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This week, U.S. Rep. William Delahunt spoke publicly and took questions, for the first time, about his decision not to charge Amy Bishop with a crime in connection with the shooting death of her brother, Seth, back in 1986. Rather than taking responsibility, Delahunt pointed the finger of blame at Braintree cops, claiming it was their fault he knew nothing about the fact that after Bishop shot her brother to death, she ran to a nearby auto body shop and aimed the weapon at an employee. Delahunt said he would have filed weapons charges against Bishop, had he known, so...

Saying he had questions about the original investigation, Norfolk District Attorney William Keating today requested an inquest into the death of Seth Bishop, who was killed by his sister, Amy, in 1986. The incident, ruled an accident at the time, has been under scrutiny since Amy Bishop allegedly went on a shooting rampage at the University of Alabama. Keating said this afternoon that he filed a request for the inquest at Quincy District Court. He said he was seeking the inquest because he was not getting cooperation from Bishop's parents, Judith and Samuel Bishop. "They have refused upon our efforts...

The Amy Bishop debacle has gone from horrifying to humiliating over the past week - and it’s getting worse by the day. Amid the cacophony and the finger-pointing, somebody needs to play the role of the adult. Braintree and State Police were corrupt, or incompetent, or perhaps both, when they let Bishop walk completely free after she shot her younger brother in the chest in 1986 and ran around town with a shotgun under her arm. Now that Bishop has allegedly killed three of her colleagues at the University of Alabama and critically wounded two others, an embarrassing blame-game is...

QUINCY — U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, the former district attorney whose office investigated the fatal 1986 shooting of Seth Bishop by his sister Amy, said Monday he does not feel his office “bears any responsibility” for Bishop being freed without charges. In a telephone interview with the Patriot Ledger, the Quincy Democrat said State Police Trooper Brian Howe correctly concluded that Amy Bishop shot and killed her 18-year-old brother, Seth, by accident. But Delahunt said he has “very serious concerns” that Braintree police never alerted Howe or his prosecutors that, after the shooting, Amy Bishop fled with a loaded shotgun...

. . . Delahunt’s people have offered one ridiculous excuse after another for his weeklong silence. The congressman, they have said, is traveling in Israel. He was, but it isn’t as though there are no phones there. He doesn’t remember much, they say. Talk to the Braintree police . . . Look, I’ve known Delahunt for years, and I’m not, at this point, reading too much into his actions. But Bishop’s alleged slayings constitute a huge tragedy, and how they happened is a matter of urgent business. There were not just red flags that she was criminally dangerous; there were...

Federal law enforcement officials did not send Amy Bishop and her husband a letter telling them they were cleared in the 1993 mail bombing investigation of a Harvard Medical School professor, an official said today, contradicting statements Bishop's husband has made to the media since his wife was charged in an Alabama shooting rampage. "No letter was ever sent,'' said the law enforcement official, who is not authorized to speak publicly on the case. Bishop's husband, James Anderson, has acknowledged the couple were both questioned by federal investigators after a package containing two pipe bombs was sent to the Newton...

One of the survivors of Friday's deadly shooting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville said she tried to talk Amy Bishop into putting the gun down. "The first thing I said was, 'Amy, think about my grandson, think about my daughter," Dr. Debra Moriarity, UAH's graduate school dean and a member of the biology faculty, said today. "I said, 'Amy, you know I've helped you, I'll help you again. It's me, it's me." "Part of my brain thought she'd go, 'Oh, it's Deb,' and she'd quit." But Moriarity said Bishop, an assistant professor, never responded. So Moriarity crawled through...

U.S. Rep. and former Norfolk District Attorney William Delahunt yesterday backed off earlier claims he didn’t recall the 1986 shooting death of Amy Bishop’s brother, with a top aide now saying police downplayed the need for further investigation. Mark Forest, Delahunt’s chief of staff, said both state and local police told the former top prosecutor they believed Amy Bishop, then 20, had accidentally blasted her 18-year-old brother, Seth, with their father’s shotgun. “They pretty much found the death was accidental and there was no need for further action,” Forest told the Herald. But Republican Joe Malone, a former state treasurer...

An 18-year-old man was killed by a shotgun blast to the chest in his Hollis Avenue home yesterday afternoon, and police last night declined to say who fired the gun.

""Amy further stated that she does not recall putting any additional bullets into the gun after it discharged, and that she then unscrewed the bottom of the shaft in an attempt to empty the weapon, and when being unable to empty the weapon this way, she stated that she then screwed the bottom of the shaft back on." Amy stated that she then heard her brother come into the house downstairs ( But the cover up State Police officer accepted that Judy Bishop couldn't hear a shotgun blast upstairs???)and she went right downstairs to ask Seth to help her unload...

The professor who is accused of killing three colleagues at the University of Alabama on Friday was a suspect in the attempted mail bombing of a Harvard Medical School professor in 1993, a law enforcement official said today. Bishop surfaced as a suspect because she was allegedly concerned that she was going to receive a negative evaluation from Rosenberg on her doctorate work, the official said. The official said investigators believed she had a motive to target Rosenberg and were concerned that she had a history of violence, given that she had shot her brother to death in 1986.