Episode 46 - The Bishop Family

In March 1976 Annette Bishop, her three children William, Brenton and Geoffrey and her mother-in-law Lobelia Bishop were all killed presumably by husband, father and son William Bradford Bishop. Not only did he bury all five bodies of his family in a nearby swamp he then absconded and has not been found since – despite being on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. 

This is the story of Annette, William, Brenton, Geoffrey and Lobelia Bishop

Information and support 

·       Samaritans UK Contact Us | Samaritans 

·       National Domestic Violence Helpline UK 0808 2000 247 

·       Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse (AAFDA) Home - AAFDA 

·       Women’s Aid www.womensaid.org.uk  

·       Mental health support USA I'm looking for mental health help for myself | Mental Health America (mhanational.org) 

·       Domestic abuse helpline USA 1.800.799.SAFE Domestic Violence Support | National Domestic Violence Hotline (thehotline.org) 

References 

New Top Ten Fugitive — FBI

WANTED: Bradford Bishop // Yas - Crime Junkie - Apple Podcasts

Bradford Bishop // 60 - Going West: True Crime - Apple Podcasts

True Crime news https://youtu.be/_DDtYlT5D10 

The Man Who Got Away | MoCo360

Bradford Bishop - Wikipedia

Annette Kathryn Weis Bishop (1938-1976) - Find a Grave Memorial

William Bradford Bishop: A Decades-Long Manhunt – NBC4 Washington (nbcwashington.com)

Credits 

Hosted and created by Clare Laxton @ladylaxton 

Produced by: Clare Laxton  

Killer in the family podcast (buzzsprout.com)

Music by Tom Box and from Pixabay. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi there and welcome to Killer in the Family podcast. I'm your host, claire Laxton. So welcome to episode 46, and by the time you listen to this, I will hopefully run the Royal Parks half marathon and I raised over 600 pounds for women's aid, so I'm really excited about that and thank you so much to everyone for your support. I also recently got my marks back for my master's dissertation and I passed, which is really exciting, and I'm really grateful that I get to continue my research when I start my doctorate in January next year. Also excitingly, there's the last announcement. I promise I'll be talking about my research on another podcast very soon. It's called let's Get Visible by Carrie Bauer, and it focuses on the experiences of older women, and it was a really great conversation that we have, so I'll put the link to the episode on socials when it's out. So let's get into this episode.

Speaker 1: 1:18

In March 1976, annette Bishop, her three children, william Brent, brenton and Geoffrey, and her mother-in-law, lobelia Bishop, were all killed, presumably by husband, father and son, william Bradford Bishop. Not only did he bury all five bodies of his family, he then absconded and has not been found since, despite being on the FBI's most wanted list. This is the story of Annette, william Brenton, geoffrey and Lobelia Bishop. So this is this is going to be a really tough listen team. Not only are we talking about the murder of five people, including three three children, but the perpetrator still hasn't been brought to justice. There are links to information and support in the episode notes, as well as all my sources For this episode. I listened to a couple of episodes of my favourite true crime podcasts Crime Junkie and Going West, so check them out if you're interested in the case.

Speaker 1: 2:43

So let's start with Annette. She was born Annette Weiss and was born on the 18th of April 1938 in Michigan in America. She attended high school in Pasadena, california, so her family moved there when she was young and in high school. Annette was a cheerleader and it was there when she met her future husband and high school sweetheart, william Bradford Bishop Jr. So Bishop Jr was born on the 1st of August 1936 in Pasadena, california.

Speaker 1: 3:16

He was a high school quarterback, so dating a cheerleader like Annette seemed like destiny. He graduated in high school in 1954, with Annette graduating in 1955. After high school, bishop attended the very prestigious Yale University and later went on to earn graduate degrees in Italian and in African studies as well, but that was later on in his career. Now, annette and Bishop sort of stayed together throughout that time and they were married in 1959. Bishop then joined the US army and he served with it in counterintelligence for about four years Now. He was deemed to be a very intelligent man and was fluent in five languages, apparently English, italian, french, spanish and the Slavic language, serbo-croatian. Now, during this time, annette and Bishop welcomed their first child into their lives, william Bradford, bishop III.

Speaker 1: 4:18

Man what is it with this? Duplications of names? It's definitely an American thing, isn't it? You know you have Senior Junior the Third, it gets so confusing. Anyway, william Bishop III was born on the 14th of August 1961, and he was born in California. He was followed by younger brothers, brenton Germain, bishop, who was born on 30th of July 1965, and Geoffrey Calder, a bishop, who was born on the 12th of February 1971. William III was the oldest. He was 14 years old when he was killed. Brenton was just 10 years old and Geoffrey was just five years old when they were all murdered, presumably by their father.

Speaker 1: 5:03

Now, after leaving the army, bishop joined the foreign service and was posted on various overseas missions. As part of his job, he went to countries like Italy, ethiopia and Botswana, and in Botswana his job title was deputy chief of mission. So like, I think, quite high up. Now. I imagine that Annette and the boys joined him on some of these postings and while they might have been really exciting and important for Bishop, they might have not been that fun for Annette. By the time they had their three children, the Bishop family settled in Washington DC where he took a job with the State Department. Now, shortly after Geoffrey was born. In the early 70s Bishop's father died and so his mum, lobelia, moved in with them. So in 1974, the whole family Bishop, annette, the three boys and Bishop's mother moved into a beautiful house in Bethesda, maryland, which sort of borders Maryland and Washington DC, and according to the Going West podcast, where they live was like a classic American suburban town lots of trees and lawns and friendly neighbours. And apparently Baylia helped Annette and Bishop buy the house with a $30,000 deposit and she and Annette had a good relationship, which is always a positive when you have multiple generations of a family leaving in the same, living in the same house. So, as I said, at this time Bishop was working at the State Department. His job title, according to the Going West podcast, was now get ready for this. Assistant of the Special Trade Activities and Commercial Treaties Division in the Office of the International Trade of the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. That's quite something, quite a long job title. Maybe that's how people measure success in the department.

Speaker 1: 6:52

Now, apparently Bishop wasn't the most happiest with his career. He didn't really enjoy his desk job and he was obsessed with his career progression. He wanted to go on another overseas appointment but Annette wasn't that keen on uprooting, you know, the whole family as the kids were getting older. And as the children were getting older, annette was exploring, doing something different for herself and getting an art degree as an education. So it feels like she was sort of starting to branch out beyond family life. Apparently there was resentment towards Annette and his mother from Bishop, who he blamed for his lack of career success, and this resentment probably grew as Annette started to build her own life and education and, in his eyes, was preventing him from going overseas. Now the obsession with his career did not serve Bishop well. In early 1976 he was passed over for promotion and he didn't take that well at all. A colleague called Roy Harrell talked about how he saw Bishop after he got the news that he'd been passed over promotion and he said he wasn't feeling well and went home. Now regardless, regardless of not getting that promotion in the 1970s from the outside it appeared that Bradford Bishop had it all A successful public service career, a beautiful house, a loving family and even a beautiful golden retriever dog called Leo. In March 1976, that perception would change.

Speaker 1: 8:46

In early March 1976, two forest rangers in North Carolina saw plumes of smoke from a fire in the park. They called in and joined police as they went to the source of the smoke. A guy called Ron Brickhouse was one of these forest rangers and talked to NBC Washington about going to that fire and finding five dead bodies in a shallow grave having been doused with petrol. He said, quote While police knew that something terrible had happened, they weren't immediately able to identify the dead bodies or start to understand what had happened to them. They did know at this time that some of the dead bodies were children, which made them even more determined to find out who they were and what happened to them. Now there were some clues left at the scene in the shape of the shovel, pickaxe and gas can, as we heard earlier, and there was a sticker on the shovel that was left at the scene which had the letters OCHHDW on it, and it took police about a week to trace that sticker and the shovel back to a shop called Pox Hardware, and it's Pox spelled P-O-C-H in Washington.

Speaker 1: 10:13

Now, at the same time, on the 8th of March 1976, police attended the house of the bishops, as a neighbour called them concerned because they hadn't seen the family for a while. When police came to check on the bishop's house, they actually saw a few blood drops outside the front door, which gave them huge cause for concern. They entered the house and inside they found a horrific scene. There was blood everywhere. According to a 360 Media article quote, there were blood soaks, linens, mattresses and pillowcases, human bones, tissue fibres and hair, but no bodies. Montgomery County Police Chief Tom Munger told NCB Washington quote to actually look at those mattresses and to think about those boys being there. It's just horrible.

Speaker 1: 11:06

The police connected the Bishop home to the bodies that they had found way down in north carolina, about 300 miles away, and this is when they started to piece together what happened to annette, william brenton, jeffrey and lobelia on the 1st of march 1976. So, as we know, on that day Bishop received the news that he was being passed over for promotion and, before leaving work, telling his bosses and colleagues that he wasn't feeling well, he drew, he withdrew $400 from a bank. He then drove to Sears, which is like a shop in America at the Montgomery Mall, and bought a gas can and a short-handled sledgehammer, and so this was apparently not like a massive sledgehammer that you automatically think of when you hear that word, but something much smaller, like a sort of handheld hammer. He then went to another shop and bought a shovel and a pitchfork at Pox Hardware. Now, police believe that when he came home he killed Annette first Apparently she was reading a book, and Bishop hit her in the head with the sledgehammer.

Speaker 1: 12:23

Now I wonder if he did it like so many other family annihilators, and killed his wife from behind like a coward. He then killed his mother, lobelia, when she got home from walking the dog Leo, and it was still the evening at this point and all three children were in bed, and Bishop then went into each of their bedrooms and killed each one of them one by one with the sledgehammer as they slept. Police said quote there was an awful lot of rage. Bishop went from room to room with such anger and rage, it was just a terrible crime scene. The police say Bishop then wrapped the bodies of his family that he had just murdered in sheets and towels and dragged them to the family station wagon like a big car which was a 1974 chevy malibu. He took their bodies along with the family dog leo, who he didn't kill, but he took on this like horrific journey and drove 300 miles south to North Carolina, there, next to a car with his dead family in it. He dug a shallow grave, put them all in there, covered them with petrol and set them alight, probably thinking that they wouldn't be discovered for weeks or months. He then drove off, never to face justice for what he had done. Now, as I usually say on this podcast, there was such shock after people discovered what happened to the Bishop family and who the prime suspect was.

Speaker 1: 14:17

And although this crime has been described as unsolved by some, police have said that they have no doubt that Bradford Bishop killed his whole family and he has been the one and only suspect in the murders his whole family, and he has been the one and only suspect in the murders. What is clear from what happened is that these murders were planned carefully and meticulously. You can see from Bishop's movements on the night he murdered his family that he was planning what he was doing. His anger and resentment at his family for holding his career back might have been building up for a while, and his lack of promotion affirmed in his mind that that was the night he was going to carry out his plan. Like so many family annihilators we've talked about, this is not a crime of passion. It's not someone suddenly snapping or seeing red mist, but it was meticulously planned and carefully executed murder of a whole family. It reminds me a bit of Robert Mockery from episode two, who killed his whole family when he was facing financial pressures, as well as his wife expanding her horizons outside the family home. Like Bishop, mockery planned the murders carefully after he probably blamed his family for his failings and decided that they could not live without him. Unlike Mockery, bishop did not take his own life. Instead, bishop reminding us of John List who we talked about in episodes six and seven absconded after he murdered his family.

Speaker 1: 15:46

Now, when we talked about John List because he also absconded sort of in the 70s it would have been so much easier to leave without detection than it would be now. There's no CCTV, no tracking credit cards or smartphones. So by the time the police found Bishop's car in the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, about 400 miles from where he buried his family on the 18th of March, he was long gone Now. Apparently, bishop's car contained dog biscuits, a bloody blanket, a shotgun, an axe, a shaving kit and Bishop's medication. The boot was also full of blood as well. Now police assume that Bishop sort of passed himself off as a hiker on the nearby Appalachian Trail. They attempted to follow his scent with bloodhounds, but they didn't have any success there. Now I couldn't find out what happened to the family dog, leo, which is really stressing me out, but I'm hoping that he found a nice family to live with and recover from the trauma of seeing Bishop murder, bury and set alight his family.

Speaker 1: 16:58

On the 19th of March, a grand jury indicted Bishop, in his absence, of five counts of first degree murder. Now, before we talk about what happened next, let's talk about the speculation for Bishop's motives. Some would say that the family weren't in any particular issue. You know financial issues, and Bishop had a successful job. It did turn out that he was seeking treatment for mental health issues, though, as we've talked about before, that doesn't inherently mean it was a reason or for court or a cause for what he did to his family. I genuinely believe that the resentment towards his wife and mother in particular, and extending to his family as a whole, consumed Bishop, as he couldn't do what he wanted. Therefore, although on the surface there weren't any huge problems for the family, under the surface for Bishop, problems for the family. Under the surface for Bishop, his plans were being made and resentment was being brewed After absconding justice.

Speaker 1: 17:55

There were sightings of Bishop. As you would expect and as we talked about recently when we talked about the Dupont-Duligionez family and Xavier, there were probably three important sightings of Bishop to talk about. In July 1978, a woman who said that she'd worked with Bishop while on a business trip in Ethiopia said that she saw him in Stockholm and she said she was absolutely certain that it was Bishop but didn't report it because she didn't know that he was a wanted man a wanted man. In September 1994, on a train station in Basel, someone who used to be neighbours with the Bishop family said that they saw him when they were on holiday and they were just a few feet away from him. And perhaps most significantly, in January 1979, bishop was reportedly seen by Roy Harrell, the colleague who we talked about earlier, so clearly someone who knew Bishop well. He saw him while in a loo in Sorrento, italy. Apparently Roy said to him hey, you're Brad Bishop, aren't you? No-transcript. So potentially some really you know solid sightings here of Bishop and lots of other sightings were reported to the police and don't think that they didn't stop looking for him, because they were constantly looking for him.

Speaker 1: 19:21

Unfortunately, the trail went cold pretty quickly for them, but the search for him has never stopped and in 2014, bishop was actually added to the FBI's top 10 most wanted list. In their press release, they said quote a reward of up to $100,000 is being offered for information leading directly to the arrest of Bishop, a highly intelligent former US State Department employee who investigators believe may be hiding in plain sight Now. Steve Vogt, who is a special agent with the FBI, said quote Nothing has changed since March 2, 1976, when Bishop was last seen. Except the passage of time, there is no indication that Bishop is dead. No lead or tip is insignificant. If Bishop is living with a new identity, he's got to be somebody's next door neighbour. Don't forget that five people were murdered. Bishop needs to be held accountable for that.

Speaker 1: 20:21

And at this time in 2014, the FBI believed that Bishop was hiding in plain sight in the USA. Steve Vogt said quote if you're a US citizen, it's usually easier to hide in this country. Americans overseas tend to stand out. The reality is he could be anywhere, but we don't want people to assume that he's out of the country and overlook the fact that he might be living in their community. People might see someone who looks like him and think it couldn't be him. Well, it could be him. That's why we need the public's help. So, as well as a call for the public's help, the FBI released an age progress likeness on what they thought Bishop would look like in 2014, when he was 78 years old Now, like any other family annihilator fugitive we've talked about, bishop was actually featured on, you know, a sort of true crime programme, and it was the John Walsh programme, the Hunt.

Speaker 1: 21:18

So we talked about John Walsh in episodes six and seven about the List family, because he became a crime fighter and campaigner for justice when his son, adam, was abducted from a mall and found dead. And my friend Kirstie and I actually saw John Walsh speak at CrimeCon when we went early this year, and he's such a passionate campaigner for justice and for victims of violence. Now John List appeared on America's Most Wanted when John Walsh hosted that programme and that actually led to his capture, as a neighbour recognised him. Sadly, bishop being featured on the Hunt, the programme that John Walsh hosted this time didn't lead to any capture. Bishop was removed from the FBI's top 10 most wanted list in 2018 to make room for another fugitive, but he is still being actively pursued. Now the last installment of the story of Bishop is a bit of an incredible one.

Speaker 1: 22:16

In 2018, a woman in North Carolina found out that she was the biological daughter of Bishop when she sent her DNA to an ancestry website. Kathy Gilchrist was born in 1957 and knew that she was adopted from an early age. In 2017, she decided to find out more about her birth parents and took a home DNA test. She thought, and through this, she found that she had loads of cousins and connected with family members she never knew she had. Now, one of these cousins continued to help Kathy find her birth parents and encouraged Kathy to send her DNA into an ancestry website. After finding out about her birth mother's family, it took a while longer to find out with her birth father, and about a year later, kathy found the truth that one of the FBI's most wanted was her biological father. Now, clearly, cathy was born long before Bishop's other children, maybe even when he was at Yale University. Not much is known about what happened with her birth mother, but it was a time that he was still with Annette as well. Now, in the meantime, cathy was clearly very shocked about the discovery of who her birth father was, and she's actually written about her experiences in a book called it's In my Genes, and cautioned that DNA ancestry searches may lead to some unexpected results.

Speaker 1: 23:43

For the police, though, this discovery opened up a whole new range of avenues for investigation, particularly about Bishop's early life. They are not giving up. Right now Bishop would be 88 years old. If he is still alive. I'll share the age progression images from the FBI on my socials. He is still a wanted fugitive, so if you know anything or think you might have seen him, please report it to the FBI and get justice for the Bishop family. Have seen him? Please report it to the FBI and get justice for the Bishop family. This episode is dedicated to Annette, william Brenton, geoffrey and Ljubelia Bishop for their lives cut too short and for the joy and love and potential they all had.

Speaker 1: 24:25

This has been Killer in the Family podcast, written and produced by me, claire Laxton, with music from the brilliant Tom Box and Pixabay. I'll be back next week with new episodes, so please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Don't forget to send me any comments or questions to my Insta at Killer in the Family pod or through a text via the link in the episode notes. Do let me know any stories you'd like me to cover as well. Also, don't forget that you can buy me a coffee if you like the podcast and help support its running. The link is in the episode notes too. Until then, I've been Claire Laxton. This is Killer in the Family podcast no-transcript.