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Accused family killer snapped after government job snub, FBI says

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Authorities say the killing on March 1, 1976, began after William Bradford Bishop Jr. learned he’d been passed over for a promotion at the State Department earlier in the day.

Bishop, who had been receiving psychiatric care for depression and suffered from insomnia, grabbed a hammer and attacked his family, FBI officials say. When it was over, his wife Annette, mother Lobelia and three sons -- William Bradford III, 14, Brenton, 10, and Geoffrey, 5 -- had been bludgeoned to death. The boys were killed in their sleep.

Outside of a single reported sighting of Bishop the next day in Jacksonville, N.C., where he bought a pair of sneakers and was seen walking the family golden retriever, the 39-year-old all but vanished.

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Now, nearly 40 years later, FBI officials have reopened the cold case and say Bishop could be hiding in plain sight in Southern California. An avid outdoorsman, he has family in Pasadena and used to talk about his love for the Sierra Nevada, according to the FBI.

It’s just a matter of someone recognizing him, they say, if he’s still alive.

“He doesn’t deserve the freedom he’s enjoyed for the last three decades,” Darren Popkin, the local sheriff in Maryland, said in a statement.

Bishop was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted list last week, and agents commissioned an artist to create a bust that approximates what Bishop would look like today.

He has a pedigreed past that includes a degree from Yale University, a master’s degree in Italian from Middlebury College and a stint in the U.S. Foreign Service. He also speaks French, Serbo-Croatian and Spanish, and earned his amateur pilot’s license flying in Botswana in Africa, the FBI said.

He has an affinity for scotch, wine, spicy food and peanuts.

Authorities say Bishop was also known for being an insomniac who was prone to violent outbursts. He also prefers a neat, orderly environment, officials said.

Bishop was 6 feet 1 and weighed 180 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes in 1976. He has a 6-inch vertical surgical scar on his lower back.

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He may still have an old Smith & Wesson .38 revolver passed down from his father and is known for wearing his Yale class ring.

There is a $100,000 reward offered for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

Anyone with information is asked to call (800) CALL-FBI.

joseph.serna@latimes.com

Twitter: @josephserna

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