Shooting at Univ. Alabama Huntsville (merged thread folds in Parents Cafe comments)

<p>An interview with a psychology professor at UAH provides some insight into her personality. It does seem that she was difficult to get along with, to put it mildly. Perhaps she just couldn’t take the blow to her ego from people whom she viewed as her intellectual inferiors. The psychology professor expresses the opinion that she could easily have found another position at a higher salary.</p>

<p>[Colleague</a> says suspect ?aloof, superior? - Decaturdaily.com](<a href=“http://www.decaturdaily.com/detail/53564.html]Colleague”>http://www.decaturdaily.com/detail/53564.html)</p>

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<p>I am not trivializing any person’s death to say that death is a part of life. Certainy it especially heartbreaking when a young person dies.</p>

<p>There always is pain and loss connected with a loved one’s death. Saying that isn’t trivializing those losses.</p>

<p>I think people get more support from society when loved ones die -including by murder- than if their loved ones are murderers.</p>

<p>People shun and blame relatives of murderers.</p>

<p>I would rather be murdered than be a murderer. If given this awful choice, I would rather my sons be murdered than kill someone in cold blood.</p>

<p>If my sons murdered someone forever I would wonder what I did wrong as a parent.</p>

<p>I thought I heard somewhere on the news that there was a quote from Amy Bishop after she was arrested about the killings. Did anyone hear this, too?</p>

<p>^ NSM - I get what you’re saying, but you’re seeing it from the perspective of you, the parent, and what would be best for you. I think the real question would be if your child could have any quality of life being imprisoned. If the answer is “yes” then you’re willing to suffer the wondering the rest of your life as the price to pay for your child getting to have a life. Trust me, even in the event of a son’s murder you question every day, rationally or not, if you could have done something differently to prevent it. My son was murdered and I rethink it every day - well not every day, time has tempered that, but the thought is always right there.</p>

<p>Not knocking you at all, but once you’re in the situation it is unlike anything you could imagine.</p>

<p>This is a great thread - noone getting hysterical, no need to have it moved…</p>

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<p>I am sure that is true, but it is also irrational. One obviously should NOT be held accountable for the misdeeds of their relatives. Note, I edited for my typo! One should NOT be held accountable…sorry for that typo</p>

<p>If one of your sons did something so heinous to another, I don’t think that you should look for fault with yourself. If you know that you have done your best to raise your children, then that is all anyone could do. There is pathology, and just plain evil in this world. JMO.</p>

<p>AL34, I am so sorry.</p>

<p>The same, AL34. I am very sorry for your loss.</p>

<p>^thanks, been a long time so we’re good with it - didn’t mean to be a thread-killer :)</p>

<p>AL34, I am sick to hear that you’ve lost a child in this way. I am so sorry.</p>

<p>mom2college, I am hoping that your friend’s husband recovers fully. They sound like wonderful people.</p>

<p>For anyone who wonders about the political culture around Boston in the 80’s, try this book:</p>

<p>[Amazon.com:</a> The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century (9780446576512): Howie Carr: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Bulger-Terrorized-Corrupted-Quarter/dp/0446576514]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Bulger-Terrorized-Corrupted-Quarter/dp/0446576514)</p>

<p>I was not able to finish it.</p>

<p>Billy Bulger was appointed President of the University of Massachusetts system in the 1990’s. No academic qualifications. UMass thought his appointment would mean more state funding, it didn’t materialize. UMass became a joke in the higher education community nationwide. </p>

<p>This has relevance to this tragic story in that it shows how in Massachusetts any thing can happen, if you have connections.</p>

<p>Jeez, this story keeps getting more Bizarre!!!</p>

<p>[Alleged</a> Ala. killer was suspect in Harvard professor bomb attempt - Local News Updates - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/ala_slay_suspec.html]Alleged”>http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/ala_slay_suspec.html)</p>

<p>*“What she told me was there were some people in her department — she did not name them — who had a personal beef with her,” Seemann said. “She said one or more of those people were directly involved with her tenure decision.”</p>

<p>Seemann said he had no clue Bishop’s frustration would lead her to the alleged shootings.</p>

<p>“She was sounding a little paranoid. I’m not sure she was taking responsibility for her part in the tenure decisions,” Seemann said of a conversation he had with her in November. *</p>

<p>Well, it doesn’t sound like she’d used to taking responsibility for her actions.</p>

<p>*The professor who is accused of killing three colleagues at the University of Alabama on Friday was a suspect in the attempted mail bombing of a Harvard Medical School professor in 1993, a law enforcement official said today.</p>

<p>Amy Bishop and her husband, James Anderson, were questioned after a package containing two bombs was sent to the Newton home of Dr. Paul Rosenberg, a professor and doctor at Boston’s Children’s Hospital.</p>

<p>It was the second startling revelation in two days about the past of Bishop, who is accused of fatally shooting three colleagues and wounding three others Friday afternoon at a faculty meeting on the University of Alabama’s Huntsville, Ala. campus.</p>

<p>A Massachusetts police chief revealed Saturday that Bishop had fatally shot her brother in 1986.</p>

<p>Rosenberg was opening mail, which had been set aside by a cat-sitter, when he returned from a Caribbean vacation on Dec. 19, 1993, according to Globe reports at the time.</p>

<p>Opening a long, thin package addressed to “Mr. Paul Rosenberg M.D.,” he saw wires and a cylinder inside. He and his wife ran from the house and called police.</p>

<p>The package contained two 6-inch pipe bombs connected to two nine-volt batteries.*</p>

<p>OMG…I wonder if her husband is nuts, too. Get those kids away from him!!!</p>

<p>^^^
Jeez is right. This story is getting incomprehensible. I’m wondering what kind of background screening colleges do when they hire faculty. A few months back there was a story out of Williams about a professor there who plead guilty to fraud and allegedly had a long history of aliases and questionable dealings. At the time, I thought that story was really remarkable, but it pales in comparison with Dr. Bishop.</p>

<p>You have got to be kidding me… how does this not come up when applying for a job (at UA)? I do think hands are tied as far as giving negative recommendations, I know DS cannot give one for a former employee, but certainly this was common knowledge around Harvard at the time. How does this not come up? </p>

<p>This is getting worse and worse, and obviously, maybe not in this case, but her husband knows of her proclivities to violence.</p>

<p>This story has taken a strange turn. I also think they should take the kids away from these people.</p>

<p>So, now universities also have to be worried about professors becoming school shooters?</p>

<p>Many many companies conduct background checks, which show if an individual has a conviction. It would not show if an individual was arrested if the arrest was dropped, or if an individual was tried and acquitted, or if the individual was simply a suspect. Assuming that one is innocent until proven guilty, those types of situations are not reported when doing a criminal background check. And that seems perfectly reasonable to me.</p>

<p>I have no idea if universities do similar background checks, but probably nothing on Bishop would have shown up anyway.</p>

<p>AL34, I’m so sorry that your son was murdered. You’re not a thread killer, you offered your experience and it’s moved people.</p>

<p>I share the concern about the children. I only hope there is a relative or family friend who is close with the children and willing to step in. Those poor kids. </p>

<p>It certainly brings up another issue, which is how did UAH not know about that? I understand that absent a conviction it would not appear on an official record but doesn’t word travel among those in the same specialties? I know two women who were stalked, one in undergrad and one in med school by men who it turned out had done it at the college they’d been at before. I’ve often wondered how common that is and, sadly, I suspect it is not that uncommon. Why is there this secrecy?</p>

<p>*
Ms Bishop shot her brother Seth, 18, a violinist and prize-winning science student, with a shotgun during an argument, he said. She was arrested at gunpoint after allegedly pointing the gun at a car to try to force the driver to stop.</p>

<p>The police chief at the time, John Polio, apparently ordered officers to free Ms Bishop and declare the shooting accidental. “I spoke with the retired deputy chief who was . . . responsible for booking Ms Bishop. He said he had started the process when he received a call from then police chief John Polio, or possibly from a captain on Chief Polio’s behalf,” Mr Frazier said. “He was instructed to stop the booking process. The release of Ms Bishop did not sit well with the police officers.”</p>

<p>According to the police chief Ms Bishop’s mother, Judith, was a public official who sat on a police personnel committee.</p>

<p>Apart from a short entry in the Braintree police log the case file on the death, including a seven-page report, has disappeared.</p>

<p>Ms Bishop, who has four children, obtained a PhD from Harvard University in 1993. She began teaching at the University of Alabama in 2003. She was told last year however that she would not get a tenured, or permanent, position and that this was her last term. Colleagues described her as a brilliant researcher but a poor teacher and communicator.</p>

<p>She held her regular anatomy and neuroscience class on Friday before going to a faculty meeting at a university building in Huntsville, Alabama, where she allegedly pulled out a 9mm handgun and began firing. Witnesses said that she then left the room and dumped the gun in a lavatory before being arrested.</p>

<p>When she was led away she told local television: “It didn’t happen. There’s no way. They’re still alive.” *</p>

<p>Guess she’s now going to have to live with the fact that her mother can’t make it all go away like it never even happened.</p>