Episode 5: Bradford Bishop

May 31

Hello,

I am back with episode 5. I’m trying to get more of these done now that my life is calming down.

In this episode, I am covering a case that I have thought about a lot since I heard it on My Favorite Murder Episode 60 when Georgia covered it. Actually, I’m not too far from the area where this happened it’s only a couple of hours so of course, I went down the rabbit hole to see if it was someone I maybe knew. I live in a small town so I feel like it could be a good place to hide out and no one notice you. He looked super familiar but I think it’s the case this case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries back in the day.

In Today’s episode, I’m going to be talking about Bradford Bishop.

Let’s start with a little background on this guy.

He was born William Bradford Bishop Jr on August 1, 1936, in Pasadena, California. He is a very educated man and had received a BS in history from Yale, a MA in international studies (with a concentration in Africa) from the University of California, and also attended Middlebury College. In 1959 he joined the Army counterintelligence then was part of the U.S. State Department and served in the U.S. Foreign Service in many postings overseas. Also, he was a foreign service officer in Africa which included posts in several other places throughout the world. His last job was at State Department Headquarters in Washington as an Assistant Chief in the Division of Special Activities and Commercial Treaties. He was reported to speak five languages fluently: English, French, Serbo-Croat, Italian and Spanish. So this dude has some serious skills please keep that in mind.

Now that we got this background out of the well. Let me go ahead and tell you that this man is known as a mass murderer and family annihilator. He killed the following members of this family: His wife, Annette, 37, his mother, Lobelia, 68, and his three sons: William, 14, Brenton, 10, and Geoffrey, 5. He killed them all by beating them with a ball-peen hammer in their home located in Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

So next I’m going to do a timeline of events. I feel like that works better when talking about cases such as this.

In early 1976, He was 39 years old and anticipating a promotion.
March 1st: That afternoon he learned he would not receive that promotion. After learning that he told his secretary he didn’t feel well and left work early. He drove to the Montgomery Mall where he purchased a ball-peen hammer and a gas can, which he filled at a gas station.
- After this Police believe that he first killed his wife, then his mother when she returned home from walking the family's golden retriever, and finally his three sons in their beds. I would imagine since the boys were in bed he may have waited until they had gone to sleep for the night.
- Later that night he loaded the bodies in the family station wagon and drove 6 hours to a densely wooded area of North Carolina, about five miles south of Columbia. He dug a shallow hole where he piled the bodies, doused them with gasoline, and set them ablaze.
March 2: North Carolina state forest ranger received a call from a spotter in a fire tower to an area where smoke was rising from the trees. There he discovered the burned bodies and a shovel with a label from a store at Montgomery Mall.
- Later that day there was the last confirmed siting of Bishop when he visited a sporting goods store in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and used his credit card to purchase tennis shoes. The witnesses stated he had the family dog with him on a leash and may have been accompanied by a woman described as "dark-skinned".
March 10: One of the Bishop’s neighbors in Maryland grew concerned about the family's absence when she realized she hadn’t seen them in 3 weeks.
- The neighbor who had a key to their home, let the detective in when they arrived to see if anything was wrong. He found droplets of blood on the front porch and entered the house to discover spattered blood on the floor.
- As he continued inside and up the steps, He found more blood splatterings on the walls and floors as well. He then found what he believes is the boy's room, and stated the entire room was covered from ceiling to floor, and wall to wall with blood. The Detective had been on the force for 12 years and stated he’d never seen such a disturbing scene.
Sometimes the time between March 12th and March 18th: they used dental records to confirm that the bodies found in North Carolina were those of the Bishop family.
March 18th: the Bishop family car was found abandoned at a campground in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, about 400 miles from the area where the bodies were found. In the car, they found dog biscuits, a bloody blanket, and the spare tire well in the trunk was full of blood.
March 19: a grand jury indicted Bishop on five counts of first-degree murder and other charges. The evidence used to come to this conviction included the fact he had disappeared, the sighting afterward in the vicinity of the bodies, and bloodstains inside the family home that matched both his fingerprints and the blood of his family members. So he was charged locally with murder by the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office in Rockville, Maryland, and then charged federally with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
On April 10, 2014, the FBI placed him on the list of its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. I included his FBI wanted poster below.

So as we are all probably wondering. Why in the hell would a man so smart and skilled want to do something like this? I found a couple of reasons while reading through stuff that I’m going to list below.

According to a co-worker he was constantly belittled by his wife and mother, telling him that he was a washed-up and that he didn't have any ability in his job anymore. The same co-worker also went on to add that the murders could have been Bishop's way to "put someone in their place", as he liked to say himself.

He was using a prescription drug called Serax. I WebMD’d that it’s also known as Oxazepam which is used to treat anxiety and acute alcohol withdrawal. This medication belongs to a class of drugs called benzodiazepines which act on the brain and nerves (central nervous system) to produce a calming and anti-seizure effect. It can also become very addictive with prolonged use. As any medication can if you have been on it a while. As someone with Anxiety myself, I completely understanding how someone belittling you could cause you to break.

So Where in the Hell is Bradford Bishop?

He had about one week window before the authorities even began looking for him. So he could have traveled on his U.S. diplomatic passport. Because it was 1976, He could have just hopped on a plane and traveled anywhere throughout much of the world and easily have avoided leaving a paper trail of any kind.
Since 1976 there has been a lot of unconfirmed sighting numerous times in Belgium, England, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. There are three sightings that have been noted by the United States Marshals Service:
- In July 1978, He was seen by an acquaintance of his family in Stockholm, Sweden
- In January 1979, He was seen in a water closet in Sorrento, Italy by someone who had worked closely with him at the State Department. When they called for him he ran away.
- On September 19, 1994, in Basel, Switzerland on a train platform, a neighbor from Bethesda reported that she saw Bishop from a few feet away.
Here are a couple of other theories :
- He died or committed suicide in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. His remains could have been eaten by an animal or just not been found or identified.
- He could have defected to the Soviet Union but that’s not seen as credible by the police.
- There are several rumors that since he worked for the government that they are helping him flee cause he was a member of the CIA which they have come out and denied that.
- Maybe he was also a victim whose body was dumped elsewhere and hasn’t been found or at least identified.

What do I think happened?

I think he got fed up with his job and his family and killed them. That seems like the most plausible thing. I hate saying that but it happens more often than it should. Honestly, he had enough skills based on his job to be able to pull this off. He could have also just left his family without killing them the same way. Because I understand why he would have killed his wife and mother but why the boys? Seems like maybe he thought it was the only option after getting killing the 2 people treating him like shit. As twisted as it sounds I do appreciate that he didn’t kill the dog. I do think that he may have planned this out a bit. I say that cause he could have easily without any prior thought went to the store and decided he wants to purchase a weapon to beat his family to death and get the gas to burn the house down. However, I can’t figure out why drive 6hr from home to dump the bodies and set them on fire. I mean I do get it he didn’t want to raise suspicions to his neighbors sooner so he could properly escape. He could have killed them, panicked, and just started driving and winged it from there. He did have resources and the knowledge of how to get away with this. At this point, He is 84 and turning 85 years old this year. He is most likely dead or at least so far hidden away that no one can find him or recognize him.

What do you all think?

There is a strange kinda update that happened concerning this case. I came across it when it happened when I had just started looking this one up and researching it. A Boston woman who had been adopted discovered through 23 and Me, that she had a distant cousin who happened to be a genealogist, who offered to dig a bit deeper into her birth parents. When the cousin discovered who her father she went back and told her his name is Bradford Bishop you may want to look him up. To which the woman replied,” Is it someone famous?”

She stated that she needed no convincing that Bishop was in fact her father. Because his 3 sons resembled her more than her own kids. Also that “when I look at the behaviors and characteristics, it’s more than clear in my mind,”, noting they both had struggled with insomnia. I have included the whole article from the Washington Post in the References if you want to read more into it cause it’s really crazy.

References

Bradford Bishop's Wikipedia.

Bradford Bishop's FBI Most Wanted Page.

Washington Post Article about Daughter

Bradford Bishop's Murderpedia page.

Eggplant Casserole

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Cook Time: 18 mins

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