Breaking - First ever female rampage killing?

[DoYouEverWonder]

What happened to those 3 other 'persons of interest'?

They seems to have fallen off the radar.

[Canadian_watcher]

well, Fox News has posted details of the 1986 Police Report:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,585823,00.html

It's lengthy but contains the statements of all three surviving members of the Bishop family at the time of that incident.

Note that the date of the report is March 30, 1987 and it is to First Assistant District Attorney John P. Kivlan from Trooper Brian Howe.

[JackRiddler]

The technologies they invented and proposed are crazy interesting. But all tech startups make revolutionary claims, and you can't tell from the outside whether any of it is true. They invented an alternative to the petri dish that they are claiming is superior, and for which they rounded up 1.25 million capital. If true, this application alone may turn into a billion-dollar business. Think about how widespread the use of cultures is in medicine and research, and the significance assigned to it! If doctors and scientists really conclude this is a superior method, they'll pay more for it, especially for research applications.

More interestingly, as she said on her UAH department page which was still up yesterday (posted above), their method is well-suited to growing neurons from stem cells or animal brains, and they are proposing a technology to make computers out of neurons. If this idea really works - anyone know how to look up if they've got patents? - you can imagine unlimited applications. Computers of living material that, still today, has superior processing power (when arranged as a brain, anyway). Potentially easier to implant into living organisms than any other technology. Down the science fiction road, which is to say who knows what may prove possible, they could grow a section of brain with a couple of your own neurons and program a skill or a personality or different memories into it and then stick it back in your head.

Phil Dick needs to write that one!

Oh, and now the even more obvious William Gibson novel occurs to me. A brain. This has the potential to allow growing a fucking supersize brain, or set of linked brains, in a vat. Programmable. Kind of dispenses with the probably illusory ambitions of AI, doesn't it? Who needs Robbie the Robot or Neuromancer, when you can just whip up a fucking live brain to whatever size and task you care to program?

Well again, we don't know if this idea was even in the neighborhood of feasible. But if it is, the military applications obviously are also endless. For one: At last, you can combine all the advantages of the suicide bomber and the smart bomb! It's smarter than you, aware, and can be programmed not to even know it exists as it tracks down exactly its assigned target, independently, and kills itself.

Note to rationalists: Yeah, I know I'm writing fiction here. It's interesting, no?

[DoYouEverWonder]

well, Fox News has posted details of the 1986 Police Report:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,585823,00.html

It's lengthy but contains the statements of all three surviving members of the Bishop family at the time of that incident.

Note that the date of the report is March 30, 1987 and it is to First Assistant District Attorney John P. Kivlan from Trooper Brian Howe.

Samuel stated that he had a disagrrment with Amy before he left about a comment that she made, and that she had gone to her room prior to his departing. He stated that upon his return to the residence, police and ambulance were at the house and that he was adivsed of the situation relating to the shooting of his son.

So Amy has a fight with Daddy, goes to her room and comes back downstairs with a loaded rifle. But it's all just a terrible accident. Believe this and I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

[ninakat]

But wait, there's more:

Alleged Ala. killer was suspect in attempted bombing of Harvard professor
February 14, 2010 05:44 PM

By Shelley Murphy, Donovan Slack, and Meghan Irons, Globe Staff

The professor who is accused of killing three colleagues at the University of Alabama on Friday was a suspect in the attempted mail bombing of a Harvard Medical School professor in 1993, a law enforcement official said today.

Amy Bishop and her husband, James Anderson, were questioned after a package containing two bombs was sent to the Newton home of Dr. Paul Rosenberg, a professor and doctor at Boston's Children's Hospital.

It was the second startling revelation in two days about the past of Bishop, who is accused of fatally shooting three colleagues and wounding three others Friday afternoon at a faculty meeting on the University of Alabama's Huntsville, Ala. campus.

A Massachusetts police chief revealed Saturday that Bishop had fatally shot her brother in 1986.

Rosenberg was opening mail, which had been set aside by a cat-sitter, when he returned from a Caribbean vacation on Dec. 19, 1993, according to Globe reports at the time.

Opening a long, thin package addressed to "Mr. Paul Rosenberg M.D.," he saw wires and a cylinder inside. He and his wife ran from the house and called police.

The package contained two 6-inch pipe bombs connected to two nine-volt batteries.

In March 1994, the Globe reported that federal investigators had identified a prime suspect in the case. But the article did not name the suspect.

A law enforcement official said today that the investigation by the US Postal Service and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms focused on Bishop, a Harvard postdoctoral fellow who was working in the human biochemstry lab at Children's Hospital at the time, and her husband, Anderson.

Bishop surfaced as a suspect because she was allegedly concerned that she was going to receive a negative evaluation from Rosenberg on her doctorate work, the official said. The official said investigators believed she had a motive to target Rosenberg and were concerned that she had a history of violence, given that she had shot her brother to death in 1986.

Investigators conducted a search of the home where Bishop and Anderson were living and questioned the couple, the official said. Anderson was questioned about whether he had purchased any of the components used to make the bombs, the official said.

During a search of Bishop's computer, authorities found a draft of a novel that Bishop was writing about a female scientist who had killed her brother and was hoping to make amends by becoming a great scientist, according to a person who was briefed on the investigation and spoke to the Globe on the condition of anonymity.

The US attorney's office in Boston did not seek any charges against Bishop or Anderson, and no one was ever charged with mailing the bombs to Rosenberg.

Federal prosecutors did not immediately return calls today.

At his home, Rosenberg declined to comment today and referred questions to Children's Hospital administrators. Hospital officials said information on Bishop and the case was not immediately available and declined further comment.

Sylvia Fluckiger, a lab technician who worked with Bishop at the time, said Bishop had been in a dispute with Rosenberg shortly before the bombs were discovered.

Shortly after the attempted bombing, Fluckiger said, Bishop told her she had been questioned by police one day in the lab. According to Fluckiger, Bishop said police asked her if she had ever taken stamps off an envelope that had been mailed to her and put them on something else.

"She said it with a smirk on her face,'' said Fluckiger. "We knew she had a beef with Paul Rosenberg. And we really thought it was a really unbelievable coincidence that he would get those bombs."

Sergeant Mark Roberts, a spokesman for the Huntsville Police, said today that police in Alabama had been informed that Bishop was a suspect in the 1993 mail bombing case.

"Presently, we are trying to confirm it through law enforcement resources,'' he said.

Roberts said the crime scene at the university was so large -- the building is some three acres -- that detectives had just finished gathering all the evidence in the shootings.

"What we're doing now, they finally got all the evidence and they're starting to go through it,'' he said.

Bishop, 44, a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville since 2003, allegedly opened fire during a faculty meeting Friday, killing three colleagues and wounding three others, reportedly after learning at the meeting that she was being denied tenure.

Her husband was detained and questioned by police but has not been charged.

On Saturday, the police chief in Braintree confirmed that Bishop had fatally shot her brother in the family home in December 1986.

Chief Paul Frazier raised questions about the circumstances of the shooting and the lack of records on the case, but the Norfolk County district attorney's office released a State Police investigation report that concluded that the shooting was an accident.

[MacCruiskeen]

What were the victims researching or developing?

[Wombaticus Rex]

So is she the luckiest sociopath of 2010 or an actual asset on someone's balance sheets?

Given the fact she dodged the bullet twice prior to this, I'm leaning towards #2. This story will get fascinating next week.

[JackRiddler]

This story is going to spawn volumes of academic articles.

Getting tenure is the new going postal!

[Wombaticus Rex]

for a commercial venture they sure have an elusive web presence.

That's not uncommon at all for startups without an actual product yet. I've actually got 2 fully incorporated entities, domains purchased, but everything is on hold and has been for months. And will be for months. Business moves slow.

[JackRiddler]

Latest: The husband speaks to the NYT, says he's surprised this happened. The gun wasn't registered to her. She once started a novel about a brilliant young woman who kills her brother and makes up for it by becoming a great scientist. And apparently she had not yet exhausted all procedural avenues for getting a new shot at tenure, but these were looking unlikely.

February 15, 2010
Twists Multiply in Shooting Case
By SHAILA DEWAN and KATIE ZEZIMA

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — On Friday, this city of rocket scientists and brainy inventors was stunned when a neuroscientist with a Harvard Ph.D. was arrested in the shooting deaths of three of her colleagues after she was denied tenure.

But that was only the first surprise in the tale of the neuroscientist, Amy Bishop, who was regarded as fiercely intelligent and had seemed to have a promising career in biotechnology. Every day since has produced a new revelation from Dr. Bishop’s past, each more bizarre than the last.

On Saturday, the police in Braintree, Mass., said that she had fatally shot her brother in 1986 and questioned whether the decision to dismiss the case as an accident had been the right one.

On Sunday, a law enforcement official in Boston said she and her husband, James Anderson, had been questioned in a 1993 case in which a pipe bomb was sent to a colleague of Dr. Bishop’s at Children’s Hospital Boston.

The bomb did not go off, no one was ever charged in the case, and no proof ever emerged connecting the couple to the bomb plot.

On Sunday, Mr. Anderson firmly defended his wife in an interview at their home in Huntsville, saying that she had been completely cleared in the pipe bomb case and that her brother’s death had been accidental.

“That’s incorrect,” he said about reports linking him and his wife to the bomb plot. “We were not suspects. They questioned everybody that ever knew this guy.”

The target of the mail bomb was Dr. Paul Rosenberg, according to The Boston Globe, which first reported that the couple had been questioned in the case. After returning home from a vacation, Dr. Rosenberg opened a package that contained two 6-inch pipe bombs connected to two nine-volt batteries, The Globe reported. The doctor and his wife fled and called the police.

Officials said that Dr. Bishop was concerned that Dr. Rosenberg would give her a negative evaluation on her doctorate work, the newspaper wrote, and that they were concerned about the incident involving her brother. The authorities in Boston searched Dr. Bishop’s computer at the time and found a novel she was working on about a scientist who killed her brother and atoned by excelling at her work, The Globe reported.

Though he firmly protested his wife’s innocence in the earlier cases, Mr. Anderson said he remained mystified over Friday’s shootings, which left three professors dead and three other people wounded after a faculty meeting at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.

Dr. Bishop was charged with capital murder; three charges of attempted murder were added on Sunday. Mr. Anderson said he did not know of any specific incident that could have led to the shooting, and did not know that his wife allegedly had a gun when she went to the meeting.

“I had no idea,” he said. “We don’t own one.”

Those killed were Gopi Podila, 52, the chairman of the biology department; Maria Ragland Davis, 50, a professor who studied plant pathogens; and Adriel Johnson, 52, a cell biologist who also taught Boy Scouts about science.

Two of the wounded were Joseph Leahy, 50, a microbiologist, and Stephanie Monticciolo, 62, a staff assistant, both of whom were in critical condition. The third was Luis Cruz-Vera, 40, a molecular biologist, who was released from the hospital on Saturday.

Mr. Anderson said that months ago, the university administration overruled a successful appeal of the decision to deny Dr. Bishop tenure in spring 2009.

“She won her appeal,” he said, “and the provost canned it.”

The university has declined to elaborate on the details of Dr. Bishop’s tenure application, saying only that she was denied last spring and that she could stay at the university only until the end of this academic year. Even if a faculty member successfully appeals a tenure denial, the final decision rests with the administration.

But Dr. Bishop had continued to fight, appealing to two members of the University of Alabama System’s Board of Trustees for help and hiring a lawyer, who was “finding one problem after another with the process,” Mr. Anderson said. One issue was a dispute over whether two of her papers had been published in time to count toward tenure, he said.

“She exceeded the qualifications for tenure,” Mr. Anderson said. “The review board said, ‘Grant it or go through the process again.’ ”

Mr. Anderson said that his wife’s research was generating millions of dollars for the university, that she had published numerous papers and that she was a good teacher.

But that estimate of her financial benefit to the university seems likely to be premature. One of her innovations, an automated system for producing cell cultures that the couple developed together, has attracted $1.25 million in financing but has not yet reached the market. Another, a potential treatment for degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, is in the process of being licensed from the university. Typically, universities share the proceeds from such licenses with the scientists responsible.

The police said Saturday that Dr. Bishop was 45, but her birth date on a university Web site indicated that she was 44.

Mr. Anderson said he could not gain access to his wife’s e-mail account and did not know if she had received any news that might have set off the shooting. The police, he said, had taken a thick binder documenting her tenure battle, her computer and the family van. At least one of the trustees had recently told her that he could not help reverse the tenure decision, a family friend said.

Mr. Anderson said he had already told the Huntsville police that they might come across the Boston pipe bomb incident during their investigation.

Sylvia Fluckiger, who worked as a laboratory technician at Children’s Hospital when Dr. Bishop and Dr. Rosenberg were working there, said Dr. Bishop had acknowledged that she was questioned by the police about the pipe bomb incident.

“She was visited by the police,” Ms. Fluckiger said. “What she said is they asked her if she had ever used a stamp, taken it off an envelope and put it somewhere else.”

Ms. Fluckiger said Dr. Bishop “had a smirk on her face” when asked about the incident. “I don’t know why she was smirking,” she said. “It was a funny expression on her face.”

“We did know that there was a dispute between Paul Rosenberg and her,” Ms. Fluckiger said, adding that she could not recall the details.

On Saturday, the police in Braintree said they were considering reopening the case of the shooting death of her brother, Seth Bishop, 18. Although a state police report said investigators determined that the shooting was an accident, Police Chief Paul Frazier said other officers remember that it came after an argument and questioned why local police documents could not be found.

On Sunday, Mayor Joseph C. Sullivan of Braintree, a Boston suburb, issued a statement saying the town would conduct a “full and thorough review” of its records for any material relating to Seth Bishop’s death. But he noted that records from 1986 were created and maintained manually, which would complicate their retrieval.

Standing at his door after church on Sunday, Mr. Anderson confirmed the existence of the novel reported in The Globe, as well as two others his wife worked on in her spare time. The couple has four children, ranging from grade-school to college age. Mr. Anderson said that somewhere in his files he had a letter sent by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms after the bomb investigation, saying: “You are hereby cleared in this incident. You are no longer a subject of the investigation.”

“This is one thing from the past I hoped would not be dredged up,” he said.

Shaila Dewan reported from Huntsville, and Katie Zezima from Boston.

[dbcooper41]

i think we're being lead around on this story.
why? i think it's to distract us from her husband. just a hunch but read these 2 pieces.
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Husband-o ... lle/21254/

February 14, 2010, 01:36 PM ET

Husband of Accused Huntsville Killer Amy Bishop Speaks Out
By Thomas Bartlett and Robin Wilson

Huntsville, Ala.—In his first extensive interview about what happened Friday at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, James Anderson said he didn't know that his wife, Amy Bishop, had a gun when he dropped her off at a faculty meeting at 3 p.m. Nor did he know specifically what might have caused Ms. Bishop, a biology professor at the university, to allegedly shoot and kill three of her colleagues less than an hour later. But he knew that his wife felt she had been unfairly denied tenure and that she was taking the fight to the highest level—the university's Board of Trustees.

Mr. Anderson talked to The Chronicle outside his home Sunday morning as he and his four children prepared to leave for church. He said his wife believed that her denial had been caused, at least in part, by a miscommunication over whether two papers had been published in time to count toward her tenure bid. While some colleagues have said that she didn't get along well with other professors, Mr. Anderson called her "very personable" and said she was a "loved teacher." There had been no threats or hints of violence, he said, nor was he aware that his wife even had a gun.

On Friday afternoon, Mr. Anderson said, he dropped his wife off at the faculty meeting. The two often commuted together; Mr. Anderson worked at Prodigy Biosystems, located just a few minutes from the campus. Ms. Bishop was also involved with the fledgling company and was going to be its spokeswoman, he said. When she called nearly an hour later, she asked him to pick her up but didn't mention the shooting. The couple was planning to go out for coffee as part of a scheduled date night. Ms. Bishop was in police custody before her husband arrived.
Since the shootings, Mr. Anderson said, he's been searching for "the trigger"—that is, what might have caused his wife to open fire on her colleagues. He wondered if perhaps an e-mail message might have upset her. Often, according to Mr. Anderson, higher-ups at the university sent "nastygrams" on Fridays. He wondered whether she had received such an message, perhaps one affirming that university officials were standing behind her denial of tenure. But so far he hasn't found anything.

Mr. Anderson said that he wanted to look through Ms. Bishop's "two-inch-thick" tenure file, but that it had been confiscated. He said that his wife had hired a lawyer to help her regarding her tenure denial and that the lawyer had been making progress.

As for Ms. Bishop's state of mind following her tenure denial last year, her husband said she "didn't want to go the way of" another university scientist who had lost tenure and was now driving a shuttle bus in Huntsville. But there were reasons to be hopeful: Mr. Anderson said his wife was looking beyond the denial and had already mentioned two leads on possible jobs. She had said she was going to check on one of the leads when she got home from the faculty meeting.

The two met when they were undergraduates at Northeastern University, and Mr. Anderson was dating Ms. Bishop when she shot her brother to death more than two decades ago. He called that shooting "an absolute accident." The Boston Globe reported that there is a controversy over whether, in fact, the shooting was accidental.

Mr. Anderson spoke to The Chronicle in the doorway of his green, wood-sided house, about 20 minutes from the campus, as a light snow fell in Huntsville. He had talked to his wife by phone earlier Sunday morning.

"I know you guys are obviously in shock," she told him, but she didn't go into detail because, she said, her call was being monitored. She wanted to know whether their children were OK and whether they'd done their homework.

so her husband dropped her off, she shoots 6 people(good shooting?), leaves the room, ditches the gun on the second floor, and calmly calls her hubby to come pick her up.
then the cops nab her before he can get there.
did noboody try to stop her or follow her? she was so unrushed that she was able to take the time to make a phone call? ok.
now this:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/region ... id=1232944

Quincy man recalls Amy Bishop holdup
‘For the last 23 years, it was just a cool story I could tell.’
By Jessica Van Sack, Jessica Fargen and Edward Mason
Monday, February 15, 2010 - Updated 6h ago


E-mail Print (61) Comments Text size Share Buzz up!

A former auto-body worker claims Amy Bishop put a gun to his chest and demanded a getaway car just minutes after she shot her brother to death 24 years ago in a controversial case that is now being reviewed.

Tom Pettigrew, 45, told the Herald he was working at the Dave Dinger Ford auto repair shop in South Braintree, near the former Bishop home, when he saw the gun-wielding woman run into the dealership with what he thought was a BB gun.

Pettigrew, of Quincy, who was 22 at the time, recalled telling his co-oworkers: “I’m like, ‘Did I just see what I just saw?’ ”

Pettigrew said he heard noise coming from where car keys are stored, so he went to investigate.

“I go over to the door and I can sense that she’s right near the door,” Pettigrew said. “I’m thinking it’s a BB gun. I open the door and she’s right there and we basically bumped into each other and I got a shotgun right in my chest!”

“And she’s like, ‘Hands up!’ and I’m like, ‘Yes ma’am’ ”

Bishop appeared agitated and nervous, Pettigrew said. The University of Alabama professor now accused of killing three colleagues Friday said she needed a car because, “I got into a fight with my husband and he’s going to kill me,” the worker recalled.

Pettigrew then watched as Bishop walked through the dealership looking at cars, all the while grasping the gun.

By then, police arrived and swarmed the parking lot. One armed officer climbed up on a nearby roof, Pettigrew said, and could have taken her out.

Instead, they arrested her. Braintree police Chief Paul Frazier has said officers on duty claim they were forced by retired former Chief John Polio to let Bishop, whose mother was a member of the police personnel board, go. Polio denies that and said then-District Attorney William Delahunt investigated the case and ruled it an accident.

Pettigrew said police questioned him after the incident but he never heard from them again.

“For the last 23 years, it was just a cool story I could tell my friends,” Pettigrew said.

Braintree Mayor Joseph C. Sullivan said yesterday the city, its police department and the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office are “conducting a full and thorough review of its municipal and law enforcement records to locate all materials relating to the Dec. 6, 1986, death of Seth Bishop . . . to identify if there were any deficits in its past record-keeping process.”

a slightly different, and more interesting version of the story.

so was her fight with 1) her dad, 2) her brother, or 3)her husband(and was James E Anderson her "husband".

if nothing else it appears James E Anderson was present, or nearby at all of her shootings. and now he's looking for the trigger.. ok.

[nathan28]

Have they found a copy of Catcher in the Rye yet?

[dbcooper41]

Have they found a copy of Catcher in the Rye yet?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2451386/posts

no, but they found this.

"During a search of her home computer, the FBI found a manuscript for a novel based on a woman who killed her brother and went on to become a renowned scientist. (or some such blather).

I’m wondering how she describes the *killing* in her novel"

[JackRiddler]

In such a case it is an unexpected thought that the husband would hold an impromptu press conference at their front door. (I'm presuming there was a small media swarm waiting for anyone to go in or out.) You can't tell for sure but the writing suggests he was unruffled and willing to tell what he and Bishop talked about on the phone.

Homework?!

[Nordic]