Accused Alabama Shooter’s History Raises More Concerns

Posted on Feb 15, 2010

AP / Huntsville Police Dept.

Alleged University of Alabama shooter Ann Bishop’s history of violence appears to extend much further back than last week’s fatal confrontation at a staff meeting on the university’s Huntsville campus. According to an unnamed law enforcement official cited in Sunday’s Boston Globe, Bishop and her husband were questioned about an attempted mail bombing in 1993 that targeted Dr. Paul Rosenberg, one of her research supervisors at Harvard. That information, combined with last weekend’s revelation that Bishop had fatally shot her own brother in 1986, adds another troubling dimension to the shootout that claimed the lives of three of Bishop’s Alabama colleagues and wounded three others on Friday. —KA

“Metrodesk” in The Boston Globe:

A law enforcement official said today that the investigation by the US Postal Service and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms focused on Bishop, a Harvard postdoctoral fellow who was working in the human biochemstry lab at Children’s Hospital at the time, and her husband, Anderson.

Bishop surfaced as a suspect because she was allegedly concerned that she was going to receive a negative evaluation from Rosenberg on her doctorate work, the official said. The official said investigators believed she had a motive to target Rosenberg and were concerned that she had a history of violence, given that she had shot her brother to death in 1986.

Investigators conducted a search of the home where Bishop and Anderson were living and questioned the couple, the official said. Anderson was questioned about whether he had purchased any of the components used to make the bombs, the official said.

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