Photo by Sam Yu Montgomery County Sheriff Raymond W. Kight has been looking for William Bradford Bishop Jr. since 1976. Bishop, who had a home in Bethesda, is wanted for the murder of his mother, wife, and three sons. Here, Sheriff Kight looks over materials from the case including an age-progressed photo of Bishop showing what he might have looked like in 2000.

The grisly case remains open.

Montgomery County Sheriff Ray Kight still has five warrants locked in his safe, charging William Bradford Bishop Jr. with the murders of his wife, three young sons, and his mother.

"There's no statute of limitations," Kight said. "I'm keeping them under lock until they're served, or Bishop's death is confirmed."

According to State Department documents, Kight said, "Bishop handled treaties for economic goods in different countries." He was assistant chief in the Division of Special Trade Activities and Commercial Treaties in the Office of International Trade.

"People who knew him assumed he was with the Central Intelligence Agency," Kight said in a recent interview.

"He had some help from the CIA. Someone helped him. I think he was with the CIA. They did a damage assessment and said he was harmless."

Kight's own requests for information about Bishop, filed under the Freedom of Information Act, twice brought replies that the CIA didn't know who Bishop was.

At one point, Kight said, "The CIA told me we would never find him."

But the sheriff isn't giving up. The gruesome scene remains clearly etched in the minds of many and leads continue to come in about sightings of Bishop.

The last big lead was from Basel, Switzerland; a woman who knew him from the tennis court back home said she had no question the man she saw getting on a train, laughing and hiding behind a newspaper in Basel was Bradford Bishop.

"She gave the details to the FBI," Kight said, "and she expected a response." But no response ever came. Another lead reported about seven months ago is still being studied.

"If we get a credible lead," the sheriff said, "we follow it."

There have been hundreds over the years.

U.S. Marshal Mark Shealey is sure Bishop will be found alive.

"None of us has given up," he said.

A veteran senior inspector with the U.S. Marshal Service, Shealey said, "I don't think this case will ever be forgotten by anyone. This is a case that's never going to go away. It's the mystery, the intrigue, the unknown."

A horrific memory

Shealey was a high school senior on March 1, 1976, the day the Bishop murders were committed. "I remember it," he said. "It's just something that stays with you."

It's a horrific memory. Blood was spattered throughout the house in Carderock Springs. Bishop's wife Annette, 37, was killed in the living room. Bishop then went from room to room with a sledgehammer. He murdered his three sons, William Bradford Bishop III, 14, Brenton, 10, and Geoffrey, 5, in their beds and bludgeoned his mother, Lobelia A. Bishop, 68, to death.

Police said Bishop put the bodies in his station wagon and drove to North Carolina, where he burned the remains and buried them in a shallow grave.

He took off with his golden retriever, Leo, and his passport.

Shealey doesn't think Bishop is in this country now, but he's sure he has been back to visit the graves and look at his old haunts. "The link is there for him to come back and show that he has control of it."

Birthdays and wedding anniversaries can trigger a trip to the States, Shealey said. "This guy is nuts, but he's not crazy. There has to be something that makes him come.

"He's got one hell of an ego," Shealey said. "He did what he did and it was very clear and calculated. His ego is not going to let him die. He's health conscious and has stayed active. He was into motorcycles, skiing and tennis."

Hundreds of reported sightings in Europe have turned sour, but Shealey said, "I think he can be found. It's just going to take a focused and consistent effort."

He said Bishop had a secretive side. "There's a rumor that he was in the CIA. He was an enlisted man in the Army and when he separated from the military in the early 60s, he gave a forwarding address in Italy. He was a missions officer for the foreign service."

Bishop is fluent in several languages, including Serbo-Croatian, Italian, French and Spanish. Officials believe he'd be comfortable living in any of those countries and could be working as an interpreter.

Age-progressive drawings are made periodically, Shealey said. Artists know that Bishop has sharp, prominent features and a very distinctive cleft in his chin.

Shealey and Kight have worked together over the years to arrest the elusive fugitive.

"We will find him," Shealey said. "When we do, we will sit on him and wait for Sheriff Kight to come and put the cuffs on him."