He talks like mad to the press although lawyers have told him not to.
He lies. First he said this:
The New York Times reported that Anderson said he did not know his wife allegedly had a gun when she went to the meeting Friday at the university. “I had no idea,’’ he told the paper. “We don’t own one.”
Well, but you have one. And you and your wife have taken it to shooting ranges very recently. From The Chronicle:
… James Anderson, told both The Chronicle and The New York Times on Sunday that the family did not own a gun. But in an interview with The Chronicle today, he acknowledged that she had borrowed a gun, though he wasn’t sure from whom. “She was very cagey and didn’t say,” he said.
Mr. Anderson said he had told his wife he didn’t want the gun around the house because of their children, who range in age from 8 to 18. “Get rid of it,” he recalled telling her. “I didn’t want to have it. I didn’t feel we needed it.”
Ms. Bishop, according to her husband, had borrowed the gun and was considering buying it. Last summer, he said, someone followed her across the campus. “She was worried about crazy students,” he said.
… Mr. Anderson said he had gone with his wife to an indoor shooting range once, a couple of weeks ago. He said she had been there at least once before with a friend.
Don’t believe any of the bullshit coming out of the husband.
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Update on the century’s great psychotic romance:
She’s on suicide watch. This was predictable, since now that her brilliant scheme has been carried out, she doesn’t feel better, but worse.
Not only did she fail to kill everyone. After ditching the gun and going out to dinner with her beloved, she was supposed to go undetected as the author of the crime.
But she got caught, and now it looks as though the state’s going to hold and then execute her! How dare they! Crappy little state! Absurd little Alabamians! She is so far above them all. And yet they seem to have some legal right to continue to hold, and then execute her. Why go on.
And how will she end it all? In the great Wagnerian tradition of their long love affair, she will do it with the help of her adored James. She will stage a liebestod. He will smuggle in the drugs that will dispatch her before she has to undergo the degradation of being handled by people so contemptibly beneath her.
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Some speculation about future events.
Bishop may ask her husband to kill her children. He is almost as crazy as she is. They should be in protective custody.
February 15th, 2010 at 6:28PM
As you know from your brief flirtation with firearms, UD-
You don’t just carry in a 9 mm automatic pistol and kill or seriously injure at least six people without some fairly recent practice beforehand.
The stories coming from her husband seem to lack a certain, shall we say, consistency.
February 15th, 2010 at 6:33PM
Right on target, Bonzo.
February 15th, 2010 at 7:39PM
“‘we’ don’t ‘own’ one” is technically true.
February 15th, 2010 at 7:53PM
@jim – technically you could be right, depending on what the meaning of is is…
February 15th, 2010 at 8:46PM
Folie à deux, perhaps? Curiouser and curiouser.
February 15th, 2010 at 8:51PM
Polish Peter: Reports from their neighbors in Ipswich very much describe a bizarre and belligerent twosome.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/ipswich_neighbo.html
February 15th, 2010 at 11:08PM
You’ve nailed it. Apparently a marriage made in, well, perhaps not exactly heaven. And this fool clearly enjoys the limelight.
He had me at “she is a loved teacher” which, though technically correct if HE loves her, is hardly an accurate summation of the feelings she engenders (and engendered) if various reports are to be believed, viz. comment 6 and other notes.
February 16th, 2010 at 8:24AM
She may not fry, UD. This is one gal for whom the insanity defense just may work, even in Alabama.
I have a feeling that the kids are going to need some serious help.
February 16th, 2010 at 8:43AM
@theprofessor: She’s certainly remorseless– but that’s not the same thing as “crazy in the legal sense”. I’d hope and expect that the judge in the case will make that clear.
February 16th, 2010 at 9:36AM
You’re right, Matt–the bar is high, as it should be. I will bet that there is going to be an ongoing history of a lot more here than “intermittent explosive disorder,” though.
February 16th, 2010 at 3:39PM
An insanity defense is going to be next to impossible for her. At least that is my speculation from reading the news reports, as worthless as it may be. The methodical nature of the shooting and the prior practice with the gun are two factors that seems to show she appreciated the nature and quality of her acts.
But I might be a little surprised if she receives the death penalty. Women do seems to be somewhat spared by their gender. Here in Arizona we only have one or two women on death row. The only one I can remember is there for asking two other men to kill her four year old. “Intermittent explosive disorder” is going to be used to keep her off of death row.
February 16th, 2010 at 4:47PM
Nora: To add to what you’ve said: Students will testify that very shortly before the meeting she conducted a perfectly satisfactory, normal, class.
You might be right about the death penalty, but I think another factor to consider is that this is Alabama. It ain’t Massachusetts down there. Juries are more willing, I think, to take the death penalty seriously.
February 16th, 2010 at 5:13PM
Worth noting that the legal standard for insanity has very little to do with clinical diagnosis. People with advanced delusional psychosis are perfectly capable of performing methodical tasks and discussing their projects coherently. “They’re all out to get me” is a thought lots of people have from time to time. Actually believing it and acting on it is the crazy part.
February 22nd, 2010 at 5:47PM
[…] blogger at The Hill agrees with UD (see this post) that authorities shouldn’t be as nonchalant about Bishop’s husband as they’ve […]