Welcome to part two of our series about the Bishop family murders. Let's jump right in, yeah, because he just strikes me as someone who was just so sick of his current life and felt that he wasn't living up to expectations. So he wanted to start afresh and maybe start a new family someday, but do it in like a completely different country where he's away from everyone. They did perform a search of the park and found no trace of him, so there is no evidence that he
may have killed himself. I guess the one thing that gives me pause is that this was a pretty remote area and if he abandoned his vehicle, he would need transportation elsewhere in order to go to the nearest airport.
There are no reports of any hitchhikers matching his description during that time period, but he was seen in the company of a dark skinned woman, so if he was in the relationship, it's possible he could have abandoned the station wagon and she had a vehicle of her own, and so she was the one who drove him out of the area and possibly took him to an airport.
You've got a wonder too, if this poor woman is still alive if she was indeed with him, because you would think he would want to leave no witnesses behind. Either she's going to be coming with him and going the distance, or at some point if he feels like she's a threat to his safety and security and that she has information that would be highly valued to law enforcement and that she might be willing to share it, I would think that he would not think for a
second but to end her life. So at this point, so many years later, if she did indeed exist and she was with him and they just like broke up, you'd think that she would come forward.
Yes, I think that if she was involved in a relationship, she had no idea what he was doing, because we have seen documented cases where people are willing to hook
up with men who have murdered their wives. But I think that most women would draw the line at a family annihilator, thinking that if he's capable of like bludgeoning his own mother and his children with a sledgehammer, that's not someone I want to spend the rest of my life with because he's obviously someone who's capable of flying off the handle and killing someone, So my own safety would be at risk.
Well, hybristophelia is a real thing. And all you need to look to for reference that there's plenty of women out there who are willing is all of the fan mail and all of the attention that Chris Watts gets.
It's true. Yeah, so some people think that if a man is charming and up are good lucky enough, they are willing to put up with anything. But since you mentioned wondering what happened to this woman, and I'm sure you're wondering about the fate of Leo the Dog, it turned out that weeks after the search of Great Smoky Mountains National Park included a park ranger was told by an acquaintance that they had seen a makeshift grave at a spot about a mile away from the parking lot
where the station wagon had been abandoned. The park ranger, his name was Dwight McCarter, decided to go out and check the area, and he did say that he found a small grave which was marked by a pile of rocks and a wooden cross, and it appeared to have
been tied together by a parachute cord. So he actually took photos of the grave, so we do know that it existed, but for whatever reason, he didn't tell anybody about this for years, and I think the first time this was released publicly was maybe like twenty eighteen or so, which is when they finally decided to publish these photographs
in the newspaper of this Cross. And of course by the time he told everyone, they tried to do a search and find this grave, but the area had become so overgrown that they have been able to track it down.
But there's been speculation that perhaps this is what happened to the poor dot Leo, that Brad decided, I can't take the dog with me if I'm traveling overseas, so maybe he decided to kill it, and because he still had a respect for Leo, he decided to give him the dignity of a makeshift grave, which is a sharp contrast to murdering your entire family and setting their bodies in fire in a grave.
That's wild. If that was indeed Leo, to honor your dog with a cross and to bury him, and to just treat your family like we're just going to leave your bodies out there in the open. I still think he was interrupted and that he intended to bury them, not because he was honoring them or because he cared, but because he didn't want to get caught and he was going to use them not being able to be found as some kind of subter views where it's like, oh,
he's disappeared as well. Maybe he is also the victim. But it's interesting that he waited until twenty eighteen to come out with this because he knew about the station wagon being abandoned there, did he not?
I think so? Yeah, But maybe he just didn't put two and two together and figured that this might have a connection to there's wanted fugitive we've been trying to find in this same park. And while this might be a long shot, I suppose an alternate explanation is that if he decided to kill his female companion, maybe he
buried her in that makeshift grave. I mean, I was thinking that if he killed her, that maybe he wouldn't go to the trouble of doing a wooden cross to mark the territory because he wouldn't want her body to be found. But I guess it is an alternate possibility. But I still think that most likely Leo was buried there because he probably didn't care well if they find Leo's body. I'm already a wanton murderer anyway, so it's not going to make much difference.
Yeah, I agree. I think that there's a strong likelihood that if it was tied to him, that it was Leo. I mean, in my heart, I want to believe that like Leo continued to live his best life and found a new family and you know, lived to a happy like old age. But given what we know about William Bradford Bishop and how easy it is for him to kill those who he supposed to loves, I would think that the probabilities high that that makeshift grave was indeed Leo.
And like you said, I don't think it was the female companion, because you don't want to go to the If you're going to go to the effort to bury this person, which we know that he doesn't do to honor people, because with his family he didn't seem to care. You're going to do it to conceal, and if your objective is to conceal, you're not going to then use a cross to draw attention to that grave.
Yeah, exactly, So I do think that in his twisted mind, he was like, well, I still love Leo, but if I'm going to take an international flight, I can't take my dog, so I'm going to give him a proper burial in this peaceful place. So over the years there would be a number of eye into citings of Bishop, but there were three that stand out because they were made by people who personally knew him and work with them,
and all of them were overseas. The first one took place in July of nineteen seventy eight and was a Swedish woman who had worked with Brad when he was posted in Ethiopia years earlier, and she claimed that on two separate occasions within the span of one week, the woman claimed that she saw a bearded man resembling Brad at a public park in Stockholm, and she believed he was following her. But at the time she was not
yet aware that Bishop had become a wanted fugitive. But once she learned about it, she reported her sightings to the authorities, but by that time so much time had passed they were unable to track him down.
Yeah, that makes sense, and I think that what is somebody that he's worked with. I would say there's like a high validity to the sighting and it actually could have been William Bradford Bishop, because I don't think he ever took his own life, and I don't think that he remained in that park for any great length of time. I think his objective was always to go overseas. So this checks.
Out exactly, and it becomes more believable when you hear my story about the next sighting, which took place six months later in January of nineteen seventy nine. And this one is more believable because it involves Roy Harrell, who was the person who he worked with at the State Department who spoke with him about not making the promotion on the list when he left work on the day
of the murders. I know that Harrol was on a trip to Italy and was in the town of Sorrento, and he was waiting to board a bus to Rome, but decided to go into a restroom and it wasn't long before a disheveled looking man who looked like a transient walked inside, and even though he had shaggy hair and a beard, Roy looked at him and said, whoa, he has a striking resemblance to brad Bishop. And he claimed that he actually said, you're Brad Bishop, aren't you.
And you would think that if this is a complete stranger, they might not even understand English and just look confused. But according to Roy, this guy just panicked and yelled oh my god no in what sounded like an American accent,
and then ran out. And you should watch the Unsolved Mystery segment because the reenactment of the seat is unintentionally hilarious because of the bad acting where he goes, oh my god ah and runs out screaming, and the actor playing Roy goes, Brad, wait stop, don't reg and stuff
like that. And I remember watching this segment on Unsolved Mysteries with my father, who's a commercial airline pilot who has traveled the world for decades, and he says, this sort of thing has happened to me, where I just randomly bump into friends and colleagues I know in foreign countries. I mean, I haven't run into any like former colleagues
who were wanted murderers. But these sort of chance encounters do happen sometimes where you're over on the other side of the world and you just happen to bump into people you know.
Oh yeah, like pre COVID. My husband used to travel for work all the time, and he'd been all over the world and it happened to him several times where he'd bump into somebody that he knew randomly in countries. So it seems improbable. But if you're going to be traveling around and the thing is he's exposed to people that travel a lot for work, right and it was
the same thing with my husband. So if that is the case, then it increases the probability that you're then going to bump into them in one of these locations that they're known to be exactly.
And I can imagine if this was legitimate, like Brad's reaction would be like that, like I'm trying to hide out from the authorities and one of the odds that I run into my former co worker thousands of miles away in Italy in a restroom. So but I guess over the years there have been people who have questioned Roy Harrel's credibility because he has often done interviews surrounding this case. I think he kind of likes the attention of being the last person who saw Brad Bishop alive
before he killed his family. And a couple years later, someone decided to call his bluff and say that ask him a question, do you know about Brad's connection with this certain person of interest? And then Roy said, well, I'll check into that and get back to you. And then he came back and spoke to this journalist and said that, oh, yeah, I know all about Brad's relationship with this person. They worked together at such and such. And then the journalist said, the problem is this person
doesn't exist. I just made him up, and you just came up with this fake story about him and Brad being close associates. So they kind of think that Roy Harold did have like a tendency to like fabricate things for attention. So that has made people believe a wonder if this actual encounter with them in the bathroom in Italy actually happened.
Given what you've just told me, it makes me question. It sounds a lot more specific, and it sounds like, Okay, there's a potential that, yeah, that could have happened, But did it? Is he just putting a little sauce on it. Is it possible that he saw somebody that like, maybe looked a little bit like him and he just added some to the story.
That is possible that he did see a guy look like Brad, but he didn't give off that shocked reaction and run away. That maybe he just exaggerated that part of the story. And I know that Roy in his Unsolved Mysteries interview has kind of gotten a lot of heat for making this one comment. I'm going to share it word for word. Quote Brad Bishop felt from the time I knew him that there was something lacking in himself.
This feeling was nourished constantly by both his mother and to some degree, his wife, who constantly told him that he was inadequate and washed up and wasn't going anywhere in his career. End quote. Well, I've read from other people who knew Annette and a Lobilia who say that those claims are greatly exaggerated about them belittling Brad constantly.
So people have always thought that Roy's interview almost kind of sounds like victim blaming, Like he's almost saying that they they negg Brad too much, that they pretty much drove him to commit the murders.
It's one hundred percent victim blaming. But in his defense, he's probably told by Brad that this is what's happening, and I'm sure that it's being greatly exaggerated. And that's the problem. When you're only getting one perspective, you're not getting this like holistic perspective where he's hearing from a net in Lubilia about William Bradford Bishop, his behavior and his tendencies, just the type of man that he is.
From them, you're just hearing about how he's being stifled, and he is blaming them, probably for his inability to be able to reach his full potential when he really needs to look in a mirror and start taking some personal accountability. And I'm sure that they did have criticism for him because he did things that needed to be criticized. At times, he sounds like he just had this idea that he is the man everything needs to go through him.
And I'm sure that that was stifling for a net and I'm sure was stifling for Lubilia as well, when he's probably looking to her as is like constant atm and then the money runs out and it's like, oh now he's got to stand on his own, and he's like this little toddler throwing a tantrum.
Yeah, because I really don't know how familiar Roy was with Loubilia and Annette if he spent much time with the Bishop family, so it's possible because they were co workers.
Everything he was saying was what Brad told him. That maybe Brad privately complained to him that my mother and my wife are nagging me so much, and Brad just took that as gospel, not realizing Roy just took that as gospel, not realizing that, Yeah, you're speaking with a narcissist here who's probably going to stretch the truth to try to pain himself in the best possible light.
And like, what are the chances that even if Roy was acquainted with a net in Lubilia that they would bright him in front of him? Do you know what I mean? Like you've got guests over, like let's criticize William Bradford Bishop and do it in front of Roy and make him and really just make him the victim here, Like I just don't think that ever happened.
No, probably not. I don't think he personally witnessed it.
So the last eyewitness sighting that took place in Europe was in September of nineteen ninety four, and this is after the Bishop case got lots of new national exposure because he was featured on Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most Wanted and the witness was a former neighbor of the best Shop family from Bethesta, who claimed that she was on vacation with her husband and saw a bishop through the window of a train on a platform, and said that he made direct eye contact and appeared to laugh
at them as the train pulled away. And it's never been confirmed that this sighting was legitimate. But what's interesting is that she described Brad as looking well groomed, whereas the sightings from the nineteen seventies described him as having shaggy here and a beard, which made it look like he was a transient of some sort and may not have had a home. So if she is telling the truth, that makes you wonder did Brad have a few rough years over there where he was wandering on the streets
living as a transient. But by the nineteen nineties, perhaps he had established a new identity and got a new job somewhere and it improved as in his station in life, and was living comfortably somewhere in Switzerland.
I mean, that's entirely possible. I do question, like you're seeing somebody on a train platform. How close of a look can you truly get? And I mean if we look back at the seventies, I would think that maybe living this kind of transient lifestyle or having this big beard would be part of him trying to conceal his identity because I would think that like interpol or you know,
the authorities would be looking for him. So anything you can do to look different than you would typically look, the pictures that would be circulated, I think would serve you in being able to evade authorities if they were ever onto you being in that country. And then by the nineties it's like, well it's not as hot as it used to be, and I've been living this life and maybe he met people and got opportunities because we know he's a smart guy, that it's very possible that
maybe he stole somebody else's identity. We don't know what happened and if it was indeed him, but I think it's possible.
Certainly is And like we see in every case involving missing persons and wanted fugitives, that there's going to be like hundreds of eyewitness sightings, but the authorities generally only report on the ones that they believe are credible, and these ones, even though they took place thousands of miles away, they were all from people who knew Bishop personally, so they probably thought, well, they probably got a better chance
of recognizing him than rather than your average citizen. So another crazy story about associated with this case is that the Bishop family were close friends with a guy named Jacques d'ambois, who was one of the most famous ballet dancers in the world because he was kind of a child protege who was ballet dancing when he was in his tea means, and in the nineteen fifties he joined a traveling ballet troupe that was operating out of California,
and because Loubilia and her husband were big ballet fans, they actually invited Jocque to live with her family in California during that time period so he could have a place to say, well, he was traveling and performing with them, and Jacques became friends with Brad when Brad was still a teenager, so they stayed in touch for years, and by nineteen seventy six, Jacques was like a very famous dancer who was invited to perform at the Kennedy Center
for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, and he got in touch with Obilia and she actually invited Jacques and his wife Carrie to spend the night of the bishop residence in Bethesda after his performances were done on the evening of February the twenty ninth, But then at the last minute, Jacques suffered a foot injury and was forced to cancel his performance. Well, the night he was supposed to go there was the night before Bishop committed the
family murders. So Jacques is always been haunted about that, saying that if me and my wife had been staying there, would that have prevented the murders from taking place? Or alternatively, would we have become victims too and been murdered because we happened to be there. So he just got very, very lucky that he suffered that foot injury because it prevented him from potentially becoming a victim in a family annihilation.
I mean, I guess we don't know the dynamics of their friendship and how close they were, and if that would be prohibitive to William Bradford Bishop in committing the murders, or if he would just go, oh, what's two other people. I'm already killing those closest to me. What is it to me that I killed this person whom like I used to be close to but it's been years and his wife. I just don't think that there would be really anything that would stand in his way if that
was his plan. So I just think that Jacques getting that foot injury was maybe his saving grace pretty much.
Yeah, And some people have said, don't blame yourself, because even if you had been there that night and it prevented Brad from committing the murders, he was still a taking time bomb. So he probably still would have done it eventually, even if it was just a couple days later.
Oh for sure, I don't think it would have gotten in the way of his plan. The only thing, if you decided that Jacques and his wife being there, he wasn't going to kill his family those days. I would just think that maybe he would have just been more prepared and we wouldn't have had that receipt with his credit card from the sporting goods company and like days later, right exactly.
Yeah, that he might have just done it at a different time and maybe spent more time formulating his plan.
So In September of nineteen ninety two, a very surprising development took place when investigators decided to check Brad's original personnel file from the State Department and discovered a letter that had been written to him by a career bank robber named Albert Kenneth Bankston, who in nineteen seventy six was incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary Marion in Williamson County, Illinois.
The letter was postmarked March fifteenth, nineteen seventy six, two weeks after the murders took place, and since Bankston made references to letter number four and letter number five and wrote the number six near the top of the page, this seemed to indicate that he and Brad had been corresponding on multiple occasions, and while the letter made no direct reference to murder, it hinted at the possibility that Brad may have been attempting to hire someone to kill
his family, and in one passage, Bankston wrote, quote, yes, I am most sure she is in the North Carolina State Penitentiary. I do not know why Sonny would tell you something that could very easily be proved. When I wrote you in February letter number five I explained that she was there and that David Paul Allen knew this sonny in Atlanta. I'm sure he's a capable person and he knows all about Creswell. In fact, David said, you could walk to Phelipslake from Creswell. I think it's about
five miles end quote. So what had happened here is that they saw the postmark March the fifteenth. That was the day that the authorities already looked at Bishop's office at the State Department and checked his personnel file. But it appeared that the letter arrived just a few days after that, and whoever, like a reception or so, someone probably put the letter in the file and it remained there for like sixteen years before anyone noticed it until
nineteen ninety two. And unfortunately, by that point, Albert Kenneth Bankston had died of cancer in prison in nineteen eighty three. So even though the authorities were anxious to talk to him and ask what is the context of this letter, they couldn't because he was already dead.
That's wild, Like we have multiple instances here, like with the grave and with this letter, where you're looking at like almost twenty years after the fact you're finding out this information, and it's like, this would have been really great to know at the time, because if you could have questioned him and said, Okay, it's clear that you're speaking in code here, But was he trying to solicit you to commit this murder or have you facilitate some
connection with somebody else who he thought would have been able to carry it out.
Yeah, And people have questioned the possibility if it could have been a hoax, that maybe Bankston was trying to insert himself into the investigation for attention or something like that. But the letter was postmark March the fifteenth, and by that point the Bishop murders had not gotten much publicity. And even if they did, I don't know if Bankston would learn about them because he's incarcerated in a prison in Illinois, and how would he have known the address
for Brad's office at the State Department. So it really does seem obvious that they had been corresponding for some time prior to this, and that maybe Brad was like looking for information on finding someone that he could hire to murder his family. But we still don't know to this day how he even found out about Albert Kenneth Bankston to begin with, what sort of relationship these two men had. So it was just a shame that they didn't find this letter until many years after the fact.
This is so weird, Like, how would he have found him in the first place. Did they have a friend in common? Did he just randomly look for somebody who was incarcerated and looked at the crimes that they'd committed and thought, this is somebody who could be connected to somebody who could carry out these murders. It just seems wild to me.
It does. And it gets even wilder because I know that Bankston made reference to a guy named David Paul Allen in the letter, and it turned out this guy did exist. He was still alive at this point. He was a career criminal who had served time in prison, so the authorities were able to track him down and question him, and he claimed that he did not know.
Bishop had no knowledge of the murders, but he claimed he had once heard about a murder for higher plot in which a man with the last name Bishop was planning to pay twenty five thousand dollars in cash and some jewelry to have his entire family murdered and According to Alan, he heard that the crime would take place while Bishop was out of the country, but when he returned home, he was disappointed to discover that the contractors he had hired did not complete the job and just
instead took his money and ran off. And they looked at the timeline, and like I mentioned, Brad had been on a business trip in Geneva, Switzerland, from January the twenty seventh until February the sixth of nineteen seventy six, one month before the murders took place. So it's entirely possible he did pay someone to kill his family and hope that would happen while he was out of the country, but for whatever reason, the whole plan fell through.
Well, then this completely changes a lot of the information if that is true, because if you're going to say that you're having financial difficulties, then I would think that that might not have been the trigger point because if you have twenty five thousand dollars to spend, think if you could have put that towards your mortgage, right, you wouldn't be in this dire financial situation to begin with.
Because this is the nineteen seventies, twenty five thousand dollars is a lot of money, so this seems really bizarre to me. Either he had other reasons that he wanted his family dead, or this just isn't true. I don't know, what do you think?
Well, his yearly salary at that time was twenty five thousand dollars, and from what I tell I don't think he would have had twenty five thousand dollars in his savings account unless he had some sort of secret bank account that he didn't tell his family about. But it seems counterproductive to me that if you're suffering from financial problems that you would pay twenty five thousand dollars a
lot of money for someone to kill your family. But it's possible that Alan has some of the details crossed up, like maybe he had arranged for someone to kill his family but it didn't happen because he didn't have the money to pay them or something like that, so they
backed out and investigators. You might also recall that the letter mentioned a guy known only as Sonny, and investigators were able to figure out that he actually existed and was living in witness protection under a new name at that point, and once again, Sonny denied knowing anything about a murder for higher plot involving the bishops. But he did hint that perhaps if Brad had paid someone to kill his family, they may have elected not to go through with it because they didn't want to cross the
line and murder three children. So it's possible he sitting a whole bunch of people to do the job for them, and when he realized that no one was willing to kill his kids, that's when Brad decided he had to do the whole thing himself or.
Were just getting the information crossed and he didn't have twenty five thousand dollars or inadequate amount of money, so he decided that, Okay, either these people don't want to kill kids, or I'm going to try to save a few bucks here because i don't have the money and I'm just going to do it myself.
Yeah, that might be what happened that he just realized I don't have the money to do it, so I'm just going to go through with it, and I'm just going to start fresh and then just flee the country or something. And another interesting thing from the letter is that Bankston made reference to an unnamed woman from the North Carolina state penitentiary, which was also intriguing because a woman had been seen with Brad outside the sporting goods
store in Jacksonville, North Carolina. I know that investigators looked into records from women who were serving time in North Carolina at that time, but could not find any records of someone who was released in early nineteen seventy six, anyone who seemed like a plausible suspect to have been this mysterious woman. But they also found it intriguing that Bankston also made reference to these specific locations in North Carolina which were not far from the spot where Brad
burned his family's bodies. In fact, this place, Phelps Lake, was only about like five miles away, And investigators have always said that the location where he dug the hole was at the end of like a logging road, like a very remote area, And they've always suspected that you can't find this spot unless you're familiar with that location. So they've always wondered, did Brad spend a lot of time in North Carolina? Did he choose this spot for a reason to bury his family? So it just makes
you wonder how long was he planning this? Did he, like say ahead of time that this place in North Carolina is going to be where I put my family's bodies. The letter just leaves you with so many any unanswered questions.
Yeah, if that is true, then yeah, if he would have had to have been familiar with that area, you have to think how long was he planning this? But there's elements of this case that seem like at odds with each other, because there's some things where it's like it looks like he planned this for a long time, and other things where it's like this seems completely impulsive.
Yeah, because the lightter does suggest premeditation, and the reference to the woman in the North Carolina penitentiary almost makes it sound like perhaps this woman was directing Brad towards people who can murder his family. But if so, how did he meet this woman to begin with? Because if she's serving time in prison, I don't think he's going to go on a skiing trip with her in Switzerland back then. So it just raises more questions than it answers.
So as if there weren't enough weird developments in this case. In March of two thousand, a North Carolina woman wound up purchasing an old diary out of flea markets at the Greensboro Coliseum, and she contacted the authorities when she discovered the words Bradford Bishop Diary on the front page and discovered that this was a diary that brad had written between October of nineteen sixty five until October of
nineteen seventy one. And they were able to confirm that it was in his handwriting and contained enough specific details about his personal life to indicate that this was his diary, and they had the words seven seventy six Colonel James Auction written on it. So it turned out that a lot of the contents of the Bishop Home had been auctioned off at the Colonel James Auction Gallery in College Park,
Maryland in the months following the murders. And we don't know how this happened, but somehow this diary was auctioned off and wound up at a flea market in North Carolina twenty four years later. And because the diary was written five years before the murders took place, it didn't offer too many insights on the murder plot, but they said that the writing got progressively more disjointed and angry as the years went along, which kind of offered an
insight into Brad's unstable mind. And they're thinking to themselves, if he used this unstable and in such a dark place in nineteen seventy one, just imagine how one in a bad place he might have been in nineteen seventy six when he finally went through with killing his family.
And that makes sense, especially if he'd had a long history with insomnia and all these other issues. You could see how it could get progressively worse. But it's just wild these things. In this case, we've got twenty four years here where we were waiting for the diary to come forward, which would have been an integral part of
the investigation. I would think for law enforcement to be able to build a profile of who William Bradford Bishop was, it should fill in some of the details about how he felt about himself and how he felt about the world around him. And then we have eighteen years where we're waiting for those letters that he's corresponding. And then we had what was it like fourteen years with the grave, with the potentially with Leo.
Like decades there was I know that the park ranger had discovered it like only a few weeks after the murder, but it didn't go public till twenty eighteen, which is like forty years after the fact.
Yeah, oh my gosh.
And to make things even weirder, it was not until April of twenty fourteen when the FBI announced that they were officially adding Bishop to their ten most Wanted Fugitives lists. And it kind of surprised me that he wasn't added much earlier, because you would think that a wanted family annihilator is the worst type of criminal, and they would have wanted to do everything in their power to find him. But what strikes me as odd is that if Brad was still alive at that point, he would have been
seventy seven years old. And while they've been very secretive about the investigation, I'm thinking to myself, they would not be adding Brad after all this time unless they had received significant intelligence to indicate that he was still alive somewhere and could still be brought to justice, even though
he would have been seventy seven years old. They eventually took him off the list in twenty eighteen, but the fact that they added him during that time period makes me think that they must have been really convinced that there was still a chance he could be captured alive and extra back to the US and brought to justice.
But unfortunately, they've been so tight lipped that I still don't know to this day why they suddenly decided to Adam to the list thirty eight years after the crime was committed.
You've got to wonder if they've brought some kind of like hold back information or some kind of intelligence or a tip with some degree of specificity that they haven't told the public about. And that's what kind of reignited them and were like, hey, let's put them on the list and maybe then we're going to be able to smoke them out. But it just didn't go as they'd hope that it would.
Yeah, but I still remember a lot of excitement back in twenty fourteen because his story was making news like everywhere.
That's when they launched the new John Walsh hosted series called The Hunt, which is like a new variation of America's Most One where they try to find wanted fugitives, and their very first episode was about William Bradford Bishop, which made me think that they're really looking very seriously to capture this guy after all, this time, and he even went to the trouble of getting forensic artists Karen Taylor to create an age progression sculpture of Brad's head
to showcase what he might look like at the age
of seventy seven. And that was a pretty big deal because you might recall earlier in this episode I mentioned wanted family annihilator John List, who, much like brad Bishop, he murdered his wife, his mother, and his three children in nineteen seventy one before going on the run as a wanted fugitive, and then in nineteen eighty nine he was profiled on America's Most Wanted and they showed an age progression sculpture of his head created by Karen Taylor
to show what John List might look like after eighteen years, and it actually paid off. He was discovered to be living a new life under a new identity, under a different state in a different state, and that bust created a huge role in getting him arrested after all this time, and he finally went to prison. So I'm thinking to myself, if they're willing to do that for William Bradford Bishop in twenty fourteen, they must be very serious about capturing him.
How old would he be today? If he's still alive, he.
Would be eighty nine years old today, or he's turning eighty nine later this year.
Wow, that's a long time on the run. I wonder like what would have been their reason way back, like when the murders originally happened, and it was thought that he was on the run, that he wouldn't have been added to the list of America's Most Wanted because, like you said, what is worse than a family annihilator who has these connections in Europe and speaks multiple languages and has this ability to be able to move around more than the average person.
Yeah, because I've looked at some of the other fugitives who have been on the list over the years, and not to downplay their crimes, but some of them are like bank robbers who never actually killed anyone. So you think it would be a bigger priority to find a family annihilator who killed five people rather than a bank robber. But so I still do this day, don't know why they didn't add him to the list till twenty fourteen.
And here's one more crazy twist in this story is if we didn't have enough in March of twenty twenty one, it was announced that a woman named Kathy Gilchrist, who had been adopted when she was a baby, wanted to do genetic genealogy to try to figure out who her birth parents were, so she submitted her DNA. She discovered the identity of her biological mother, who had passed away during the spring of twenty twenty but guests who turned out to be her biological father, well.
Of course, William Bradford Bishop.
Yes, and in case you're wondering, she was not conceived after he was already on the run as a wanted fugitive because Cathy was born in nineteen fifty seven. But they haven't revealed the identity of her biological mother for privacy reasons. But this would have taken place while brad was a student at Yale University. He Provedsumbly had an
affair with this woman and she became pregnant. But this is also when Brad was still dating a net They had already in a relationship for this time, so that kind of shows a lot about his character that he was willing to cheat on her and father an illegitimate child with another woman. We still don't know if brad
ever found out if this other woman was pregnant. But as you can imagine, it was a major shock to Kathy Gilchrist to wonder who her biological father was and then find out that he was a family annihilator who had been a wanted fugitive for nearly fifty years.
I can't imagine having those questions about who your parents are and then to find something out like that, you would feel, I suppose blessed that you were given up for adoption and that you had a family that hopefully loved you and cared for you and the way that you needed. And it's good to have those questions answered.
But also just so fortunate that Kathy never grew up in a home with William Bradford Bishop, because we know the way that he treated his family and how it ended for them exactly.
Yeah, So it was pretty much a blessing in disguise. And I know some people like to joke that they're often reluctant to use genetic genealogy and try to find out their birth family because you never know what you're going to find if the truth will be horrifying, and to discover your father is a family Annihilator is pretty high at the top of the list.
Yeah, I can't think many worse discoveries.
Like I said, at the time of this recording, William Bradford Bishop would be nearly eighty nine years old. I do think the chances of him, even if he did get away, of him still being alive at this time are remote, but it's not impossible. But I don't discout the possibility that maybe we'll find out that he went on to live a new life under a new identity before he died of natural causes, and maybe they'll we'll get a link from DNA or genic genealogy and find
out his current whereabouts. Because we've actually had a similar situation to this happened in the news recently a wanted fugitive named Sharon Kinney who murdered quite a few men during the nineteen sixties. She wound up going to prison for murder in Mexico and escaped in nineteen sixty nine and became one of the most notorious wanted female wanted
fugitives in the history of the United States. And I always figure that she was probably killed in Mexico or something or something happened to her and She never made it back to the United States, but just a few months ago announced that DNA testing and fingerprint testing had discovered that she had actually managed to escape to Canada and was living in the small town of Taper, Alberta. And she got remarried, started a new life under a new identity, and she did not actually die of natural
causes until twenty twenty two. So after she escaped from prison, she managed to live a new life for fifty three years without being captured before she died of natural causes. And I wonder if that's going to be the same thing with William Bradford Bishop, where we'll find out that he died a couple of years ago and they'll they'll use DNA testing to uncover the false identity he was living under.
The difference is they have different laws in Europe surrounding genetic genealogy and DNA testing, do they not?
They do, Yes, We've talked about this on our episodes about like Jennifer Fairgate, that they don't have genetic genealogy in place. So that is the one thing that worries me is that if he managed to escape the country and go overseas, then genetic genealogy may not be an option if he died of natural causes while living over there, But I think you're kind of in agreement with me.
I know there are some people who think that his death was a suicide, that he walked into Great Smoky Mountains National Park and killed himself after he abandoned his station wagon, but I think there's just too many evidence
pointing away from that. We've had all the sightings of him overseas, and the fact that he was added to the FBI's ten most Wanted list in twenty fourteen, which does make me think that he was still alive for a great period of time after he committed the murders, and that his remains are not in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
I one hundred percent agree with you. I think his objective was always to live the life that he felt that he deserved, and his family was an obstacle, so he needed to eliminate that obstacle and then he could continue on with his objective, which I think that he did. And I think at least some of those sightings by
his coworkers. I don't know about Roy's, but I think that the other ones could potentially have been William Bradford Bishop, and I think that that's wild to think that protect Actually three co workers saw him overseas in different time periods, right like the female coworker seeing him in the nineteen
nineties being clean cut. If that was indeed him, and if it was, if he was laughing at them like haha, you know, I'm getting away, like you're not going to be able to stop this train type of a thing, then that would kind of line up with like the cat that got the canary, knowing that like you haven't caught me yet, You're not going to catch me today.
Pretty much, And unfortunately that is wrung true. And if he did start a new life, I am really anxious to find out if he ever got remarried or had more children, and if his new family were completely oblivious to the fact of what he had done back when he was living in America. So yeah, I thought this would be an interesting one to talk about because even though it's no mystery who did it, there are just so many weird things that have happened in this case,
so many un answered questions. The discovery of the letters from Albert Kenneth Bankston makes me wonder like was there more to this story? Was he trying to start a murder for hire? And of course I still wonder did he have a email companion who helped them escape? Was he conducting an affair at the time. That's why I really want him to be captured alive, just so not only so he can face justice, but to answer all
these weird questions we have surrounding this case. Because it's not often when a case involving a wanted fugitive where it's pretty clear cut who did it, can give you just so much to talk about and so much to analyze.
It's true, there's just so much information here. It's overwhelming, almost because there's all of these women who could have been a part of his life. He could have been cheating, could have been doing this and that, And maybe he went and ended his own life in the forest, maybe he didn't. Where's the dog? And then we've wont all of these overseas sightings, So there's a lot to dig into here. And then when you add the coworkers as well's and the dynamics there and his dynamics at work,
there's a lot to analyze. But I definitely agree with you, I think this is such a tragic case because in the midst of all of these big actions and these things that he's doing, it's like, we've got Brad Brad Brent and Jeffrey and Annette and Lubilia, and they're the true victims here. But it's so hard not to talk about all of the actions of William Bradford Bishop. And I think we see this so much with family annihilator cases. But it almost makes me angry at myself right because
I want to be asking more about the victims. But the reality is we just don't know that much because Brad, Brent and Jeffrey were little kids, and when there's little kids, we just don't have as much to analyze because there isn't as much information about who they were out there.
But we do know that Lubilia was a good mother, that she gave them that thirty thousand dollars to put down for their mortgage, and we know that Annette had dreams of I don't know if she wanted to work in the field of art or she was just studying art, but she had dreams outside of William Bradford Bishop and outside of that family, and she deserved to be able
to actualize those dreams. But he took that from her, and he took too Lubilia's life from her, and took Brad's life from him, Brent's life from him, and Jeffrey's life from him, and none of them deserve that. And William Bradford Bishop is a horrible person for that exactly.
And like you said, we're more of a victim Center podcast. We don't like to spend so much time talking about the perpetrators. But because this particular perpetrator has never been found and there's still questions about his motives, it's still unavoidable. But I will be satisfied if one day, even if he's in his nineties, you get to see him in handcuffs and brought back to the US to face justice for what he did.
You can only hope that somehow along his travels he's suffered some kind of karmic retribution.
Oh yeah, Like if that sighting of him in the restroom in Italy was legitimate, it looked like he was a transient who was living on the streets. So I'd like to think that if he has lived for years, that it hasn't been a happy life, that he hasn't had like a new family, a new job, and has made lots of money that he's constantly struggled to evade the authorities ever since he committed this horrible crime. So any further thoughts on William Bradford Bishop.
No, I think that about wraps it up, But I'm with you. I would love to see this man arrested. I don't care if he's one hundred years old. Just knowing that he got caught and to be able to take that from him, of being able to get away with something like this and to evade authorities, I'm sure only feeds his narcissistic tendencies. So to know that he was caught and that he was outsmarted would I'm sure be satisfying for everybody who is connected to all of the victims.
Yes. So I want to give out our advisory here that William Bradford Bishop's agent hands Bust is available on the internet anywhere to show what he might look like today. So if you think that you've seen him, please contact the appropriate authorities. So that about wraps up our series on the Bishop family murders and next time we'll be back with Ashley again. So until then, thank you. So much for your support, and we'll see you on our next series of episodes.
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit about the trail Patreon.
Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on the trailwent Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
ten dollar tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsaved Mysteries, where you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary track at which I make more smart ass remarks about jewel Kaylor than be sure to join Tier three.
So I want to let you know a little bit about the jeweles and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our Pathwent Chili mini's which are always over an hour, so they're not very mini, but they're just too short to turn into a series and we're really enjoying doing those, so we hope you'll check out those patreons will link them in the show notes.
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Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy