[John] William Bradford Bishop is wanted
by the FBI for killing his entire family and he was last seen in the Smoky Mountains 45 years ago. But there was at least one family member that got away, perhaps because Bishop didn't know she existed. 10News reporter Shannon Smith shares how a DNA test connected one woman to a murderer still on the run. [Shannon] Growing up in the northeast,
Kathy Gillcrist had amazing adoptive parents. She never really cared to know
who her real parents were. [Kathy] I just didn't feel that that it was something worth jeopardizing the relationship I had with my parents. Always this little feeling in the back of my mind that, "You know, maybe I find out
something I don't want to know." [Shannon] The newly retired drama and
English teacher had time to start digging so she took a DNA test through
23andMe and found three matches. [Kathy] Seriously, within hours, I had three distant cousins, and I immediately contacted all three of them. And one was Susan. [Shannon] Susan Gillmor is her third cousin, and lucky for Gillcrist, Gillmor lives for genealogy. [Susan] Started out with a tree of maybe
200 people when I first joined Ancestry, and I now have 20,000 on my tree. [Shannon] So she was more than up for the task
of finding her newfound relative's parents. First, she found Gillcrist's mother and several half-siblings. It took two years and one false match, but Gillmor was finally able to find Gillcrist's father. [Kathy] I said, "Is he somebody famous?" She said, "Um yeah, but I'm gonna
let you google him yourself" So I did and what came up was
his FBI most wanted poster. [Shannon] Her father is believed
to be William Bradford Bishop wanted by the FBI for murdering
his wife, mother, and three kids and dumping their bodies in the
remote North Carolina woods. [Darren] The anger that he showed when
he committed these murders is beyond even comprehension. [Shannon] He then abandoned his
car at the Elkmont Campground in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and has been wanted by police ever since. [Kathy] The weekend of the murders I was being crowned Miss Stoughton 1976. Here I am doing about the most wholesome thing a young lady can do, and he, my father, is murdering his family. [Shannon] Gillmor believes Gillcrist was
conceived while Bishop was in college, well before he started the family he later killed and that he never knew about her. [Susan] All the geographies were possible, where Brad was at the time Kathy was conceived was, and the mother was right there. It all made perfect sense. [Shannon] When she started looking at pictures, Gillcrist said there was no denying Bishop was her father. [Kathy] But that little mouth. He has a mole on one side; I have one on the other side. We have the same face. But then when I looked into his qualities, his, you know, his anxiety issues. I struggled with the same ones. We have a lot of the similar tendencies. [Shannon] She's made several trips down to the Smokies never knowing her father's path through those
same mountains for very different reasons. [Kathy] Yeah, I want to go back and retrace all of that. [Shannon] Gillcrist's DNA has not
been matched against Bishop's though she has contacted
police about the connection. [Susan] We can't be 100 percent sure
without a DNA test from somebody closer, but I am 99 percent sure we've got the right father. [Shannon] Bishop is still wanted by the FBI 45 years
after disappearing into the Smoky Mountains. If he's alive, he'd be 84 years old. [Kathy] Now as a young child, I was
always seeking fame and notoriety, and meanwhile, my father... my father achieved everything that
I wanted but in a negative way. [Shannon] Gillcrist thinks he's still out there, maybe living in the woods, maybe still in the Smokies. [John] Anyone who takes a DNA test can opt-in
to sharing their DNA with law enforcement. That type of information can help solve crimes
like murders or even missing person cases. If you want to learn more about your genetic heritage, we do have more information right now at WBIR.com.
