"There is no need to hide one's inner life in an academic institution. Murderers, great criminals, should ideally be dons," writes Anita Brookner in her novel The Debut. "Plenty of time to plan the coup and no curious questions or inquisitive glances once it is done."

But Amy Bishop is not one of those great criminals.

But a criminal she may be. Not only did she allegedly murder her colleagues with a 9 mm; more than 20 years ago, Amy Bishop reportedly shot and killed her brother. This is a woman who should not have had a gun. This is a woman who should have had more help. This is a woman about whom people will say, "How come nobody who worked with her day in and day out knew?" and "Are there more like her?"

 "Amy Bishop" has now become one of those names.  Anybody else with the name Amy Bishop is trying to find an alias or a nickname, and fast.

Everything about the story changed for me when I found out that she'd reportedly shot and killed her 18-year-old brother back in 1986, back in Braintree, Massachusetts, and back when Amy Bishop was released into the custody of her mother.

So says a report out of the Boston Globe, which goes on to quote Braintree Police Chief Paul Friazer as saying "I don't want to use the word 'coverup' ... but this does not look good" because, according to the writer of the story, "Bishop had shot her brother during an argument and was being booked by police when the police chief at the time ordered the booking process stopped and Bishop released to her mother. Frazier said he was basing his statements on the memories of one of his officers who was on the department at the time and had arrested Bishop. He said the records from the case have been missing since at least 1988." [read the whole story here.

My reaction to the horror of what went on at Huntsville was wholly altered when I read that she reportedly shot her brother.

I'm trying to figure out why and to be honest about it. It's not easy.

The best I can come up with is this: At first I could almost feel a sense of tragic sympathy for the person who snapped, for the unhinging of a potentially great mind -- I had only recently watched the disturbing movie Dark Matter, which itself deals with the murder of faculty by a disgruntled graduate student and is based on actual incidents at the University of Iowa -- and this story from Alabama seemed to be drawn from a similar pattern.

I told myself: Here was a horror story. Here was a mother of four children, a woman whom others regarded as successful despite her denial of tenure, who nevertheless couldn't stop thinking and talking about her rejection. According to an article in The New York Times, she would practically corner strangers at cocktail parties and talk passionately about how unfairly she was treated by her institution. Here was an assistant professor denied tenure, allegedly killing three people at a faculty meeting and wounding three others, a Harvard-trained neuroscientist who was described by her colleague as being "not as good as she thought she was," who was mangled by a system she then sought to destroy in a rage of blind violence.

But there's more to this horror story. This was a different soul, one who apparently howled out her pain and rage 20 years ago, one who might have been rescued or restrained, one who might have been cured or caged or at least taken out of circulation. But because she was smart and because someone was willing to take care of her, the system forgave her -- only to have her attack and allegedly kill those who represented another kind of system, one that did not reward her to her satisfaction, 24 years later.

She thought the world was unfair and she was right.