Is This Dead Man William Bradford Bishop, Jr?
Back in 1981, a man walking along Route 72 in northern Alabama was fatally struck by a vehicle, victim of a hit-and-run. The man carried no ID. He was wearing several layers of dirty clothing, typical of a homeless vagrant. He was dubbed "John Doe" by the authorities and buried. But before interment, the coroner took a photo (upper right).
Following the FBI's placing murderer Brad Bishop on its Ten Most Wanted List earlier this year and CNN's The Hunt's hour-long special on the case, tips have been flowing in -- more than 350, according to the FBI. One of them is the possibility that "John Doe" and Brad Bishop are one and the same man. The FBI has requested exhumation of "John Doe" so that a DNA test can be done to tell us one way or the other. This should happen very soon.
When working as a city desk cub reporter in New York City, one of my many disagreeable jobs was to report on what the news folks called "floaters," dead bodies that regularly turned up floating down the two rivers flanking Manhattan. I interviewed NYPD cops and coroners staff to see if the bodies were identifiable and, if so, who they were. You never know who might be a prominent mafioso rubbed out in a contract killing. Many went un-ID'd and were buried in a paupers cemetery. What I learned was that death has a way of distorting a human being's facial features. Photos of corpses were not always a reliable match up to a person in life.
Law enforcement officers have tracked down claims of deceased John Does being Brad Bishop over the years. None panned out. Comparing the above photos of Brad Bishop and "John Doe," I see some resemblance, but not a perfect match. I believe the dead man is not Bishop.
What do you think?
ETA (10/10/14): The FBI wasted no time. Exhumation has been carried out --