In 1976, after getting upset for not getting a work promotion, Bishop bought a sledgehammer and a shovel and murdered his wife and three children as they slept at their home in Bethesda, Maryland. With the bodies loaded into the station wagon, Bishop allegedly drove , about a six-hour drive, to a densely wooded swamp off North Carolina Highway 94, about south of Columbia, North Carolina. He would later burn the bodies and bury them in near the swamp.