02-14-2010, 09:58 AM
Professor Charged in Alabama Campus Shooting Reportedly Killed Brother in 1986
Quote:Saturday, February 13, 2010
An Alabama university professor accused of fatally shooting three colleagues at a faculty meeting this week shot her younger brother dead at their home in the Boston suburbs more than 20 years ago, but records of it are missing, police said Saturday.
Amy Bishop shot her brother in the chest in 1986, Braintree police Chief Paul Frazier said at a news conference. She fired at least three shots, hitting her brother once and hitting her bedroom wall, before police took her into custody at gunpoint, he said.
Before Bishop could be booked, however, the police chief back then called officers and told them to release her to her mother, Frazier said. The shooting of the brother, Seth Bishop, was logged as an accident, but detailed records of the shooting have disappeared, he said.
"The report's gone, removed from the files," he said.
The Harvard-educated neurobiologist who became an assistant professor at the Alabama school in 2003 has been charged with capital murder, and other charges are pending.
Frazier said people who worked for the police department then remember the shooting and he planned to meet with the district attorney over the possibility of launching a criminal investigation into the report's disappearance.
The former police chief, John Polio, said Saturday in an interview at his home that he was astonished at any allegation of a coverup. He said he didn't call officers to tell them to release Bishop.
"There's no coverup, no missing records," he proclaimed.
A University of Alabama at Huntsville spokesman said Bishop, 42, had been denied tenure before she was held Friday in the campus shooting.
As Bishop was being taken to jail in handcuffs she said: "It didn't happen. There's no way."
Attempts by The Associated Press to track down addresses and phone numbers for Bishop's family in the Braintree area weren't immediately successful Saturday. The current police chief said he believed her family had moved away.
She was taken Friday night in handcuffs to the county jail, and said as she got into a police car: "It didn't happen. There's no way. ... They are still alive."
District Attorney Ron Broussard said he did not think Bishop has a lawyer. Her husband, James Anderson, was detained and questioned Friday, though he has not been charged.
Ray Garner, a spokesman at the Huntsville campus, said Bishop had been denied tenure -- a type of job protection afforded academics -- months ago, and this was to be her last semester.
Some have said the professor, who students said was bright but had difficulty explaining difficult concepts, opened fire because of a dispute over the issue.