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A Little Less Mess: The Bradford Bishop Murders [Maryland] · Bless This Mess: A Southern True Crime Podcast

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to bless Us Mess on the Drue
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Grum podcast. I'm Kara, Just Kara. This is a Little
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Less Mess. These are our many episodes that come out
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: on Mondays where we step outside of the South and
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: talk about some of the crazier true crime cases. In
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: this episode, we are heading up to the elite, wealthy
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: suburbs of Washington, d C. I'm bringing you a case
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: that is going to make you look twice at the
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: people you think you know best. We talk a lot
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: about family annihilators in true crime, the John List and
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: the Chris Watts of the world. But this case is
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: different because, unlike the others, this killer didn't get caught.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: He didn't make a careless mistake. Instead, he used his
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Ivy League education, his government training, and his fluent languages
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: to step right off the face of the earth. Today
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: we're talking about the nineteen seventy six Bradford Bishop murders,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and fifty years later, he is still out there. But
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: just a quick reminder of our weekly schedule. On Mondays,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: we step outside of the South for a Little Less
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Mess minisodes, which is this one, and Thursdays are for
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: our full length regular episodes and those are right here
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: on the main feat Now if you want to get
• 1:31
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• 1:35
  Speaker 1: plus our Friday bonus show Sit and Sippin' and Bullshit
• 1:38
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• 1:41
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• 1:43
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• 1:46
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• 1:47
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• 1:52
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• 1:57
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• 2:03
  Speaker 1: listening right now, All right, grab your coffee, let's go
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: ahead and get into it. To understand this case, you
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: have to understand the world. William Bradford, Bishop Junior, lived
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: in They called him brad brad was the Golden Boy.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: He had degrees from Yelle and Middlebury. He spoke five
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: languages fluently, which included Croatian, Italian, and French. He worked
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: in the Foreign Service for the State Department, serving an
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: elite diplomatic post all over Europe and Africa. By the
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: spring of nineteen seventy six, Brad was thirty nine years old.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: He lived in a beautiful, sprawling home in Carderock Springs,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: an exclusive neighborhood in Bethesda, Maryland. He was married to
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: his high school sweetheart, Annette, and they had three beautiful
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: young sons, fourteen year old Brad Junior, ten year old Brent,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: and five year old David. Brad's sixty eight year old mother, Labelia,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: also lived with them. To the neighbors the Bishops were
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: the picture of success. They played tennis, they threw dinner parties.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: They seemed perfect. But behind closed doors, Brad Bishop was simmering.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: He was dealing with severe insomnia and depression. He had
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: money problems, and most importantly, he felt like his career
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: was stalling. He was brilliant and he thought he deserved
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: to be an ambassador. On March first, nineteen seventy six,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Brad went to work at the State Department in DC
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: and got the final blow. He was told he was
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: being passed over for promotion. He felt he was owed.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: He told his secretary he wasn't feeling well and he
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: left the office early. But he didn't go straight home.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: He went to the bank and withdrew several hundreds of dollars.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Then he went to a hardware store. He bought a
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: small sledgehammer, a pitchfork, and a gas can, and then
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: he drove to his perfect suburban home. What happened next
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: is one of the most chilling methodical crimes in American history.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Brad's wife, Annette, was likely the first. While she was
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: reading a book, Brad bludgeoned her to death with the sledgehammer.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Then he moved to his mother, killing her in the
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: exact same way. Finally, he went upstairs to the bedrooms
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: of his three young sons who were sleeping, and he
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: killed all of them. He even killed the family's golden retriever.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Brad didn't panic. He was completely calculated. He loaded the
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: bodies of his wife, his mother, and his three boys
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: into the back of the family's nineteen seventy four Chevy
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: station wagon. He threw the dog in as well. Then
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: he just started driving. He drove south through the night,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: crossing state lines until he reached a dense, swampy, heavily
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: wooded area in Columbia, North Carolina, about two hundred and
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: seventy five miles away. He pulled off a logging road,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: dug a shallow trench, dumped his family inside, doused them
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: in gasoline, and set them on fire. But here's where
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: the story takes a weird turn. While Brad is baring
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: his family in the swamp, a local forest ranger actually
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: spotted the smoke from the fire. The ranger went to investigate,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: but by the time he got there, the fire was
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: dying down and Brad was already gone. It was only
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: after poking through the ashes that the horrific discovery was made.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Because the bodies were burned so badly, the police in
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: North Carolina had no idea who they were. Meanwhile, back
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: in Maryland, a neighbor noticed that the Bishop House had
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: been quiet for days, mail was piling up. They called
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: the police to do a welfare check on March eighth,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: a full week after the murders. When the police walked
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: into the Bethesda home, they found a bloodbath. Blood was
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: splattered on the walls and the ceilings. It didn't take
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: long for authorities to connect the crime scene in Maryland
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: to the bodies found in North Carolina. The manhunt for
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Bradford Bishop was on, but he had a seven day headstart.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Investigators quickly found the family station wagon. It was abandoned
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. Inside
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: the car, they found dog biscuits, blood stains, and the sledgehammer.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Police scoured the massive rugged park with bloodhounds and helicopters.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: They thought maybe Brad had gone into the woods to
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: end his own life, but they found nothing. And that
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: is because Brad Bishop didn't go into the woods to die.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: He went into the woods to disappear. Remember this is
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: a man who spent his entire adult life traveling the
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: world carrying a diplomatic passport. He knew how borders worked,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: he knew how to blend in. Within weeks of the murders,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: credible sightings started rolling in. In July nineteen seventy eight,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: a woman who had known Brad Well swore she saw
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: him in a park in Stockholm, Sweden. She called out
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: his name, he looked at her with pure terror in
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: his eyes and ran away. A few months later, another
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: former colleague saw a man who looked exactly like Brad
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: at a public restroom in Sorrento, Italy. When the colleague asked, Hey,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: are you Brad Bishop, the man panicked muttered something in
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: a perfect American accent and bolted. There was another siding
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: in a train station in Switzerland. The FBI believes that
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: brad Bishop simply took on a new identity, maybe using
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: the passport of a deceased person and using his fluency
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: in multiple language to live freely in Europe for decades.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: The FBI has chased leads. In twenty fourteen, almost forty
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: years after the murders, they added Bradford Bishop to the
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: ten most Wanted list. They created age progressed photos showing
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: what he might look like in his seventies and eighties.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: They've even exhumed the body of an unidentified man who
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: was hit by a car in Alabama, thinking it might
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: be him, But it wasn't. If Bradford Bishop is still
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: alive today, he'd be approaching ninety years old. The Bradford
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Bishop case is so deeply unsettling because it destroys the
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: illusion of safety. This wasn't a drifter or a known criminal.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: This was a highly educated diplomat, a guy who played
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: tennis at the country club, a guy whose neighbors thought
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: he had it all. It makes you wonder how does
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: a man annihilate his entire family? Including his own children,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: and then just go to live a quiet life at
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: a cafe in Italy or a cabin in Switzerland. How
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: do you live with those ghosts? Or did he just
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: lack a conscience entirely? The FBI is still looking for him,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: the reward is still active, but at this point many
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: investigators believe that if he is found, it won't be
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: a dramatic arrest. It will be a deathbed confession or
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: a DNA match on a John Doe halfway across the world.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: What do you guys think. Is Bradford Bishop still alive
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: living out his final days in Europe or did the
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: guilt finally catch up with him years ago and he
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: took his own life. That's our case for this week.
• 10:02
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• 10:05
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• 10:08
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• 10:11
  Speaker 1: there where you can directly. It's pretty much like texting
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: stew and myself. If you want a little more banter
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: and some southern cases, check out that Thursday episode. All right,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: that's all I got for you today. Remember stay safe,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: lock your door, and keep that porch lad on by everyone.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Don't you know it's badline to be superstag checks mind
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: that being als, it's working. Say this wor