Where Is Brad Bishop?

With proper planning and discipline, the sheriff said, it's possible to assume a false identify and hide in plain sight indefinitely.

It's no secret, Kight said. "There are plenty of books out there on how to do it. Look in the paper at the obituaries; find someone near your date of birth. Go in and get their birth certificate. Get their Social Security number."

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, obtaining false identification has become more difficult. Laws and procedures have been tightened. "But there are still ways for someone with a devious mind to do it," Kight said. Then it's just a matter of living quietly under the radar, avoiding background checks and contact with police.

Consider John E. List:

His wife, his mother and his three children were shot to death in their New Jersey home in 1971 -- and List (like Bishop five years later) was nowhere to be found. With an assumed Social Security number and a driver's license in the name of Robert P. Clark, List remarried and lived for nearly two decades in Colorado and a Richmond suburb, where he was working as an accountant in 1989.

He was arrested that year, and later sentenced to life in prison, only after an acquaintance saw him profiled on the TV show "America's Most Wanted."

And reputed Boston crime boss James J. "Whitey" Bulger:

No alleged gangster in the city was more notorious than Bulger, a household name in Irish South Boston, where he reigned for decades. But in 1995, after learning he had been indicted, he managed to disappear with hardly a trace because of years of careful planning, investigators have said. Eleven years later, he remains in the wind, a fugitive from racketeering charges and 18 counts of murder.

Bishop had the advantage of being an experienced international traveler, fluent in Italian, Spanish, French and Croatian. He had served tours at embassies in Italy, Ethiopia and Botswana. He had military intelligence training. He understood the arcane ins and outs of overseas immigration bureaucracies. With his know-how, Kight said, Bishop could easily have melted into a foreign society under layers of false paperwork.

Long before the killings, for example, "he could have issued himself numerous passports in any number of different names, and we'd never know."

Plus, if his plan was to flee the country, he had a head start. The burned bodies weren't identified, and Bishop wasn't missed, until a week after the slayings.

Why the slayings occurred is anyone's guess. As far as investigators could tell, nothing had been terribly amiss in the family -- no dire financial woes or major job worries, no extramarital affairs or serious mental problems. Thirty years later, the sheriff said, Bishop remains an enigma. "I don't think I know him at all."