Forgiving Her Sister’s Murderer, Face to Face
Attorney Jeanne Bishop has helped thousands of clients make amends for their crimes. Now she’s helping the man who killed her sister make amends for his.
On April 7, 1990, David Biro broke into the affluent suburban Chicago home of Nancy and Richard Langert armed with a glass cutter and a revolver. When the Langerts returned home that night, Biro, then 16, was waiting. He rejected the couple’s attempts to negotiate, which likely included money; police discovered $500 in cash abandoned at the scene. Biro shot Richard in the head and Nancy, who was pregnant, three times. He left her bleeding in the couple’s basement.
“It was Palm Sunday,” remembers Jeanne Bishop, Nancy’s sister. Bishop was at choir rehearsal at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. “The secretary came and said, ‘You have a phone call.’
“I said, ‘Can you take a message?’
“She said, ‘No, you need to come with me.’ ”
Bishop immediately thought of her elderly father. But it was his voice she heard over the phone: “Nancy and Richard have been killed.”
An image of a truck crushing the couple’s compact car on the expressway flashed through Bishop’s mind.
“What do you mean, killed?” she said.
“Somebody killed them.”
A week later, Bishop learned the details of her younger sister’s last moments. Nancy had remained alive for roughly 10 minutes after Biro shot her in the elbow, back, and abdomen. Before she died, she crawled over to her husband’s body and used her own blood to draw a heart and the letter U.
No Division
Six months after the murders, the police arrested Biro. An honors student at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, Biro had once been admitted to a psychiatric hospital for trying to poison his family. He had bragged to his …
Public Servant
How the murder of her sister spurred Jeanne Bishop to grapple not only with Christian forgiveness but also with her vocation.
Nancy Langert’s murder spurred Jeanne Bishop to grapple not only with Christian forgiveness but also with her vocation…
On Their Side: A Public Defender’s Work to Humanize Her Clients
How the murder of her sister spurred Jeanne Bishop to grapple not only with Christian forgiveness but also with her vocation.
Nancy Langert’s murder spurred Jeanne Bishop to grapple not only with Christian forgiveness but also with her vocation…
On Their Side: A Public Defender’s Work to Humanize Her Clients
How the murder of her sister spurred Jeanne Bishop to grapple not only with Christian forgiveness but also with her vocation.
Nancy Langert’s murder spurred Jeanne Bishop to grapple not only with Christian forgiveness but also with her vocation…
Christian College President Quits After Attempted Layoff of Pro-Evolution Professor
(UPDATED) Biology faculty member says theology, less so evolution, played role in job elimination.
Update (May 14): Evolution was not the only issue that led to the attempted firing of Northwest Nazarene University (NNU) theology professor Tom Oord, says a biology professor at the Idaho Christian school.
Jennifer Chase said that no NNU administrators have criticized the biology or chemistry department regarding its perspectives on evolution.
“I think that it is too easy to find the simple (evolution) story that fits with others who have faced censure,” Chase wrote in an email to CT. “Even in those situations, I think there is a more important and subtle story: the expansion of orthodoxy far beyond creeds or even the official statements of denominations to be ‘everything that I believe is the exact right set of requirements for the title Christian.’”
A disagreement over doctrine was at the heart of Oord’s dismissal, said Chase. That included his views on open theology.
“Dr. Oord’s use of process theology, views on creatio ex nihilo, non-coercive love vs. holy love—a big deal in the Church of the Nazarene—seem to be the worst offenses,” she wrote.
These details are not addressed in the Church of the Nazarene’s Articles of Faith. That led Chase to argue that they should not have affected Oord’s employment.
“When brought out into the light of broader Christian traditions and views, they seem like minutia,” wrote Chase.
It is unclear whether Oord’s position on evolution as a theology professor played a role in his clashes with the school’s outgoing president. Oord was unavailable for comment.
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The embattled president of a Christian college in Idaho has resigned following a campus crisis caused …
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