Bradford Bishop

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William Bradford Bishop, Jr. (born August 1, 1936) was a United States Foreign Service officer who has been a fugitive from justice since allegedly murdering five members of his family in 1976.

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[edit] Known biography

William Bradford Bishop, Jr. was born in Pasadena, California. He received a BS in history from Yale, and an MA in international studies (with a concentration in Africa) from the University of California system. He also attended Middlebury College.

After his graduation from Yale in 1959, he served 4 years in Army counterintelligence. Bishop is reported to speak five languages fluently: English, French, Serbo-Croat, Italian and Spanish.

Bishop joined the U.S. State Department and served in the U.S. Foreign Service in many postings overseas. This included postings in the Italian cities of Verona, Milan, and Florence (where he did post-graduate work at the University of Florence). He also served as a foreign service officer in Africa including posts in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and in Gaborone, Botswana. His last posting was at State Department Headquarters in Washington as an Assistant Chief in the Division of Special Activities and Commercial Treaties.

As of early 1976, he and his wife Annette (age 37) had three sons, ages 5, 10 and 14. He was 39 years old, anticipating a promotion, and was using a prescription drug called Serax, which can be addictive. On the afternoon of March 1, he learned he would not receive the promotion he had sought.

[edit] The murders

After learning of this career disappointment, Bishop told his secretary he didn’t feel well and left work early. He drove from Foggy Bottom (the neighborhood where he worked at the U.S. State Department headquarters ) to what is today Westfield Montgomery (then called Montgomery Mall) where he purchased a ball-peen hammer and a gas can, which he filled at a gas station. Police believe that he used the hammer to kill first his wife, then his mother when she returned home from walking the family's golden retriever, and finally his three sons in their beds.

With the bodies loaded into the family station wagon, Bishop drove 275 miles (about 6 hours' drive) to a densely-wooded area off North Carolina highway 94, about five miles (8 km) south of Columbia, North Carolina. There, he dug a shallow hole where he piled the bodies, doused them with gasoline, and set them ablaze. The next day, March 2, a North Carolina state forest ranger was dispatched by a spotter in a fire tower to an area where smoke was rising from the trees. The ranger discovered the burned bodies and a shovel with a label from a store at Montgomery Mall.

It was later confirmed that Bishop visited a sporting goods store in Jacksonville, North Carolina that same day and used his credit card to purchase tennis shoes. According to witnesses, he had the family dog with him on a leash, and was possibly, but not certainly, accompanied by a woman described as "dark skinned". All later sightings of Bishop are unconfirmed.

According to police reports, a week later, on March 10, a neighbor of the Bishop's in the Carderock Springs neighborhood in Bethesda, Maryland grew concerned about the family's absence claiming she hadn't seen them for about three weeks. The neighbor contacted local police who dispatched a detective to the nearby neighborhood. After meeting the neighbor, who had a key to their home, the detective decided to enter inside to see if anything was wrong. As he approached the front door, he found droplets of blood on the front porch and entered the house to discover spattered blood on the floor. Continuing up the steps, there were more blood splatterings on the walls and floors as well. As it seemed it couldn't have gotten any worse, the detective entered the room which was believed to be the children's, and the entire room was covered from ceiling to floor, and wall to wall with blood. The detective stated that in his 12 years as a police officer, he had never seen such a disturbing scene. Shortly afterward, dental records were used to confirm that the bodies found in North Carolina were the Bishop family.

On March 18, the Bishop family car was found abandoned at a campground in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, about 400 miles (640 km) from the Columbia-area pyre. The car contained dog biscuits and a bloody blanket; the spare-tire well in the trunk was full of blood.

On March 19 a grand jury indicted Bishop on five counts of first-degree murder and other charges. Evidence included his disappearance, the sighting afterward in the vicinity of the bodies, and bloody stains inside the family home that matched both his fingerprints and the blood of his family members.

According to a co-worker of Bishop's, his family (primarily wife and mother) constantly belittled him, telling him that he was a wash-up, and that he didn't have any ability in his job anymore. This may have caused him to feel very upset, and could have ultimately led to his decision to commit what seemed to be a crime of passion. The co-worker also went on to add that this was usually Bishop's way to "put someone in their place", as he liked to say himself.

[edit] Aftermath

Bishop had approximately one week of advance time before the authorities even began looking for him and could have traveled on his U.S. diplomatic passport. Because of the methods of air travel and immigration in 1976 throughout much of the world, he could easily have avoided leaving a paper trail of any kind.

Since 1976 Bishop has been allegedly sighted numerous times in Belgium, England, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. The three sightings noted by the United States Marshals Service are as follows:

  • In July 1978, Bishop was seen by an acquaintance of the Bishop family in Stockholm, Sweden
  • In January 1979, Bishop was seen in a water closet in Sorrento, Italy by a co-worker who had worked closely with him at the State Department. Bishop ran when hailed by the co-worker.

Alternate theories that Bishop died or committed suicide in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park or that he had defected to the Soviet Union are not seen as credible by the police.

[edit] In the media

After the initial national headlines, the Bishop case has been the subject of articles in national publications like Reader's Digest and Time Magazine at milestone anniversaries. It has been followed intermittently on an ad hoc basis by the Washington Post, the Washington Star, and the Washington Times as well as local Washington D.C. television stations. The case has also been featured on television shows such as Unsolved Mysteries, ABC's Vanished and America's Most Wanted.

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