more weirdness. i notice they refer to a newspaper article but they don't give any publication info about the newspaper or the shooting it refers to.
.New Twist in Old Shooting Involving Ala. ProfessorUpdated: 5 hours 33 minutes
ago
Print Text Size E-mail MoreJay Lindsay
AP CANTON, Mass. (Feb. 26) -- Investigators have discovered that a newspaper on
the floor of Alabama university professor Amy Bishop's home when she killed her
brother more than 20 years ago described an incident strikingly similar to what
she did that day, raising questions about her claim that it was an accident.
Norfolk District Attorney William Keating said investigators found the date of
the newspaper after enlarging a police photo of the scene. He said the newspaper
contained an article about someone killing a relative with a shotgun and
stealing a getaway car from a dealership.
Bishop, currently accused of killing three faculty colleagues in an Alabama
shooting this month, killed her teenage brother with a shotgun at their suburban
Boston home in 1986. She then went to a car dealership's body shop and tried to
commandeer a car, police said. After her arrest, she told police the shotgun had
accidentally discharged.
Amy Bishop, here in a police booking photo released Feb. 13, shot her brother to
death in 1986. Investigators concluded it was an accident, but a prosecutor has
ordered a new inquiry into the killing.
Keating on Thursday ordered an inquest into the shooting of Bishop's brother,
Seth Bishop, saying there are new questions about whether it was an accident, as
investigators concluded at the time.
The handling of the case has been under scrutiny since Amy Bishop was accused of
killing three faculty colleagues and wounding three others in a Feb. 12 shooting
at the University of Alabama-Huntsville.
Keating said the inquest would allow a judge to subpoena Bishop's parents, who
refused to talk with state troopers who went to their home last week, saying
they had retained an attorney.
"Had they cooperated and we thought their answers were forthright and truthful,"
Keating said, "this might not have been necessary."
Bishop's mother was the only other witness to the killing. An attorney for the
Bishops, Bryan Stevens, did not immediately return a call seeking comment
Thursday.
Mark Coven, the presiding judge in Quincy District Court, will conduct the
closed-door inquest and report his findings to Keating, who would then decide
whether to issue an indictment. The only possible charge that could be filed is
murder, because the statute of limitations on all other counts, including
manslaughter, has expired.
The fact that the only other eyewitness says the shooting was an accident is "a
huge burden to overcome," Keating said.
Police reports released by Keating last week said Bishop told police she
accidentally fired the shotgun in her bedroom, then went downstairs to ask her
brother for help unloading the gun, which her father bought after a break-in.
She said that after the gun accidentally went off again, hitting her brother,
she fled, believing she dropped it, the reports said. She was arrested at
gunpoint. She said she did not remember anything from when she fired the gun the
second time until she was at a police station later.
Bishop was released after her mother went to the police station, and police
didn't question Bishop or her family for 11 days, among the serious errors
Keating said were committed in the 1986 investigation.
Keating said his investigation indicates Bishop was calm and cooperative after
she was arrested, contrary to police assertions at the time that she was too
hysterical to be questioned.
"The more information we got, the more we looked at reports, the more questions
we had," Keating said.
The inquest won't focus on how the investigation was handled, but some of what
the judge finds could be used by state police, who are reviewing the original
investigation, Keating said.
Seth Bishop's death is among several incidents involving Amy Bishop, a Harvard
University-educated neurobiologist, that are being re-examined, including when
she and her husband were questioned but never charged in the 1993 attempted mail
bombing of a medical researcher who gave her a bad job review. The U.S. attorney
in Boston is reviewing its actions in that case.
Bishop also was charged with assault and disorderly conduct after a fight over a
child booster seat in a restaurant in 2002. The charges were dismissed after six
months' probation.
Bishop 45, is charged with capital murder and attempted murder in the Alabama
shooting. Colleagues say she had complained for months about being denied the
job protections of tenure. In Bishop's only public comments since the Alabama
shootings, she said they "didn't happen."
A police spokesman in Huntsville, Ala., said it was unclear whether information
gathered in a Massachusetts inquest could be used in the capital murder case
against Bishop in Alabama.
"It's too bad they didn't do a good investigation up there the first time," Sgt.
Mark Roberts said. "If they had in 1986, we might not be where we are today in
2010."
AP reporter Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Ala., contributed to this report.
Filed under: Nation, Crime
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press
