Luke Skywalker
Super Moderator
{vb:raw ozzmodz_postquote}:
Bob Downs, a regular at Cutchall's, said the shootings were the worst thing to happen in the sleepy town since the infamous kidnapping of a 17-yer-old girl 50 years ago.(Photo: Markell DeLoatch, Public Opinion)
Fifty years after a crime spree in the tiny mountain community of Fort Littleton, Pa., people are<span style="color: Red;">*</span>still talking about it.
On<span style="color: Red;">*</span>May 11, 1966, William Diller<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Hollenbaugh, an<span style="color: Red;">*</span>itinerant<span style="color: Red;">*</span>farmhand known as "the Bicycle Man" because he rode his bike everywhere, kidnapped 17-year-old Peggy Ann<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Bradnick, grabbing her off the street as she walked home from school.
The kidnapping came after a reign of terror.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Hollenbaugh, who had previously spent 20 years in either prison or state asylums,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>was the suspect in a string of shootings and break-ins<span style="color: Red;">*</span>throughout the area,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>including one that resulted in a local farmer losing a leg.
Hollenbaugh<span style="color: Red;">*</span>held<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Bradnick<span style="color: Red;">*</span>hostage for a week, first chaining her to a tree and then<span style="color: Red;">*</span>dragging her through the mountains, eluding, what was at the time, the largest manhunt in U.S. history. It included<span style="color: Red;">*</span>more than 1,000 local and state police,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>FBI agents, National Guardsmen and volunteers<span style="color: Red;">*</span>scouring the mountains.
On May 17, they cornered<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Hollenbaugh. He fired on his pursuers,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>fatally wounding FBI agent Terry Anderson. He also killed one of the search dogs and wounded another.
Hollenbaugh<span style="color: Red;">*</span>was tracked to a nearby farm, where<span style="color: Red;">*</span>he was gunned down after an exchange of fire.
Bob Downs remembers it well. At the time, in addition to working construction, he owned a little motel not far from the turnpike interchange at Fort Littleton, and many of the FBI agents involved in the manhunt<span style="color: Red;">*</span>stayed there, including Anderson.
He volunteered to assist authorities, accompanying them on patrols, armed with his deer rifle.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>He went with a state trooper,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>screaming<span style="color: Red;">*</span>down the turnpike, to take the wounded search dog to the University of Pennsylvania veterinary hospital in<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Philadelphia, running lights and siren the entire way. The owners of the motel still have a picture of the dog on the wall in the lobby.
"That<span style="color: Red;">*</span>was the biggest thing to ever happen around here," Downs, 76, now retired, said as he sipped coffee at<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Cutchall's<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Gulf, right across state Route 522 from the Fort Littleton turnpike interchange.
That was,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>until Sunday morning.
They were still talking about it two days later at<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Cutchall's. It seems everybody in these parts stops by<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Cutchall's<span style="color: Red;">*</span>at one time or another during the day. It's one of the few businesses off the interchange.
As the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>sun rose Sunday morning, a bit before 7 a.m., a<span style="color: Red;">*</span>54-year-old retired state trooper from nearby Newville<span style="color: Red;">*</span>named Clarence Briggs,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>deep in debt<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and bankrupt, tried to rob the turnpike collections from that morning,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>appearing, heavily armed, at the interchange just as the private security guard collecting the receipts had arrived.
It went badly. Briggs<span style="color: Red;">*</span>shot and killed<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Danny Crouse, a 55-year-old turnpike toll collector who had been on the job for only three months, and the security guard,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Ronald Heist, a 71-year-old retired York City cop who worked collecting tolls for York's<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Schaad<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Detective Agency.
Briggs was later shot and killed after exchanging<span style="color: Red;">*</span>gunfire with state police as he was transferring the money from the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Schaad<span style="color: Red;">*</span>van to his car in the parking lot adjacent to<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Cutchall's.
Randy Miller, a regular at Cutchall's, said he arrived at the station moments after the shootings Sunday morning. 'I just wanted to get out of there,' he said.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Markell DeLoatch, Public Opinion)
Ronnie Hoffman drove<span style="color: Red;">*</span>right through it, arriving at<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Cutchall's<span style="color: Red;">*</span>for<span style="color: Red;">*</span>his<span style="color: Red;">*</span>morning coffee<span style="color: Red;">*</span>just after Briggs had been shot. He thought the police had just arrested the guy and had him on the ground. It was only later that he learned of the scope of the violence that occurred at the sleepy interchange. Had he arrived moments earlier, he would have been driving through a crossfire.
"I didn't know what was going on,"<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Hoffman, a 70-year-old retired farmer and construction worker. "If I'd known, I would have gotten<span style="color: Red;">*</span>outta<span style="color: Red;">*</span>there."
Randy Miller<span style="color: Red;">*</span>arrived at<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Cutchall's<span style="color: Red;">*</span>shortly after it happened. He walked out toward the gas pump to see what was happening and a state trooper yelled at him to get back inside.
"I just wanted to get out of there," he said.
Miller, Hoffman and his brother Willis, and an assortment of other locals meet just about every<span style="color: Red;">*</span>morning at<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Cutchall's<span style="color: Red;">*</span>to have coffee, gossip and "tell lies to each other," one of them said.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>They know everybody and greet them when they walk in, joking that they should be wearing blue vests like the greeters at Walmart.
They remember seeing Crouse stopping in the store now and then for coffee. He was new, and they didn't know him well. They weren't even sure of his name, only realizing that<span style="color: Red;">*</span>he was one of the two men Briggs<span style="color: Red;">*</span>killed after<span style="color: Red;">*</span>they saw his picture in the paper.him."
Fort Littleton isn't much more than the interchange. Back in the '60s, Willis Hoffman said, the place was jumping and home to plenty of industry.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Now, the largest employer in the area is JLG, which manufactures lift equipment<span style="color: Red;">*</span>for a variety of industries. Some residents hit the turnpike every morning for jobs elsewhere, some driving as far as Carlisle and Harrisburg for work.
And that made the violence so much more shocking, they said. These kinds of things, they all said, don't happen around here, in their little town nestled in the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Appalachians, about 20 miles west of Blue Mountain. When bad things happen, Shaw said, it's usually people from elsewhere, brought to Fort Littleton by the turnpike.
"It gets closer and closer all the time," Ronnie Hoffman said.
Follow @FnMikeArgento on Twitter.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed