BELK MAKING A BIG MOVE Department store leaving Madison Square Mall for a new home at Bridge Street Town Centre. See page A3 We break news online Saturday, September 29, 2012 No Bishop trial in brother’s death Massachusetts won’t try her in ’86 shooting earlier ruled accident By Brian Lawson brian.lawson@htimes.com Amy Bishop will not face a murder charge in Massachusetts for the 1986 shooting death of her brother Seth, the Norfolk County district attorney’s office announced Friday. DA Michael Morrissey said his office would withdraw the indictment issued against Bishop two years ago because her recent capital murder conviction in Alabama ensures that she will be in prison for the rest of her life. “We will not move to have her returned to Massachusetts. The penalty we would seek for a first-degree murder conviction is already in place,” Morrissey said. Amy Bishop Seth Bishop Massachusetts does not impose the death penalty. Morrissey said that if circumstances were to change in Alabama then prosecution could take place, but that is unlikely given that Bishop this month waived her appeal rights when admitting to killing three people at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2010. Bishop, 47, a Harvardtrained biologist, was rejected for tenure at UAH in 2009 and was reportedly angry and distraught over the decision. During a faculty meeting on Feb. 12, 2010, she stood up suddenly and, without saying a word, began firing a 9 mm pistol at her colleagues. Gopi Podila, Stephanie Monticciolo, Adriel Johnson, Maria Davis, Luis Cruz-Vera and Joseph Leahy were each shot. Podila, Johnson and Davis died. The other three were wounded, two seriously. Bishop on Monday also received three consecutive life sentences for the attempted-murder charges. After she was arrested for the UAH shooting, Massachusetts authorities opened an investigation into her brother’s death. The death of 18-year-old Seth Bishop in the family’s Braintree, Mass., home on Dec. 6, 1986, had been ruled an accident, and Bishop was never charged with a crime. After the UAH shooting, Madison County District Attorney Rob Broussard and See BISHOP on A8 Era ends at Times; big shift in focus Giant pieces of Huntsville history New media group launched as many longtime employees leave By Lee Roop lee.roop@htimes.com Friday was the last day of work for many Huntsville Times employees, and Monday is the first day for a new Alabama media company that includes both familiar and new faces in Huntsville and across the state. Alabama Media Group launches its new products and services Monday and immediately becomes the state’s largest media organization. It was created to provide news and information in the ways consumers increasingly seek it today: personal computers, tablets and smartphones, as well as newspapers. The new company’s staff will post on al.com up-to-the-minute breaking news, sports, features and helpful information about events and activities, and it will publish three editions each week of The Huntsville Times, The Birmingham News and The Mobile Press-Register. There will be no newspaper on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, but a heftier Times – with expanded news, features and sports sections, more daily comics and your favorite puzzles from each prior day – will still appear in driveways and news racks on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Every day, journalists will This photo shows the Madison County Courthouse that was replaced in the mid 1960s by the present-day courthouse. (File Photo/Courtesy Huntsville Public Library) LINKS TO OUR PAST Old courthouse columns give new appearance to garden By Paul Huggins paul.huggins@htimes.com Ed Voelker might have traded decades of military and engineering experience for a chance to talk to anyone who helped erect three limestone columns at their original site before they were moved to Huntsvile Botanical Garden in 1991. Voelker is the volunteer construction leader for the park’s current effort to move and erect five columns that once graced the third Madison County Courthouse. The columns stood downtown for 102 years, until their removal in 1964. The park features several other columns in addition to the three at the entrance, but each of them features only three of the four original pillar sections.This will be the first time a column with all four sections and the cap, 23 tons in all, will stand fully erect in nearly 50 years. The assembly began Friday and will continue Monday. “It’s nerve-wracking,” Voelker said. “Nobody recently moved them before. So everyone one of us involved is scratching our heads a little bit and going overboard a little bit to be careful with them.” These columns can’t be replaced, added Harvey Cotten, botanical garden vice president See ERA on A8 and chief horticulturist. The historic aspect of the columns makes them invaluable, of course, but they also fit perfectly with the garden’s mission to mix Southern heritage with the city’s high-tech growth, he said. The garden has approached the column move with slow caution. Voelker said the moving and set-up process has involved some trial and error and general knowledge of limestone strength characteristics. For ages, large masonry sections have been moved by drilling a hole in the top and inserting a lewis, a clamp with reverse levers that holds a tighter grip as weight increases. Garden officials feared the old limestone might have deteriorated to a point where using the lewis wouldn’t hold or would damage it. The first alternative used nylon straps. It worked fine, Voelker said, but an examination of the straps after unloading four sections revealed the limestone’s sharp edges had frayed the straps. Fearing the straps could break, they tried another method. Now they are drilling holes in the column tops, inserting eye bolts and securing them with $1.00 newsstand Huntsville, Alabama Vol. 103, No. 189, 28 pages Contents © 2012, The Huntsville Times SPORTS /// D1 Friday night lights The Bob Jones Patriots come back strong after last week’s upset loss to Hazel Green with a big victory over the Huntsville Panthers. SPORTS /// D1 Saturday night lights The No. 1 Alabama Crimson Tide entertains the Ole Miss Rebels at 8:15 p.m. on ESPN. Alabama A&M hosts Grambling in the Louis Crews Classic with kickoff at 6 p.m. at Louis Crews Stadium. Workers arrange the columns from the old Madison County See PAST on A8 Courthouse at the entrance to the Huntsville/Madison County Botanical Gardens on Friday. (The Huntsville Times/Eric Schultz) Harvey Cotten: C1 Another mystery solved. Classifieds D7 Comics C3 Crossword C2, D8 Deaths A5 Editorials Lotteries Movies Television A7 A2 C4 D12 77 59 High Low Forecast: Some clouds, some rain. Full report, D12