Editing Amy Bishop (section)

===Past incidents===
At the age of 21, Bishop fatally shot her 18-year-old brother, Seth Bishop, on December 6, 1986, at their home in Braintree, Massachusetts. Bishop fired two shots from a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun (one into her bedroom wall, then one into her brother's chest while they were in the kitchen with their mother). Later she pointed the weapon at a moving vehicle on the adjacent road and tried to get into the vehicle. The death of her brother was classified as an accident by Braintree police.

In statements to Braintree police that day, both Amy Bishop and her mother, Judy Bishop, described the shooting as accidental. Police found that the shotgun had a live round in the chamber. This would have required Bishop to rack the slide of the weapon after shooting her brother to simultaneously eject the spent shell and reload the chamber.

After a brief inquiry into the incident by the state police in 1986 (reported in 1987), they repeated the Braintree police department's initial assessment that the shooting was accidental. The district attorney Bill Delahunt, later elected as a U.S. Congressman, did not file charges. Detailed records of the shooting had disappeared by 1988. Braintree police chief Paul Frazier said on February 13, 2010, "The report's gone, removed from the files."

After speaking with officers involved with the case in 1986, Frazier called the "accident" description inaccurate. He and others said that then-chief John Polio had ordered Bishop released to her mother—allegedly a political supporter of the chief as a member of the Braintree town meeting. They said that Amy Bishop had demanded to meet with Polio personally after the arrest—instead of being charged for the shooting. Frazier was not on duty during the incident but recalled "how frustrated the members of the department were over the release" of Amy Bishop.

Other officers, he said, believed that Polio had "fix[ed] a murder", resulting in what Frazier described as "a miscarriage of justice. Just because it was a friend of his." The now-retired Polio denied that there had been a cover-up. Frazier's 2010 account and the 1987 Massachusetts State Police report differ in several key details, including whether Bishop had been arguing with her brother or with her father before the shooting.

According to investigators, Bishop and her husband James Anderson were suspects in a 1993 letter-bomb case. Paul Rosenberg, a Harvard Medical School professor and physician at Children's Hospital Boston, received a package containing two pipe bombs, which failed to explode.

Rosenberg was Bishop's supervisor at a Children's Hospital neurobiology lab. Bishop had allegedly been concerned about receiving a negative evaluation from Rosenberg, and reportedly "had been in a dispute" with Rosenberg. Bishop resigned from her position at the hospital because Rosenberg felt she "could not meet the standards required for the work." According to documents based upon witness interviews, Bishop was "reportedly upset" and "on the verge of a nervous breakdown" as a result.

Anderson reportedly told a witness that he wanted to "shoot," "stab" or "strangle" Rosenberg prior to the attempted bombing. Anderson denied he had ever threatened Rosenberg, saying, "I wouldn't know the guy if he walked into a bar. And allegedly this tip came into a tip line, and the validity of the witness was never ascertained." Per investigators, the USPIS-ATF investigation "focused" on Bishop and Anderson, but closed without charges filed due to lack of evidence. At one point during the investigation, the couple refused to cooperate with investigators. They refused to open their door, to allow searches of their home, or to take polygraph tests.

The chief federal prosecutor in Boston, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, reviewed the case following the shooting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. She ultimately decided Bishop would not be charged in the bombing attempt. She determined that the initial investigation in 1993 was "appropriate and thorough"; the case remains unsolved.

n 2002, Bishop was charged with punching a woman who had received the last booster seat at an International House of Pancakes in Peabody, Massachusetts. According to the police report, Bishop strode over to the other woman, demanded the seat, and launched into a profanity-laced rant. When the woman would not give the seat up, Bishop punched her in the head, all the while yelling "I am Dr. Amy Bishop!" Bishop's victim was identified as Michelle Gjika. Bishop pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault plus disorderly conduct for the assault, and received probation. In the aftermath of the 2010 Alabama shooting, Gjika declined to comment on the restaurant incident; she said, "It's not something I want to relive."

In addition to recommending probation, prosecutors recommended that Bishop attend anger management classes. It is unclear whether the judge in the case ordered her to do so. Her husband said she had never attended anger management classes.