Amy Bishop has a violent and deadly past - Alabama Police Department

Amy Bishop, a 42-year-old neurobiologist, could face the death penalty for allegedly shooting dead the chairman of the biology department and two other professors on Friday after being denied a permanent university post. Two professors and an assistant were wounded.


Amy Bishop, a Harvard-educated professor who went on a shooting rampage at the University of Alabama may have escaped charges for the killing of her teenage brother in 1986 because of a police cover-up. Ms Bishop, then 19, shot her brother Seth, 18, a violinist and prize-winning science student, with a shotgun during an argument.

Ms Bishop was freed after John Polio, the police chief at the time, apparently halted the investigation. John Polio ordered officers to free Ms Bishop and declare the shooting accidental.

According to the police chief, Ms Bishop’s mother, Judith, was a public official who sat on a police personnel committee. Apart from a short entry in the Braintree police log the case file on the death, including a seven-page report, has disappeared.

Mr. Polio, now 87, denied that the police had improperly let Ms Bishop go free.

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 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.

Amy Bishop is Assistant Professor at the department of Biological Sciences. She teaches BYS 313: Anatomy & Physiology 1, BYS 314: Anatomy & Physiology 2, BYS 400/600: Introduction to Neuroscience, Special Topics 691: Mechanisms of resistance to oxidative stress in the CNS and Special Topics 692: Research. The list of her publication, abstracts, & presentations can be view here.