Braintree, Massachusetts police are under the gun; the county has finally indicted professor Amy Bishop for the 1986 shotgun murder of her 18-year-old brother. Bishop, you will recall, shot six of her colleagues at the University of Alabama Huntsville, killing three, in February of this year. “The grand jury has indicted Amy Bishop for murder in the first degree,” Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating told reporters. “Here in Massachusetts, we had evidence of a murder. We proceeded with that, as we should have.” According to boston.com, Keating’s mea culpa doesn’t sit well with the top cop who ordered her released without charge for her brother’s death . . .
“Former Braintree police chief John V. Polio [above], who ran the department when Bishop killed her brother, said the murder indictment against Bishop “does not convince me in any way that she’s absolutely guilty. I’ll stick right with the innocent unless proven guilty.” Yeah, well, he would say that wouldn’t he? Check this out . . .
Bishop’s mother, Judith, told police decades ago that she was in the room when her 21-year-old daughter accidentally shot her son.
Amy Bishop told police she took her father’s shotgun on Dec. 6, 1986, loaded it, and fired a shot in her bedroom, then went downstairs to the kitchen and shot her brother in the chest. She said she accidentally shot him while trying to figure how to unload the shotgun.
According to police reports from 1986, Bishop then fled the home, tried to commandeer a car at gunpoint from a Braintree auto dealership, and trained the gun on police, who eventually persuaded her to drop the weapon. Bishop was released within hours and did not face charges.
And here’s the thing: the Braintree police’s reports on the incident were never sent to the DA’s office. Which was news to Polio, apparently.
“I don’t question myself one bit,” Polio said during a telephone interview this afternoon. “I did absolutely the right thing because when I took it for granted that [reports] were sent over to the DA’s office when in fact there was a lack of communication that I was unaware of. I did nothing that I would change.”
Oh, I wouldn’t go that far chief. Again, Polio is the guy who ordered Bishop released witbout charge after the Massachusetts murder. Why he did it is not known. You can read his end-of-service profile here, and draw your own conclusions. Suffice it to say, we’ve not heard the last of this case.
I thought they were arresting her because of her bad hair. If not, the prosecutor needs to add that crime to the indictment.