Ex-Official Sought 21 Years After Murders -- Five Members Of Family Slain

For two decades the only explanation for William Bradford Bishop's whereabouts has been in a long-forgotten folk song:

Some day they'll find him, down in old Mexico.

With Leo his retriever, drinking Jose Cuervo.

Why did he do it? No one can tell.

He traded his family for a ticket to Hell.

The obscure tune on a 1977 Adelphi Records label captured the morbid fascination with one of the world's most mysterious killers. But the Montgomery County, Md., sheriff and a detective are still sifting through thousands of unconfirmed Bishop sightings around the globe, looking for the real end to the story.

There are no lyrics running through their heads, no images of old Mexico. Only the horrific images from police photographs of a family burned and battered beyond recognition, and questions that anyone familiar with the mystery longs to answer:

What ever happened to Brad Bishop? Why did a handsome, Yale-educated diplomat go home from his State Department job one day in 1976 and allegedly bludgeon to death his wife, mother and three children? And where did he flee, presumably using passports he obtained through his diplomatic duties?

`I think he's still alive'

"I think he's still alive. He's only 60 years old. And I think wherever he is, he's doing very well for himself," said Montgomery County sheriff's Capt. Robert Keefer, who last year alone - 20 years after the crime - got more than 200 leads on the Bishop case

from around the world.

"We've put out a worldwide blitz to find him. We've had sightings everywhere, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Africa, Greece, even Russia," Keefer said. "It's a repulsive crime that leaves an impression on anyone who has ever heard about it."

Keefer and his boss, Montgomery County Sheriff Raymond Kight, have spent years following up tips, tossing around theories and even requesting files from the CIA, which they say have surfaced in the shadows of the Bishop investigation.

"My feeling is that Bishop had CIA connections and training, and that's possibly how he was able to disappear," said Kight.

The CIA denies having any files on Bishop, who sparked an international manhunt in 1976 when he ditched the family station wagon in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and strolled off with his golden retriever at his side. Some 400 miles away, in a shallow North Carolina grave, police later found what was left of his family.

"He was trained in the Army as a spy, so he knows how the authorities work," said Robert Weis, the brother of Bishop's wife, Annette. "It would be nice if there was ever some finality, but I don't know that there ever will be."

A widely traveled foreign-service officer with the State Department who served in American embassies in Italy, Ethiopia, and Botswana, Bishop had impeccable credentials.

He spoke five languages fluently and had won commendations during a four-year stint with Army counterintelligence, which included assignments to Yugoslavia.

All-American couple

In his personal life, he gave the outward appearance of an all-American guy. He and Annette had been high-school sweethearts in California.

After he graduated from Yale and she from the University of California, Berkeley, Brad Bishop rose through the ranks of the State Department. But by the mid-1970s, his career apparently hit a wall.

On March 1, 1976, not long after he had returned to a Washington desk job from an overseas post, Bishop left work early, complaining of the flu and upset over being passed over for a promotion.

On the way to his modest Bethesda, Md., home, using part of the $400 he had withdrawn from his bank earlier in the day, Bishop bought a 2 1/2-gallon gasoline can and a small sledgehammer in the Montgomery Mall.

That night, police allege, he used the sledgehammer to kill Annette, 37, and his mother, Lobelia Bishop, 68, who lived with them. He then killed his three sons - William, 14, Brenton, 10, and Geoffrey, 5 - in their beds, police say. Neighbors did not hear a sound.

Police think he packed the five battered bodies into the back of his maroon Chevrolet wagon and headed south to North Carolina. The killer dug a grave in a forest near Columbia, N.C., dumped gasoline on the bodies and set them afire. A forest ranger discovered the grisly scene.

Police weren't able to identify the victims until a week later, since no one had reported any of the Bishop family missing. Their home was eventually searched and blood was found spattered in the foyer, where a violent struggle had apparently occurred, and in the bedrooms.

After disposing of the bodies, police and the FBI believe, Bishop drove his car 400 miles west to the Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. The car was found 16 days after the discovery of the bodies; police bloodhounds picked up a faint scent of Bishop near the park's tourist center.

The last confirmed sighting of Bishop was March 2, 1976 - shortly after the bodies were dumped - in a Jacksonville, N.C., sporting-goods store where Bishop bought tennis shoes on his credit card. He was with an unidentified woman who held his dog, Leo, on a leash, recalls John Wheatley, who still runs the store.

The woman is a tantalizing detail for Kight and Keefer. Find her, they say, and you take a big step toward finding the elusive Bishop.

Keefer uncovered a clue as to her whereabouts in 1992, when, while digging through Bishop's old files at the State Department, he found a March 15, 1976, letter sent to Bishop from a convicted bank robber that made a vague reference to a woman, passports, and the area where the bodies were discovered.