Principled Uncertainty: A True Crime Podcast

This is the newest episode of Music City Murder, my newest podcast. The PUPodcast feed is currently not active, so if you want to hear NEW episodes from me, go subscribe to Music City Murder!

Signing off. Check out Music City Murder on Apple!

An interview with author of The Black Dahlia Avenger and son of Black Dahlia suspect, George Hodel, former LAPD detective Steve Hodel.

An interview with Steve Hodel, retired LAPD detective and son of the now-infamous George Hodel, popular suspect in the unsolved Black Dahlia murder case.

This is the third and final installment of the life and crimes of Paul Dennis Reid (AKA The Fast Food Killer). It is based on the book, 'When Nashville Bled,' by Judith A. Yates.

Paul Dennis Reid—or PDR, as he is often called in the podcast—ups the ante in his reign of terror in Nashville by kidnapping two women from a Baskin Robbins in Clarksville, TN and butchering them in a nearby state park. It is the final installment in this true crime saga.

The second episode in the exploration of Nashville serial killer Paul Dennis Reid's reign of terror from 1997. "The Fast Food Killer" murdered several people over the course of a few months in areas just around and outside Nashville, TN. The third episode in this true crime series should be out in a few weeks.

In this episode, we cover the mass killer, Texas native, and wannabe country star Paul Dennis Reid.

If you look up some famous serial killers from Tennessee, Paul Dennis Reid will 100% turn up on that list.

I used research from the book When Nashville Bled by author Judith A. Yates to bring you the first in a three-part true crime series about the Tennessee serial killer.

Reid was convicted of the murders of seven fast food workers in the 1990s and is known infamously as the "Fast Food Killer."

PUPodcast, Episode 262: Bradford Bishop

Mar. 2, 1976. 12:40 pm. About 5 mi. south of Columbia, NC, which lies in the far eastern stretches of the state, out near the coast. A NC forest ranger on Highway 94 named Wilma Swain observes smoke in the distance and calls in authorities to help locate and contain the fire. Thinking it to be no more than a disposal fire, Ranger Ron Brickhouse goes in search of it.

Initially, he finds a pile of dirt, a shovel, and a red gas can, as if someone had started a fire and just left it to burn. However, in the hole near the implements, Brickhouse finds an arm, a leg, and shoes visible amidst the flames.

It looks as though there is a human body in the fiery pit. As investigators extinguish the flames and begin to extract the body, they find another body underneath. And then another. And so on. They keep going until they reach the bottom, and by then, they have pulled five human beings from the fiery wreckage. The state medical examiner finds the cause of death for the family members to be “blunt trauma to the head.”

No one can immediately identify the victims, and without a driver’s license or some other form of ID, the authorities struggle, at first, to get the investigation going. Judging by the ladies’ hairstyles — which do not match the ‘dos of the rural population — the investigators (correctly) assume they are from a more urban area. The only item that have anything to go on is a shovel left at the scene. At the base of the shovel, down near the blade, is a sticker with partial name for a hardware store on it.

The only letters visible on the handle are OCH[space]HD, which meant it was a hardware store whose name ended in OCH. This partial name was the only actual clue they gather to identify either the killer or the victims, and so they begin there.

Off to a bad start. Unhelpfully, not a single hardware store in NC ended in OCH, so Agent Lewis Young and another agent, travel up the NC coast into Virginia, looking for hardware stores matching the name from the abandoned shovel.

Mar. 7, 1976. Agent Young approaches the Metro Police in Washington, DC., and they are able to identify a store in Potomac, Maryland named Poch [like 2Pac] Hardware. They post a flyer of four of the victims in the hardware store (one of the victims was too badly damaged) and then, having no sufficient leads, eventually return to NC.

March 8, 1976. Bethesda, Maryland. The Bishop family — a mild-mannered “DC” family consisting of William Bradford, who is a foreign service agent, his wife Annette, Bradford’s mother Lobelia, and three sons Brad, Brenton, and Geoffrey — hasn’t been seen in days, and neighbors become suspicious after the front lawn piles up with newspapers.

Montgomery County MD Mike McNally receives a call to basically do a welfare check for a family living on Lilly Stone Drive in Bethesda, Maryland. Officer McNally gets inside the residence and finds a scene nothing short of horrendous.

Not a single member of the extended family is present in the home, but the excessive amount of blood speaks to the obvious presence of foul play. There is blood on the front porch, blood inside the home, blood leading up the stairs to the second floor, and gouts of blood cover the walls in the kids’ bedrooms.

Meanwhile, dental records from the crime scene are used down in North Carolina confirm the identities of the bodies in the fire pit. The five victims are the members of the Bishop family, which brings up two important questions: where is the husband, William Bradford Bishop, and how did the bodies end up on the coast of North Carolina?

A little background on Bradford Bishop. Though on the surface his life appears to be perfect — a Yale graduate with multiple degrees, a prestigious job, and a beautiful and caring family — the cracks beneath the facade reveal a much different picture.

While it is true that Bishop was a foreign service agent, with multiple posts across the world, it seemed as though his light was dimming. He’d recently been brought home from his most recent post and was being reassigned to a desk job, ostensibly ending the glamorous, jet-setting career he had been fostering since the mid-1960s. Living abroad, the Bishops had been able to live for free on the government’s dime, with limos and chartered cars spiriting them to all their destinations. That all came to a crashing halt when the family returned to America. Bishop’s $26,000 salary — along with the fact that Annette, Bradford’s wife, was barred from working — was not enough to make ends meet. They even had to take some money from Lobelia, Bradford’s mother, in order to buy their home in Bethesda.

The relationship, too, seemed to be under enormous strain at the time of the murders. Bradford had engaged in two extramarital affairs, and the difficult personality he brought to his coworkers in the State Department rose into prominence at home, and he and Annette began to have extreme disagreements over their quickly separating lives. It was yet another piece to add to the puzzle of what would come on that horrific night in March of 1976.

Lastly, the final piece that seems to send Bishop into deadly action: On the day of the murders, Bishop finds out he is not to receive a much-envied promotion — one that would seemingly put him back in the game — and he ducks out of work early as a result. On the way out, he meets a colleague who commiserates with him about not receiving a promotion, and that man would later testified that Bishop appeared fraught and nervous about his current circumstances.

After leaving work on March 1, sulking from his lost promotion, Bradford Bishop withdraws $400 from the family’s checking account, effectively zeroing it out, and goes home. He takes the family’s station wagon to a nearby SEARS and purchases a short-handled sledgehammer and a two gallon red gas can. He drives the car to a Texaco station and fills both the car and the can up.

My research is a little unclear on this point, but I’m pretty sure he then travels to a spot called Poch’s Hardware and buys a pointed shovel and a pitchfork. He then returns home and arrives at around 9 pm. The family has already eaten dinner and begun the process of winding down for the night.

Bradford’s mother, Lobelia, puts a leash on the family dog, a retriever named Leo, and heads out for a late-evening walk. A neighbor sees her walking up Lilly Stone drive around 9:30 pm, so we can be assured the time frame of the attack occurs sometime in this window.

Back at the Bishop residence, Bradford begins a step-by-step bludgeoning of his family. He descends to the basement family room, where he strikes his wife repeatedly in the head with the mini-sledgehammer. She has been studying art for a class she’s been taking and is unaware of the attack until it’s actually happening.

As he reached the ground floor, his mother Lobelia returns with Leo the Retriever. She seems something — maybe the blood on her son or the hammer dangling from his grasp — but she sprints for the bathroom and locks herself inside. He manages to get the door open and kill his mother right there in the bathroom. Afterwards, he treks upstairs and visits the same indescribable violence upon his three children.

He goes first to his eldest son’s room — this is Brad III — and bashes in his head while he sleeps. Bradford Bishop then moves across the hall to the bunkbeds where his two youngest children — Brenton (10) and Geoffrey, just 5 years old — and kills them too. Here is a quote directly from the book A Killer in the Family:

In what must have been a blind rage, Brad so violently attacked Brent, 10, in the top bunk that the coroner not only noted “multiple fractures” of Brent’s skull but “pulpefication of brain.” The furious backswing left scrape marks in the ceiling just above Brent’s head.

Little Geoff, 5, lay below in the bottom bunk. Asleep in his football-player pajamas he cannot have known what hit him; the coroner said any single blow of the hammer could have been fatal. Geoff’s blood ran into a blue pillowcase with white stars on it.

With the worst of the deed done, Bradford Bishop disposes of his bloody clothes and likely takes a shower. He then carries each of the five bodies — on different floors of the multi-level home — out to his Chevy Malibu station wagon and loads them in there, covering them with blankets when he is done. It should also be noted that besides himself, the only other living creature in the car is Leo, the family dog. Inexplicably, he’s left the family pet alive after this macabre and violent act.

Then, in the middle of the night, Brad Bishop drives away, setting forth on a 300-plus mile journey that will take down a good stretch of the eastern seaboard, through DC and down I-95 down into North Carolina. He reaches the town of Columbia at around 9 the next morning and veers off the beaten path onto State Road 1103, where this grim and senseless crime will become very public very quickly.

He digs for nearly three hours, giving up around noon, after he’s created a hole just under three feet in depth. He decides this is good enough and begins the process of dragging the bodies to the pit, beginning first with the smallest child, Geoff, and working his way up through the children, his wife, and then finally his mother, Lobelia, whom he places on the top of the pile. He pours nearly a gallon of gas on the bodies and throws a match on top.

It’s unclear how long Bradford Bishop stands there, watching his family burn, but by the time the forest rangers respond to the call, he is long gone.

He stops at a shop called Outdoor Sports in Jacksonville, North Carolina, just outside Camp Lejeune and buys a pair of Converse sneakers. What’s weird about this financial transaction is that the owner, John Wheatley, also reports having seen a woman with Bishop, whom he later describes as “about five-six, medium heavy-set” and “Caribbean.”

After that, he goes off the grid until March 18, 17 days after the murders.

On the 18th, Bishop’s Malibu is discovered at a campsite on the border of Tennessee and North Carolina, just outside Gatlinburg. According to locals, the car had been there for nearly two weeks. In the car, they find some dog biscuits -- presumably for Leo -- maps of the US, including brochures advertising hikes, and lots and lots of blood. The trunk area had been soaked through in the stuff.

Three Credible Sightings

• In July 1978, a Swedish woman, who said she had collaborated with Bishop while on a business trip in Ethiopia, reported she had spotted him twice in a public park in Stockholm during a span of one week. She stated she was "absolutely certain" that the man was Bishop.[3] She did not contact the police at the time because she had not yet realized he was wanted for murder in the U.S.[21]
• In January 1979, Bishop was reportedly seen by a former U.S. State Department colleague in a restroom in Sorrento, Italy. The colleague greeted the bearded man, whom he personally believed to be Bishop, eye-to-eye, asking the man impulsively, "Hey, you're Brad Bishop, aren't you?" The man panicked suddenly, responding in a distinctly American accent; "Oh no." He then ran swiftly out of the restroom and fled into the Sorrento alleyways.[3]
• On September 19, 1994, on a Basel, Switzerland, train platform, a neighbor who had known Bishop and his family in Bethesda was on vacation and reported that she had seen Bishop from a few feet away.[3] The neighbor described Bishop as "well-groomed" and said that he was getting into a car.[22]

 

Motive

Here is a quote from A Killer in the Family:

Did Brad want the bodies to be found? Did he want the world to know that he had killed them? A tree falling in the woods is an unknown event. “He could have covered them up, thrown some branches on them, and it would have been years before they were discovered,” said Montgomery Co. Sheriff’s Office Lieutenant Sean Songco. “He wanted them found.”

A Michigan forensic psychologist, Richard Walter, agrees. “It doesn’t count unless somebody sees them,” he told the CNN television show The Hunt with John Walsh.

Twitter: @blakebraddy

Podcast Twitter: @pupodcast

The Rolson McKane Novels (Amazon)

I'm back! The hiatus for the Principled Uncertainty Podcast is OVER! Time to get back to work. There will be an episode in the coming days, so get ready for some true crime!

Hey, folks! I talked at length about the 'Boogie House' giveaway going on on my site right now, and I promised I would provide the link to it so you can get in on all the free giveaway action! The giveaway ends July 30, so enter today for a chance to win a SIGNED copy of the first Rolson McKane Book.

Click here to enter...

Now, on to the episode.

From 2012-2014,  Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy III texted each other thousands of times. They met, as it were, through absolute happenstance. In 2012, both families were vacationing in Florida, when Carter and Roy met. Turns out, they lived less than an hour away in their hometowns in Massachusetts.

Still, being high school students, they rarely saw each other, and instead fell into an intense online relationship, trading FaceBook and text messages.

Roy’s parents separated and then divorced. Roy fell into a deep despair and then tried to commit suicide. It was Carter who helped him through these difficult times.

Carter encouraged Roy to receive treatment for his depression. His past battles resulted in four failed suicide attempts. Carter herself struggled with emotional issues. She fought depression, too, as well as eating disorders and extreme insecurities. She often cut herself when she was overly distraught. She craved the attention of more popular girls in school and became despondent over their lack of personal attention.

Then, after a time of being Roy’s sort of personal sounding board, in which she kept him from veering to the dark side of his mentality, she then took up the cause of convincing him to kill himself.

Why, exactly, she shifted is up for speculation. However, the evidence points to a perceived complex on Carter’s part regarding her insecurities of being unpopular. This is where the story gets a little bizarre, so bear with me while we delve into it.

Of all the thousands and thousands of messages passed along between Carter and Roy, several happen to relate very closely to the TV show Glee, which ran from 2009-2015 and followed the exploits of high school students with a propensity for leaping into song.

Okay, a little backstory: So, one of the show’s stars, Cory Monteith, died of a drug overdose in 2013. He was dating co-star Lea Michele at the time. The show, to give Monteith a proper memorial, filmed an episode devoted to the young star. The episode, entitled “The Quarterback,” aired on October 10, 2013.

Carter, it appears, seemed to have drawn inspiration from this series of events, up to and including the idea that she take on the “grieving girlfriend” role after his death to elicit sympathy from other people in the classroom.

In the wake of Roy’s death, Carter communicated with several friends, and a few of the text messages have an eerie closeness to the script from “The Quarterback” episode of Glee.

Here’s one example. It’s a text message to friend Samantha Boardman six days after the death of Roy.

I had it all planned out. He was gonna graduate Fitchburg and then when I graduated the college I'm going to, we would live happily ever after on the ocean somewhere, with our son Conrad the 4th. He knew too I didn't have to tell him. Now it's gonna be something different, maybe something better, but I just don't think that that's possible. He was my person.

And another text the next day, this time to a different friend, but the wording and message is ostensibly the same.

I just had it all planned out with Conrad. Now I have to do something different, maybe something better, I just don't think that that's possible. He was my person you know?

Now, here’s the script from Glee.

Rachel: I had it all planned out. I was gonna make it big on Broadway and maybe make a Woody Allen movie. And then when we were ready, I would just come back and he'd be teaching here and I'd walk through those doors and I would just say "I'm home" and then we would live happily ever after.

Will: That's a good plan. Did you tell him?

Rachel: I didn't have to. He knew.

Will: And now what?

Rachel: I don't know, something different.

Will: Maybe something better.

Rachel: I just — I don't think that's possible. He was my person.

Play the video:

https://youtu.be/9bMuEQxwkR0

Here’s another one. In a text to Boardman mere days after Roy’s death, Carter said:

He was the greatest man I ever knew and I literally lived every day feeling like the luckiest girl in the world when I had him.

In a December 2013 interview with Ellen DeGeneres, Michele had this to say about Monteith:

I was so happy. He’s such a private person, and I literally lived every day of my life feeling like the luckiest girl in the whole world. I just thought he was the greatest man.

A final example. In the same conversation with Boardman, Carter writes:

One of the hardest parts is feeling like I'm gonna forget everything. And I don't want to. I can still hear his voice so clearly.

 

And the corresponding lines in Glee. Rachel says to Will:

 

I can still see his face and I can hear his voice so clearly. Do you think that I'll ever forget it? Because I'm afraid that one day I will.

 

Though a few others deal tangentially with Glee, the vast majority of text messages, especially the ones on the days of July 13 and 14, are harrowing for completely different reasons.

July 12, 2014

 

He parked his truck in a KMart parking lot.

 

Conrad Roy III got out of the truck, trying to back out of the suicide attempt, when Michelle Carter -- an hour away at the time -- told him to get back in and finish the job. This moment, the judge concluded, is what made Michelle Carter’s actions a crime.

 

The trial took a week. Carter waived the right to a jury trial.

 

The defense argued that Carter’s reaction to antidepressants had affected her to a dangerous extent. Dr. Peter Breggin, who testified for the defense, “said Ms. Carter was ‘intoxicated’ by antidepressants, which she first started taking at 14, causing her to become unhinged at times and to show intense anxiety, irritability and psychoses.”

 

Carter, 20, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and will be sentenced August 3. She faces up to 20 years in prison. The defense team is suspected to appeal the decision to a higher court.

 

Controversy

 

The ACLU argues that words alone cannot be responsible for someone else’s actions.

NYT: “This is saying that what she did is killing him, that her words literally killed him, that the murder weapon here was her words,” said Matthew Segal, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which raised concerns about the case to the state’s highest court. “That is a drastic expansion of criminal law in Massachusetts.”