William Bradford Bishop, Jr. (born August 1, 1936) is an American international-relations worker who has been a fugitive since allegedly murdering five members of his family in 1976. August 1 is the 213th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (214th in leap years), with 152 days remaining. ... 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ...

Known biography

William Bradford Bishop, Jr. was born in Pasadena, California on August 1, 1936. 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. Pasadena is a city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. ... August 1 is the 213th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (214th in leap years), with 152 days remaining. ... 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... A Bachelor of Science (B.S., B.Sc. ... Yale redirects here. ... A masters degree is an academic degree usually awarded for completion of a postgraduate course of one or two years in duration. ... The University of California (UC) is a public university system in the state of California. ... Mead Chapel - Middlebury College Middlebury College is a small, highly selective liberal arts college located in the rural New England town of Middlebury, Vermont. ...

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-Croatian, 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. Country Italy Region Veneto Province Verona (VR) Mayor Paolo Zanotto Elevation 59 m Area 206. ... Country Italy Region Lombardy Province Milan (MI) Mayor Letizia Moratti Elevation 120 m Area 182 km² Population  - Total (as of December 31, 2004) 1,308,311  - Density 6,988/km² Time zone CET, UTC+1 Coordinates Gentilic Milanesi Dialing code 02 Postal code 20100 Patron St. ... Country Italy Region Tuscany Province Florence (FI) Mayor Leonardo Domenici Elevation 50 m Area 102 km² Population  - Total (as of 2006-06-02) 366,488  - Density 3,593/km² Time zone CET, UTC+1 Coordinates Gentilic Fiorentini Dialing code 055 Postal code 50100 Frazioni Galluzzo, Settignano Patron St. ... Map of Ethiopia highlighting Addis Ababa (in red). ... Satellite image of Gaborone Location of Gaborone in Botswana Gaborone (pron. ... Nickname: DC, The District Motto: Justitia Omnibus (Justice for All) Location of Washington, D.C., with regard to the surrounding states of Maryland and Virginia. ...

As of early 1976, he and his wife (about three years younger than Bishop) had three sons, aged 5 to 14 years. He was 39 years old, anticipating a promotion, and was using a prescription anti-depressant drug called Serax, which can be addictive. On the afternoon of March 1, he learned he would not receive the promotion he had hoped for. Oxazepam is a benzodiazepine hypnotic sold under the name Serax. ...

The Murders

After learning of this career disappointment, Bishop told his secretary he didn’t feel well and left work early. On the way home he bought both a 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. Modern filling station, Preem in Karlskrona, Sweden An Ampol station in Australia in the late 1940s. ...

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 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 Bethesda, Maryland store. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

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. Jacksonville is a city located in Onslow County, North Carolina. ...

A week later, on March 10th, a neighbor of the Bishops in the Carderock Springs neighborhood in Bethesda, Maryland grew concerned about the family's absence. The neighbor found the front door unlocked and entered to discover blood-spattered walls and floors, and then called police. Shortly afterward, dental records were used to confirm that the bodies found in North Carolina were the Bishop family. Bethesda is an urbanized, but unincorporated, area in Montgomery County, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a church located there, the Bethesda Presbyterian Church, built in 1820 and rebiult in 1850, which in turn took its name from the Aramaic words Beth Hesda, meaning house of...

On March 18, the Bishop family car was found abandoned at a campground in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, about 400 miles 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. Main Entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, from Gatlinburg The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a United States National Park that straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains portion of the Appalachian Mountains. ...

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.

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. He could have reached almost any corner of the earth in that time, and 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: The United States Marshals Service (sometimes incorrectly spelled Marshals Service), a bureau within the United States Department of Justice (see ), is the United Statess oldest federal law enforcement agency. ...

• 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.

• On September 19, 1994 on a Basel, Switzerland train platform, a neighbor who knew Bishop and his family in Bethesda, Maryland reported that she saw Bishop from a few feet away.

Alternate theories that Bishop died or committed suicide in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park or that he had defected to the Soviet Union are not seen as credible by the police at this time. Stockholm [, ] is the capital and the largest City of Sweden. ... Vesuvius keeping a watchful eye over Sorrento and the Bay of Naples. ... Basel (English traditionally: Basle [ba:l], German: Basel [ba:z@l], French Bâle [ba:l], Italian Basilea [bazilE:a]) is Switzerlands third most populous city (188,000 inhabitants in the canton of Basel-City as of 2004; the 690,000 inhabitants in the conurbation stretching across the...

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.

External links

• October 3, 2000 Yale Daily News article on Bishop
• March 2006 Washington Post Article marking the 30 year anniversary of the Bishop murders (registration required)
• Readers Digest on-line article abstracton Bishop
• Montgomery County, Maryland Sheriff’s page on Bishop
• U.S. Department of Justice’s page on Bishop