Kidnapping of Peggy Ann Bradnick

On May 11, 1966, Peggy Ann Bradnick, then 17, was walking home from a school bus stop near Shade Gap, Pennsylvania, with her five siblings when William Diller Hollenbaugh, a local man known as "the Bicycle Man" and, due to a series of earlier shooting incidents attributed to him, "the Mountain Man," identified by police as her abductor, seized her and dragged her into the woods. Her brother Jim ran home to alert their father, Eugene Bradnick, who searched briefly before notifying police.

Hollenbaugh, who had a prior 1939 burglary conviction followed by roughly two decades in prison and an insane asylum, had reportedly told Peggy Ann he was responsible for several earlier violent incidents in the area, including the 1964 shooting at the home of Christine Devinney and the April 1965 shooting of Ned Price. During the abduction, Hollenbaugh moved Peggy Ann through a Pennsylvania Turnpike culvert, chained her to a tree while he searched for his dogs, and eventually took her to a dugout shelter he had built in the Tuscarora Mountains at a site known as Gobbler's Knob. On May 16, he forced her to accompany him during a house burglary, where he acquired a handgun.

The search escalated into what was described as the largest manhunt in United States history to that time, involving more than 1,000 federal, state, and local officers, National Guardsmen, and civilian volunteers. On May 17, FBI Special Agent Terry Ray Anderson spotted one of Hollenbaugh's dogs and was shot and killed by Hollenbaugh, who also shot two tracking dogs. Searchers briefly sighted Peggy Ann alive before she and Hollenbaugh disappeared again. That evening, Hollenbaugh took refuge with Peggy Ann in a wash house at a hunting lodge in Burnt Cabins. The next morning he shot and wounded Cambria County Deputy Sheriff Francis Sharpe and forced him to drive toward the Turnpike; the car was stopped at a closed cattle gate, where Hollenbaugh opened fire on officers before fleeing with Peggy Ann to a farm owned by Luther Rubeck.

At the Rubeck farm, law enforcement converged on the pair. Hollenbaugh exchanged gunfire with officers and was fatally shot. Initial reports credited 15-year-old Larry Rubeck with the fatal shot, but it was later determined that Pennsylvania State Trooper Grant H. Mixell had fired the shot that killed Hollenbaugh. Peggy Ann was taken to Fulton County Medical Center; she was found to have no serious injuries and had not been sexually assaulted, though she suffered blistered feet and dehydration. She was released on June 1, 1966.

The case received extensive national media coverage at the time, including reporting that won journalist Robert V. Cox a 1967 Pulitzer Prize. Bradnick later shared her account publicly, including in a 1966 Saturday Evening Post article and a 2017 autobiography, and participated in commemorative events, including a 2011 memorial marker for Agent Anderson.