Warrants: Police believe Durham man may have been murdered

Friends and family members of a Durham man believed he died after suffering a heart attack last month, but new search warrants reveal that police believe he may have been murdered.

Authorities found Bill Bishop, 59, in his Hope Valley home at about 6 p.m. on April 18. Bishop’s teen son called 911 and said that he found his father unconscious.

A search warrant for the home on May 2 shows that as soon as first responders got to the scene, they noticed red flags.

A Durham police detective requested the search and asked to take items from the home because he believed it could be a murder scene.

According to the warrant, the teenage son said he found his dad with a dog leash around his neck and the dog still on the leash. But when first responders arrived, they say the leash was not on Bishop. The son told them he removed it to check on his dad.

The warrant states the son kept changing his story and that he even pulled an EMS supervisor aside, to tell him he wouldn't be upset if his dad died.

The son told first responders his dad emotionally abused him his whole life.

An application for a separate warrant to examine a laptop Durham Academy had assigned to Bishop's son notes that investigators had found suspicious information on the son's cellphone, such as searches for calculating the value of an estate, transferring bank accounts after a death and the prices of gold.

Bishop's ex-wife and his girlfriend, Julie Seel, agreed to talk to police, but they later changed their minds, according to one warrant application.

On Wednesday evening, Seel issued a statement describing Bishop as a "brilliant man."

"Bill was brilliant, generous, kind, and an inspiration – which was why he was my best friend, partner, and future, and why I wanted him in my daughter’s life. I dearly miss and love him. I feel honored and blessed to have shared his life over this past year and to have been with him through his final breath," Seel said in the statement.

An obituary for Bishop was posted in the Tampa Bay Times detailing his professional accomplishments as a developer, and saying he died from a heart attack. In a preliminary report released one day after the obituary, the medical examiner ruled he died by strangulation.

Durham Police are now calling this a death investigation.