Amy Bishop: where was the ounce of prevention?
Why was Amy Bishop not apprehended and incarcerated long ago? Or, at the very least, forced to have an encounter with the mental health system?
If this report is true (and I’d like to see a link to the additional police records to which it refers), new facts have been uncovered about her behavior after leaving the house in the 1986 shooting of her brother that make it even more shocking that she was never charged with a crime. Talk about the proverbial smoking gun:
Bishop had fled with the gun, and two officers tracked her down outside a car dealership near her home. As one officer asked Bishop to put the gun down, a second officer, using a truck as cover, moved within about 5 feet of Bishop.
“I drew my service revolver and yelled three times drop the rifle,” Officer Timothy Murphy wrote. “After the third time she did.”
Police examined the shotgun and found it loaded with a 12-gauge round. A second round was discovered in her pocket.
She didn’t drop the rifle immediately? She had more rounds in her pocket?? And there is also a report that she had threatened a worker at the dealership, pointing the shotgun at his chest and demanding a car; the police must have known that as well, because the man said they questioned him.
When combined with is known of the other facts of the 1986 case, these more recent revelations point to a massive coverup; no police force could be that incompetent. Not only was Amy’s 18-year-old brother unserved by the justice system of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but her later victims are a direct result of that abject failure as well.
Were there other chances to get Amy along the way? Unfortunately, we do not know enough about the 1993 pipe bomb case to make a judgment. Perhaps the police simply did not have enough evidence to pin that one on anyone. And the fact that Amy was the terror of her Ipswich neighborhood—you know, the sort of person who complains about everything and everybody and becomes its scourge—was not actionable under the law, either. What could they have charged her for: being obnoxious?
But one excellent chance to have gotten Bishop into the criminal justice system was muffed in 2002, when she physically assaulted a woman in an International House of Pancakes. This time, there appears to have been no dispute about the facts, no “accident” excuse was accepted And yet the charges were dismissed, and Bishop was not even required to attend anger management classes, despite a prosecutor’s recommendation (not that this would necessarily have helped, but it would have represented the first and only intervention by the mental health system in Amy’s very obviously troubled and aggressive life).
There is virtually no question that Bishop should have been convicted in 1986 and in 2002. If the records of the 1986 crime had not been “disappeared,” the lesser crime of 2002 might have been taken more seriously. But even without these convictions, it is also surprising that Bishop never was treated by a mental health professional (again, that would not have necessarily made a particle of difference, but there’s a chance it might have). People cannot be forced into the mental health system, even temporarily—unless they have harmed themselves or others, or seriously threatened such harm. Amy Bishop most definitely fit either or both of those categories.
In addition, even at the U. of Alabama there were serious and official questions about her mental health. A group of student complained to the department. A professor on her tenure committee (who wishes to remain anonymous) had reported her as “crazy,” and his complaints reached the associate provost of the university, John Severn. But there was no thought to do anything about it; the context in which Severn was concerned was the university’s defense against a lawsuit filed by Bishop after her tenure denial, in which she alleged (what else?) gender discrimination. The professor didn’t budge; he reiterated his claim to Severn.
Well, now the prescient teacher gets to say “I told you so.” But that must be scant comfort:
No one incident stands out, the professor said, but a series of interactions caused him to think she was “out of touch with reality.” Once, he said, she “went ballistic” when a grant application being filed on her behalf was turned in late. The professor said he avoided Ms. Bishop whenever he saw her, on or off the campus. When he spotted her not long ago at a Barnes & Noble bookstore, he made sure he was out of sight until she had left the store. He even skipped a faculty retreat because he knew she would be there…
When the professor found out on Friday afternoon that there had been a shooting on the campus, he didn’t immediately hear exactly where it happened, who was involved, or whether the shooter was a faculty member, student, or someone from outside the university. Even so, the professor said his first thought was: “Oh my God. I bet it was Amy Bishop.”
Why do I continue to harp on the Bishop case? It points out how profoundly the system failed Bishop’s brother, her family, her neighbors, many people who crossed her path along the way, and her final victims. Why did it take their deaths to call attention to a woman whose acts were screaming for intervention her entire adult life?
We think Bishop’s story began with the Braintree coverup—but for all we know, there were earlier incidents. We think we know the steps along the way—but for all we know, there were other victims at other times. Why did it have to get to the point of blowing away three more people and seriously wounding three others before this woman was recognized as a danger to the entire community? There was no one to put all the facts together and see the big picture until it was much too late.
[NOTE: On reflection, it is difficult to escape the thought that at least part of the reason Bishop was not taken seriously enough was that she is a woman. While there is no question that women are much less likely than men to be murderers, there is also no question that a significant number of them are (see this and this), and that this particular woman exhibited clear signs of extreme dangerousness that were ignored.]
This case gets more outrageous by the day. Next we’ll hear that she is Whitey Bulgers niece. Delahunt’s office must be working feverishly to distance him from this nightmare. What a shame.
the police must have known that as well, because the man said they questioned him.
ah yes… but she yelled out the female pass card!!! its not me, its my husband… forget my craziness, its all his fault… nothing adds up in it. does it?
and i knew it stunk from scratch as i have been through this bs mill now that mackinnon and others have changed it. (there is so much i could tell and show that most dont even know it exists!!!)
what we have is a very far left person in which the protections afforded fringe and freaky by feminists and other groups, result in lack of culpability for their followers (which is a reason they follow) in my office the ladies have the run of the place, and there is not a single thing you can really say or do. why? because any complaints and your attacked as anti feminist, you hate women, your just using the system to harrass her, etc.
that is, with all the special protections the more than equal get, its no wonder to us who have been studying this what happened. she was even smart enough to wear her hair in the right way to get that protection automatically!! its why a woman can claim rape, no evidence, have it dropped, and not go to jail in most incidents, and if convicted, serves a symbolic time..its why, they can sexually mutilate a partner, and not go to jail for it…its why they get custody over 90% of the time, and you cant disparage her with the truth to change that outcome. its why men are automatically arrested in domestic altercations, even if she started it, used a weapon and so forth. (its interesting to watch cop shows carefully, there are several where they were arresting the man who was nearly in tears helpless, only to switch becasue the woman didnt know that she ONLY gets that protection if she pretends she doesnt have it!!)….
The students upset with biology professor Amy Bishop told The Associated Press they went to University of Alabama in Huntsville administrators at least three times, complaining she was ineffective in the classroom and had odd, unsettling ways. A petition signed by dozens of students was sent to the department head. But students said the complaints made a year ago didn’t result in any changes in the classroom.
why should they? ever hear about womens studies courses and the inability to correct wrong facts? of the negative attacks heaped on oppressors who decide to attend. or even in the case of one researcher who refused to let any men attend.
well, over the years, with a son, i learned to teach him to drive around these elephants as people pretended they didnt exist. but ever look at who wrote those crazy quotes of feminism i bring up? PROFESSORS!!! and if you cant get communist feminst ideologues indoctrinating you by complaining, how do you get rid of the same in other places? you dont.. which is why our school system is now flooded with femal and male pederasts, pedophiles, sexual sadists, ideoogues, communist radicals, etc.
Bishop’s past encounters with the law have also included 2002 charges for a fight over a child’s booster seat at an International House of Pancakes
yeah… like everyone makes a stink so much about such that there are police reports on them. the point is that she was a member of a protected class of radical females.. of course they are claimed to have no power, but over and over IF YOU TAKE tHE TIME, and not listen to their apologists making up stuff, you can see it clearly. she was incompetent at her job, yet seeking tenure as an equal.
[edited for length by n-n]
Reading some of the comments of the Chronicle piece you linked to (which appears to be an academic publication) , I was struck by the sheer bunker mentality that seemed to be the prevailing opinion. It seems to matter not that there appears to have been a detectable pattern of odd behavior, so much that someone has the audacity to mention it. They honestly seem to be more upset that someone with such a ‘biased’ opinion was on the tenure committee then by the tragedy itself.
No one incident stands out, the professor said, but a series of interactions caused him to think she was “out of touch with reality.” Once, he said, she “went ballistic” when a grant application being filed on her behalf was turned in late.
—
Yes, she’s a nutter, but from what I’ve read so far she sounds like she was very much a product of academe, not an outlier. In my experience, the majority of professors would go ballistic if their grant application was delayed administratively.
Anti-social behavior is not just tolerated in academe, it’s rewarded. Want to get out of a lousy committee assignment? Do a crappy job. Want to avoid teaching? Suck up to the right full professor – start a collaboration with him on his pet project, for example – and that onerous teaching assignment magically disappears.
Professors need to start to think of themselves as employees and start holding each other accountable for their behavior in the workplace.
Y-not: I’ve had a great deal of experience in academia, and in addition know a great many friends in the field, and I am in complete disagreement with you. Slightly eccentric and/or petty behavior is not unusual (and that’s true for most fields). But Bishop was an outlier.
An apalling common thread runs thru the Bishop and Major Hassan cases. It is both institutionalized cowardice and denial, facilitated greatly in Bishop’s case by fear, raw fear, of civil litigation.
Were there other chances to get Amy along the way? Unfortunately, we do not know enough about the 1993 pipe bomb case to make a judgment.
of course there were…
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hf_Cw1b1x1DmRrdG4hiu4P55yZTgD9DS5VB01
It appeared the violent episode in Bishop’s past wasn’t known to her colleagues in Huntsville.
its just that neo liberal progressivist communism doesnt allow you to use those things to make choices. those things woudl mean we are not equal… and dont have equal outcomes. you see… if you did bad things, you get to hide them.
thats why 700 census takers are ex cons who havent passed validation… (but how do you prove that the guy that robbed you was the man who entered your home 6mths ago as a census taker?)
and look at Barney… he was a closet gay.. then it became known because he had a boy friend. then it turned out the boy friend was compromizing state security by running a prostitution ring from barneys house. what was the result of all that? Barney was now put in charge of the loans that collapsed, and the prostitute boyfriend was given a job in state.
do you see a pattern here? its called inviting the termites in..
why get in trouble for the harm you want to do? all you have to do is select and promote incompetents over competents. and let their natural ways (which you deny exist) then result in the natural damage such damaging people cause!!! (which is why culture discriminated against them!!! not because of what they claim is the reason!)
after all, you want to harm chilldren and young adults, but you dotn want to be held culpable for it and get punished and have them take things away from you, including a future.
so what you do is hire affirmative action, follow the rules that you can hire an incompetent over a competent if they are part of a group that they say your allowed to do that..
and then, you just let that dominate decision making, and let the bombs fall undirected and indiscriminately.
the damage the amy bishops that have not cracked are doing vastly outperforms the damage that she is doing.
Abbie Jane Swogger…abigail holloway…adrianne hockette…adrienne laflamme…alison mosbeck…alison peck…allena ward…amanda louise thompson…amanda athely…amber jennings…amber marshall…amira sa’di…amy bramhall…amy elder…amy gail lilley…amy mcethenney…amy n miller…amy northcut…amy yarborough…andrea fox…angela christine coffey…angela comer…angela angel simmons lindle…angela palmer…angela stelwag…anna bettencourt…anne knopf
aprio watsion and ashley burkett…ashley flores…autmn leathers…becci hill,…beh an chester…beth raymond…bethany sherril
want to know what all of those names have in common? realize that a partial list would go over 1000 people? ALL of them were neo liberal teachers who were caught sexually with each other and underage students. MOST are bi and lesbian, and feminist (living the vagina monologue a V day stuff), and most were like bishop, impossible to keep away from children and their victims because they are all a protected class. which is why there is less than 1% of males in the lower grades.. you see the males are all pedophiles… while these women, are all feminists in love!!!
THIS is the desired end result of progressivisms cultrual games: our inability to say no to all this.
AMY was only an outlier because she got caught and went to far.
the short list above, is the SAME THING…outside of that… there are many more that dont get caught.
and when you read what they did get caught, and realize that many of them had been around kids for years.. then what?
“I was stupid, very stupid. I already know I was and I can understand you looking at me wrong. It’s the biggest mistake I ever made in my whole life.” Police allege Swogger “asked or encouraged” two 15-year-old runaway girls to have sex with her. According to a police papers, Swogger admitted to having sex with a 17-year-old boy and asked police, “How serious is that?” The one-time exotic dancer resigned Feb. 25, 2008.
remember, you cant judge a woman!!!!! if she dreses inappropriatly, its your problem for looking. if she had a prior job like prostitute, or stripper, your to ignore that!! because thats harrasement and discrimination. oh.. and you can never admit the truth that bisexuals and homosexals predator children and people more than heterosexuals do.
not only that, but when you read their quotes and things, these people have no ruler. no way to tell that what they are doign is not right!
[edited for length by n-n]
What irritates me is this incident will be used as another excuse to try to make it more difficult for me to keep and carry my gun. This wackjob illustrates once again that murderers are not “normal people who just snapped.” They have a long history of violence.
Bishop is loony tunes, but she is not crazy. I also think getting away with the murder of her brother gave her a sense of invulnerable superiority which, when backed up by her degrees, was an entitlement game she played to the hilt.
Artfldgr: I agree that PC correctness has gone too far. I also agree that the fact that Bishop was a woman may have been a factor in her getting off (just as the Ft. Hood shooter’s religion was a factor in his not being taken seriously until it was too late).
However, the fact is that, unless a person is arrested and/or convicted, he or she has no prior record. This is not a progressive PC idea; it is one of the basic foundations of our legal system. Bishop had no record because she was (incorrectly and perhaps corruptly) cleared in the 1986 case and the records disappeared, and also cleared in the 2002 case (charges dismissed), and never charged due to lack of evidence (probably) in the 1993 case. I am not at all certain why the dismissed 2002 charges would not have come up in a routine background check the U. of A. did, but I believe the university asserts they did not (perhaps because she knew enough to request that they be expunged?).
The other incidents were all not legally actionable (being a neighborhood pest, for example, or acting oddly but not threateningly at the U of A).
Sexual indiscretions by teachers (female or male) are a different category than violence and threats of violence. Females have, however, traditionally gotten off easier because their male victims were thought to be less damaged by the experience (that perception is slowly changing). As for whether gay people are more likely to be pedophiles (or molesters of older teenagers), the research is both flawed and unclear.
New Zealand Airlines Ban Men From Sitting Next to Children on Planes
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10357510
Can a man talk to a kid in the park anymore without being seen as a pervert?
Society Builds Wall Between Men and Children
pajamasmedia.com/blog/society-builds-wall-between-men-and-children/
To all those who worry about the pedophile plague, I would say that they not only have a very imperfect understanding of probability, but also that they fail to understand the terrible damage that is done by this system of presuming guilt in the entire male population just because of the tendencies of a tiny minority.
There are all sorts of reasons why the numbers of male school teachers are down 50 percent in the period 1981 to 2001, and why the ratio of female to male teachers in primary schools is now seven to one. … But it is surely a huge deterrent to any public-spirited man contemplating a career in education that society apparently regards all adult male contact with young people as being potentially a bit dodgy, a bit rum, a bit you know. …
It is insane, and the problem is the general collapse of trust. Almost every human relationship that was sensibly regulated by trust is now governed by law, with cripplingly expensive consequences.
nice how its coordinated to happen the same time in several western countries (and yet we dont believe that its not natural). if you watched this from its begining as i did… and followed it, you saw a clever long term campaing that started with feminists saying all men are rapists, etc…
and ending up leaving the field of education open to women of feminist/progressive persuasion without competition, and so left the feild open to every fruitbat, nut job, pervert, etc… as long as they were female.
the good ladies were pushed out. like pizzey, but not necessarily the way pizzey was. the point being is that the minute your reasonable organization has two or three of amy ilk, your taken over.
narcissistic sociopathy is what the rulers want.. with a touch of paranoia what yuo ahve is part of what russia had, which is red terror. the facts as given by the state, and the ideologues create fear which moves you.
the males fear they have no equal defense, so rather than be what the women say they are, they leave the feild to women (what horrible oppressors to not fight the women and leave!!! its a clue to the truth, and to the warped sense that the entitled have)
[edited for length by n-n]
Why did it take their deaths to call attention to a woman whose acts were screaming for intervention her entire adult life?
‘Cuz “the system” is of the Amy Bishops, by the Amy Bishops and for the Amy Bishops.
Art,
What do you mean about Amy’s hair being right?
Neo– here’s another example of a woman who was extremely dangerous: Brenda Spencer killed an elementary school principal and a custodian as well as injuring eight children and a police officer by shooting from her bedroom window overlooking a San Diego schoolyard in 1979. The gun had been a Christmas present from her father.
Spencer was only 16 at the time of the shooting but had a prior record of petty criminality. Whether the mental health system might have picked her up is hard to say. In any case, she is proof that some women are just as deadly with guns as some men.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Spencer
However, the fact is that, unless a person is arrested and/or convicted, he or she has no prior record. This is not a progressive PC idea; it is one of the basic foundations of our legal system.
first of all.. if that is so, then how do they know she had an argument over a booster seat in a restaurant and police were called? thats not true. give me a bit of info on you, and give me some money and i will pull up stuff you thought was not available. i can show you how its done. i would just search DESK RECORDS… so EVERY altercation, even if not resulting in a case, is recorded and if you know where to look, like not in the stack of cases, you can get it.
as far as presumption, mackinnon changed that. sorry.. i nearly went to prison for the murder of a person that is still alive!!! and her robbery, embezzlement, forgery, shoplifting, false charges, and more… never resulted in anything.. i on the other hand was destroyed by the system.
if what you said is true, that would never have even come close to happening. and the records of all that would not impact my jobs today (it does), and it would not affect my travel on airlines (it does).
it also affects my ability to get contract work for the state, so i had to fold my company. and thats for a murder that never happened…the basic foundations of our legal system has been changed a while back.
it was discovering this the hard way that made me change and study it. and through all that i ahve had reasonable peopel tell me waht you have said. these are the reasonalbe apologists who have yet to find the truth by being caught in it and applying those terms and then seeing what happens!
females are presumed innocent. so its really impossible unless they are complete freaks and more, to do anything about!!!
thats what you dont get. because you dont hire them, you dont get into a place having to try to get rid of them. you can easily get rid of a guy, you cant get rid of a female. (ask hiram monserate: thats a joke. but let me know how do you throw a woman out of your apartment and not go to jail. i would lke to know… )
keep loving the cancer, and see if you can be cured of the desease it brings
can you explain to me why so many young feminist liberated teachers are having sex with students and have no idea its wrong? i mean even guys didnt stand up for guys that did that!!! and as far as innocent till proven guilty, which is what yor also leaning to.
then explain the duke rape case in light of what you just said? i mean, if the boys were innocent, then why did they have to prove innocence, and why did the liberal teachers (like amy) not have to retract their statements and newspaper ads?
THEN explain how the gay professor who adopted two black children to be his sex toys and rent them out… was above suspicion?
a protected class is antithetical to what you just said aobut our system. but thats what you get from the prophet marx.
UNEQUAL treatment to achieve equal outcomes…under that, the female amy was being ignored as a way to right past oppression of women… (and until she went over some line, she was only eccentric).
and a male was a criminal…so any male adminsitrator, especially if a principal, would have no way to get rid of them.
right now this year alone, about a half dozen women who foudn out that i am for women, but against feminism.. have ‘confessed’ that they ahve ruined their lives… they are barren, with no prospects and hate their careers… they want to find a partner… they said they threw away perfectly good men.
[edited for length by n-n]
What do you mean about Amy’s hair being right?
havent you noticed that the elite wealthy love that egyptian hair do?
i had a bi girlfriend years ago… and a gay male leatherman cousin…i learned that groups communicate and locate each other by the costumes they wear. i guess we always know that, or esle bikers might accidently show up dressed liek rahm in a tu tu.
i learned about that cut after being with the debutant… then i noticed the variation among hard core feminists. look at eve ensler and amanda marcotte, roxanne dunbar, heck… go to the right place and yuo will notice a crowd of them…
i have no idea where or how it came about.. but you can see the elite in old movies with it… its a variation of page boy.. [but also kind of like anubis] weird…
i used to write extensively on the history an such in this area… and have gone from place to place… and watched how the ‘fringe’ became bloggers and advisers to various presidential candidates. after a while, you notice trends… flows… like what happens at X, gets commented on by feministing, or pandagon… then gets picked up by the next layer of fruitbats.
meanwhile most women got nothing from them that they werent goign to get anyway, or that they didnt earn for themselves (and let these progressives take over the labels).
go read Feminist Rage Page – Equality never looked so pissed…read stuff by wendy dennis. the hatred is so palpable it makes for a red haze over everthing.
“My white skin disgusts me. My passport disgusts me. They are the marks of an insufferable privilege bought at the price of others’ agony.” — Robin Morgan, The Demon Lover, (NY: Norton & Co., 1989), p. 224
personally i wouldnt follow people that said that, wrote that, and so forth,
[edited for length by n-n]
Artfldgr: I don’t think you read my comment carefully. Or perhaps I did not make myself clear.
My point was that, with Bishop, the records of the first case (the murder ruled an accident) should have been available, but they unaccountably were missing. And then in the 1993 bombing case, Bishop was only questioned (along with many many others) during an investigation, so there was no available record there (unless a person were able to hack into the entire record of everything the police did in the case—and why would anyone looking into Bishop’s background prior to this want to do that?). But, as I wrote, the 2002 IHOP case should have come up in a search. However, there is a way to get the records expunged, and perhaps Bishop availed herself of that, and it worked.
I would imagine that if people go that extra mile, there are ways to dig up hidden records. But there was no reason for the U of A to have done that in their background check of Bishop. So they didn’t, and therefore nothing was revealed.
The presumption of innocence in a trial is something else (for example, the Duke rape case). They were the victims of an overzealous and corrupt prosecutor, a rush to judgment on the part of university administration, and the press. Our system of justice is far from perfect. Fortunately, in the Duke case, justice was served in the end. But not without a terrible trauma for the accused and their families, one that may never be completely eradicated.
As more background I enclose a picture of the happy couple (http://www.boston.com/news/local/gallery/02_15_10_bishop/), and a more depressed sad sack of a man could hardly be imagined than her husband; a certain phrase ending in “whipped” comes to mind.
Then, there is this picture of poor Amy, tightly pursed lips, haircut, stare and all (http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/02/15/crimesider/entry6209793.shtml). It suddenly feels cold in here. Do you feel a draft?
Wolla Dalbo: Mr. Anderson bears a certain resemblance to Keith Olbermann, don’t you think?
Ugh … I can’t say that I know much about the inherent nuttiness endemic in academia … but the one thing that I have read about this case which really gave me the shudders is the account of those neighbors of the Bishops which Neo posted earlier, or that someone posted in links. I’ve lived in a neighborhood with a seriously nutty neighbor – back in the late 70s and early 80s when a man in the neighborhood that my parents lived in then appeared to be going slowly insane. He was convinced that all the neighbors around (this was in hill-country suburbia in Southern California, where most of the houses were on half-acre lots and just about everyone was irreproachably middle-class and law-abiding) were processing drugs. He insisted that he could smell it, that there were pipes and tubes running between all of the houses. A next-door neighbor who drew his particular ire – and was slowly dying of MS – he insisted she was a drug abuser. He lurked in the shrubbery, spied on all the neighbors, called law enforcement incessantly … eventually he had to be listed as a sort of neighborhood toxic dump with anyone trying to sell their house. Neighbors took him to court for harassment a number of times, but he always managed to look so proper and reasonable in front of the judge. I think he was eventually on the ‘well-known nut’ list of every law-enforcement body in Southern California. I was very glad when my parents moved away – because I was afraid that he too would cut loose someday, and when the slaughter was done, everyone looking in from the outside would be wringing their hands and saying “Oh, why, oh why didn’t anyone see the warning signs!”
In the neighborhood and day to day, we all saw the warning signs. It’s just that nothing much could be done, until the nutty neighbor cut loose with a gun. My parents’ nutty neighbor in Tujunga was known as “the Fan-man” – Mr. Salka. There isn’t much on him if you do a search, since most of his antics in the neighborhood dated from well before news stories and law enforcement blotters and material like that got posted on-line. But it was frightening and very wearing, living close to someone that unbalanced.
Someone did some research into Amy’s stellar scientific career and found, among other things, a publication with her husband and three of the kids in a vanity journal and a helium baloon launch.
http://afamilyofshepherds.blogspot.com/2010/02/is-accused-murderer-dr-amy-bishop.html
Neoneocon quote: “Artfldgr: I don’t think you read my comment carefully. Or…”
You were right the first time.
Most of these testimonials sound a lot more like after-the-fact bandwagon jumping, motivated by her colleagues’ desire to claim a piece of the spotlight. If we treated every bit of gossip as if it was the Word of God, we would have the intellectual and cultural development of the Middle East.
We should be focusing on the stuff that proved her lunacy, not on the hearsay of some colleague who was scared of her because “she complained about something a year ago.” Lots of people complain about lots of stuff, it doesn’t mean all complainers are about to go postal.
Wolla Dalbo – I looked at the pictures.
I say; the birds have all stopped singing.
Tatterdemalian: I doubt you’ve followed all the links and read all the information. This wasn’t a colleague or two. This was a great many people over a great deal of time. It involved not just colleagues, but students, neighbors—and seems to have been a majority, not a minority, opinion. She was aggressive and offensive to many many people.
Not to mention multiple instances of violence on her part, including almost certainly the murder of her brother.
The university department I graduated had lots of freaks among its professors, just as well of the best mathematical minds in the world, and these two sets were the same people. Even obvious nutters and conspiracy theorists made permanent contributions to their fields (professor Schafarevich was an anti-semit, believer in world-wide Jewish conspiracy ruling the world, but excelent algebraist; professor Fomenko belives that there were no antiquity, Bisant, Rome, and Greece, and all ancient texts were forged by Medieval monks, and his crazy theory, named New Chronology, was published in a dozen of popular books. Still, he is one of the world leading topologists). But they all have good manners, never were aggressive or deliberately offensive. Some detachment from reality can be expected from professors in general, and from advanced mathematics professors in particular. But there are worlds of difference between being asocial and being anti-social, between simple narcissism and malignant narcissism. Ami Bishop did not have anger management problem, she has a problem of narcissistic rage, readiness to run amok in a nick of time and smash everything around her in the process.
Sometimes I doubt if the Supreme court decision about unconstitutionality of compulsory protective incarceration of nutcases was a wise one. It left in the large aplenty of potentially homicidal maniacs, who just had not a chance actually murder somebody, but can do it at any minute.
Here is a bit about the novel Amy was writing:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/bishops_unpubli.html
boston.com also has a story about her being second cousin to John Irving and her membership in a book club.
What is it with left wing nutcases like Amy Bishop these days?
Just finished reading the letter left by the nutcase who flew his plane into the IRS building in TX.
The things the guy complains about are striking in how they reveal a mindset so focused on a particular viewpoint of society – as well as blaming everyone but himself for his problems.
He even closes with a reference to the communist creed!
I have a suspicion he and dear Amy would have gotten along famously….