HUNTSVILLE, AL - Dateline NBC will broadcast a two-hour special on former University of Alabama in Huntsville Assistant Biology Professor Amy Bishop and on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico beginning at 8 p.m. tomorrow.

Dateline co-host and correspondent Chris Hansen will explore the story of Bishop, 45, who is charged in capital murder and attempted murder in the Feb. 12 deaths of three UAH biology faculty members and the shooting of three more.

Ann Curry will report on the oil spill in the first hour of the program. The second hour of the segment will look at Bishop's life, including the 1986 shooting death of her brother, Seth, at the family home in Braintree, Mass. Bishop admitted shooting her 18-year-old brother in what was ruled an accident at the time.

Bishop and her husband, Jim Anderson, were also questioned but not charged in an attempted mail bombing of Bishop's former boss at Harvard University, Dr. Paul Rosenberg, in 1993.

Hansen will question what would have happened had UAH officials known more about Bishop's "troubling past," said Sarah Karlson, a producer on the Dateline program.

The segment will explain the shooting in the biology department conference room as well as report on the April inquest into Seth Bishop's death. Some of the people who testified at the inquest as well as some of Bishop's friends and former neighbors in Massachusetts are also interviewed, Karlson said.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to indicate that the show will be at 8 p.m. Friday.

