Her Father Murdered Family and Has Been a Fugitive for Decades: Here's What She'd Say If They Came Face to Face

Kathy Gillcrist always knew she’d been adopted.

So, after retiring as a high school teacher in 2017, she decided she wanted to find out more about where she came from and bought a DNA test kit.

She soon found a third cousin who helped her find her birth mother, who had placed her for adoption in 1957. But her father proved to be more elusive.

When Gillcrist was finally given his name, she asked her cousin jokingly if her father was famous.

The cousin told her to check him out for herself.

What Gillcrist soon discovered online was as disturbing as it was shocking: The man who fathered her, William Bradford Bishop, was a fugitive, wanted by the FBI for the killings of his 68-year-old mother, his 37-year-old wife and his three sons, 14, 10 and 4, in 1976.

“I never would have believed what I was about to discover when I first decided to take that DNA test,” she says. “What I learned after spitting in that tube was more drama than I could ever have anticipated.”

Gillcrist’s story is featured on the upcoming episode of People Magazine Investigates. Titled “My Father Was a Mass Murderer,” the episode airs Monday, Dec. 23 at 9/8c on ID. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)

Bishop seemed to have the perfect life. 

Born in Pasadena, Calif., he received an American Studies degree from Yale University and a Master’s in Italian from Middlebury College in Vermont.

He married his high school sweetheart Annette in 1959.

That same year, Bishop enlisted in the U.S. Army and spent four years working in military intelligence. He became fluent in French, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish and Italian.

He later became a foreign service officer with the State Department and secured posts in Italy, Ethiopia, and Botswana.

During this time, he had three sons, William, Brenton and Geoffrey.

He returned to the U.S. in 1974 where  he worked as an assistant chief in the Division of Special Activities and Commercial Treaties. His family, along with his wife Lobella, moved to the Washington, D.C., suburb of Bethesda, Maryland.

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But all wasn’t right with Bishop.

On March 1, 1976, Bishop, who had been under psychiatric care in the past and had used medication for depression, left early from work after being passed up for a promotion.

On his way home, he stopped at a bank and withdrew $400 before purchasing a gasoline can and a sledgehammer.

Once home, he killed his family and then drove their bodies to Columbia, N.C., where he tossed their bodies in a hole he’d dug and then set them on fire.

A coroner later determined they died from blunt force trauma.

Bishop, an avid outdoorsman and licensed amateur pilot, was linked to the crimes via his fingerprints, which were found on the gasoline can at the fire scene as well as in the blood at the family’s home.

His maroon-colored station wagon was later found in the parking lot of the Elkmont Campground in Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Gatlinburg, Tenn.. Inside the vehicle, authorities discovered two blood-stained tarps, a blood-stained blanket, an axe, a shotgun, and a suitcase containing men’s clothing, toiletries as well as cigarette butts in the ashtray.

Over the years, there have been reported sightings of him in Stockholm, Sweden, and Sorrento, Italy, but his whereabouts to this day remain a mystery.

Gillcrist, who self-published a book about her shocking discovery called It’s in My Genes, believes that Bishop, who would be 88 now, is still alive.

“He was an outdoorsman,” she says. “He was healthy. There is no question that he could survive in whatever situation he found himself in. He was a chameleon. He changed personas, as were needed.”

If she ever gets a chance to speak to him, she says she would ask, “How do you live with this? How do you justify what you did? And are you a happy person now?”

People Magazine Investigates: My Father Was a Mass Murderer airs Monday, Dec. 23, at 9/8c on ID.