By Jay Van Paemel
Robert Wels was named receiver of his brother-in-law’s property.Acting in that capacity, Wels authorized the sale of Bishop’s motorcycle and the family’s rust-colored, 1974 Chevrolet station wagon. The latter vehicle was the object of a nationwide search before it was located last March 18 at a resort campsite deep in the Great Smoky National Park on the North Carolina Tennessee border.To protect the Gneisers from a possible claim sometime in the future by Bishop or his heirs, the title company they employed in the purchase of the house insisted that a guardian, who has greater legal authority than a receiver, be named in Bishop’s behalf.The last confirmed contact with Bishop occurred last March 2, when he used BankAmericard, his only credit card, to purchase $15.50 worth of sporting goods in Jacksonville, N.C., about 100 miles south of Tyrrell County, N.C., where the bodies were discovered earlier that day.
A forest ranger, patrolling the swampy forest near the hamlet of Columbia, N.C., spotted the bodies, which had been set afire, about noon. But it was almost a week before the charred remains were connected to the Bishop family, whose absence from home was attributed by friends to a spring skiing trip that the close-knit, athletic family had planned.
Bishop, a highly regarded, $26,000-a-year career Foreign Service officer, had left his office at the State Department unusually early on March 1, complaining a cold.Police later determined that Bishop drove from his Foggy Bottom office to Montgomery Mall, where he bought a five-gallon gasoline can at Sears and had it filled at the Texaco station there.
Investigators also have concluded that the first victim was his wife, Annette, who was slain in the den. They theorize that Bishop’s mother, who lived with the family, returned from walking the family dog and surprised the killer, who hurriedly placed one of Brad Bishop’s jackets over Annette’s body. After the two women were fatally bludgeoned, the three boys, who were wearing pajamas and apparently were asleep in upstairs bedrooms, were then killed by a powerful blows to their heads.The killer then stuffed the bodies in the family’s station wagon and drove through the night to North Carolina, where the bodies were dumped into a bathtub-size grave and set afire.
The station wagon, which was found more than two weeks later, contained a blood-stained blanket, an ax and a shotgun. A massive search of the park, from the air and on foot, followed discovery of the station wagon. But except for some early false reports, there was no trace of Bishop, or the family’s missing golden retriever, Leo.
In the intervening year, police have found no rational motive for the murders: No evidence of infidelity, or financial or job problems. The Bishops, friends and associates insisted, were the archetypical All-American family, blessed with beauty brains and togetherness.
The lone imperfection investigators uncovered was that Bishop had consulted three psychiatrists in recent years, and that he had been taking the prescription drug Serax to treat symptoms of depression and insomnia. A quantity of Serax was found in the glove compartment of the station wagon.
“When he stepped out of that car,” said the FBI’s Quinn, “the trail ended.”
North Carolina Attorney general Rufus Edmisten, who directed the hunt for Bishop in that state, said last week that Bishop’s disappearance is “the most baffling mystery I’ve ever encountered.”
Edminsten, the former deputy counsel to the Watergate committee, discounted the possibility that Bishop, an experienced outdoorsman, wandered off into the park and met his death.
Edminsten, the former deputy counsel to the Watergate committee, discounted the possibility that Bishop, an experienced outdoorsman, wandered off into the park and met his death.
Jack Linahan, assistant chief ranger of the Great Smoky park, said “the number of people who utilize the park” make it unlikely that a body could go unreported “visually or by one of the other senses.”As a State Department employee, Bishop was stationed in Ethiopia, Botswana and Italy and earlier was with Army intelligence in Italy. He speaks Italian and Serbo-Croation fluently, and in addition to his undergraduate degree from Yale, heared tow master’s degrees, in Italian from Middlebury College and African Studies from UCLA. With his education, language abilities and diplomatic credentials, investigators agree that Bishop could get along relatively well in a foreign land.
At least one of Bishop’s former neighbors said she would “like to see more investigation of Brad’s involvement in intelligence activities.”When Carolyn Gneiser was shown the Bishops’ house last November, neither she nor her real estate agent, owned it, although the Gneisers were vaguely aware that both Bishop and Angell had lived in the area.
“I fell in love with the house,” Mrs. Gneiser recalled. Her husband, WMAL/radio anchorman Bob Gneiser, inspected it a few days later and agreed that it was just what they were seeking. It had an addition that would be perfect for Mrs. Gneiser’s mother, who was moving from Florida to become part of their extended family.“We talked it out,” and decided to make the move, Gneiser said, “although frankly, we renegotiated (the price) a little bit” after learning from Mrs. Kate that the house had belonged to the bishops.
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BRAD BISHOP PROBABLY LOOKS LIKE THIS....TODAY
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BRAD BISHOP PROBABLY LOOKS LIKE THIS....TODAY
Not to be confused with, this man:
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| Quinten Tarentino (Hollywood Mogul) |