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Wednesday, June 05, 2002

By Ernie Hoffman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

A 14-year-old Hempfield youth told acquaintances he had killed his older brother and planned to kill his parents because they would not allow him to see a girl they considered a bad influence.

	Ian Bishop is taken to his hearing yesterday. (V.W.H. Campbell Jr., Post-Gazette)

Evidence presented at a preliminary hearing yesterday indicated Ian A. Bishop also was angry with his family after being disciplined for smoking in school. His parents were apparently supported by their older son, Adam, according to witnesses.

And Ian particularly disliked Adam Bishop because he believed his older brother was homosexual, Westmoreland County District Attorney John W. Peck said.

It was the first time any motive had been offered for the fatal bludgeoning April 19 of 18-year-old Adam Bishop.

Ian Bishop and a friend, 15-year-old Robert M. Laskowski, also of Hempfield, whom prosecutors say helped to kill Adam Bishop, were arrested separately in the next several hours.

Both were ordered held for trial on first-degree murder and other charges by District Justice James Falcon at the end of yesterday's lengthy hearing.

During the hearing, three people testified that they had met Ian Bishop in Westmoreland Mall the evening of the killing.

They said the youth told them that he had killed his brother, but they thought he was joking.

"He said he had hit his brother with a hammer and used a billy club," Jesse R. Brown, 19, of Hempfield, testified. "He said that he should have got his parents."

Ian Bishop said he then struck his brother's face against a bathtub and pushed it into the water, Brown said.

Brown said he drove Ian Bishop several places until he found out through a friend that Adam Bishop was indeed dead. Then he dropped off the younger boy at Wendover Middle School where Bishop was later arrested by state police.

He said Ian Bishop also told him that while he beat his brother with the hammer, Laskowski stood by with a club but did not strike the victim, so Bishop took it from him and used it on his brother.

Heather M. Exton, 15, of Hempfield, testified that Ian Bishop told her that when his brother tried to rise from the floor he struck him with a club and broke his arm, then put him in a bathtub.

"He said his brother was a faggot," she said. "He said he wanted to kill his parents, too."

Rebecca A. Ballew, 15, of Youngwood, said Ian Bishop talked about killing his parents in February, some weeks before the killing, because they would not allow him to see his girlfriend.

Adam Bishop was supposed to be only the first victim, according to state Trooper Kirk Nolan, who said that Laskowski told him that the Bishops' parents, Jeffrey and Karen, were next on the list.

Laskowski told police he and Ian Bishop had discussed the killings three days earlier and that instead of taking his regular school bus he took the one the Bishop boys rode that afternoon, got off near their house and went to help kill Adam Bishop, Nolan said.

Adam Bishop was supposed to be dead by 4:15 p.m., Nolan said Laskowski told him, because that was the time Karen Bishop would arrive home from work.

Thomas R. Ceraso, one of Ian Bishop's attorneys, conceded that his client had killed his brother, but he argued that Peck had failed to produce evidence of specific intent to kill and the first-degree murder charge should be thrown out.

"The best the commonwealth has shown is that our client struck his brother ... and we do not deny that," Ceraso said.

Lee R. Demosky, Laskowski's attorney, also asked for that charge to be dropped. He said all his client did was help to put the victim in a bathtub.

But Peck told Falcon a minimum of 18 separate hammer blows to the head "is overwhelming evidence of intent to kill," and he said Laskowski provided the moral support for the killing.