When you think of a mass shooter, you don’t envision someone like Amy Bishop. Forty-five years old, female, Harvard-educated, Biology professor, and mother of four, Amy Bishop would seem an unlikely killer.

It was 3pm on February 12, 2010, and thirteen professors and staff members from the University of Alabama Biology Department met in a third-floor conference room. Plant biologist Gopi Podila passed out the printed agenda and sat beside Amy Bishop. Amy had a handgun in her purse.
Amy was normally quite vocal in these meetings, but that day she was silent and brooding. She shot six of her co-workers, killing three, before she washed up and called her husband for a ride home. The police arrived before he did.
But Amy’s homicidal rampage did not come out of nowhere. Investigations into her background would reveal a troubled person with a history of violence and a probable cover up in her hometown in Massachusetts.

Today, in A Shooting in Alabama, we’ll delve into the life of a killer, atypical but just as devious and dangerous as any other. At how many points in her life could she had been thwarted—and why wasn’t she?

Note: Jill and Dick will be taking next week off. TCB will return on January 29th!