Convicted murderer Alfred J. "Freddie" Bishop is the second-longest serving inmate in the ACI's history and a criminal legend in Rhode Island.

Bishop is expected to be charged this afternoon with the murder of a Warwick man. The police say Bishop fatally shot Gabriel Medeiros, 35, and shot two of the man's relatives -- his brother and the brother's wife -- during a June 28 burglary of the couple's home, 43 Warwick Lake Ave.

The murdered man's brother, Caesar Medeiros, and Caesar’s wife, Claire Medeiros, were treated at a hospital and released.

The shootings last month in the Hoxsie neighborhood residence occurred just after midnight when Caesar Medeiros awoke to the sound of his dog barking and noises coming from the front of the couple’s ranch-style house.

When he got up to investigate, the police say, he was confronted outside his bedroom door by a masked man who carried a nickel-plated handgun and may have walked in through an unlocked front door.

Gabriel Medeiros was shot in the chest and likely died instantly, the police say. Caesar was then shot in the arm and the upper torso and Claire in the thigh. It is believed the assailant suffered head injuries, although the police have declined to say how he was wounded.

Before the patrolmen arrived, the suspect ran out the back door of the house and disappeared in the normally quiet neighborhood behind the Warwick school administration building and St. Timothy Church off Warwick Avenue.

The police initially described the assailant as clean shaven and between 5’8” and 5’10” with red hair sprinkled with salt and pepper. They later said that description of his hair color may have been inaccurate.

“There’s a good possibility that the red hair may be more blood from the wound on his head than from the color of his hair,” Deputy Police Chief Mark Titus said.

Now, Warwick Police Chief Col. Stephen McCartney has declined to say what led detectives to identify Bishop as a suspect in the murder.

Bishop had been released on parole from the state prison last August, after serving 33 years behind bars for the shotgun murder of his friend.

When Bishop walked out of the Adult Correctional Institution’s maximum security unit last Aug. 16, law-enforcement officers shared the message: Freddie Bishop is getting out.

Three investigators for the state Department of Corrections and at least one state police detective observed Bishop while he was being processed for release that day. He had to check in to the prison’s home confinement office because he was to be tethered electronically for the next six months.

Only one other inmate -- James Silvia -- served more time at the ACI than Bishop, who commanded enough institutional power during the tumultuous era of the 1970s to keep a pet goat he named after the warden.

The state Parole Board had voted the year before Bishop’s release from the ACI for prison officials to move him to a less-secure facility at the ACI to give him time to begin preparing for the outside world.

But Corrections Director A.T. Wall, who has the final say over where the system's most dangerous criminals serve their time, rejected his department's classification board's recommendation to move Bishop from medium security to minimum security. Wall told the Parole Board in 2005 that Bishop "has a history of domination and manipulation of inmates, and even of compromising and manipulation of some staff."

Considering Bishop’s history and reputation, Wall said he was not willing to place Bishop in a nonsecure institution such as minimum security, where inmates often come and go from outside jobs.

After that, Bishop was disciplined at least two times for making threats to staff, Wall said, and months before his August release was transferred back to maximum security, where inmate movements are more limited.

Bishop had been serving a life sentence for the December 1973 murder of his friend, James Dunn, who was shotgunned through the living room window of his girlfriend's Warwick home.

As medics treated the bleeding hole in his back, Dunn whispered: "Bishop shot me."

Hours after Dunn died, the police found Bishop sitting in a car, glass particles from the shattered window still on his clothes. Soon thereafter, corrections officers escorted Bishop behind the granite walls of the maximum-security prison. He was 31.

In the 1970s, an era marked by prison violence and turmoil, Bishop was known to control the south wing of maximum security. The era ended for Bishop and 14 other "heavies" one night in 1978 when a new corrections director, John J. Moran, had them all shackled and transferred out of state.

Bishop spent the next several years in prisons between Lewisburg, Pa., and Maine, earning the nickname "Hit Man." In 1984, New Hampshire prison officials sent him back to Pennsylvania after he became a prime suspect in New Hampshire in the murder of an inmate.

In 1993, the Parole Board voted to release Bishop, setting off a hue and cry among politicians and law enforcement officials who argued Bishop remained a dangerous criminal and should remain locked up.

During an extraordinary Parole Board hearing opened to the media, state police detectives told board members that Bishop had been heard on wiretap tapes with his old friend and convicted felon Robert Papa, planning a robbery of a Warwick bookmaker.

They also pointed out that Bishop continued having visits from people like Albert Ursillo, whom police at the time had charged with murder.

The outcry had its intended effect. The Parole Board reversed its decision to free Bishop.

But in 2005, the Parole Board said it had heard no opposition to Bishop's release. Bishop's then-lawyer, John F. Cicilline, said Bishop had mellowed over the years and just wanted to lead a quiet life.

After his release from the ACI last August, Bishop was to live with his sister in Cranston. A skilled carpenter, he told the Parole Board he was going to work for an East Providence yacht maker.

-- With Journal archival reports