Alexander Bishop had his charges dismissed Thursday, a year after he was charged with the murder of his father, developer Bill Bishop. In a one-page court filing, the prosecutor said the case was dismissed due to insufficient evidence.

District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Sarah Willets told the INDY the office had no plans to make any further statements. 

“Alexander is grateful to finally be able to move on with his life after the tragic loss of his father and an unwarranted criminal prosecution,” Bishop’s attorney, Allyn Sharp, said in a statement.

Bishop, now 18, was 16 years old when his father died in 2018. He says that he found his father in the family theater room with a dog leash wrapped around his neck. Winston, the family dog, was still attached. Bill Bishop, a wealthy developer, died in the hospital three days later.

Two weeks before his death, Bishop, who was worth a reported $5.5 million, had finalized his divorce from Sharon Bishop. His girlfriend, Julie Seel, received temporary control of his estate. She told the police that she believed Alexander had killed his father. 

Alexander Bishop was charged with the crime in February 2019. (He has not been allowed to return to Durham Academy since.) In September, however, a Durham County Superior Court judge threw out significant amounts of key evidence in the case, later writing that police investigator Tony Huelsman had “invented facts” and made statements “in reckless disregard of the truth.”

Huelsman, the judge ruled, exaggerated claims when applying for search warrants, saying that over $462,000 in gold bars had been stolen by Alexander and his mother when they had been sold in 2016. The judge also accused Huelsman of making false statements about Alexander’s interaction with EMS and omitting his initial claim that he found his father in a chair.

In her statement, Sharp said the cause of death was likely cardiac-related: “Autopsy at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner revealed blockages up to 80% in William Bishop’s coronary arteries. William Bishop appears to have died after a tragic cardiac event during or after which the dog got his leash wrapped around William Bishop’s neck.”

Contact digital content coordinator Sara Pequeño at [email protected]. Correction: The worth of the gold in question was over $462,000, not $45,000 as originally reported.

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