Amy Bishop

Her attorney, Miller, visited her in jail and said she did not remember the shooting and was "very cogent," but seemed to recognize that "she has a loose grip on reality." Initially he said Bishop has severe mental health issues that appear to be paranoid schizophrenia, but later retracted that statement, saying "he had spoken out of turn." As of February 2013, Bishop told reporter Patrick Radden Keefe that she was being treated for paranoid schizophrenia with haloperidol. Miller told a reporter for The New York Times that, "This is not a whodunit. This lady has committed this offense or offenses in front of the world. It gets to be a question in my mind of her mental capacity at the time, or her mental state at the time that these acts were committed."

After pleading guilty in September 2012 and waiving her right to appeal, Bishop filed an appeal on February 11, 2013. The appeal stated that she was not informed of her rights she would be waiving by pleading guilty, she was not correctly informed of the minimum range of punishment, and the circuit court failed to explain that she could withdraw her plea. On April 26, 2013, the Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama rejected the appeal; they stated that Bishop failed to challenge the validity of her guilty pleas in the circuit court and did not file either a motion to withdraw her pleas or a motion for a new trial.

Bishop was charged with one count of capital murder and three counts of attempted murder. On September 11, 2012, Bishop pled guilty to the above charges after family members of victims petitioned the judge against use of the death penalty. The jury heard a condensed version of the evidence on September 24, 2012, as required by Alabama law. On September 24, 2012, Bishop was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

In 2012, the spouse of one of the murdered researchers wrote a letter to the judge presiding over the case. In this letter, the writer indicated that the researcher's family had greatly suffered from its loss due to Bishop's actions, but that the family did not see a benefit from the loss of another life. In response to this letter, Bishop's lawyers offered to change her plea to guilty in exchange for the prosecution not seeking the death penalty. On receiving this offer, chief prosecutor Robert Broussard contacted and learned from the nine survivors that none of them wanted the death sentence for Bishop. On the basis of these opinions, Broussard decided not to seek the death penalty. Bishop changed her plea to guilty.

On September 24, 2012, Bishop was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Norfolk County declined to seek Bishop's extradition because, as Massachusetts does not have the death penalty, her Alabama sentence was sufficient punishment. Bishop stated through her Massachusetts lawyer that she wanted to be tried for her brother's death in order to vindicate herself. Bishop is serving her sentence at Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama.

Three people were killed and three others wounded in a shooting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) in Huntsville, Alabama, on February 12, 2010. During the course of a routine meeting of the biology department attended by approximately 12 people, Amy Bishop, a biology professor at the university, stood up and began shooting those closest to her with a Ruger P95 handgun.

Three faculty members were killed, and three others were injured. Only a few students were present in the building at the time of the shooting, though none were harmed. A memorial service was held at UAH on Friday, February 19, 2010, with 3,000 people in attendance.

After a brief inquiry into the incident by the state police in 1986 (reported in 1987), they repeated the Braintree police department's initial assessment that the shooting was accidental. The district attorney Bill Delahunt, later elected as a U.S. Congressman, did not file charges. Detailed records of the shooting had disappeared by 1988. Braintree police chief Paul Frazier said on February 13, 2010, "The report's gone, removed from the files."

Other officers, he said, believed that Polio had "fix[ed] a murder", resulting in what Frazier described as "a miscarriage of justice. Just because it was a friend of his." The now-retired Polio denied that there had been a cover-up. Frazier's 2010 account and the 1987 Massachusetts State Police report differ in several key details, including whether Bishop had been arguing with her brother or with her father before the shooting.

On February 16, 2010, Braintree officials announced that the files previously missing had been located, and Norfolk County District Attorney William Keating concluded that probable cause existed in 1986 to arrest and charge Amy Bishop for crimes committed after she fled the house. She had taken the shotgun to a nearby auto dealership shop and brandished it at two employees in an attempt to get a car. She could have been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, carrying a dangerous weapon, and unlawful possession of ammunition.

On February 25, 2010, District Attorney Keating sent a letter to District Court Judge Mark Coven, to start a judicial inquest into the 1986 shooting. Keating said that recently enlarged crime scene photos from Bishop's bedroom reveal a news article in which a similar crime was reported. He speculated that this article may relate to Bishop's intent. Keating did not identify the specific news article, but The Boston Globe wrote that an internet search revealed that "two weeks earlier, the parents of Patrick Duffy, the actor who played Bobby Ewing on the popular television show Dallas, were killed by an assailant wielding a 12-gauge shotgun, who then held up a car dealership, stole a pickup truck, and fled."

On March 1, 2010, former Massachusetts State Police Detective Brian Howe discussed the case. Howe was the lead investigator for the state police in the Bishop case. He said he looks forward to addressing the judicial inquest into the shooting, and stands by his 1987 report. He had agreed with Captain Theodore Buker, the late Braintree lead investigator, that the shooting was accidental. Howe said that he was assigned to the case nearly two hours after the shooting and immediately called Braintree. Buker told him that he would not be needed that day and that Bishop had already been released into her parents' custody. Howe stated that Braintree police never informed him that Bishop had later allegedly accosted employees at a car dealership at gunpoint, demanding a car. Howe said that he repeatedly requested the December 6 incident reports from the Braintree police, but never received them.

On March 1, 2010, Norfolk District Attorney William Keating announced that an inquest would be held April 13–16, 2010. Judge Mark Coven, first justice of Quincy District Court, was scheduled to hold the inquest. During the inquest Braintree police officers testified that Judy Bishop had asked for Polio by name before the officers were ordered to release Amy Bishop. Judy Bishop, Polio, and his wife all testified that Judy Bishop and Polio had not been friends, and Judy Bishop denied that she had asked for Polio at the station.

On June 16, 2010, Bishop was charged with first degree murder in her brother's death, nearly 24 years after his shooting. Keating commented, "I can't give you any explanations, I can't give you excuses, because there are none. Jobs weren't done, responsibilities weren't met and justice wasn't served." Bishop's parents, who claim that the Braintree officers lied about the events at the station, issued a statement after the indictment. They wrote, "We cannot explain or even understand what happened in Alabama. However, we know that what happened 23 years ago to our son, Seth, was an accident."

In November 2010, survivors Leahy and Monticciolo filed lawsuits against Anderson and Bishop to recover damages. In January 2011, attorneys representing Davis' and Johnson's families filed wrongful death lawsuits against Bishop, Anderson, and the University. In September 2011, Bishop pleaded not guilty by means of the insanity defense.

In March 2009, Bishop had been denied tenure at the university, making spring 2010 her last semester there, per university policy. Due to the attention Bishop attracted as a result of the shooting, previous violent incidents in which she had been involved or implicated were reevaluated. In 1986, she shot and killed her brother in Braintree, Massachusetts, in an incident officially ruled an accident. She was also questioned, along with her husband, after a 1993 pipe-bomb incident directed toward her lab supervisor.

Bishop was reportedly a poor instructor and unpopular among her students. She dismissed several graduate students from her lab, and others sought transfers out. In 2009, several students said they complained to administrators about Bishop on at least three occasions, saying she was "ineffective in the classroom and had odd, unsettling ways." A petition signed by "dozens of students" was sent to the department head. The complaints, however, did not result in any classroom changes. Also in 2009, Bishop published an article in a vanity-press medical journal listing her husband and three minor children as co-authors. The article was later removed from the journal website.

As explained by University president Williams, after Bishop was denied tenure in March 2009, she did not expect to have her teaching contract renewed after March 2010. She appealed the decision to the University's administration. Without reviewing the content of the tenure application, they determined that the process was carried out according to policy and denied the appeal. The routine faculty meeting at which Bishop opened fire was unrelated to her tenure.

Bishop joined the faculty of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alabama in Huntsville as an assistant professor in 2003; she was teaching five courses prior to the shooting. Previously, she had an instructor at Harvard Medical School. Her and her husband's "portable cell incubator" came in third in a technology competition, winning $25,000. Prodigy Biosystems, where Anderson is employed, raised $1.25 million to develop the automated cell incubator. The university's president claimed that the incubator would "change the way biological and medical research is conducted", but some scientists consulted by the press declared it unnecessary and too expensive.

In 2002, Bishop was charged with punching a woman who had received the last booster seat at an International House of Pancakes in Peabody, Massachusetts. According to the police report, Bishop strode over to the other woman, demanded the seat, and launched into a profanity-laced rant. When the woman would not give the seat up, Bishop punched her in the head, all the while yelling "I am Dr. Amy Bishop!" Bishop's victim was identified as Michelle Gjika. Bishop pled guilty to misdemeanor assault plus disorderly conduct for the assault, and received probation. In the aftermath of the 2010 Alabama shooting, Gjika declined to comment on the restaurant incident; she said, "It's not something I want to relive."

Bishop's 1993 137-page dissertation at Harvard was titled The role of methoxatin (PQQ) in the respiratory burst of phagocytes. Her research interests include induction of adaptive resistance to nitric oxide in the central nervous system, and utilization of motor neurons for the development of neural circuits grown on biological computer chips. An anonymous source at Harvard stated that Bishop's work was of poor quality and undeserving of a doctorate degree, calling it "local scandal No. 1".

According to investigators, Bishop and her husband James Anderson were suspects in a 1993 letter-bomb case. Paul Rosenberg, a Harvard Medical School professor and physician at Children's Hospital Boston, received a package containing two pipe bombs, which failed to explode.

The chief federal prosecutor in Boston, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, reviewed the case following the shooting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. She ultimately decided Bishop would not be charged in the bombing attempt. She determined that the initial investigation in 1993 was "appropriate and thorough"; the case remains unsolved.

Bishop had written three unpublished novels. One featured a woman scientist working to defeat a pandemic virus, and struggling with suicidal thoughts at the threat of not earning tenure. The novels reportedly "reveal a deep preoccupation with the concept of deliverance from sin". Bishop is the second cousin of the novelist John Irving. She was a member of the Hamilton Writer's Group while living in Ipswich, Massachusetts in the late 1990s and was said to believe that writing would be "her ticket out of academia." She had a literary agent although she had not published any books. Members of the club said she "would frequently cite her Harvard degree and family ties to Irving to boost her credential as a serious writer." Another member described Bishop as smart but abrasive in her interactions and as feeling "entitled to praise."

In 1986, she shot and killed her brother with a shotgun, in what was initially ruled an accident based on her mother's testimony; she was not charged with a crime. In 1994, she and her husband were questioned regarding a letter-bomb incident involving a doctor at a facility at which she had previously been employed. In 2002 she was charged with assault after striking a woman in the head during a dispute at a restaurant, but she was not convicted.

At the age of 21, Bishop fatally shot her 18-year-old brother, Seth Bishop, on December 6, 1986, at their home in Braintree, Massachusetts. Bishop fired two shots from a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun (one into her bedroom wall, then one into her brother's chest while they were in the kitchen with their mother). Later she pointed the weapon at a moving vehicle on the adjacent road and tried to get into the vehicle. The death of her brother was classified as an accident by Braintree police.

After speaking with officers involved with the case in 1986, Frazier called the "accident" description inaccurate. He and others said that then-chief John Polio had ordered Bishop released to her mother—allegedly a political supporter of the chief as a member of the Braintree town meeting. They said that Amy Bishop had demanded to meet with Polio personally after the arrest—instead of being charged for the shooting. Frazier was not on duty during the incident but recalled "how frustrated the members of the department were over the release" of Amy Bishop.

The statute of limitations has expired on each of these charges. The most serious charge considered in 1986 was manslaughter for the death of her brother. Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts, ordered the state police to review their investigation, saying, "It is critical that we provide as clear an understanding as possible about all aspects of this case and its investigation to ensure that where mistakes were made they are not repeated in the future." An investigation was opened in which the state cooperated with the Norfolk County District Attorney's office to assess the state and local police, and then-DA's handling of the case.

Amy Bishop Anderson (born April 24, 1965; age 44 at the time of the shooting) is married to James Anderson and is the mother of four children. She grew up in Massachusetts, attended Braintree High School, and completed her undergraduate degree at Northeastern University in Boston. Her father, Samuel Bishop, was a professor there in the Art Department. She earned her Ph.D. in genetics from Harvard University.