In March 2008, Amy Bishop, a biology professor at the University of Alabama, was in her office catching up on her mail before her next class started. She didn’t know it at the time, but she was about to open one particular piece of mail that would trigger a chain of events leading to the death of three people.

The letter was from the Dean of the Colleges of Science and stated that Bishop was being dismissed from the university as of February 26th, 2010. Bishop was advised that the spring of 2010 would be her last semester at the university, as she had not made tenure.

From an outsider’s view, Bishop appeared to be a success in life. Born April 24th, 1965, Bishop was married, had four children, and was highly educated. She received her undergraduate degree from the Northeastern University in Boston, earned her Ph.D. in genetics from Harvard University, and became an assistant professor at the University of Alabama in 2003. She also partnered with her husband in developing a portable cell incubator, a technology that maintains and supports the growth of microorganisms when conducting biological experiments. Their endeavors were part of a competition in which they won third place and $25,000.

Bishop is the second cousin of author John Irving. When she was living in Massachusetts in the 1990s, she had also pursued writing by joining the Hamilton Writer’s Group. She hoped that becoming a writer would allow her to leave academia. She wrote three novels, none of which were ever published. Despite all of her accomplishments, there were problems with her conduct. Members of the Hamilton Writer’s Group have stated that she tried to present herself as a serious writer by frequently bringing up her degree from Harvard and her association with John Irving. They also found her to be abrasive and self-righteous, and that she deemed herself deserving of praise.

In her tenure review meeting at the University of Alabama, Bishop learned that one of her colleagues on the board had referred to her as “crazy.” In response, Bishop filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

During faculty meetings, some professors accused her of acting in erratic ways. She was not popular with her students, who saw her as a poor instructor. They felt that she was “ineffective in the classroom and behaved in odd and unsettling ways.” Some of her students went so far as to sign a petition requesting that the University take action but nothing ever came of it. Bishop once published an academic article and used the names of her husband and children as the article’s co-authors.

According to the University, Bishop did not receive tenure because she had not submitted all of her research papers in time to get published, so they did not count toward her tenure. The University board also felt that she was spending too much time seeking patents for her portable cell incubator. However, there were darker parts of Bishop’s past of which the University was unaware.

In 1986, Bishop fatally shot her brother; however, no charges were brought as it was ruled to be an accident. In 1993, both she and her husband were suspected of sending a letter bomb to Paul Rosenberg, a colleague of Bishop’s at Harvard University. The letter bomb failed to explode and authorities lacked the evidence required to bring charges against the Bishops. In 2002, Bishop was charged with misdemeanor assault and disorderly conduct for punching another customer at the International House of Pancakes in Peabody, Massachusetts.

The same morning that Bishop received her letter of termination, February 26th, 2010, she was scheduled to attend a faculty meeting for the biology department. The meeting started around 3:00 pm and was attended by twelve of her colleagues, who sat around a large oval meeting table. Bishop sat silently as the group discussed business. After 40 minutes had passed, Bishop stood up and pulled out a 9-mm handgun. She shot the person sitting next to her in the head and then methodically continued shot each person around the table in the head. Those who were sitting on the opposite side of the table attempted to take refuge on the floor. In the words of Debra Moriarity, a survivor of the attack, “This wasn’t random shooting around the room; this was execution style.” Moriarity survived because Bishop’s gun jammed when it was her turn.

With the help of others, Moriarity rushed Bishop and pushed her out of the room before barricading the door. Bishop had killed three people and wounded three others. On September 11th, 2012, she was charged with three counts of capital murder and three counts of attempted murder. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and is being held at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women. While in prison, Bishop was hospitalized after she attacked another female inmate.

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