ROCKDALE TOWNSHIP — Pennsylvania State Police are investigating the alleged disappearance of 17-year-old Mary Gingerich, whose father, Edward Gingerich, was released from prison in March 1998 after serving five years and one day for the death of her mother.

Reported missing Wednesday night, Mary Gingerich, of Frisbeetown Road in Rockdale Township, is believed to be in the company of several family members including her father, two brothers and a female cousin. Tribune sources confirmed Thursday that Edward Gingerich has been in the area for several months, possibly as early as December 2006.

According to state police, a dark-colored vehicle of unknown make and model reportedly transported the teen to an unknown destination.

“Circumstances of her being missing are unclear at this time and custody was an unresolved issue,” state police noted in a Thursday press release.

The body of his Edward Gingerich’s wife, Katie, was found by police at the couple’s Rockdale Township home on March 18, 1993. The 29-year-old woman died from extensive blunt-force trauma to the head and her internal organs had been removed.

Found guilty of involuntary manslaughter but mentally ill by a Crawford County jury in March 1994, Gingerich, who was 27 years old at the time of the incident, was sentenced in May of that year to serve two and one-half to five years, the maximum allowed by law. Because he received credit for the time he was lodged in Crawford County jail after his arrest the day after his wife was killed, his maximum sentence was up five years and one day after her death.

Testimony during the trial indicated Gingerich, who is Amish, suffered from schizophrenia at the time of the murder. He reportedly had stopped taking medication for paranoid schizophrenia nine months before the killing.

Shortly before Gingerich’s release, Douglas Ferguson, the Crawford County prosecutor who tried the case, said that more than 50 members of Gingerich’s former Old Order Amish community near Cambridge Springs had signed a petition advocating keeping Gingerich in a mental hospital forever.

In November 2000, Gingerich was reported to be living in the central Michigan community of Evart in Harmony Haven, a community for troubled Amish.