Inquest slated for April in death of Seth Bishop

Keating initiated the inquest after Amy Bishop, now a 45-year-old biology professor at the University of Alabama, allegedly opened fire at a faculty meeting last month, killing three colleagues and injuring three others.

After the shooting rampage, details emerged about the 1986 shooting casting doubt on whether it was accidental, as authorities had initially ruled.

Amy Bishop had told police that she was trying to unload her father's shotgun in her family's Braintree home on Dec. 6, 1986, when the gun went off, striking her 18-year-old brother in the chest. Bishop, 21 at the time, then fled the home, attempted to commandeer a getaway car at gunpoint from an autodealership, and later trained her gun on police as she resisted arrest, according to Braintree police reports.

Keating, who reviewed the local reports after the Alabama shootings, said she should have been charged at the time with assault with a dangerous weapon, unlawful possession of a firearm and illegal possession of ammunition. In addition, Keating's investigators found, in a crime scene photo of Bishop's bedroom where she loaded the 12-gauge shotgun, a National Enquirer article chronicling actions similar to Bishop's that day. The article reported that a teenager wielding a 12-gauge shotgun killed the parents of the actor who played Bobby Ewing on the popular television show, "Dallas," and then commandeered a getaway car at gunpoint from an auto dealership. Keating said that could suggest that Bishop intended to kill her brother.

Braintree Police released Amy Bishop without charges that day, and the Norfolk County district attorney at the time also declined to prosecute the case. The Globe reported last week that the state trooper who investigated the case on behalf of the district attorney said he never reviewed the local police reports or crime scene photos before declaring the death accidental. The district attorney at the time, William D. Delahunt, now a congressman representing Massachusetts, signed off on the trooper's decision.

Keating, when initiating the inquest last month, said he couldn't help wondering if the shootings in Alabama could have been averted if the 1986 investigation had been handled properly.