Police probe the contradictory life of Tampa teen suicide pilot

By VICKIE CHACHERE and KEN THOMAS, Associated Press, Posted January 12 2002, 9:46 AM EST

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TAMPA -- Gawky and shy, Charles Bishop ambled through life the way a million other 15-year-old boys do -- a square peg, a kid with a bad complexion and big dreams.

So when he crashed a stolen Cessna into a skyscraper and left a handwritten note showing sympathy for Osama bin Laden, Bishop again seemed to fit a familiar profile: copycat teen grasping for attention.

But as investigators probed deeper into the boy's life, they began to see a jumble of contradictions.

Why would he target a skyscraper after telling friends that he abhorred the World Trade Center attacks and wanted to go to Afghanistan and ``get the SOBs''?

Why would an honor student who knew patriotic songs by heart and aspired to join the Air Force sympathize with bin Laden, the nation's No. 1 enemy?

Why would he tell his grandmother that if anything happened to him he didn't want his ``enemies'' coming to his funeral, a request similar to one made in the last will and testament of suicide pilot Mohamed Atta?

Bishop had warned a friend in an e-mail just hours before his Jan. 5 flight that he was ``going to be on the news.'' But few imagined anything like this. With the images of the crash still fresh, investigators are working on a ``psychological autopsy.''

But they acknowledge that they many never know what motivated Bishop, and that the answers may have vanished with him into the hole he left in the skyscraper's 28th floor.

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Always eager to fly, Bishop arrived 10 minutes early for his 5 p.m. flight lesson at National Aviation Academy at St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport on that Saturday.

``He seemed happiest when he was involved with anything related to aviation,'' relatives would write later in a ``family remembrance.''

His grandmother, Karen Johnson, dropped him off for what was to be his first night flight. Earlier that day, he had told her that if something happened to him, he didn't want his ``enemies'' coming to his funeral -- and not to tell his father, from whom he was estranged.

A dispatcher handed the boy the paperwork for that day's lesson -- ``touch-and-go'' landings -- and a key to the airplane, loaded with 40 gallons of fuel. Then Bishop was buzzed out to the ramp where the planes are parked.

He was supposed to wait for the flight instructor to finish another lesson. Before anyone noticed, however, the boy hopped in the plane and took off.

He easily could have crashed on the runway, flight school owner Robert Cooper said. The plane's brakes were not on, meaning it could have lurched forward when he started it or hit someone or another plane.

``By the time we realized it, he was rolling,'' Cooper said. ``You can't tackle an airplane.''

Flight school officials alerted the Clearwater control tower as the red-striped airplane buzzed over Tampa Bay, hooking eastward over the restricted airspace of U.S. Central Command headquarters, which directs the military's actions in Afghanistan.

The plane flew 1,000 feet over Southwest Flight 2229, which had just taken off from nearby Tampa International Airport with 114 passengers and five crew members aboard, causing the jet to make a shallower climb on its path to New Orleans.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command scrambled two F-15s from Homestead Air Reserve Base in South Florida as a precaution.

The pilot of an orange-and-white Coast Guard helicopter used hand signals to try to get Bishop to land, but the teen never responded. Cooper said the plane's radio was likely turned off.

Twelve minutes after he took off, Bishop's plane struck the 28th floor of the 42-story office tower, scattering office furniture and a black leather chair in a law office. Just an hour earlier, an attorney had been at his desk in the corner office.

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Friends and teachers say Charles Bishop was shy but friendly. An honors student who loved classical music and shunned rock and rap. A student councilman who had three mixed-breed dogs.

He had bounced from school to school in his home state of Massachusetts, Atlanta and the Tampa area. He rarely spoke of his father, Charles Bishara, whom investigators have so far been unable to locate. Shy when he arrived at Dunedin Academy for the eighth grade, Bishop quickly became popular in his class of 20.

Dressed in their red, white and blue uniforms, students gathered every morning to sing patriotic songs after a flag-raising ceremony. Bishop volunteered to hold the gold-fringed flag and would belt out ``The Battle Hymn of the Republic,'' ``America the Beautiful,'' and ``My Country 'Tis of Thee.''

``When we sang it you would hear his voice the loudest,'' said Danielle Parker, his computer science teacher.

Last year, Bishop helped publish a book of essays about Christmas, which he called ``my favorite holiday.''

``People who celebrate the holiday of Christmas should not be selfish. Rejoice! Be thankful!'' he wrote in his essay, titled ``True Christmas Spirit.'' ``Some people have nothing to be thankful for and are severely depressed.''

The boy's mother pre-registered him for high school last February but then changed her mind, headmaster Dale Porter said. In a May 14 letter, she said a ``sudden, critical illness in the family'' would prevent her son from attending his eighth grade graduation and continuing at the school.

``Thank you for providing Charles with a safe and happy school year,'' she wrote.

By August, Bishop was among more than 2,000 students at East Lake High School, where he was remembered for wearing sunglasses in class and silently gazing out the school bus window.

Following the attack on the World Trade Center, 15-year-old Emerson Favreau recalled that Bishop ``hated bin Laden.'' Cooper, at the flight school, said Bishop wanted to ``just go over there and get the SOBs.''

The flight school's operations manager, Doug Cunningham, said his pupil was angry that private planes were grounded after the attacks. In an e-mail, Bishop said student pilots should be required to wear identification badges to increase safety.

In the days before the Christmas holidays, Bishop's honors-level English class was reading ``Romeo and Juliet'' but Shakespeare's tale of teen suicide never seemed to bring out a response in him, said teacher Andrea Panarelli.

``We didn't get to Act V. Everyone was still alive when we left on the 21st'' of December, Panarelli said. Before his fateful flight lesson, Favreau said Bishop sent him an e-mail saying he was going to be on the news.

``When I heard a Cessna hit the building, what he said popped into my head. I knew that's what he flew,'' Favreau said. ``And when they said it was a 15-year-old East Lake High School student, I knew it had to be him. But I kept hoping.''

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Grim-faced investigators from state and federal agencies gathered at Tampa Police headquarters the day after the crash.

Tampa Police Chief Bennie Holder said the case will likely be ruled a deliberate crash caused by a suicidal teen.

Still, the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner's Office is conducting a ``psychological autopsy.''

James Sewell, regional director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, has asked his agents to find out ``what makes this kid tick.''

The theories of his death abound.

``I think he wrote the note to get publicity so people would know who he was when he died,'' classmate Favreau said. ``And they do.''

Investigators learned that Bishop had been prescribed Accutane, a powerful acne medication which has been under federal investigation for its links to suicide and depression.

Detectives also took note of his parents' own brush with suicide, though a family lawyer said the boy knew nothing of it. In 1984, his mother and father joined in a suicide pact when they were denied a marriage license because of insufficient documentation.

The pact ended when Bishop's mother, then 17 and known as Julia Detore, was arrested for stabbing Charles Bishara, 19, with a 12-inch butcher knife. Charges were dropped when Bishara refused to cooperate with prosecutors.

The couple married after their son was born in 1986 but divorced when he was a baby. Julia Bishara later changed her name and her son's to Bishop.

``It was a very depressing time for her,'' said family attorney Pamela Campbell on Friday. ``Through that tragedy hope was born.''

The lawyer said Bishop's distraught mother still has no insight into the crash and remains unsure whether it was a suicide or an accident. ``At this point in time, she really doesn't know what to believe,'' Campbell said.

If investigators ever determine what prompted Charles Bishop's dramatic act, the next step is to find ways to prevent it from happening again. Some investigators -- including the National Transportation Safety Board's lead investigator Butch Wilson -- doubt that's even possible.

``You can't protect people from someone who is bound and determined to do themselves in,'' he said

Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2002

Answers

Posted at 7:19 a.m. EST Saturday, January 12, 2002

PILOT: Charles Bishop was described as a patriot.

Family was to celebrate teen's flight

Mother saw no signs of suicide

BY PHIL LONG plong@herald.com

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ST. PETERSBURG -- The evening 15-year-old Charles Bishop crashed a stolen plane into a downtown Tampa skyscraper, he was to have attended a festive dinner with his mother and grandmother.

The celebration: completion of his first night flight as a student pilot.

Instead, Bishop stole a single-engine plane from his flight school on Jan. 5, flew over MacDill Air Force Base and ignored a Coast Guard helicopter crew's orders to land. He was killed when he crashed the plane into the 28th floor of the Bank of America Plaza.

The celebration-turned-tragedy was one of several details that St. Petersburg attorney and family spokeswoman Pamela Campbell shared as she met dozens of reporters drawn by the worldwide attention focused on Charles Bishop.

In Bishop's pocket, police say, was a suicide note praising Osama bin Laden and the 19 hijackers responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Campbell said that Charles' mother, Julia Bishop, has not seen the suicide note, nor have the police read it to her. And the family is having a hard time believing he was suicidal, Campbell said.

A private funeral is scheduled for this weekend.

Campbell said the family has received more than 400 calls from the media for interviews. But more important, she said, have been dozens of calls of sympathy from people who have lost children to suicide, homicide or accidents.

Campbell said Charles' family bristles at the description of him as a ``loner.''

``He just started at this school,'' Campbell said. ``He didn't have a lot of friends yet.''

The lawyer described him as a patriot and a member of Young Republicans.

Among the new details Campbell described from a written family reminiscence: Bishop earned first chair alto sax at Benito Middle School.

Because of his interest in languages, he was one of 18 East Lake High School students selected to participate in a German-language competition in Daytona Beach this year. And he had been selected as a student ambassador in a program that was to take him to Australia in the summer.

``He cared about the world his generation was inheriting and took special interest in environmental impact issues, animal rights and endangered species laws, and the new world of national politics which impacts all of these issues,'' the statement said.

``While he read all of Tom Clancy's books, he also loved classical music, the art of the stock market as well as the many friends he made at East Lake High School and elsewhere.''

Campbell said Julia Bishop ``didn't see any signs. She had no inkling this was coming. . . . There were positive, neat things coming about for this child. So suicide wasn't anything they would have even imagined.''

Campbell refused to discuss Charles' use of Accutane, an acne medicine that has been linked to depression in a very small number of teenage users.

She declined to answer any questions about his health.

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2002