State Trooper Closed Bishop Investigation When Braintree Police Failed To Provide Requested Files

The Massachusetts State Trooper assigned to investigating Amy Bishop’s fatal shooting of her brother says he closed the case after his repeated requests for the Braintree police reports were blown off.

In his first extensive public comments since Bishop allegedly killed three people in a February shooting rampage in Alabama, Brian L. Howe said yesterday that he repeatedly asked Braintree police for their files on the case but never got them.

“ ‘We’re putting them together; we’re putting them together’ – that was the response I got,’’ Howe said.

After four months, he said, he just closed the case and ruled it accidental. Despite his responsibility as lead investigator under state law, he said, he ultimately decided to put his trust in what the Braintree police had told him, that it was a tragic accident.

So he threw his hands up in the air and closed the file?  Did he never think to drive over to the Braintree Police HQ and demand the files?  Did he never think to call his boss, Bill Delhaunt (D-Hackville), and tell him he was getting the run around from the Braintree P.D.? It’s not like a State Police investigator or the district attorney do not have enough clout to get reports from a local police department when investigating a shooting death.

Howe goes on:

“I conducted myself in an honest and professional manner in this investigation, as expected by a member of the Massachusetts State Police,’’ he said. “Any suggestion to the contrary is ill informed and malicious.’’

Howe said, however, that he now believes that the delay in getting him the reports may not have been administrative. Braintree police “certainly withheld things,’’ Howe said. “Why, I don’t know.

“I think it’s a valid conclusion that they did not give me the reports for a reason.’’

Ya think?

Bishop Blame Game: Delahunt, Former Braintree Chief Start Pointing Fingers

Steel cage match, Hack edition.

“Bill Delahunt should know the facts a lot more before he shoots his mouth off,” retired Braintree police Chief John Polio said. “I was hoping that Delahunt would take the high road. But he does what he often does and took the low road.”

Don’t we know it.   

Delahunt, the Bay State congressman who formerly served as Norfolk district attorney, broke his silence on the Bishop case yesterday and stood by his office’s handling of the 1986 shooting death of Bishop’s 18-year-old brother, Seth.

[…]

If an arrest had been completed and charges of assault with a dangerous weapon had been filed . . . the district attorney’s office . . . would have requested psychiatric evaluation of Miss Bishop. We can speculate what that might have revealed,” Delahunt said.

The shooting was ruled accidental, but reports showing she fled the house wielding a shotgun and menaced two men, including a car dealer from whom she allegedly demanded a getaway car, remained hidden until last week.

“I thought we handled it appropriately, given the information we had,” Delahunt said.

Polio was having none of it.

Polio, 87, said he “never ordered Amy Bishop released” from custody following the shooting and claimed that decision was made by the head of detectives, Capt. Theodore Buker, who has since died.

In a written statement, Polio said he believes all Braintree police reports were either turned over to the lead investigator, State Police Detective Brian Howe, or withheld by Buker. He also said his understanding was the probe was taken over by Howe and the district attorney. Delahunt said Howe claims he’s never seen the reports.

Even if Delahunt himself did nothing wrong, this press is not good for his already poor chances of winning reelection in November.  I predict he will be making an announcement that he wants to spend more time with his good buddy Hugo and announce his retirement plans before Easter.

Left-Wing Nutty Professor Updates: Braintee Police Reports Found, D.A. Says She Should Have Been Charged, Bishop Went Moe Green At IHOP

The Braintree mayor says the missing police reports were found with a retired Braintree cop.

Braintree Mayor Joseph Sullivan said the missing files were found with an unnamed, retired Braintree police captain.

Read the reports here

The name of this police captain must be released and any possible connections to the Bishop family need to be investigated.

Current Norfolk County D.A., William Keating, says police should have at minimum charged Bishop with assault with a dangerous weapon and unlawful possession of a firearm.

Keating said last night the reports indicate Bishop, then 20, at a minimum could have been prosecuted for assault with a dangerous weapon and unlawful possession of a firearm after she told cops she shot a hole in the chest of her only sibling, Seth Bishop, 18, with the family’s shotgun on Dec. 6, 1986.

But Keating said the statute of limitations has expired on those charges, as well as manslaughter based on reckless conduct.

In 2000, Bishop was charged with assault and battery after she pulled a Moe Green at the IHOP in Peabody.

Bishop was charged with assault and battery for a March 2002 incident, in which an enraged Bishop unleashed a profanity-laced tirade against a mother whose child got the last booster seat at the Peabody International House of Pancakes, according to a Peabody police report.

She yelled “I am Amy Bishop” and then punched the frightened mother in her head. When police questioned Bishop, she claimed to be the victim, the report stated.

Prosecutors asked that Bishop, who received probation, take anger management classes. It is unclear if she did.

If the classes were a condition of her probation she would have been required to take the classes and to provide documentation to her probation officer or be found in violation.

She was a menace in her former Newton, MA and Huntsville, AL neighborhoods as well.

During the mid-1990s, when the couple lived in Newton, they called the cops twice – once to report a “suspicious vehicle idling in front of the home,” and again when Anderson complained about an unruly MBTA bus driver who he claimed nearly ran him down.

In Huntsville, neighbor Sherry Foley, 63, recalled that Bishop wrangled with another neighbor over a barking dog.

“Amy Bishop got all bent out of shape because she said his dogs were barking and disturbing her,” Foley said. “She would call him every hour on the hour. They weren’t even his dogs.”

This self-absorbed, paranoid, abusive, dangerous woman has been terrorizing innocent people since at least 1986.  How she was able to procure a job in an academic environment after the 2002 incident is going to be yet another question of which the families of Bishop’s victims deserve an answer.

Left-Wing Nutty Professor Updates: Mother Was On Braintree Personnel Board In 1986, Delahunt Suddenly Remembers The Case

This is starting to reek of a cover up.

Bishop’s mother was on the Braintree Personnel Board when her daughter shot her son to death in 1986

Also yesterday, new details emerged in the bizarre saga. Anderson told the Associated Press the couple had recently gone to a shooting range, but he didn’t know where she got the gun she used for target practice that day.

Bishop blasted her 18-year-old brother Seth with a shotgun in their Braintree home in 1986 in what was ruled an accidental death. She was later questioned about the 1993 attempted bombing of Dr. Paul Rosenberg, a Newton Highlands physician who evaluated her doctorate work at Harvard University.

Braintree Mayor Joseph C. Sullivan announced Sunday law enforcement is “conducting a full and thorough review” of records relating to Seth Bishop’s death after Braintree police Chief Paul Frazier said Amy Bishop’s mother, Judith Bishop, sat on the city’s politically wired personnel board at the time of the shooting.

Bill Delahunt has had a miraculous mental breakthrough and suddenly remembers the case and of course he’s blaming the police for his lack of investigation and/or prosecution of Bishop.

U.S. Rep. and former Norfolk District Attorney William Delahunt yesterday backed off earlier claims he didn’t recall the 1986 shooting death of Amy Bishop’s brother, with a top aide now saying police downplayed the need for further investigation.

Mark Forest, Delahunt’s chief of staff, said both state and local police told the former top prosecutor they believed Amy Bishop, then 20, had accidentally blasted her 18-year-old brother, Seth, with their father’s shotgun.

“They pretty much found the death was accidental and there was no need for further action,” Forest told the Herald.

Pretty much? That’s convincing.  And just who were the state and local police officers who told Delhaunt that it was, like, pretty much, like an accident?

Left-Wing Nutty Professor Harassed Kids In Her Ipswich, MA Neighborhood

Her former neighbors describe the Bishop family as “strange.”  You don’t say.

The former Bay State woman who allegedly killed three people in a shooting rampage in Alabama last week had several run-ins with police and was considered “strange” when she lived in Ipswich, Mass., according to former neighbors.

Amy Bishop and her family lived in Ipswich from approximately 1999 to 2003. Bishop was arrested in Alabama on Friday, accused in a shooting rampage at the University of Alabama that left three people dead and another three injured.  

“Not a lot of people liked them. They thought they were strange,” former neighbor Joe Lafoe said. 

Police records show she often complained about the neighbor’s children, even though she had four of her own.

“She didn’t want her kids to come out and play, so our kids couldn’t play outside,” said one neighbor who did not want to be identified.

In 2000, police records show Bishop called police about children playing basketball at 8 p.m. on a summer night. Bishop told police that night that the situation may soon “come to blows.”

“We’re all thankful and grateful nothing happened to our families in this neighborhood,” another former neighbor said.

Lafoe said Bishop and her husband often called police because children rode dirt bikes around the neighborhood.

“(Bishop’s husband) actually grabbed me once on the dirt bike and threw me down to the ground,” Lafoe said.

Basetball at 8:00 p.m. in the summer?  The horror.

Those kids are lucky she didn’t get really pissed.