Report: Bishop Suspect in Mail Bomb Case
The Boston Globe has reported that the female professor accused of gunning down several colleagues at the University of Alabama Friday, killing three, had been a suspect in a 1993 mail bomb attempt on a Harvard professor.
CBS Station WBZ notes that 17 years ago, Dr. Paul Rosenberg received a package at his Newton, Mass., home containing two pipe bombs. The explosives did not detonate because the box was cut open.
No one was ever arrested in the incident.
Now, the Globe reports that, according to sources, Amy Bishop, who was a medical student at Harvard at the time, was questioned in the bombing attempt.
A law enforcement official told the Globe that Bishop, who was working at Children's Hospital at the time, was questioned because she was allegedly concerned about receiving a negative evaluation from Rosenberg on her doctorate work.
Bishop, a professor who was vocal in her resentment over being denied tenure and the loss of her teaching post, is accused of shooting six colleagues at the University of Alabama in Huntsville Friday.
On Saturday, WBZ reported that police in Braintree, Mass., said that Bishop had shot and killed her brother back in 1986, but that the shooting was ruled an accident. No police reports from that day can be found.
No Hints of Violence
Everyone, from family and friends to her students, said the intelligent and at times awkward teacher seemed normal in the hours before police say she opened fire Friday afternoon, leaving three dead and another three wounded.
Jim Anderson - the father of Bishop's husband, James Anderson - told The Associated Press on Sunday his son had no idea Bishop was planning the bloodshed she's accused of.
"He knew nothing. He didn't know anything," the father said. He said that the police had spoken with his son at length and that "they are doing a good job."
Indeed, there were many things Bishop apparently did not reveal to those around her.
In 1986, Bishop shot and killed her 18-year-old brother with a shotgun at their Braintree, Mass., home. She told police at the time that she had been trying to learn how to use the gun, which her father had bought for protection, when it accidentally discharged.
Authorities released her and said the episode was a tragic accident. She was never charged, though police Chief Paul Frazier on Saturday questioned how the investigation was handled.
Some of Bishop's colleagues, including William Setzer, chairman of the department of chemistry, told The Associated Press they did not know about her brother's death.
Police say the gun she's accused of using wasn't registered, and investigators don't know how or where she got it.
Bishop, who has four children, was arrested soon after the shooting and charged with capital murder. Other charges are pending. Her husband was detained and questioned by police but has not been charged.
James Anderson said his wife had an attorney but would not say who it was. He declined further comment to The Associated Press on Sunday. However, he told the Chronicle of Higher Education earlier in the day that he had no idea his wife had a gun - nor did he know of any threats or plans to carry out the shooting when he dropped her off at the faculty meeting Friday.
Just after the shooting, Anderson told the Chronicle, she called and asked him to pick her up. She never mentioned the shooting, he said.
Even in the days and hours before the shooting, Bishop's friends, colleagues and students said she was acting like the intelligent - but odd - professor they knew.
UAH student Andrew Cole was in Bishop's anatomy class Friday morning and said she seemed perfectly normal. Kourtney Lattimore, 19, a sophomore studying nursing who had Bishop for anatomy and physiology courses, said she didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.
"She was fine. It was a normal day," Lattimore said.
Bishop had worked closely for three years with Dick Reeves, who had been CEO of BizTech, which had been working with her to market a cell incubator she invented to replace traditional equipment used in live cell cultures. Bishop often mentioned the issue of tenure in their discussions, Reeves said.
"It was important to her," he said.
However, the two had spoken as early as Wednesday, and Reeves said she showed no signs of distress.
Tenure - a type of job-for-life security afforded academics - is often a stressful process for anyone up for review, Setzer said. Bishop was up front about the issue, often bringing it up in meetings where the subject wasn't appropriate.
"That was another thing that made her different," Setzer said. "In committee meetings she didn't pretend that it wasn't happening or anything. She was even loud about it: That they denied her tenure and she was appealing it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
Some have said the shootings stemmed from Bishop's tenure dispute, though authorities have refused to discuss a motive. Andrea Bennett, a sophomore majoring in nursing and an athlete at UAH, said a coach told her team that Bishop had been denied tenure, which the coach said may have led to the shooting.
Killed were Gopi K. Podila, the chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences, and professors Adriel Johnson and Maria Ragland Davis. Three people were wounded. Two of them - Joseph Leahy and staffer Stephanie Monticciolo - were in critical condition early Sunday. The third, Luis Cruz-Vera, had been released from the hospital.
Sammie Lee Davis, Davis' husband, said in a brief phone interview that he was told a faculty member got angry while discussing tenure at the meeting and started shooting. He said his wife had described Bishop as "not being able to deal with reality" and "not as good as she thought she was."
Bishop was calm as she got into a police car Friday, denying that the shootings occurred. "It didn't happen. There's no way. ... They are still alive."