[NOTE: I originally posted a picture of Amy Bishop here, but I found it too disturbing, I decided to remove it. It is a chilling portrait of an angry human being.]  

It is always more shocking when a woman commits an act of extreme violence. The case of Amy Bishop, the neuroscientist who allegedly shot three professors at the University of Alabama last week, is especially troubling. Bishop has a Ph.D. from Harvard and is the mother of four children. Her case raises disturbing questions about a life of ambition and violence. Bishop shot her 18-year-old brother in 1986 in Massachusetts and the death was ruled accidental. She also was previously questioned in a 1993 case involving a pipe bomb sent to a former colleague.

Bishop was denied tenure and there is speculation this fueled her rage. She was described by the New York Times as “fiercely intelligent.” According to the Boston Herald, Bishop held a gun to a man’s chest at a Boston area auto body shop and demanded a getaway vehicle minutes after her brother’s shooting 24 years ago. According to the Herald, Bishop’s mother was a member of the police personnel board in Braintree at the time of the shooting.

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