<p>Contrary to the hubby, the FBI never sent them an exoneration letter for the 1993 bombing attempt:</p>
<p>[Official:</a> No exoneration letter sent to Bishop or husband in 1993 bomb case - Local News Updates - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/hold_for_postin.html]Official:”>http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/hold_for_postin.html)</p>
<p>Of course, current Braintree officers and town officials are going to say that the investigation of Seth Bishop’s death was mishandled in light of Amy’s murderous rampage in Alabama. What do you expect them to say? That the investigators did a terrific job twenty years ago!!!</p>
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<p>I hate these sorts of pronouncements in the news.</p>
<p>I guess that it’s up to the husband to produce the claimed letter.</p>
<p>yorkyfan, that’s the whole point, the investigation wasn’t thorough. It seems like it was all based on what the mom and daughter had to say about it.</p>
<p>"And more details were revealed yesterday, including that a Massachusetts judge ignored prosecutors and refused to order Bishop into anger management in 2002 after she admitted to striking a fellow mom in the head in a Peabody pancake house flap over a kids’ booster seat.</p>
<p>Judge Robert Ronquillo Jr. said through a spokesman yesterday he “gave the appropriate disposition based on the facts presented to him at the time.”</p>
<p>Those facts included an International House of Pancakes manager telling Peabody police a profanity-spewing Bishop “was acting like a crazy person.”</p>
<p>Ronquillo continued the case without a finding for six months, after which the charges of assault and battery and disorderly conduct were broomed from her criminal record."</p>
<p>[Alabama</a> victims’ kin, cops ‘very angry’ at Massachusetts - BostonHerald.com](<a href=“http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20100218alabama_victims_kin_cops_very_angry_at_massachusetts_look_how_many_lives_were_taken/]Alabama”>http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20100218alabama_victims_kin_cops_very_angry_at_massachusetts_look_how_many_lives_were_taken/)</p>
<p>Notice that many CC posters are willling to give U of A a pass for not acting on student complaints about a professor instead of yelling “cover-up.” It seems to be a matter of perspective.</p>
<p>Since WHEN are students’ complaints grounds to have a prof fired or grounds for a school to take some kind of “action”? If that were the case, most profs wouldn’t last a year. </p>
<p>And, UAH never denied that there had been any complaints or claimed that the complaints are “lost” (that would be a cover up).</p>
<p>And…this was NOT “U of A”…my goodness, you’d think after a week, people would know the difference. This happened at UAH</p>
<p>It’s ridiculous to blame the school. Parents, students, whatever complain about this teacher or that prof all of the time…schools only take action if something serious is brought to their attention. Like something illegal!</p>
<p>“What do you expect them to say? That the investigators did a terrific job twenty years ago!!!”</p>
<p>You can bet that if everything was done properly, the police and DA will stick their neck out and back their people. Remember that many of the officers that were involved still work there. Again even chief Polio himself who ok the release said that it was not done properly.</p>
<p>““You have to talk about Amy Bishop’s mental health in this situation as one of the variables, but being denied tenure when you’re in your mid-40s at an out-of-the-way obscure rural campus in the deep South is a catastrophic loss, and people don’t understand that,” says Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston. “If you’re denied tenure, you’re fired. And in this economy chances are you’ll have to change your career, which is pretty hard for a woman who’s spent a decade in graduate school on a prestigious campus, Harvard, and had a good reputation for scholarship. Where is she going to go?””</p>
<p>East Coast provincialism: U of A -Huntsville isn’t a rural campus nor is UAH considered “obscure” at least not by people who are into rocket engineering.</p>
<p>However given that she’s from Boston, where Harvard is the hub of the universe, Amy Bishop may have felt that she had hit rock bottom by not getting tenure there.</p>
<p>but being denied tenure when you’re in your mid-40s at an out-of-the-way obscure rural campus in the deep South is a catastrophic loss, and people don’t understand that,” says Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston.</p>
<p>OMG…and I like Jack Levin, but I’m sending him an email! </p>
<p>Good heavens…rural…out of the way campus??? It’s located within the second largest research park in the nation and within 5 minutes of an international airport. LOL </p>
<p>The city has almost 200,000 people. While that’s not huge, it’s certainly not “rural” or even “small town.” And, it has NASA and Redstone Arsenal, the latter which remains the center of testing, development, and doctrine for the U.S. Army’s missile programs. It’s hardly obscure to those in the high-tech industry. </p>
<p>Deep South??? What a laugh…he’d be hard-pressed to find many people in Huntsville with southern accents. Most are transplants from elsewhere.</p>
<p>Besides viewing tenure and rejection as a blow, I really don’t view tenure as any more of a life crisis than that experienced by many others whose lives are severely disrupted by life events and hardships. What makes me curious about Amy Bishop is the confluence of society and life in a setting we all understand (university academic career life) and her mental illness, whatever shape that became as she aged up from child to teen to college student to grad student to parent and teacher with high IQ and research skills.<br>
I was just looking up the Unabomber and the many times he was diagnosed with either a schizoid personality disorder (prosecution’s position and expert) or the times several doctors diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia (defense position). Even though he received the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia (despite his own objections and attempts to represent himself and to reject mental illness as his defense), he did not display all aspects of this illness. He did have two major symptoms doctors relied on…severe social impairments that compromised his self care and a constant delusional state (he believed the media was attempting to control his life and he held long term related beliefs on this matter and created carefully executed revenge responses to these beliefs despite all the evidence to the contrary and all the evidence that he was mistaken.)</p>
<p>Anyway, it will be interesting to see what kind of defense the doctors and the defense team present. Obviously, Dr. Bishop did not overtly display paranoid schizophrenia in all of its symptomology in ways that made the nature of her illness clear as a bell to anyone else. We do not know how long she had been ill or if she had seen anyone medically at all. It remains to be seen how much she will be held accountable for the decisons she clearly made. Nothing her husband has to say is sensible or credible at this point. He seems to have dismissed her outrageous aggression at the IHOP, to have shown no concern for the woman she struck and to have a lack of reality base himself… and to have been willing to go to target practice with a very unhappy, angry woman facing a job loss who had already shot someone to death in her poorly explained past. What husband in his right mind would accept the malarkey that a spouse had “borrowed” a gun? </p>
<p>SALLY C. JOHNSON, PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION OF THEODORE KACZYNSKI (Jan. 16,
1998), [court</a> TV becomes truTV](<a href=“http://courttv.com/trials/unabomber/documents/]court”>Documents Allege Hannah Gutierrez-Reed Brought Live Ammunition to Set | Court TV Video) psychological.html [hereinafter JOHNSON
EVALUATION]. Dr. Johnson also diagnosed Kaczynski with premorbid Paranoid Personality
Disorder with Avoidant and Antisocial Features, on the basis that Kaczynski suspected,
“without sufficient basis,” that others were exploiting, harming, or deceiving him. Id. Four other
doctors diagnosed Kaczynski with paranoid schizophrenia, although without the detailed
analysis of Dr. Johnson, including Dr. Raquel Gur, M.D., Ph.D.; Dr. Karen Froming; Dr. David
Foster; and Xavier Amador, Ph.D. See id. However, the prosecution’s doctors, Phillip Resnick
and Park Dietz, disagreed. They believed that Kaczynski’s problems merely fell in the Schizoid
or Schizotypal range of personality disorders. See id. John T. Kenny, Ph.D., also disagreed with
the paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis. See id.</p>
<p>Besides viewing tenure and rejection as a blow, I really don’t view tenure as any more of a life crisis than that experienced by many others whose lives are severely disrupted by life events and hardships.</p>
<p>Others more familiar with the tenure process can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the denial of tenure is much different than - say - being laid-off due to a down-turn in the economy.</p>
<p>Being denied tenure is like being told, “We still need someone to do YOUR job; we still have funding for YOUR job, but you are fired and we’re hiring someone else to do YOUR job.”</p>
<p>Jack Levin definitely shows East Coast provincialism. Like him, I had not known of the work that goes on in Hunstville! I learn something on CC all the time.</p>
<p>Generally, non-tenured profs live in a state of anxiety, but they also don’t take it for granted that they will or should be awarded tenure. Amy Bishop reportedly was worried that if denied tenure, she would end up like a Ph.D. she knew was driving a school bus, or something like that. For someone who took herself so seriously (“I’m Dr. Amy Bishop”) and thought that she could atone for killing her brother through her devotion to science, that must have been a bitter pill to swallow.</p>
<p>Denial of tenure is tantamount to being told “You’re not good enough” which is different from being laid off because your company is experiencing financial difficulties or is being taken over. But many people get fired for not being good enough and they don’t have a whole year to look for alternative employment. I think that the tenure system is anxiety-producing but also quite humane compared to being terminated without notice or with just a month’s notice.</p>
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<p>I agree. While there surely are valid arguments for reforming the tenure system (in retirement from his first career, my H is a contract faculty member, nontenured by choice, so I know something about this), the most relevant issue is Amy Bishop’s psychosis. In any work environment, there would eventually have been a trigger that sent her over the edge. And I’m willing to bet that even if she had received tenure, she might have snapped for some other reason. We will never know. Since this happened, my H and I have been reflecting on people we’ve worked with over the years who seemed “odd” to the point of disturbing. They’re everywhere, not just in the university setting.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Oh true…</p>
<p>If this woman could hit another mother over a baby booster seat, then she’d likely go off on anyone over anything…being cut-off on the road…whatever!</p>
<p>I wonder if she had any “road rage” incidents?</p>
<p>Being denied tenure is like being told, “We still need someone to do YOUR job; we still have funding for YOUR job, but you are fired and we’re hiring someone else to do YOUR job.” </p>
<p>I agree that being denied tenure is a severe life event and a blow and a rejection that is personal that has a major impact after years of preparation and work in a field. I know a couple of good people who were “shown the door” and another colleague was invited “in.” Both of them are still teaching at the college level with reduced expectations and certainly some considerable bitterness. I know people who were not invited to join their college academic departments who teach in high schools and community colleges. Being denied tenure is admittedly very personal, very dramatic and is a major life blow event but it is not a rare occurrence and it is an anticipated hazard in academic circles. </p>
<p>What concerns me is the reality that we will all meet up with people who may have untreated, unspecified, undefined underlying disorders in the work place, and we have to make decisions about our conduct and sometimes their job performances.</p>
<p>personal note: I had a very close, dear friend who was murdered with a shotgun by someone who was a highly regarded Judge. It was a saga that was on television nightly for many months but I know I am the only person who told her I thought he could hurt her and that he was so narcissistic he was dangerous.</p>
<p>she told me, and I will never forget it, because she took my hand…“he would never hurt a hair on my head.” </p>
<p>months later her relatives were in court suing his poor (and also under-informed) doctors for malpractice in a fight over the nature of his “illness”. (They did not win a judgment against his doctors…who were not held accountable for the crime, thank heavens.)</p>
<p>I have had occasion in my life to ponder evil and “wrong decisions motivated by ego, narcissism and hubris” vs mental illness and where these two things converge and cause havoc for the innocent.</p>
<p>“Being denied tenure is like being told, “We still need someone to do YOUR job; we still have funding for YOUR job, but you are fired and we’re hiring someone else to do YOUR job.””</p>
<p>It’s sort of like that, but there’s much more politics involved than on a regular job.</p>
<p>In my case, I knew that I didn’t get tenure due to politics that had nothing to do with me. What happened to me was due to a power play between my dean and the college prez. I also knew that if I were willing to move, I could have gotten an academic job elsewhere, but I didn’t move due to the fact that H had tenure, and my kids were middle school and in high school, and I didn’t want to uproot the family.</p>
<p>I bet that odd though she was, Amy Bishop, probably could have found employment – good employment – elsewhere. Her Harvard doctorate plus her invention probably would have been big helps in her getting a good job.</p>
<p>Faline2, what a sad story.</p>
<p>Wow- I know most of those folks who evaluated Kascynski! And for the record- they all have Ph.D.s and none of them are weird, bizarro or crazy.</p>
<p>*
I bet that odd though she was, Amy Bishop, probably could have found employment – good employment – elsewhere. Her Harvard doctorate plus her invention probably would have been big helps in her getting a good job.*</p>
<p>You know that is VERY true…especially since UAH has such tight ties with the companies at Research Park. I wonder if she had sent out any resumes or if she was just set on being a prof? Maybe she didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of having to really work with colleagues in the business world???</p>
<p>I once spent 2 months helping a friend open an appliance store. I had a customer that sounds like she had similar (lacking) social skills. This woman, an engineer, was a VERY difficult customer. I spent all morning with her; she showed no reaction to anything I showed her. Never a smile; never a sign that she liked anything I showed her. No small talk - which is rather customary in these circumstances. All I knew was that she wanted Stainless and certain sizes…that’s all she’d give me… LOL</p>
<p>So, she absolutely floored me when she ordered an entire kitchen’s worth of new appliances…Fridge, D/W, cooktop, double ovens, & a microwave. </p>
<p>I wrote up the order, arranged the installation, but never a happy expression from her face. Odd…very odd.</p>
<p>thank you, geezermom.<br>
great pain and ruin follows acts this heinous…the perp’s children suffered so greatly, and it always amazed me that he could not factor in any reality about what would happen to them or to his own parents…he had been a “good” parent on many scores.</p>
<p>I do feel sorry for her children…very much so.</p>