Dr. Amy Bishop

      No Comments on Dr. Amy Bishop

When you think of a stereotypical school shooter, you probably don’t picture Dr. Amy Bishop, a middle-aged mother and biology professor. In 2010, she executed three of her colleagues at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), where she had recently been denied tenure. Initially, many thought Amy had just “snapped,” but investigators discovered that she had a history of workplace problems, and this wasn’t the first time that she had killed. 

image from pixabay
Subscribe

Huntsville, Alabama

This case technically begins in Braintree, Massachusetts, Amy Bishop’s hometown, but we’re starting in the southern United States, in Huntsville, Alabama. Huntsville is Alabama’s most populous city with about 215,000 residents (about 180,000 when the events of this case occurred). The region grew as a weapons research hub after World War II, earning the nickname “The Rocket City” after it became a hot spot for missile development and NASA research. 

UAH, a public research university founded in 1950, shares that history, with half of its students graduating from its engineering and science programs. Famous UAH alumni include several professional athletes, authors, scientists, and politicians, as well as a NASA astronaut, Jan Davis, and the founder of Discovery Communications, John Hendricks. 

If Huntsville or UAH make headline news, it’s usually because of something related to “The Rocket City” reputation. Except in 2010, when it was the site of a tragic mass shooting.  

February 12, 2010

On Friday, February 12, 2010, at 3:00 pm, thirteen colleagues from UAH’s biology department gathered for their regular faculty meeting. Staff filed into a small conference room on the Shelby Center science building’s third floor, most of them sitting around a rectangular table. Forty-four-year-old biology professor Amy Bishop took a seat in front of the room’s only door. 

As the nearly hour-long meeting was nearing its end, Amy stood suddenly and pulled a handgun from her canvas tote bag: a 9mm Ruger P95 semi automatic pistol loaded with twelve rounds. She aimed it at the 52-year-old biology professor immediately to her right, Dr. Gopi Podila. Gopi died from a single gunshot to his chest, leaving behind a wife and two daughters. He had joined the team at UAH as chairman of the biology department in 2002. 

Gripping the gun in both of her hands, Amy Bishop next shot at 63-year-old staff assistant Stephanie Monticciolo, who was sitting next to Gopi. Stephanie had time to cover her face with her hands, causing Amy’s bullet to strike Stephanie’s finger before entering her brain. The bullet tracked down Stephanie’s right cheek and arm, resulting in severe injuries that forced her to retire early. One of her colleagues removed his shirt and used it to apply pressure to the wound as the shooting continued. Stephanie spent more than six weeks at the hospital recovering, undergoing surgeries and therapies for years afterward. 

Next, Amy executed the 52-year-old associate biology professor sitting to her left, Dr. Adriel Johnson. Adriel was a beloved faith leader who was deeply involved in his community along with his wife and two sons. He was born and raised in Alabama and spent his career at UAH.  Adriel sat next to 52-year-old associate biology professor Dr. Maria Davis during the meeting, and Amy shot her next. Maria had been at UAH for almost 10 years when Amy killed her. She was also a breast cancer survivor. 

One after another, Amy aimed her gun at her colleagues’ heads and fired. Survivors remembered that Amy’s expression was angry, but her shooting was methodical. Since Amy was blocking the door, everyone had ducked under the table to avoid her bullets. Biology professor Dr. Luis Cruz-Vera managed to call 911, but he passed the phone off to someone else after he realized he’d been shot. Fortunately, Luis’s physical injuries were minor, and he was released from the hospital the next day.

Fifty-year-old biology professor Dr. Joseph Leahy wasn’t as fortunate. Joseph’s colleagues used small paper napkins to slow the bleeding from his head, an act he said saved his life. Joseph went blind in his right eye, spent two months in the hospital, and needed to have a titanium plate implanted in his forehead. Brain damage impaired vision in his other eye, along with his ability to return to his career at full capacity. In 2017, he died of a sudden heart attack. 

By now, Amy Bishop had fired six of her gun’s twelve rounds, killing three colleagues and wounding three more. She had six bullets and six targets left in the small conference room. It was then that Debra Moriarty, Amy’s friend and UAH’s dean of graduate studies, decided to act. She crawled under the table and grabbed Amy’s ankles. Amy backed away and looked down at her friend. Debra pleaded:

“Amy, think about my grandson, think about my daughter. Amy, you know I’ve helped you, I’ll help you again. It’s me, it’s me.”

Amy pointed her gun at Debra and pulled the trigger. Debra winced as she heard the gun click, but it had jammed, sparing her life. Debra took the opportunity to flee past Amy into an open area outside the conference room. Amy followed her, shooting at Debra a few more times with the same results. Debra raced back to the conference room while Amy struggled with her jammed weapon. Another colleague shut and locked the door, then two more used a coffee table and a small refrigerator to barricade everyone inside. 

Amy didn’t return to the conference room – she walked to a restroom on the second floor, where she threw her gun and jacket away, and then called her husband, James Anderson, to pick her up. He claims they had a date planned that evening after work. She was greeted outside by law enforcement instead. Amy told arresting officers:

“It didn’t happen. There’s no way. They’re still alive.” 

The tenure motive

Right away, those close to Amy Bishop wondered if her motivation for the shooting lay in UAH denying her tenure back in April 2009. The university was concerned about Amy’s mental health, complaints from students, and the lack of research contributions she had made to her field. Amy was busy inventing an automated cell incubator and, the university claimed, too focused on obtaining patents for her work rather than publishing research. 

Amy appealed the decision, was rejected again in November, but continued battling. She filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) citing that an unnamed male professor went on record in a tenure committee meeting saying that he knew Amy was “crazy” as soon as he met her.

“I said she was crazy multiple times and I stand by that. The woman had a pattern of erratic behavior. She did things that were not normal.” 

Her friend Debra Moriarty said that Amy “harassed” her about helping appeal the tenure decision. Debra followed through by meeting with UAH’s provost. After meeting with the provost, Debra’s “conclusion was that procedures had all been followed correctly.” 

Amy’s husband, James Anderson, believes her challenges obtaining tenure were a factor in the shooting, and he called for an investigation into the academic community, “that whole world that no one knows of,” as he calls it. “We are referring to an isolated group, like monks, and no one knows what goes on there.” Amy’s mother says Amy “just snapped” after her tenure denial, and other close family refer to the shooting as “an accident.” While Amy’s struggles with stress and rejection are valid, they aren’t unique, especially within her field, and her peers don’t resort to murder to resolve their hurt feelings. 

There are three problems with the tenure vengeance theory, the first being that some of Amy’s victims had actually voted in support of her tenure. It was true that some of Amy’s students had petitioned to have her removed due to her “unsettling ways,” but the department head she had just murdered, Dr. Gopi Podila, was the one who dismissed the students’ complaints and defended Amy (he also voted for her tenure). Amy was also prepared to shoot her friend, Debra, who had personally appealed to UAH’s provost on Amy’s behalf. 

Another problem is that Amy continued to offer her own conflicting theories. In a 2014 appeal, she accused her attorney of failing to mention a “student stalker.” This supposed stalker was the reason why Amy brought a gun to work. She didn’t explain how that fear translated into her opening fire on faculty members. 

Finally, there is the fact that Amy being denied tenure wasn’t necessarily going to be financially ruinous. Amy’s incubator invention was a success, and her patents promised future recurring income. She had a full year to find a new job, and her husband said there were at least three other universities interested in talking to her about a position. 

Earlier warning signs

Investigators turned up a criminal past as they continued searching for a motive. On Sunday, March 16, 2002, about a year before UAH hired her, Amy Bishop had been charged with assault. Amy, her husband, and their four children went to an IHOP for breakfast, and Amy requested a booster seat for her youngest. The last one had just been given to another family, and Amy approached the other mother and her children. Amy “launched into an expletive-laced rant,” shrieking, “I am Dr. Amy Bishop!” repeatedly. She only left the restaurant after punching the woman in the head. Charges were eventually dropped. 

Various neighbors and former colleagues came forward after the shooting to share their own altercations with Amy. In particular, the police and Amy’s neighbors in Ipswich, Massachusetts recalled multiple incidents while she lived there from 1998 until 2003. Amy called the police four times with noise complaints, one time telling police that it was about to “come to blows” with kids playing basketball in a public area near her home. She called her neighbors directly to complain about their noise, and even complained so much about the ice cream truck that it stopped visiting her street. In 1999, she reported two of her daughters missing because they didn’t call her before going out. 

Back in December 1993, Dr. Paul Rosenberg, Amy’s supervisor at the Boston Children’s Hospital’s neurobiology lab, received two six-inch pipe bombs in the mail. Fortunately, he was suspicious and opened the package carefully, preventing detonation. Although they have since been cleared, Amy and her husband Jim were suspects. Amy resigned after Paul gave her a negative evaluation. He wrote that Amy was “on the verge of a nervous breakdown…[and] could not meet the standards required for work.” Witness interviews corroborated Paul’s claims that Amy “exhibited violent behavior” and “was not stable.” 

A note on Jim Anderson

One witness in the pipe bombing investigation said that Amy’s husband was the one plotting a violent revenge against Paul Rosenberg. The witness’s identity hasn’t been released, and Jim Anderson denies the claim. Despite the documented performance evaluation, Jim says the only reason Amy had to leave was because the lab ran out of funds for her project. 

Jim has always defended his wife against criticism. A close friend of the couple claims that “Amy is a narcissist,” and whenever she got angry, Jim “fanned the flames” as a way to control her. The two met through their college’s Dungeons & Dragons group and married in 1989. They had their first child in 1991, and Amy earned her Ph.D. from Harvard in 1993. The couple ended up having four children between 1991 and 2001. When Amy accepted the job at UAH in 2003, her youngest child was barely a toddler. She was the family’s breadwinner and experienced the added stress of balancing motherhood with a demanding career. Somehow Amy also found the time to write three novels, which are still unpublished. 

One week before the shooting, Jim and Amy went to a shooting range. Amy practiced firing the 9mm pistol that she would use to terrorize and murder her colleagues a few days later. A friend of Jim’s had gifted it to him back in the late 1990s. Immediately after the shooting, Jim denied that the family owned a gun at all. 

Braintree, Massachusetts

Amy’s history of violence and run-ins with the law go all the way back to her hometown of Braintree, Massachusetts. Braintree is about twenty minutes south of Boston in Norfolk County, with a population of almost 40,000 today (which is about the same as it was back in the late 1960s when Amy’s family moved there). It’s the birthplace of John Adams, America’s second president, his wife, Abigail, and their son, America’s sixth president, John Quincy Adams. Notorious signatory John Hancock, Mark Wahlberg, and Donnie Wahlberg are also among Braintree’s famous former residents. 

Amy Bishop was born on April 24, 1965, in Iowa City, Iowa and arrived in Braintree at three years old when her father, Sam Bishop, took a position in the art department of Boston’s Northeastern University. Her younger brother, Seth, was born shortly after the move. Amy was a severely allergic and asthmatic child who loved music and science. She was described as empathetic, but also a loner; bright, but competitive. 

After the Bishop’s home was robbed in 1985, Amy’s father purchased a 12-gauge shotgun for protection. On Saturday, December 6, 1986, 21-year-old Amy and her father engaged in a heated argument, although the topic and intensity of the fight, and whether it ever happened at all, has evolved over the years. Afterward, Amy was alone in the house for several hours: her father left to go Christmas shopping, her 18-year-old brother, Seth, went to the grocery store, and her mother, Judy, was working at the horse stable. Amy would later tell police that she was worried about robbers and loaded the shotgun to feel safer. Then, she tried to unload the shells and accidentally shot her bedroom mirror. 

Judy returned home first, followed by Seth with the groceries. Amy claims that she met Seth in the kitchen and asked him to unload the gun, but the shotgun accidentally fired again when she turned toward him. Judy told police she saw the whole thing happen exactly as Amy stated. 

After Amy murdered her colleagues in Huntsville, Judy commented that her daughter shared “her father’s temper.” Some close to the family believe that Amy spent her time alone stewing the explosive argument she had with her father that morning and had actually intended to shoot him instead. A close friend said:

“I’ve never asked Sam and Judy what happened in the house that day, because I don’t want them to lie to me. And you know what? To protect my kids, I’d lie, too. I’d lie on a stack of Bibles.”

Judy told police that Amy ran with the shotgun from their home after shooting Seth. She ended up at a nearby car dealership that was closed and deserted except for some off-duty mechanics. Shotgun in hand, Amy demanded that the mechanics give her the keys to a car. The mechanics fled, but Amy was still at the dealership when police caught up with her. She hid behind a car and pointed the shotgun at an officer who said she looked “frightened, disoriented.” Another officer approached her from behind and Amy complied with his commands to drop her weapon, and Amy was arrested. 

Amy was released into her parents’ custody the same night, although memories and opinions differ on the reason why. Some point the finger at police chief John Polio, saying he gave the orders to release her and drop murder charges. The story within Braintree’s police ranks goes that Judy Bishop arrived at the station and demanded to speak with John. Judy was an active and influential community member who “was a big supporter of his,” and John used Judy’s influence to advance his personal goals. The lieutenant interrogating Amy remembered how Judy entered the room and everything came to “an abrupt halt.”  

The Polios and Bishops adamantly deny that such a cover up occurred. In 2010, when the case was reexamined, John defended Braintree police’s handling of it. “The mother was saying her version of how it happened, and her version was that it was an accident. I didn’t tell anybody to release her.” Judy believes the officers “were out to find some way to nail Polio,” and claims they exaggerated her role in the community. “I was there. I saw it happen. It changed my life.” 

Seth Bishop’s death was ultimately ruled an accident. Massachusetts state trooper Brian Howe failed to include Amy’s standoff with police in his final report. Norfolk County’s district attorney at the time, Bill Delahunt, says that he would have filed assault charges against Amy if he had known that she brandished a weapon at an officer. Brian Howe said he didn’t know about the standoff either because Braintree police didn’t turn their original reports over to him. Bill also places blame on police chief John Polio, saying police “never would have released Amy without” his orders, “they would have been afraid to.” 

Days after she shot Seth, Amy told a local paper a story of how Seth saved her life when he would have only been four years old. She described him as a “calm, giving, funny brother who was always there for me.” The interrogating officer said that Amy was in a “highly emotional state” that made it “impossible to question her” after she was arrested. She experienced severe depression, sleeping in her parents’ bed for months and rarely leaving the house. The family continued living in the home for years, and Amy’s parents weren’t supportive of therapy. Amy said she attempted suicide around this time, but her mother insists that it was a pumpkin carving accident. 

On June 16, 2010, four months after the mass shooting at UAH, a Massachusetts grand jury indicted Amy in the first degree murder of her brother. Two days later, she attempted suicide for the second time and was nearly successful. With no physical evidence remaining, many witnesses who were elderly or deceased, and no evidence pointing to motive, the case against Amy Bishop would be hard to prove. When she was sentenced for the UAH shooting, Massachusetts dropped the charges, saying that Amy would be where she belonged anyway.

Not insane, just guilty

After her arrest in February 2010, Amy’s attorney, Roy Miller, could only fight for an insanity defense and negotiate to remove the death penalty. Roy pointed to Amy’s violent past as support of the insanity defense.

“Something is wrong with this lady. Her history speaks for itself.”

In September 2012, Amy Bishop pleaded guilty to one count of capital murder and three counts of attempted murder in exchange for being spared the death penalty. She was sentenced to life without parole for capital murder and given three more life sentences for the attempted murders, and her time had to be served consecutively. Amy unsuccessfully appealed her sentence in 2013 and 2014. 

Amy wrote her 40-page 2014 appeal by hand. In the court’s attempt to summarize Amy’s complaints, they note that her document:

“…at first appears to use particular headings and subheadings but quickly devolves into a format void of any further guidance for the reader as the petition jumps back and forth to different claims and issues…Each and every one of [Amy’s] claims is nothing more than a desperate attempt to unravel the web which she has woven for herself.”

Aftermath

Today, Amy Bishop says that “the worst thing about prison is being separated from my children,” the oldest of which turns 32 this year. Amy’s youngest child and only son, Seth, named after her brother, died on April 19, 2021, at just 20 years old. In August 2022, 19-year-old Vincent Harmon was indicted on a reckless murder charge, downgraded from manslaughter, for shooting and killing Seth. The case was supposed to go to trial in November 2022. 

Before his death in 2017, UAH shooting survivor Dr. Joseph Leahy said the event was “kind of a big nothing” to him since he had no memory of it. Stephanie Monticciolo, on the other hand, spoke openly about her journey recovering from post traumatic stress disorder in addition to the physical injuries that led to her early retirement. UAH’s biology department formally prioritized student mentoring as a way to honor the shooting victims, something that was important to them while they were still teaching. Debra Moriarty, who many consider a hero for stopping Amy that day in 2010, said that honoring her lost colleagues is a balancing act:

“You don’t want to forget the people, but you don’t want to memorialize the act that took them from you.” 

Additional resources

image from pixabay