Freeing Freddie Bishop

In 1993, The ProJo published a deep profile of convicted murder Freddie Bishop by Dan Barry and Tom Mooney: Inmates dressed in regulation drab shuffle through the prison compound. They wend their way toward the dining hall, forming chains of khaki.

But one link stands apart.

His prison coat is bleached bone-white.

"#1" is stamped on his back.

"See that guy in the white coat," a prison administrator says, peering from a tower that looms over the compound. "That's Freddie Bishop."

As if on cue, Bishop looks up, grins, and nods.

Bishop, 50, has spent half his life behind bars for continuous acts of violence. For the last 19 years, he has been serving a life sentence for emptying his shotgun into a man who considered him a friend.

He has been eligible for parole for almost a decade. But his fight for freedom has been blocked by a concerted, and unusual, effort on the part of prison officials and state police.

They say Bishop is an evil man who cannot be controlled, who virtually has run every prison he's been in, from Maine to New Hampshire to Rhode Island. They say he has threatened to kill a prison director. They say he keeps in touch with the underworld, and has no interest in rehabilitation.

They say for the sake of the community, Bishop should remain locked up.

But the Parole Board chairman says Bishop has been in prison long enough, almost as long as any other inmate in Rhode Island. He says Bishop has stayed out of trouble in recent years and has earned another chance.

It is time, he says, to free Freddie Bishop.

Bishop was eventually released. It took 10 months and 17 days for him to kill again.