A Professor's Rage

by Michele R. McPhee

A devoted wife and mother and a Harvard-educated scientist working as a biology professor at the University of Alabama–Huntsville, Amy Bishop seemed to have it all. But when she was denied tenure, her whole world came crashing down…and she reacted in a way no one ever could have imagined. On February 13, 2010, Amy was charged with murder for opening fire in a staff meeting the day before, killing three colleagues and injuring others. How could one woman's fury unleash such destruction? While the campus massacre made national headlines, authorities began a thorough investigation and uncovered another chilling episode in Amy's past. When she was twenty-one, Amy fatally shot her teenage brother, Seth. His death was ruled an accident―and no charges were pressed. But for many involved in the case, Amy's story didn't add up, and law-enforcement officials suspected it was murder…After the Huntsville rampage, the cold case was reopened and Amy would find herself charged with killing her own brother―murder in the first degree. If Amy had been found guilty twenty-four years earlier, three lives might have been saved. A Professor's Rage is the chilling true story of an intelligent woman with a secret past ... a past that would burst out in a shocking killing.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Crime

272 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 28, 2011

Reviews

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 2 out of 5]

I find it so ironic that for years this wackadoodle threw her weight around “I am Dr Amy Bishop” to get her way to finally have the legal system and the press to then consistently call her “Dr Amy Bishop”. I dont know why I find that so amusing. Well all the country knows her name now.
I really want to give this a two star because it’s another one of those true crime books that gets written before any bits of the trial occur. I can’t stand that. My book on Susan smith was like that I remember maybe the one on darla what’s her face too. You gotta grab cash that fast you can’t wait to get to the end? There wasn’t enough of the police/ attorney relationship included, there wasn’t enough of the complicity with her husband, I think there was more to just a “town council” weight thrown around for the original murder in 1986. This book just allowed the author to write enough of the story to,say she had.

[Valerity (Val) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Professor's Rage was quite a story, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. Amy Bishop was obviously a sick individual, yet cunning enough to keep it hidden from most, unless she got really inensed.

Hope to see an update showing the outcome of the murder trials and her brother's death case.

[Jessica White · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was expecting this book to chronicle the story of Amy Bishop's life. Little did I know, it was a life filled with crime.

Bishop is most widely known for methodically murdering half of the Biology staff at the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) in 2010. Bishop was driven to murder because she was denied tenure and would not be continuing on as a Professor at UAH. Violence and disappointment seem to be a common theme in the Amy Bishop crime catalog.

It took 24 years and a mass shooting before the Braintree Massachusetts Police Department finally brought the Seth Bishop shooting to light. In 1986 Amy decided it was time to teach herself how to use her father's shotgun. After it "accidentally" went off in her upstairs bedroom, she attempted to find her brother, Seth, to see if he could help her unload the weapon. Upon running downstairs, the shotgun "accidentally" went off again, this time striking and killing Seth. Instead of staying with him, she ran and unsuccessfully attempted to carjack several drivers before threatening Dinger Ford employees at gunpoint. Realizing they weren't going to give her a car off the lot, she continued running. She was still clutching the gun when police finally attempted to apprehend her.

That's just the beginning of her life of crime.

There's also an incident involving a pipe bomb being sent to one of her bosses after an explosive incident in a research lab. While Amy and her husband have been cleared in this crime, there is still significant evidence that they were involved.

Oh, and she straight up decked a woman in an IHOP because her kid was using the last booster seat.

So, yeah.

More true crime reviews at A Reader's Diary!

[Mallory (onmalsshelf) Bartel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve been interested in this case since I saw it on an episode of Snapped and decided to choose this for a buddy read that I host for true crime books.

Overall, I’m disappointed by the multitude of grammatical errors in that book and that it stops before her trial with zero update.

If you’re interested in this case, just try to find the Snapped episode or a podcast episode on it instead.

[Becky · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of the most poorly-written books I've ever read. The grammatical errors are appalling. Much of the storyline seems to be completely without citation, so while I learned quite a lot that wasn't in the major media reports about the case, I don't even know which parts are true and which are not.

The photos in the middle of the book seemed odd. The ones regarding the crime scene in which Bishop allegedly murdered her brother are listed as "From the library of Michele McPhee" (the author). But... how did the author get those? Are they really from a police report? The report was missing.

A lot of things about this book just don't make any sense. And the entire thing stops before the trial, so the reader doesn't even find out what happened. I'm honestly surprised a publisher would allow this to go to print. It seems to be shoddy reporting at best, and potentially even libelous.

[Beth · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is about what you would expect from a quickie true crime story written before the trial takes place. If you've followed the case, you already know most of the story, but the book does contain some details not previously reported in the papers. One repeated error (calling Bishop an "associate" professor, the rank of a tenured professor--untenured profs are "assistant" professors) makes me wonder what other errors might be present.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the writer was very thorough in her research regarding Dr. Amy Bishop's background and Massachusetts politics and I found the story riveting from the start. Having grown up near Braintree, Ma, it was particularly interesting to me. I did not recall much about this case as I had moved away long before then. The reason I gave. it only 4 stars is that I think the ending was rushed. I think the author should have finished the book after the trial was finished for the reader to know the outcome. I had to look online to see what happened to all involved.

[CHARLOTTE HENRICHS · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing

It seems as though this book just ends with no conclusion. It also goes off on too many tangents so that the reader soon forgets what he is reading about. But the worst part was having to go to Wikipedia to see what ultimately happened. Maybe the author should have waited until the story played out prior to writing the book.

[Tija Addams · Rating 1 out of 5]

Being fascinated with the topic of women who kill I was very excited to finally read this. Unfortunately I was bitterly disappointed. Way too much irrelevant filler. You can read more about this whole case on the internet.
This book lacked substance & the author skimmed over the crime. I’d definitely NOT recommend this book

[Ronnie Cramer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read and enjoyed this book a couple of years before joining Goodreads, and when I came across it recently I decided to give it another go. It concerns the life of infamous nutjob Amy Bishop, who made a career out of making people miserable.

[Sae-chan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chief John Polio sounded exactly like my boss... I wonder if 20 years from now I want to be in the same room with her. Most probably not.

[Isabel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some parts were interesting but others were plane boring. Didnt finish the book to be honest lost interest.

[Donna Humble · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written with a lot of back story along with the details of her crime.

[Deb Wolshuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting

I remember the Amy Bishop case in the media. It is amazing that she slipped through every loophole in her brother's case.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, this was an unsatisfying story in that there is no resolution to it - yet.

At the very least, Amy Bishop has rage issues. At the most, she is a psychopath (and I am not a psychologist, so I cannot make that determination with any authority).

What I found frustrating about the story was that Amy Bishop has never had to answer for the 1986 murder of her younger brother, Seth, whom she shot in the chest in the kitchen of the family home. Instead, the shooting is ruled an accident under what many people consider very suspicious circumstances.

She continued with her life almost as if the shooting had never happened, and perhaps because she got away with murder, Amy Bishop felt free to commit several other bad acts. Bishop wasn't held responsible for a letter bomb mailed to a Harvard professor who had fired her, and she was treated extremely leniently by a court when she assaulted another woman in a restaurant over a child's booster seat (the other woman had her child in the seat, Bishop wanted the booster seat for her own child's use).

After opening fire and killing 3 of her colleagues (seriously injuring 3 others) at the University of Alabama in 2010, she still has not been tried. (Her trial date is set for March 19, 2012. Here is a September 2011 report from the Huntsville Times http://blog.al.com/breaking/2011/09/a... ).

I think it would have improved the book if it had been completed and published after Bishop's Alabama trial has ended.

That being said, it is a very interesting case - one I will follow until its conclusion.

[Anirban Gangopadhyay]

Extremely light reading. Clearly written by a journalist. Accumulating all the tiniest details from someone's personal life to bolster a hypothesis -- couldn't have been done by anyone else.

But despite that, the case made here is pretty strong. Also, being quite familiar with the tendency of universities to ignore a professor's tantrums (as long as he/she delivers), all this makes a lot of sense.

Lastly, some nice insight into Massachussetts police and how relaxed the legal system here is. Made me re-think my position on criminal justice and its preventive role. Clearly, in this story, if Amy Bishop was apprehended right away after she shot her brother and the whole cover-up never happened, she would never have been allowed to rise this far. If nothing else, that would have placed a check on her arrogance. In turn, her failure would not have seemed so shattering for her.

Overall, a leisurely yet insightful read. Plan to read a book from St. Martin's True Crime Library once in a while.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting read. I really like the way the author went back and set things up from the very beginning of not only Amy's story, but some of the history of the DA and the police force in Boston. I do feel like it seemed a little sidetracked at times, and it there were a few lines it repeated over and over again that kind of got annoying. I also feel like the story was left incomplete with the way it ended. I know we can logically assume what happens (or even look it up after reading), but the problem comes because it felt incomplete, not because the story wasn't actually told through the trial. It seemed to need something at the end that better wrapped it up for me. Anyway, I'd recommend this to anyone who likes true crime stories or who wants to know more about Amy Bishop and the UAH incident.

[Carrie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This could have been a great book. The case is fascinating, and McPhee is a gifted writer. But, I was not at all surprised to see that the author is also a frequent Fox News guest. She has maanged to turn the book into an anti-liberal screed. It's laughable how evil she paints the liberal academics of New England (Amy Bishop's parents). She goes on for a page and ahalf about an evil liberal female judge, who didn't even have anything to do with the Bishop case. I rolled my eyes every time McPhee tried to tie Bishop's obvious mental illness into her "far left" political views. McPhee would be a much stronger writer if she didn't try to demonize those with liberal views, since it had nothing to do with the case.

[Rod Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Buyer Beware: This true-crime paperback sells itself as an account of the 2010 University of Alabama at Huntsville shooting rampage by professor Amy Bishop, but the book devotes most of its pages to Bishop's shooting of her brother at the family's Braintree, Mass., home in 1986, and the alleged police cover-up that followed.

The university shooting doesn't play out until two-thirds of the way through the book, and even then feels almost like an afterthought.

Most of this book offers a glimpse into local Massachusetts politics around the time of the 1986 incident, and would be of little interest to anyone outside of the Bay State.

[Ruby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this story to be an amazing tale of ineptitude on the part of the higher ups in the Boston police department. I found it amazing that Bishop was let go after murdering her brother and committing multiple crimes, and that it was covered up for so many years. If it weren’t for the cover up, thanks to a mother’s ties to law enforcement, and the crooked John Polio, the massacre at the University of Alabama might never have taken place. This is a disturbing tale, told by a writer who understands how true crime novels should be written, and I appreciate that, and would definitely recommend this to true crime readers.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recently read a New Yorker article about Amy Bishop, and was interested in learning more. This book didn't tell me much about the shootings in Alabama that I hadn't already learned from reading online, but it did give me new information about the incident 25 years earlier, when Amy supposedly "accidently" shot and killed her brother. There were so many missed opportunities, red flags that could have alerted someone to how dangerous Bishop could be.

Not the best true crime book I've read, but enjoyable for what it's worth.

[Elizabeth]

McPhee Nails it !!

True to form Michele McPhee writes a thorough and compelling piece of non fiction . Her talent for not beating around the bush and telling a gripping and factual account of multiple tragedies by one mad woman and the astounding cover up is amazing .

[Trish Bodine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember when this happened. I live about an hour from Huntsville, and UAH is my alma mater.

[Lin S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

With all the signs this woman was a total wacko throughout her life! "I didn't see this coming" said No one!?

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished this just after Amy Bishop plead guilty. The book ends way before that. Well written, fascinating story. Just not super.

[Joni]

I love this author!

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring. The narrative moves way too slowly for my taste. I really hate not finishing a book, but this one bored me & irritated me so much that I ended up just throwing in the towel instead of finishing it. Meh. Could've been much better with more information and with photos of the family instead of all the police involved.