Delahunt Finally Resurfaces, Plans Press Conference Today

It's taken Massachusetts Democrat Willianm Delahunt 10 days to get his story together surrounding his decision to release Amy Bishop, I mean Dr. Amy Bishop, from custody following the shooting death of her brother in 1986. Since it was divulged Delahunt, then the Norfolk DA, made a call and Bishop walked free, he's used his trip to Israel as a convenient excuse to avoid comment on the explosive case.

Former district attorney and U.S. Rep. William Delahunt is vowing to today divulge the details of his role in the investigation of a Braintree native who killed her brother in 1986, the same woman who allegedly unleashed a deadly rampage in Alabama this month.

“I really want to get myself fully briefed,” Delahunt told the Herald yesterday, after returning from a trip to Israel, where he had been since the Alabama killings took place on Feb. 12.

Delahunt, who is considering not running for re-election, was the Norfolk district attorney when Amy Bishop shot her 18-year-old brother to death in 1986.

Bishop, 45, a Harvard-educated neurobiologist, faces capital murder charges for allegedly shooting to death three colleagues and maiming three others at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Delahunt said he and former assistant district attorney John Kivlan will hold a press conference at his Quincy congressional office this afternoon to answer questions.

“We’ll be there ... to spend whatever time is necessary to answer questions from the media,” Delahunt said.

Bishop was not interviewed by Delahunt’s state police squad until 11 days after her brother’s death.

After the shooting, Bishop had run from her parents’ Victorian house with the shotgun and held it to the chest of an auto body shop worker, demanding a getaway car, according to the worker and reports by Braintree police at the time. She then trained the weapon on cops who found her there.

She wasn't interviewed for 11 days after she killed her brother and pointed a shotgun at police?

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has announced an investigation into the 1986 slaying and mishandling of the case.

Law enforcement lapses in the 1986 case have touched off outrage from Boston to Alabama.

“There are just too many unanswered questions,” said Needham attorney Timothy Burke, a former prosecutor. “This is the very reason why cases of this magnitude require the utmost in scrutiny.”

Bridgewater State College criminal justice professor Dr. Mitch Librett, a retired New Rochelle, N.Y., detective, said the case smacks of a “cover-up.”

“I have never heard of such a thing where there’s been a death by firearm where you have the actor identified and there’s not so much as a grand jury,” he said.