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As suspicious state troopers closed in, he jumped out, pulling the teen-ager with him. He opened fire with a pistol, ducked behind a corncrib and ran across the road to a farmhouse. Two shots rang out simultaneously—one fired by Larry Rubeck, 15, from the farmhouse, the other by a state policeman. Hollenbaugh fell dying, blood spurting from a severed jugular. Peggy dashed into the arms of Pittsburgh Newsman (and TIME Stringer) Scott Rombach. "Thank God!" she cried. "I'm safe!"
"Shy & Meek." She was hospitalized for physical and nervous exhaustion. Why had Bicycle Bill taken her? One explanation was offered by Psychiatrist John P. Shovlin, superintendent of the state hospital where Hollenbaugh had been confined. Recalling him as a typically "shy, meek" schizophrenic who "was always retreating," Shovlin noted: "These people find it painful to associate with people of their own age. They sometimes seek the companionship of someone much younger."
His prognosis was confirmed by Peggy's own story, which indicated that Bicycle Bill had long planned to spirit her away. Though she did not know him, he knew her name. The caves where they hid had been stocked with cans of corn and baked beans, which he shared with her. At night when he slept, Bicycle Bill chained her by her neck to a tree, and a couple of times tugged her along by a chain leash. But he did not physically injure her. When after several days Peggy's brown suede shoes wore out, he wrapped her feet in old newspapers and gave her a pair of his overshoes.
"He did not purposely harm me in any way," said Peggy, "other than the fear, the tension, and the hardship of being in the woods and being away from my family."