The Shade Gap Kidnapping
The Story Behind the Bicycle
On May 11, 1966, in the late afternoon, Peggy Ann Bradnick, 17, was abducted after she and her siblings walked off the bus near their home. Her abductor, William Hollenbaugh, carried a shotgun and wore a green coat, a cap, goggles, and a homemade device in his mouth to disguise his identity. He took her into the woods but backtracked so that search parties would look in the opposite direction of his true whereabouts. Peggy Ann’s father, Gene, did try to look for her on his own, armed with a shotgun. Peggy recalls hearing her father call out her name. However, she was unable to answer as Hollenbaugh held her at gunpoint.
He told her he had been watching her for several months. He also made her wear different clothes than what she had been abducted in to change her appearance. He told her she would be his forever. She recalled him saying:
“Nobody in this world ever cared for me.”
He kept her in a mountain cave he used to store other supplies he kept separate from his cabin on Fogal’s Hill, Shade Gap. A few days into the kidnapping he realized he needed to check on his dogs that he kept at his cabin, this is when he would chain her to a tree near the cabin while he would feed his dogs without her escaping. One of these dogs had wandered off and attracted the attention of the police, recognizing it as one of Hollenbaugh's, a small party including "Special Agent Anderson, Trooper George E. Plafcan, Hollidaysburg Troop, Huntington Station, Tom “Mac” McGinn, a professional dog handler, and another a civilian handler named Jack Straub, had their dogs follow the scent of Hollenbaugh’s dog. This small detail of men had purposely left other law enforcement behind."
When they arrived at the cabin, the barking of another dog alerted Hollenbaugh to the men. On May 17, 1966, Hollenbaugh shot and killed FBI agent Anderson and Wied, one of the German Shepherd search dogs. He escaped with Peggy Ann in tow.
Peggy Ann and Hollenbaugh made it to an area cabin where they hid in the bathroom. On the morning of May 18, 1966, "Cambria County Deputy Sheriff Francis Sharpe entered that bathroom and was wounded by Hollenbaugh, who was hiding behind the shower curtain. Hollenbaugh forced the injured deputy sheriff to drive a car, while he and Peggy Ann sat in the rear seat. They didn’t get very far, because a closed gate blocked the car’s path. Sharpe apparently got out to open the gate and then yelled for aid. Hollenbaugh attempted to escape by running from the car to a local farm, at Burnt Cabins, owned by Luther Rubeck." He was pursued by the police.
“[Hollenbaugh] was moving in a boxer’s shuffle. He didn’t say a word. That man was the coolest person I ever saw. I felt it was like my last shot."
-Corporal Grant H. Mixell
On May 18, 1966, Hollenbaugh was shot by Corporal Mixell in the shoulder, the bullet then entered his neck. William Hollenbaugh died from the injury. Peggy Ann survived the ordeal.
Hollenbaugh was buried next to his parents in an unmarked grave.
William Diller Hollenbaugh was born on July 24, 1921. At age 16, he began to serve five years in prison for three counts of burglary and was then placed on probation. In 1945, he was sent to the Fairview Hospital, Wayne County, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was paroled from the hospital in 1959 and he returned to Huntington County.
Hollenbaugh became known by the nicknames: "Bicycle Pete," “Bicycle Bill,” and “Mountain Man.”
Rethinking Villainy
“I’ve always forgiven him for what he did. Mental illness is a terrible, terrible disease and it does encompass you as a human being. You can’t fault people for things that they have no control of. You can’t get to heaven, where I want to go someday, with hatred.
I’ve never considered myself a victim of anything. I consider myself a survivor.”
-Peggy Ann Bradnick Jackson
In stories, the tendency to paint the villain as mentally disturbed and violent is an easy trope to fall back on. As a society, we stigmatize what we do not know. We seek to understand and reject what we cannot.
William Hollenbaugh committed acts of violence, threatened an innocent girl, and murdered a man. It is not confirmed that his diagnosed schizophrenia is the cause of what he did, but his paranoia led him to a breaking point. We also cannot separate him completely from what was a part of him.
"Although there seems to be improvement in the public’s general understanding of the various issues related to mental illness, their attitudes remain unfavorable—and have possibly worsened" (Beachum, 2). The association of mental illness and violence is still strong even as the understanding of mental illness grows.
This is not to forgive William Hollenbaugh completely of his crimes, but Peggy Ann's words 50 years after the ordeal shed a light into forgiveness. If the survivor can forgive, what other doors can be opened?