<p>Police waited 11 days to interview Amy Bishop and her mother, who had witnessed the shooting of the brother!</p>
<p>"A former Braintree police chief backed away yesterday from his earlier defense of a 1986 decision not to press charges against Amy Bishop, who shot her brother to death that year and then, on Friday, allegedly killed three of her colleagues at the University of Alabama.</p>
<p>John Polio, now 87, said in an interview yesterday that after reading a State Police report compiled in 1986 and released to the public last weekend, he has questions about the quality of the investigation into the death of Seth Bishop, which was declared an accident.</p>
<p>The report, which Polio said was not given to him at the time, reveals that State Police did not interview Amy Bishop and her mother, who witnessed the shooting, until 11 days later, and there were some discrepancies in their accounts of what happened.</p>
<p>If I remember right the real difference between sociopath and psychopath boils down to a psychotic break (total lbreak from reality) Was she psychotic at the time? Well, the husband says she was acting normal and the students say she was acting normal. </p>
<p>My thoughts: Cold blooded killer and the husband knows it.</p>
<p>Well. Now it turns out that they met in college because they were both Dungeons and Dragons devotees. Which makes them geeks, not potential killers.</p>
<p>Also: I don’t want to sound like an Ivy League snob or to denigrate Northeastern, but if Amy Bishop was always a scientific “genius” (like her brother), and her family had plenty of money (as appears to have been the case), is Northeastern a college that a high-achieving “genius” from Massachusetts would have been likely to end up at back then, absent “issues” with recommendations or interviews, etc. that might have hurt her chances with higher-ranked schools? I know that she went to Harvard Medical School, but that was later.</p>
<p>Not that it’s really important in this tragedy, but it’s not uncommon for high school students to do research and even publish, particularly in biology. Unlike other sciences, biology doesn’t require an extensive background to actively do research.</p>
<p>Donna, I don’t know whether her parents were that wealthy, but I did read that her father was working as a Professor the Arts department at Northeastern, so maybe to get free tuition or reduced tuition, both kids were attending Northeastern.</p>
<p>As unfair as it is, I think this sort of “cover-up” occurs in police departments of tight-knit communities all over the nation. The mom works for the town in some capacity so she and her family are known to the Braintree PD. The family is probably affluent and respected in the community. When the shooting occurs, Mom, in hysterics, calls her contacts at the PD for help and repeats the “accidental” shooting story. Mom may be lying or deceiving herself; in any case she has just lost a son and she is not going to lose her daughter to jail. Probably a number of officers are sympathetic and it is inconceivable to them that the daughter of a family that they know and respect is capable of murder. So the Braintree PD decides not to investigate too thoroughly because why put this poor family through additional suffering. </p>
<p>I have a distant relative who got as drunk as a skunk one night and drove her pick-up truck up someone’s lawn, onto their porch, and through their living room window, demolishing the entire living room. Luckily nobody was in the room or they would have been killed. The police officer who responded called her dad instead of arresting and booking her. Why? Her dad was the proprietor of the most popular bar in town and everyone knew him.
Her dad came and took her home; she never got a ticket. </p>
<p>I’m not sure where I am going with this. But I think, in smaller towns, the police departments and the communities they serve are members of the same “tribe”. It may have been hard for many of the officers to believe that a member of their “tribe” would be capable of murder, especially if the community was a low crime area with educated, “nice” people.</p>
<p>Actually, they had had a couple of other murders/killings by kids in Braintree just before the one involving Bishop. The police chief implied that they were overwhelmed.</p>
<p>Oh, lovely article. Another attempt to suggest a connection between fantasy games and real-life violence. I’m sure that soon we’ll be hearing more calls to ban Dungeons & Dragons, and probably all video games and fantasy films, from northern Alabama’s fundamentalist idiot contingent.</p>
<p>“not that it’s really important in this tragedy, but it’s not uncommon for high school students to do research and even publish, particularly in biology. Unlike other sciences, biology doesn’t require an extensive background to actively do research.”</p>
<p>Her youngest kid is 9. Hard for me to imagine that child did something worthy of being listed as the co-author of a research article for a biology journal.</p>
<p>Does her husband actually have an attorney telling him to stop talking to reporters? Because he seems to just be continuing to talk to do the opposite.</p>
<p>Northeastern has a much better reputation now than it did in the 1980s. The area is generally nicer too. My sister got her degree there on the coop program back in the 1980s.</p>
<p>Here’s another big discrepancies in the police statements. In the police report, the Bishop (mom and Amy) was not interviewed until 11 days later on Dec 17th. The shooting occurred on Dec 6th but 2 days later, the local newspaper already reported that the police will not be pressing charges. Here’s the archive of the articles.</p>
<p>The newspaper already have quotes from Amy, her Mom, and the lead investigator 2 days after the incident with again the usual discrepancies about multiple firings. The key here is that the chief said they should not have waited 11 days to interview. Seriously, the chief did not know anything but his subordinate already said the case is closed after 2 days?</p>
<p>I think, frankly, being a murderer, in cold blood like this, just flat out IS a mental disorder, personally.</p>
<p>I don’t think, in this day, that many shooters would just be released for 11 days without questioning. Even in the cases of self-defense, I think they are held and interrogated, but I could be wrong.</p>
<p>Her husband seems to be missing something vital, too…</p>
<p>"Anderson told Eric Moskowitz, the Globe reporter who knocked on his door, that he hadn’t bothered to learn the identities of the people his wife is accused of shooting, even though he assumes he knows them.</p>