HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – The gun used to kill three people during a faculty meeting at an Alabama school was bought for the suspect’s husband two decades ago when he said he was having problems with a neighbor, an investigator testified Tuesday.

The investigator told a judge that an acquaintance bought the gun in New Hampshire for Amy Bishop’s husband to skirt a waiting period where the couple lived in Massachusetts.

Additional Photos

Amy Bishop made her first appearance Tuesday in Huntsville, Ala., with her attorney, Roy Miller. Bishop is charged with killing three fellow University of Alabama at Huntsville biology faculty members on Feb. 12. The Associated Press

Huntsville police investigator Charlie Gray also testified that Bishop denied to officers that she had anything to do with the rampage at a biology department faculty meeting Feb. 12, which also wounded three others.

Bishop, making her first court appearance, was denied bond during a brief hearing. The capital murder case against her was sent to a grand jury, which is not expected to hear it for several months.

Looking gaunt and wearing a red jail jump suit, the handcuffed Bishop made no comment.

The 45-year-old Harvard-educated biologist was arrested shortly after the shooting. The gun was found in a bathroom trash can a floor below the faculty conference room, with Bishop’s bloodied red-and-black plaid coat on top of it, according to testimony.

During the hearing, Gray testified that the gun used in the shooting was purchased in 1989 for Bishop’s husband, James Anderson, by a man in New Hampshire identified as Donald Proulx. He said Proulx told federal agents that he believed he purchased it in Troy, N.H.

Gray said Proulx told federal agents Anderson, who was living in Massachusetts, asked him to buy the gun because Anderson was having problems with a neighbor and New Hampshire didn’t have a waiting period for gun purchases.

Anderson was not in the courtroom for the hearing. He previously told The Associated Press that he knew about the gun and joined Bishop in target practice, but didn’t know where his wife got the firearm.

Anderson declined to comment when reached at the family’s home Tuesday afternoon.

A message left on what was believed to be Proulx’s Facebook account wasn’t returned.

Proulx’s father, Donald Proulx Sr., said his son lives in Florida but he doesn’t know where or how to reach him. He told the AP on Tuesday that he met Bishop’s husband “a couple of times, that’s it. I have no relationship with him.”

Gray testified that Bishop, during a taped interview that lasted more than two hours, was not agitated but “seemed calm, she seemed very intelligent” as she denied anything to do with the shooting.

“She said it was no way she was there, no way it happened. ‘I wasn’t there.’ That kept being a recurring thing throughout the interview,” Gray said.

Bishop’s attorney has said that she doesn’t remember the shootings, and she herself said the shootings “didn’t happen” in her only public comments since the killings.

“What about the people who died?” a reporter asked as she was led to a police car hours after the killings.

“There’s no way. They’re still alive,” she responded.

Bishop, wearing white socks and flip-flops with a thick chain around both ankles, appeared to be paying attention to the proceedings Tuesday but was mostly expressionless. She at times fidgeted with her hands and tapped her leg. Sometimes she whispered answers to questions from her attorney, Roy Miller.

Bishop is charged with capital murder, which can bring the death penalty if she’s convicted, although prosecutors have not made a decision on whether they will seek a death penalty.

Miller has said he will argue that Bishop was insane.

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