Bradford Bishop and Trenny Gibson: Both Associated with Smoky Mountains National Park in 1976

By: Shane Lambert

Original time of writing: November 27th, 2024

I was reading about Bradford Bishop tonight, a man who spent a lot of time on the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted list. Bishop is no longer on this list but he was never apprehended. His age would be advanced now that there is a chance that he has passed away of natural causes.FBI images of Bishop are below, taken from their official website. In this article, I will associate Bradford Bishop's timeline with another unsolved mystery, that of Trenny Gibson, a teenager missing since 1976. I do this as food for thought as opposed to offering any kind of smoking-gun proof that the two cases should be associated. But I think the possibility that the cases are related cannot be ignored.

Bishop allegedly killed five family members on March 1st, 1976. His vehicle was found later that month, on March 18th, in Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee.

Bishop was considered an avid outdoorsman and both a camping and hiking enthusiast. Perhaps in agreement with this, his car was found in the park at an abandoned campground seventeen days after allegedly killing his family members. That his vehicle was found at an abandoned campground suggests to me that Bishop's short-term plans to elude authorities involved hiding in remote wilderness locations. That opinion has shaped a lot of what I write below. Trenny Gibson: Missing From Smoky Mountains National Park Since October 1976"While reading about Bishop, I wondered for a moment why I had a familiarity with Smoky Mountains National Park. I have never been there. Then I recalled that this was the park that Trenny Gibson had gone missing from. 

I wrote about her five years ago after reading about her case at a time when I was focusing on missing people and hiking trails. Gibson went missing on October 8th, 1976 while on a school field trip that involved hiking in Smoking Mountains National Park. As of the time of writing (November 27th, 2024).

There are just under seven months between March 18th, 1976, and October 8th, 1976. That's a huge gap of time to associate the two respective events, the discovery of Bishop's station wagon and the date of Gibson's disappearance. However, Bishop was an avid hiker, camper, and outdoorsman. 

Furthermore, presuming that he killed his five family members, as commonly assumed, he would have had a massive motive to hide from the law -- permanently. It is thought that Bishop blended in with the hikers in the area in the immediate aftermath of abandoning his vehicle. For almost certain, Bishop would want to move away from his vehicle, knowing it would be a lead for the authorities as they searched for him. One has to wonder if he used whatever resources he had to set up camp in the national park in March 1976 and then stayed for the long term.

The first credible sighting of Bradford Bishop after the deaths of his family members happened in July 1978, when someone who knew him claimed she saw him in Stockholm, Sweden. Admittedly, there is a big gap between the date of his station wagon's discovery in March 1976 and July 1978. But he could have stayed in the park for several months as there is no proof that he was anywhere else until more than two years later.

Could Bradford Bishop have kidnapped Trenny Gibson? The connection between Gibson and Bishop might be called tenuous. Certain things line up but not like a line of dominoes. Bishop is certainly the type of person who would have the nerve to commit an abduction based on the allegations against him involving murder.

So the scenario that I would like to suggest starts with Bishop preparing for a life on the lam after March 1st, 1976. This much is assumed about him by those who have written about his case.

Maybe Bishop equipped himself with camping supplies with the resources he had. We know that he ditched his car near Elkmont in March 1976. Then it's thought that he blended in with the hikers as he moved away from the station wagon. At this point, he would have no choice but to use his avid outdoorsman skills to hide in the park from authorities. This was not someone who could simply re-enter his life: in fact, if the allegations against him are true the statutes will never expire.

Trenny Gibson: Missing While Hiking Separate From Her Classmates

When Trenny Gibson went missing, she was on a school excursion but she was hiking separately from her classmates. That she may have fallen on a difficult section of the trail has been suggested. It's a scenario that can't be discounted, even though she was never found despite a serious search. But many thought that she may have been lured and abducted. Some sources say that her scent was tracked to a roadside location, where it disappeared.

If Bradford Bishop was still in the park, he clearly had the nerve to commit an abduction. Furthermore, that he may still have been in the park cannot just be brushed aside. His car was found there and his alleged crimes were so major that he could likely never be free again if found, giving him a motive to hide out long term. Also, he had the outdoor skills and intelligence to survive as a camper long term.

What I think can be stated for certain is that he might have been in the area of Trenny Gibson on the day she disappeared. Also, Bishop, if the allegations against him are true, was capable of felonious acts.

On the other hand, one could argue that it would actually be stupid for Bishop to abduct Gibson. The ensuing search for her might simply reveal his own hiding spot. I think this is a counterpoint that needs to be addressed. 

In my opinion, if Bishop has anything to do with Gibson's disappearance, then it might just be from an accidental encounter. Trenny Gibson, for part of the school trip, had hiked alongside her classmates. My thoughts on her disappearance have always been that she chose to hike alone for a short time for one unflattering reason: she was planning to urinate off of the trail and didn't want any of her classmates around. Maybe, like the rest of us, she was a critic of outhouses.

When someone urinates near a hiking trail, I think they usually choose to go 10 to 20 yards away from the trail for privacy's sake. There's not much need to go much further. In the past, I've thought that Trenny simply picked an unlucky spot to do this with some kind of transient lurking not too far off of the trail. 

In this scenario, I wonder if that hypothetical transient was none other than Bradford Bishop. He's on the lam, he can't rejoin society, and his car was found in the park earlier in the year. If Trenny Gibson found his hiding spot while venturing 20 yards off the trail, then his motive for disappearing her is immense. Also, he would realize it's time to move on with search parties coming to look for her.

It is not that hard to explain why such search parties would not find his camp. I've worked on enough missing person cases to know that phrases like "we left no stone unturned" or "we scoured the area" are often fluff. You have to add the phrase "within budget" to each statement to form something true.