Member-only story
The Scholarly Shooter — The Case of Amy Bishop
They thought she snapped, but she had done it all before
The University of Alabama in Huntsville faculty meeting unfolded in typical fashion, a dozen or so academics from the school’s biology department gathered in the early evening. On Feb. 12, as the conference room filled, Amy Bishop, a neuroscientist and assistant professor, sat there bitterly. She had been working there since 2003, and now, seven years down the line, she was angry, angry at not being granted a tenured faculty position, angry at the world.
She pulled out a 9mm Ruger semi-automatic from her handbag.
Bishop was no stranger to gunfire, just like her acquaintances were no strangers to her.
Graduating from Northeastern University, Bishop moved from Massachusetts to Alabama after getting her coveted doctorate in genetics from Harvard. Rumors persisted that her credentials were ill-deserved, with someone even stating to The New Yorker that “she should never have got a degree.” Her move to UAH was a celebrated one, though, then-President David Williams speaking highly of her cell-research methods rather than echoing the sentiments of others who believed Bishop to be unfit for the profession.
She raised four children with husband Jim Anderson, and the two sometimes collaborated on scientific projects. But the new instructor spent her time working on patents, not papers, and university staff informed her that a serious lack of published materials would be detrimental to any hopes for tenure. One of the committee members partly responsible for the official decision called her “crazy,” and brought up accusations of serious mental illness.
At the time of her brandishing the gun, Bishop was trying to get that verdict changed through an appeal. After teaching her classes for the day, she killed three coworkers execution-style and wounded three, first shooting Dr. Gopi Podila, the department chairman who approved her tenure, in the head. Professors Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson also lost their lives. During the massacre, Debra Moriarity, one of Bishop’s friends, begged for her to stop.
Instead, her former companion did not hesitate to shoot under the table at Moriarity’s face, but the gun…
