Amy Bishop, Accused "Killer Professor," Faces Probe in Brother's Shooting Death
WOBURN, Mass. (CBS/AP) Amy Bishop, accused of killing three fellow professors at the University of Alabama-Hunstville, faces a rare investigative inquest beginning Tuesday - but it's not about the alleged shooting deaths on campus Feb. 12.
This investigation traces back to her brother's shooting death in 1986, in Massachusetts, a case originally ruled an accident, but now reopened.
A Massachusetts district attorney recently ordered the probe into whether Bishop intentionally shot her 18-year-old brother,
Seth, at their home in Braintree, south of Boston, 24 years ago.
Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating is expected to call as many as two dozen government witnesses to testify this week during the inquest, according to the Boston Globe. Among the many questions in the renewed investigation will likely be how the teen's death was ruled an accident considering Bishop's odd behavior after the killing.
Bishop said at the time that she took her father's shotgun and loaded it, but couldn't figure out how to get the bullets out. She then went to her brother to ask for help and the gun went off, according to Braintree police reports.
But instead of calling police for help she allegedly fled the house, held workers at an auto dealership at gunpoint in an attempt to commandeer a getaway car, trained the shotgun on police, and refused to drop it when officers tried to arrest her, the Globe reported.
But some area lawyers told the Globe that Quincy District Court Judge Mark S. Coven, who is conducting the Bishop inquest, will likely focus more on the shooting of Seth Bishop than on the many peculiarities of the investigation.
If Coven determines that Bishop deliberately killed her brother, the judge could recommend she be charged with homicide, the only crime for which the statute of limitations hasn't expired.
Bishop is now incarcerated in Alabama, awaiting trial on a capital murder charge for the shootings at the university, where she worked as a biology professor.
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