< Back to front page Text size – +

Bishop to appear in court next week

E-mail|Link|Comments () March 16, 2010 07:26 PM

By Donovan Slack, Globe Staff

Former Massachusetts resident Amy Bishop is scheduled to make her first court appearance since she allegedly killed three colleagues and injured three others in a shooting rampage at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Bishop will appear at a preliminary hearing on March 23 to face one charge of capital murder and three charges of attempted murder, according to The Huntsville Times.

It will be the first public appearance since Huntsville police cuffed Bishop and took her into custody after the shootings at a faculty meeting Feb. 12.

Since then, authorities in Massachusetts have raised questions about Bishop's role in her brother's death in 1986 and potential involvement in an attempted mail bombing of a Harvard professor in 1993.

Federal authorities now are reviewing the attempted bombing investigation in which Bishop was questioned but not charged. A judicial inquest is scheduled to begin in Quincy District Court next month to examine the shooting death of her 18-year-old brother, Seth, which authorities had initially ruled was an accident. Bishop shot him with her father's shotgun on Dec. 6, 1986.

Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating, who initiated the inquest, has said the investigation of that shooting was mishandled and he wondered if it had been acted on properly, whether the deaths in Alabama could have been averted.

Bishop, 45, is expected to mount an insanity defense in the Alabama case, according to her lawyer.

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.