Where Is Brad Bishop?

30 Years Later, Md. Murder Suspect's Flight Still a Puzzle

Surely he's dead, right?

A lot of people think so.

All these years after Brad Bishop, a State Department Foreign Service officer, allegedly bludgeoned his mother, his wife and his three young sons in their Bethesda home and burned their bodies -- all these years after a Maryland grand jury indicted the missing diplomat on five counts of murder in one of the most baffling cases in the annals of local crime -- he couldn't still be out there, hiding under a phony name, living quietly on the lam. . . .

Could he?

A lot of people think so.

Who knows, really?

"Until I can prove he's dead," said Montgomery County Sheriff Raymond M. Kight, "I'm going to assume he's alive."

A bright-green arrest warrant folder bearing his name -- "Bishop, William Bradford Jr." -- contains the oldest of nearly 2,000 open cases (alleged traffic scofflaws, deadbeat dads, rapists, drug dealers and killers) in the files of the fugitive squad at the sheriff's office, in Rockville. Generations of deputies have been on the lookout for him since Gerald R. Ford was in the White House. Decades have gone by. And the Bishop warrant sits on a shelf.

Where did he go?

Why did it happen?

That distant March.

Thirty years ago this week.