Tennessee Guardsman found dead and bound with zip ties in 2019 was shot over custody dispute, authorities say

After an investigation that spanned nearly five years and included hundreds of possible suspects, authorities in Tennessee said they believe a custody dispute was behind the killing of a National Guardsman who was bound with zip ties and fatally shot in 2019.

Officials in Loudon County said Tuesday that Amanda Bishop, 39, and Eric Byrd, 39, were charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Jacob Bishop, a member of the Tennessee National Guard who had returned from a deployment to Poland in the months before he was fatally shot.

Amanda Bishop of Kingston and Byrd of Lenoire City were arrested Tuesday, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.

Their bonds were set at $1 million each, the sheriff’s office said in the release. Court records for the case were not available Thursday night and it isn’t clear if Byrd or Amanda Bishop, Jacob Bishop’s wife at the time of his killing, have lawyers to speak on their behalf.

Byrd is Amanda Bishop’s cousin, NBC affiliate WBIR-TV of Knoxville reported.

During a news conference Tuesday, Loudon County Sheriff Jimmy Davis alleged that a custody dispute involving the couple’s child was heated and prompted the animosity that eventually led to Bishop’s killing.

Additional details about the dispute were not immediately available. Jacob Bishop’s relatives did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday night. Contact information could not be found for relatives of Amanda Bishop.

Authorities found Jacob Bishop dead at his apartment in Lenoir City, southwest of Knoxville, shortly before 8 a.m. on the morning of Oct. 1, 2019. He was bound and had been shot multiple times, the sheriff’s office said.

The sheriff’s office said Jacob Bishop’s body was discovered by his mother, who told WBIR in 2021 that she’d gone to his home because he was late for work and believed he’d overslept.

“When you find your son dead on the floor in his apartment, that’s something that sticks in your brain,” Diane Bishop told the station. “It doesn’t go away.”

She said she didn’t want to make her son out to be a saint, but said he was a “very good man,” she told the station.

In its 2021 report, former Loudon County Sheriff Tim Guidner told WBIR that the case was “complex,” but it had not gone cold and was being investigated daily.

The sheriff’s office said in a news release Tuesday that more than a dozen law enforcement agencies were involved in the investigation, including the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and a sheriff’s office in Texas.

In the 2021 report, WBIR noted that the sheriff’s office initially identified roughly 400 possible suspects with ties to Jacob Bishop. Asked about that figure at the news conference Tuesday and whether Amanda Bishop had previously been considered a top suspect, Davis said she was “always right up there at the top of the list.”

Davis attributed the arrests to good detective work and new technology. After five years of heartache and worry over whether the case would be solved, Davis said it was a relief to finally tell Diane Bishop that two people were in custody over her son’s killing.