NEWS

Small town still shaken by 50-year-old crime

Mike Argento
margento@ydr.com
Bob Downs, another 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.

It's been 50 years and the people in the tiny mountain community of Fort Littleton still talk about it.

On May 11, 1966, William Diller Hollenbaugh, an itinerant farmhand known as "the Bicycle Man" because he rode his bike everywhere, kidnapped 17-year-old Peggy Ann Bradnick, grabbing her off the street as she walked home from school.

The kidnapping came after a reign of terror. Hollenbaugh, who had previously spent 20 years in either prison or state asylums, was the suspect in a string of shootings and break-ins throughout the area, including one that resulted in a local farmer losing a leg.

Hollenbaugh held Bradnick hostage for a week, first chaining her to a tree and then dragging her through the mountains, eluding, what was at the time, the largest manhunt in U.S. history. It included more than 1,000 local and state police, FBI agents, National Guardsmen and volunteers scouring the mountains.

On May 17, they cornered Hollenbaugh. He fired on his pursuers, fatally wounding FBI agent Terry Anderson. He also killed one of the search dogs and wounded another.

Hollenbaugh was tracked to a nearby farm, where 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 stayed there, including Anderson. He volunteered to assist authorities, accompanying them on patrols, armed with his deer rifle. He went with a state trooper, screaming down the turnpike, to take the wounded search dog to the University of Pennsylvania veterinary hospital in 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 was the biggest thing to ever happen around here," Downs, 76, now retired, said as he sipped coffee at Cutchall's Gulf, right across state Route 522 from the Fort Littleton turnpike interchange.

That was, until Sunday morning.

***

They were still talking about it two days later at Cutchall's. It seems everybody in these parts stops by Cutchall's at one time or another during the day. It's one of the few businesses off the interchange.

As the sun rose Sunday morning, a bit before 7 a.m., a 54-year-old retired state trooper from nearby Newville named Clarence Briggs, deep in debt and bankrupt, tried to rob the turnpike collections from that morning, appearing, heavily armed, at the interchange just as the private security guard collecting the receipts had arrived.

It went badly. Briggs shot and killed Danny Crouse, a 55-year-old turnpike toll collector who had been on the job for only three months, and the security guard, Ronald Heist, a 71-year-old retired York City cop who worked collecting tolls for York's Schaad Detective Agency.

Turnpike shooting: 'Everybody knows Ronnie Heist'

Briggs was later shot and killed after exchanging gunfire with state police as he was transferring the money from the Schaad van to his car in the parking lot adjacent to Cutchall's.

Ronnie Hoffman drove right through it, arriving at Cutchall's for his morning coffee 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," Hoffman, a 70-year-old retired farmer and construction worker. "If I'd known, I would have gotten outta there."

Randy Miller arrived at Cutchall's 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.

Police: Retired trooper killed 2 at turnpike interchange

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.

Miller, Hoffman and his brother Willis, and an assortment of other locals meet just about every morning at Cutchall's to have coffee, gossip and "tell lies to each other," one of them said. 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 he was one of the two men Briggs killed after they saw his picture in the paper.

"He seemed like a nice guy," said Janay Shaw, who works at the store on weekdays.

They also remembered Briggs from his time as a state trooper when he would stop in at the gas station. Troopers from the Newville and Everett Barracks often stop in at the store, as the interchange marks the boundary between their respective territories.

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The guys at Cutchall's talked about what might have led to the botched robbery, that Briggs was deep in debt, had filed for bankruptcy, his wife had left him. He had problems, they said.

Shaw was having none of it.

"Lots of people have money trouble, but they don’t go out and rob and kill innocent people just doing their jobs," she said. "It just blows my mind that somebody who had sworn to serve and protect would shoot innocent people. There was something wrong with him."

Police: Briggs wore tactical gear, carried 3 guns

**

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. Now, the largest employer in the area is JLG, which manufactures lift equipment 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.

"It’s pretty quiet around here," Willis said.

Shaw said, "Mayberry. If it ain't Mayberry, I don’t know what is."

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 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.

Turnpike timeline: Two killed in attempted robbery

It was close for Randall Cowen, a 72-year-old retired PennDOT worker. His sister-in-law works at the toll plaza and had been scheduled to be on duty Sunday morning. But she took the day off, trading days with Crouse, so she could attend a nephew's birthday party. "She's still really shook up about it," he said.

They all are.

"It's still hard to believe," Downs said, as he looked out the window at the site where the violence unfolded. "It still don’t make any sense. No sense at all."

Cutchall's Gold Star service station on Route 522 in Fort Littleton, is right off the Pennsylvania Turnpike interchange that was the site of a botched robbery that left three dead Sunday morning. It's still the talk of the small town.