Warrant: Safe may hold clues to Durham man's death

Bill Bishop, 59, a prominent developer in the Tampa area was found unconscious in his Dover Road home, near Durham's Hope Valley Country Club, on April 18. He died in a local hospital two days later.

According to an application for a warrant to access a Liberty Safe found in a locked storage room next to the indoor theater where Bishop's teenage son found him, Bishop's girlfriend, Julie Seel, told investigators there was at least $50,000 in gold, $75,000 in jewelry and cash in the safe. She described Bishop as "a survivalist" who always kept a stash of gold on hand and said his ex-wife and his son would know about it.

Police also found paperwork in Bishop's home office that included a purchase order for 20 10-ounce gold bars and five 32-ounce gold bars for a total cost of $462,773, according to the warrant application.

Bishop's ex-wife, Sharon Bishop, told police she didn't know the combination to the safe, prompting the need for the search warrant to have a locksmith drill into the safe to get it open.

In the warrant application, however, Seel told police that she and Sharon Bishop swapped text messages the day before Bill Bishop died about checking the safe for documents. It's unclear whether it was the same safe investigators wanted to open up, but Seel said Sharon Bishop told her she checked the safe and found no documents.

Although no charges have been filed in the case, police have focused their investigation on Bill Bishop's 16-year-old son, a student at the private Durham Academy.

According to previously released search warrants, the son said he found his father unconscious in the theater room with a dog leash wrapped around his neck and the dog still on the leash. But details of his story kept changing, and he told first responders that his father emotionally abused him and that he wouldn't be upset if his father died.

An application for a warrant to examine a laptop Durham Academy had assigned to the teen 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.

Michael Ulku-Steiner, Durham Academy's head of school, said in an email Tuesday that the school allowed police to search the teen's locker and his electronic records on May 30, but he declined further comment.

The teen has declined to talk with police, according to the latest search warrant.