her Ph. Bishop's thesis at Harvard was titled The role of methoxatin PQQ in the respiratory burst of phagocytes , and was pages in length. Her research interests include induction of adaptive resistance to nitric oxide in the central nervous system, and utilization of motor neurons for the development of neural circuits grown on biological computer chips.

She published at least four scientific articles between and as a lead or co-author. She joined the faculty of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alabama UA in Huntsville as an Assistant Professor in and was teaching five courses prior to the shooting. Previously, she was an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

According to a friend and fellow member of a writing group in Massachusetts, Bishop had penned three unpublished novels, one of which featured a female scientist working to defeat a potential pandemic virus, and struggling with suicidal thoughts at the threat of not earning tenure.

She is the second cousin of the novelist John Irving and was a member of the Hamilton Writer's Group while living in Ipswich, Massachusetts in the late s and apparently saw writing as "her ticket out of academia.

Multiple colleagues of Bishop had expressed concern over her behavior. She has been described as interrupting meetings with "bizarre tangents After Bishop's tenure was denied and she learned that this colleague referred to her as "crazy," she filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission EEOC , alleging gender discrimination, with the professor's remark to be used as possible evidence in that case.

The professor did not retract his comments: "The professor was given the opportunity to back off the claim, or to say it was a flippant remark. But he didn't. She did things that weren't normal In , several students say they complained to administrators about Bishop on at least three occasions, saying she was "ineffective in the classroom and had odd, unsettling ways.

The complaints, however, did not result in any classroom changes. Bishop was suspended without pay retroactively on the day of the attack, and later, in a one-paragraph letter dated February 26, , she was fired. Bishop received a letter of termination from Jack Fix, Dean of the College of Sciences, which did not state a reason for doing so. Her termination was effective February 12, the day of the shooting.

As explained by University president Williams, Bishop was denied tenure in March and expected not to have her teaching contract renewed after March She appealed the decision to the University's administration and without reviewing the content of the tenure application itself, they determined that the process was carried out according to policy and denied the appeal.

The faculty meeting that was under way when Bishop opened fire was a routine meeting unrelated to her tenure. Anderson, Bishop's husband, said that the denial of her tenure had been "an issue" in recent months describing the tenure process as "a long, basically hard fight.

She approached members of the University of Alabama System's Board of Trustees, and hired a lawyer who was "finding one problem after another with the process. Bishop had previous encounters with law enforcement officials due to "an outburst or violent act" on her part.

In each instance, she remained "unscathed" and did not come to the attention of the UA-Huntsville administration or other employers. She shot her brother with a shotgun, killing him in , in what was initially ruled an accident based on her mother's testimony and was therefore not charged. In , she and her husband were questioned regarding a letter-bomb incident involving a doctor at a facility at which she had previously been employed.

She was charged with assault after striking a woman in the head during a dispute at a restaurant in , but was never officially found guilty. When she was 21, Bishop fatally shot her year-old brother, Seth Bishop, on December 6, , at their home in Braintree, Massachusetts. The incident, in which Bishop fired at least three shots from a gauge pump-action shotgun one into her bedroom wall, then one into her brother's chest while they were in the kitchen with their mother, and one into the ceiling of a room in her house while fleeing the scene , then later pointed the weapon at a moving vehicle on the adjacent road and tried to get into the vehicle, was classified as an "accident" by Braintree police.

In statements to Braintree police that day, both Amy Bishop and her mother, Judy Bishop, described the shooting as accidental. After a brief inquiry into the incident by the state police in reported in , they repeated the Braintree police department's initial assessment that the shooting was accidental and district attorney Bill Delahunt, later a U. Congressman, decided not to file charges. Detailed records of the shooting had disappeared mysteriously by , Braintree police chief Paul Frazier said on February 13, that "The report's gone, removed from the files.

After speaking with officers involved with the case in , Frazier called the "accident" description inaccurate, and said that then-chief John Polio ordered Bishop released to her mother, a member of the Braintree town meeting who reportedly had demanded to meet with Polio personally after the arrest, instead of being charged for the shooting.

Frazier was not on duty during the incident, but recalled "how frustrated the members of the department were over the release. Frazier's account and the Massachusetts State Police report differ in several key details, including whether Bishop had been arguing with her brother or with her father before the shooting.

On February 16, , it was announced that the files previously declared missing had been located by Braintree officials and turned over to Norfolk County prosecutors. Norfolk County District Attorney William Keating concluded, based upon these files, that probable cause existed in to arrest and charge her for crimes committed after she fled the house. She had taken the shotgun to a nearby auto dealership shop and brandished it at two employees in an attempt to get a car.

She could have been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, carrying a dangerous weapon, and unlawful possession of ammunition. The statute of limitations has expired on each of these charges, and the most serious charge considered in was manslaughter. Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts, has ordered the state police to review their efforts in the investigation saying, "It is critical that we provide as clear an understanding as possible about all aspects of this case and its investigation to ensure that where mistakes were made they are not repeated in the future.

Keating said that recently enlarged crime scene photos from Bishop's bedroom reveal a news article in which a similar crime was reported and that this article may relate to Bishop's intent.

Keating did not identify the specific news article, but The Boston Globe wrote that an internet search revealed that "two weeks earlier, the parents of Patrick Duffy, the actor who played Bobby Ewing on the popular television show Dallas , were killed by an assailant wielding a gauge shotgun, who then held up a car dealership, stole a pickup truck, and fled.

Howe, who retired in and no longer lives in Massachusetts, was the lead investigator for the state police in the Bishop case. He said he looks forward to addressing the judicial inquest into the shooting, and stands by his report and his agreement with the now-deceased Braintree lead investigator, Captain Theodore Buker, that the shooting was accidental. Post a Comment. Browse us for breaking news, missing person alerts, unsolved crimes and cold cases.

Plus explore interviews, photos, case updates and brand new evidence in our ongoing 'Smiley Face Murder' investigation. Never heard of the Smiley Face Killers before? Start here. His obituary in the Huntsville Times said, "He will be remembered as a goofy, adventurous kid that loved taking hikes, watching old movies and borrowing books from his older sisters.

Major US snowstorm, Djokovic visa revoked, child tax credit: 5 things to know Friday. Hong Kong bans transit flights from over countries. Ad Microsoft. Refinance Rates at 2. Calculate your rate now. Full screen. Author James Sullivan's extended family gathers in the back yard of their Billings Road home in Sept.

There are two great uncles in this picture who were veterans. One is Billy Lydon behind umbrella pole , who was the Battle of the Bulge, and the other is Warren Meehan seated far left , who dropped an ice cream machine on a Navy haul line into the ocean.

Sullivan is the baby at back, being harassed by an older cousin.