Professor-Turned-Killer Finally Apologizes

But one of Amy Bishop's victims doubts she's being genuine
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 20, 2015 9:04 AM CDT
UAH Prof-Turned-Killer Finally Apologizes
Amy Bishop is escorted by sheriff's deputies at the Madison County Courthouse in Hunstville, Ala., Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012.   (AP Photo/The Huntsville Times, Michael Mercier)

Five years after she killed three colleagues at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, former professor Amy Bishop says she's sorry for the "terrible crime." In her first apology, Bishop adds she is "terribly sorry for the victims and their families, and my family." Denied tenure, Bishop, 50, pulled a gun from her purse during a meeting on Feb. 12, 2010 and shot six people, reports AL.com. She pleaded guilty to capital murder in 2012 and was sentenced to life in prison but has since launched appeals claiming she was battling schizophrenia, allergies, and steroid use at the time of the shooting. The apology came via a handwritten note included in a new 50-page court filing alleging Bishop's trial and lawyers were inadequate, reports NBC News.

"Do I think she's truly sorry?" asks shooting victim Joseph Leahy, who suffered a traumatic brain injury and was left blind in one eye. "I think she truly wants to get out of prison. That's what I think," he tells WAFF. The apology "won't bring me back my eye sight, it won't bring me back the ability to drive again," he adds. After the 2010 shooting, police took a second look at a case from 1986, which concluded Bishop had accidentally shot and killed her 18-year-old brother at their home in Massachusetts. They found probable cause that Bishop had committed a crime but couldn't pursue charges since the statute of limitations had expired. The Harvard-educated Bishop is serving her sentence at Alabama's Tutwiler Prison for Women. (More Huntsville campus shootings stories.)

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