A brilliant professor at the University of Alabama at Huntsville is accused of shooting several of her colleagues after her application for tenure was denied. The shooting has reignited interest in the 1986 shooting of her brother, which was ruled acci
Amy Bishop, a brilliant professor, sounded delusional as she was taken away by police after allegedly gunning down three of her colleagues at the University of Alabama at Huntsville.
Now her husband, John Anderson, is speaking out: "I love her. She's barely holding up. I'm caving in, to say the least. Nobody understands what happened. Nobody knows. I can't sit down and talk to her and ask her, 'What happened? What broke?' "
Anderson says he tried to calm her rage over being refused tenure at the university. "I'm sorry. I feel for all these people. I wish it never came to this."
And there are new details about the mysterious 1986 shooting death of her brother. Amy Bishop claimed she accidentally shot and killed 18-year-old Seth Bishop, but was there a police cover-up?
Bishop was released from custody within just hours. Many people are questioning why the shooting was ruled accidental so quickly. It turns out that Amy Bishop's mother was on the influential police personnel board. Bishop's actions right after the shooting might lead you to believe that the shooting was anything but accidental.
Minutes after the shooting Bishop ran out of her parents' home and fled to an autobody shop, where she allegedly tried to steal a car. Tom Pettigrew was in the autobody shop when Bishop entered.
"I don't want to say she pointed the gun at my chest, but we kind of bumped into each other and the gun ended up hitting me right in the middle of my chest," Pettigrew tells INSIDE EDITION. " I go, 'What are you doing here, what's going on?' And she said, 'Put your hands up!' " Pettigrew says.
Former Braintree Police Chief John Polio, now 87, says there was no cover up.
"If it wasn't a cover up, then it was very poor police work on somebody's part," INSIDE EDITION's Matt Meagher tells Polio.
"That is correct, somebody dropped the ball," Polio responds.
And INSIDE EDITION has learned more about Bishop's alleged motive for the shooting. She was apparently fearful that without tenure at the university, she would end up like Dr. Douglas Prasher. Prasher is a brilliant biochemist who, after being laid off from NASA in 2008, now has to drive a shuttle bus for a living.
"When you're up for review, or tenure review, and you don't know what else you would do, it's terrifying," Prasher tells INSIDE EDITION.
Prasher, whose pioneering research actually led to a 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry for three colleagues, lives in Huntsville. His story is widely known there.
Said Bishop's husband of Prasher's story: "That's what happened to one guy that didn't get tenure, and he is driving a courtesy shuttle."
