Breaking - First ever female rampage killing?

[elfismiles]

a tiny bit more on the victims...

UAH faculty background on suspected shooter & victims
Reported by: Mike McClanahan
Last Update: 2/14 11:09 am

From the University of Alabama in Huntsville website:

Faculty in Biological Sciences

(Information related to Friday’s incident)

Amy Bishop (charged with one count of capital murder)
Assistant Professor of Biological Science
College of Science
Hired: August 2003
Ph.D. Genetics
Came from Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA
Born: 4/24/1965

Courses taught: Anatomy & Physiology, Introduction to Neuroscience, Human Anatomy and Physiology

Dr. Bishop earned a doctorate from Harvard University and her research interests were in the field of neurobiology. She conducted research into ALS and Alzheimers diseases. (More information – www.uah.edu/biology/amy.html)


Luis Cruz Vera (listed in stable condition and able to leave Huntsville Hospital Saturday afternoon)
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
College of Science
Hired: August 2007
Ph.D. in Genetics and Molecular Biology
Originally from Mexico
Came here from Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Courses taught: General biochemistry


Gopi Podila (killed)
Professor and Chair of Biological Science
College of Science
Hired: July 2001
Ph.D. Molecular Biology
Originally from India
Came here from Michigan Technological University, Houghton Michigan
Born: 9/14/1957
Courses taught: Molecular biology systems, advanced molecular techniques, plant molecular biology and biotechnology


Maria Ragland Davis (killed)
Associate Professor of Biological Science
College of Science
Hired: August 2002
Ph.D. Biochemistry
Came from Research Genetics in Huntsville
Courses taught: Cell development, Gene silencing in fungi


Joseph Leahy (in critical condition at Huntsville Hospital Saturday afternoon)
Associate Professor of Biological Science
College of Science
Hired: August 1997
Ph.D. Microbiology
Came from Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
Taught courses: Infection and Immunity, general microbiology I & II


Adriel Johnson (Killed)
Associate Professor of Biological Science
College of Science
Hired: March 1989
Ph.D. Biology
Came from North Carolina State University
Born: 6/22/1957

Courses taught: General biology, organismal biology, genetics, biochemistry, anatomy and physiology, neurobiology, cellular, molecular and developmental biology.

Staff assistant Ms. Stephanie Monticciolo was also in critical condition at Huntsville Hospital Saturday afternoon.

Madison County District Attorney Rob Broussard said Dr. Bishop is charged with one count of capital murder, and could have her first court hearing in approximately six weeks. Huntsville Police Chief Henry Reyes confirmed that a 9 mm pistol which police recovered in a second floor bathroom in the Shelby Center was used in the shooting.

The university remains open for those faculty and staff who wish to report to work and grief counselors will be available to the campus community next week,but the campus will close. All classes, campus, and athletic events will also be canceled during the week of February 15th-19th. Details have not been released, but a memorial service is planned for Friday, February 19th.

Source: http://newinfo.uah.edu/news/newspages/c ... php?id=172

http://www.cbs42.com/content/localnews/ ... 0_tPw.cspx

[elfismiles]

Oh GREAT!

Herald on Bishop: D&D made her do it

Herald on Bishop: D&D made her do it
Published Feb 16 2010, 11:12 AM by Adam Reilly 0Today in the Herald, Laurel Sweet takes the still-unfolding story of Amy Bishop in a new direction: Bishop, she reports, loved to play Dungeons & Dragons back in the day...just like Wakefield workplace killer Michael McDermott!

Bishop, now a University of Alabama professor, and her husband James Anderson met and fell in love in a Dungeons & Dragons club while biology students at Northeastern University in the early 1980s, and were heavily into the fantasy role-playing board game, a source told the Herald.

“They even acted this crap out,” the source said....

The popular fantasy role-playing game has a long history of controversy, with objections raised to its demonic and violent elements. Some experts have cited the D&D backgrounds of people who were later involved in violent crimes, while others say it [sic] just a game....

I am not, I confess, a Dungeons & Dragons connisseur. But I know the game has been around for a few decades--and in that time, it hasn't exactly spawned an epidemic of violence. Maybe that's why Sweet doesn't meet the traditional quota for a "trend" piece by citing a third Dungeons & Dragons-influenced killer.

Limited analytical value notwithstanding, Sweet's piece has generated some entertaining responses over at bostonherald.com. One commenter notes that Red Sox hero/conservative agitator Curt Schilling is a big D&D type, and forecasts a horrific Fenway massacre to come. Another offers: "I heard she used to play hopscotch and jump rope as a child. That's it, time [to] ban these destructive activities from the past time of America's youth." And a commenter with the moniker johntheobscure weighs in with this:

My name is John Ruch. I freelanced for the Herald for years, during which I played D&D regularly, as I still do.

This article is the exact type of hateful, incompetent, fraudulent, lazy and incorrect "reporting" that convinced me to stop associating myself with the Herald.

Feeling some back-to-the-80s deja vu? You're not alone:

Mazes & Monsters is a far-out game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFIWUYr0n10

Read more: http://thephoenix.com/BLOGS/dontquoteme ... z0fjbls14n

Suspect in slays fan of ‘Dungeons’
By Laurel J. Sweet
Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Accused campus killer Amy Bishop was a devotee of Dungeons & Dragons - just like Michael “Mucko” McDermott, the lone gunman behind the devastating workplace killings at Edgewater Technology in Wakefield in 2000.

Bishop, now a University of Alabama professor, and her husband James Anderson met and fell in love in a Dungeons & Dragons club while biology students at Northeastern University in the early 1980s, and were heavily into the fantasy role-playing board game, a source told the Herald.

“They even acted this crap out,” the source said.

When questioned about it yesterday, Anderson, 45, a research scientist in Huntsville, Ala., dismissed the egghead escape as “a passing interest. It was a social thing more than anything else. It’s not the crazy group people think they are.”

McDermott studied engineering at Northeastern in the late 1980s, but Anderson said he never met him. Police seized two Dungeons & Dragons books from McDermott’s Haverhill apartment after he shot seven co-workers to death on Dec. 26, 2000.

The popular fantasy role-playing game has a long history of controversy, with objections raised to its demonic and violent elements. Some experts have cited the D&D backgrounds of people who were later involved in violent crimes, while others say it just a game. A federal appeals court recently upheld a prison ban on the game in Wisconsin, where prison officials reportedly testified they were afraid the game could promote “hostility, violence and escape behavior.”

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regio ... _dungeons/

[dbcooper41]

http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/7035570/

2 victims came through the PhD program at NCSU.
btw, ncsu is/has been crawling with spooks for years. i have a lifelong friend of the family who is a world famous microbiologist(i'll be looking for a link to the victims). only in the past few years did i realize the most likely reason why he traveled the world so much. last time i saw him i asked if he knew anything about don c wiley. he stammered something like "nope never heard of him".
of course not!
by all accounts professor Adriel Johnson was a fine person.
another btw, ncsu has an interesting connection with the "dungeons and dragons" killing of the late 1980's.

so what's next for this story? alien spawns at nasa huntsville?

[nathan28]

Dungeons and Dragons? The '80s called and left like forty messages, they need their Jack Chick tracts and Kiss albums back.


Fuck it, this is a sick joke. Everything from JFK to Dungeons and Dragons to "accidental" shootings and back again. Maybe they'll find a receipt that reads "Thermite" in her house?

You know where to find me:

[JackRiddler]

This thread is taking a distinctly unpleasant turn.

Yeah, I wonder sometimes!

? ?

What specifically are you referring to?

Proximately, this:

All they cared about was themselves. So instead of subduing her and calling security, they push her out the door. Then instead of using their cell phones to let anyone know this maniac is on the loose, they work on a backup plan in case she comes back. Oh give me a break.

Pretty fucked up way to interpret it on the basis of fuck-all in definite facts, DYEW. "Pushed her out the door" probably doesn't mean there was anything orderly or intended about whatever scuffle ended with her going through the doorway, just a terrified attempt not to die during which no doubt the thought of subduing her, if possible, occurred. Do we even know the relative size and strength of the woman who confronted her? Nothing in the article suggests they didn't make calls, which they surely did, and if they didn't, my last thought would be to attribute that to malice or selfishness, or anything approaching conscious, considered decisions. DYEW makes it sound like they sat back down and resumed the meeting with a new agenda item: "Backup plan in case she comes back. (NOTE: Perhaps she'll shoot other people instead?)" It's very likely they're describing the 30 seconds after they had her out the door (and the minute or two her rampage took) which would have seemed like HOURS to them, and in the meantime they have, in fact, spent many hours vividly reliving these minutes during the last few days. I wonder how "well" most everyone on this thread would do if someone you've been working with and talking with over coffee for years suddenly gets up from the table at a work meeting and shoots six people in the head within a few seconds. You think in such a situation you're even aware of what decisions YOU will be making?

I also wonder why I need to waste time explaining things this fundamental.

Otherwise, I find all aspects of this story interesting, I really do. Which is why I've been updating this thread too. But the ease with which, again, without certain knowledge of anything much, specific-sounding insinuations are made about the husband, the family back in MA, the colleagues, Harvard, the possible spooks involved with the company if there even is a company, Braintree MA and William Howard Taft is disturbing. In fact, it sort of reminds me of... the irresponsible press stories about her supposed "extreme left" politics, or attributing the act to too much D&D. (Someone, revive the Gygax thread!)

[JackRiddler]

Dungeons and Dragons? The '80s called and left like forty messages, they need their Jack Chick tracts and Kiss albums back.

Come on now, KISS was '70s. Peaked around 76. Pretty much over by '80s, though I'm sure they never stopped earning like bandits. And who's Jack Chick?

I guess we didn't have the same '80s.

[dbcooper41]

But the ease with which, again, without certain knowledge of anything much, specific-sounding insinuations are made about the husband, the family back in MA, the colleagues, Harvard, the possible spooks involved with the company if there even is a company, Braintree MA and William Howard Taft is disturbing. In fact, it sort of reminds me of... the irresponsible press stories about her supposed "extreme left" politics, or attributing the act to too much D&D. (Someone, revive the Gygax thread!)

my comments about braintree, taft, etc were not to be taken seriously. it was more like morbid humor.
but i am honestly interested in her husband. as a virtual nobody, i have much more of a web presence.
and wouldn't you be interested if your wife became interested in guns and shooting? wouldn't you discuss with her how she got a gun? where it would be stored with kid around?
and i think the emergence of at least 3 distinctly different versions of her brother's death is interesting.
what i find most interesting though is how this story seems to have so many "conspiracy theory" touchpoints.
and when sites like aolnews and fox are breaking facts in a case i gotta pause.
again, it's like we're being lead around.

[barracuda]

Amy Bishop, Northeastern University, 1988

[justdrew]

so do these dead biologists get added to The List or not?

This is exactly why people should not be generally allowed to carry guns any more than they're allowed to carry hand grenades. Why in hell did she bring a gun? Why was she even allowed to have a gun?

I'd like to know who the reporters source is on this D-n-D crap. That person is, as far as I'm concerned, the number one most likely to be a psi-operator involved in this so far. Very strange that someone would feel the need to drop that dime.

why in heck would they have denied this person tenure? She was pulling in good grants and signing deals...

[barracuda]

why in heck would they have denied this person tenure? She was pulling in good grants and signing deals...

It seems pretty clear that she wasn't much of a team player.

[Nordic]

why in heck would they have denied this person tenure? She was pulling in good grants and signing deals...

It seems pretty clear that she wasn't much of a team player.

The story does seem weird to me, too. When confronted with someone trying to kill you, if you have a chance you incapacitate them, I mean pick up a chair and smack them over the head, kill them if you have to, right? But they let her go out the door? They pushed her out the door???? She was outnumbered at that point, why not just jump all over her, get her to the ground and bash her head in, even if you have to stomp on her with your foot, until she's unconscious? I mean this was a life and death situation, you don't act nice, even from a purely cold blooded practical point of view it's in your interest to just render the person unconscious no matter how you do it.

I mean they just watched this woman kill three people and shoot two others. Is she that physically imposing? Was she that slippery? Did she actually run out the door?

Because I was in a physical altercation once with someone who seemed intent on killing me, and I spent every ounce of energy I had pinning the person down and subduing them by any means necessary. I was very cold blooded and practical about it, the adrenaline rush came later.

The whole thing is just bizarre as hell. It don't make no common sense.

[DoYouEverWonder]

so do these dead biologists get added to The List or not?

This is exactly why people should not be generally allowed to carry guns any more than they're allowed to carry hand grenades. Why in hell did she bring a gun? Why was she even allowed to have a gun?

I'd like to know who the reporters source is on this D-n-D crap. That person is, as far as I'm concerned, the number one most likely to be a psi-operator involved in this so far. Very strange that someone would feel the need to drop that dime.

why in heck would they have denied this person tenure? She was pulling in good grants and signing deals...

You would think hubby would be a bit freaked out when she wanted to go to target practice all of a sudden, considering her history with handling guns.

[DoYouEverWonder]

Amy Bishop, Northeastern University, 1988

Wow, whoever gave her that doo is the one that should have been shot.

[Nordic]

so do these dead biologists get added to The List or not?

This is exactly why people should not be generally allowed to carry guns any more than they're allowed to carry hand grenades. Why in hell did she bring a gun? Why was she even allowed to have a gun?

I'd like to know who the reporters source is on this D-n-D crap. That person is, as far as I'm concerned, the number one most likely to be a psi-operator involved in this so far. Very strange that someone would feel the need to drop that dime.

why in heck would they have denied this person tenure? She was pulling in good grants and signing deals...

You would think hubby would be a bit freaked out when she wanted to go to target practice all of a sudden, considering her history with handling guns.

I stick by my speculation that hubby set her up to do this because he was scared shitless of her and wanted to get her out of his life.

I know, I know, it's full of holes, but think about being the husband in that situation ...... He's probably been scared of her for a long long time!

And maybe someone knows this about Huntsville:

My Dad used to go there to test some of the top-secret weapons crap he was working on. He went there a lot.

[JackRiddler]

Amy Bishop, Northeastern University, 1988

At that time, college (I'm an '87 graduate), I would have totally gone out with this girl. Just based on appearances and the science background, nothing more, and assuming I didn't know about the brother. In high school, we would probably be hanging out talking about LoTR or Heinlein or some such, and suppressing all hint of sexual undercurrent.

Whoever asked why she was allowed to have a gun: looks to have been unlicensed.

dbcooper: it's okay. I'm all for throwing everything in here that has any relevance. Just uncomfortable about exceeding any known fact with speculations, which at this point can go in ANY direction. That comment I complain about above had me upset. I don't think there's any doubt about the proximate facts: Amy Bishop opened fire at a meeting and killed three people and it's pretty goddamn harrowing and tragic.