ANOTHER SHOCK IN ALABAMA MURDER CASE – AT 7:50 A.M. ET:  I wrote a few days ago that we'd follow closely the case of the murder of three University of Alabama professors, allegedly by another faculty member, on Friday.

We don't normally do murder here, but let me remind readers that this case is important for its public-policy implications.  We learned on Friday that Amy Bishop, a Harvard-trained biologist, shot and killed three faculty members, and wounded another three, at a meeting of her department at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.  We later were stunned to learn that, in 1986, she shot and killed her brother in Braintree, Massachusetts.  Although she fired the weapon three times, the killing was ruled "accidental."  And we later learned that she was a suspect in the attempted pipe bombing of a Harvard professor, whom she feared would give her a bad report card.

And now there's more, according to a well-reported story in The New York Times:

Also Tuesday, The Boston Globe reported that Dr. Bishop was charged with assault in 2002 after punching a woman in the head at an International House of Pancakes in Peabody, Mass. According to a police report, Dr. Bishop was angry that the woman had taken the last booster seat in the restaurant, which Dr. Bishop wanted for one of her children, The Globe said. It added that Dr. Bishop was sentenced to probation and that prosecutors recommended she take anger management classes, though it is not clear whether she did.

What is disturbing is that the University of Alabama, when it hired Bishop, knew nothing of her violent history.  Call it Massachusetts justice.  She did no time for shooting her brother at point-blank range, nor, as it's now reported, for trying to commandeer a car at gunpoint after that shooting:

In the hours after the shooting death of her brother, Dr. Bishop tried to use the shotgun to steal a car from a nearby Ford dealership, said Tom Pettigrew, an employee of Dave Dinger Ford at the time. In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Pettigrew said a woman who he soon realized was Amy Bishop approached him with a shotgun and told him to put his hands up.

“She was distraught,” Mr. Pettigrew said. “She was hyperaware of everything that was going on. She said: ‘I need a car, I just got into a fight with my husband. He’s looking for me, and he’s going to kill me.’ ”

She was cleared of the Harvard bombing, but there are doubts about that investigation.  And she did no time for punching a woman in the head in 2002.

Ray Garner, a spokesman for the university in Huntsville, said that the university knew nothing of Dr. Bishop’s violent past when she was hired, and that there were no indications of trouble in her personnel file.

“We did the normal academic background checks,” Mr. Garner said, adding that Dr. Bishop had letters of recommendation from Harvard and elsewhere. “She seemed pretty impeccable.”

COMMENT:  Three professors are dead, allegedly at the hand of Ms. Impeccable.  As The Times points out:

Had Dr. Bishop been charged with the serious crimes listed by the district attorney on Tuesday, their presence on her record might have changed the course of her career, even if she were eventually acquitted.

The district attorney in the case of her brother's death was William Delahunt, now a very leftish Democratic congressman from Massachusetts.  The investigation into that shooting will now probably be reopened.  Congressman Delahunt was recently spoken of retiring. 

Scratch him.

February 17,  2010