All About Case of Cherrie Mahan, Missing Since 1985, and Theories that Have Surrounded Disappearance
A woman recently claimed to be the long lost 8-year-old girl, sparking renewed interest in the cold case
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (2)
Cherrie Ann Mahan around 1985 when the 8-year-old went missing (left) and an age-progressed photograph approximating what she would look like at 44 years old (right).Bundled in a gray coat over her blue leg warmers and denim skirt, the 8-year-old got off the school bus in Cabot, Pa., on Feb. 22, 1985.
Cherrie Ann Mahan was about 100 yards from home. But she never made it there.
To this day, investigators do not know what happened to her.
Her missing persons poster – the first featured on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s mailers – has stayed up for decades, updated with an age-progressed photograph of what she would look like as a woman in her 40s.
Pennsylvania State Police have continued to process tips in the intervening years, running into many dead ends in a case that long ago ran cold.
Related: Woman Claims to Be Long-Lost Girl Cherrie Mahan, Girl's Mom Says It's Untrue
And, yet, as recently as last month a woman claimed to be the long-lost Cherrie. Cherrie's mom said she doesn't believe the woman, and police have said the woman's fingerprints aren't a match.
And, so, the investigation moves forward.
A Mural-Covered Van Was Nearby
Witnesses at the time – other young children on the school bus – last saw Cherrie getting off at her home stop. They also reported to authorities a nearby bright blue 1976 Dodge van, which was painted with a mural depicting a mountain and a skier, per her missing person’s poster, which notes that the van “may be involved in her disappearance.” The poster includes few other clues about what happened that day.
“There's been a lot of vans that we looked at,” Pennsylvania State Trooper Jim Long told CBS News in 2020. “There's been a lot of vans we actually processed forensically and unfortunately didn't lead us anywhere.”
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
Cherrie Ann Mahan in an age-progressed photograph approximating what she would look like at 44 years old.Phantom Sightings
Cherrie’s body has never been found, and police are still investigating the case as a missing persons case – as opposed to a homicide – 39 years later.
The age-progressed photograph released by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children suggests what Cherrie might look like if she survived into adulthood.
CBS News previously reported on several phantom sightings of women who looked like a grown Cherrie in both Michigan and New Jersey, which police have ruled out.
Another woman once called the nursing home where Cherrie’s mother worked, saying that she was Cherrie, per the outlet. Police compared family photographs and took the woman’s fingerprints — and ruled her out, too.
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This May, a woman went on a Facebook group called Memories of Cherrie Mahan, and said she was Cherie in what the administrator, Brock Organ, later called “aggressive posts,” which have since been taken down.
“Some people say, ‘But what if it was really her?’” Organ wrote in the post explaining the woman’s removal from the group. “This has an easy answer: if it was really her, she could present herself at any police office and arrange for a DNA test without reaching out to people online and making aggressive claims. That is what a reasonable person would do.”
Cherrie’s mother, Janice McKinney commented below the post, saying that police were investigating. “This is very hard on me so please be aware I see everything,” she added.
A Handwritten Letter
In the 2010s, Cherrie’s mother received a handwritten letter purporting to detail how the little girl had been killed and where she was buried.
“It was very graphic and cruel to me,” McKinney said of the letter in an interview with CBS News in 2020.
“I pray you find some peace after you find her body,” the person concluded in the letter, signing off as Pastor Justice, WPXI reported after speaking with McKinney.
She handed it over to police, and the letter sparked the investigation anew.
“We actually followed up on to the point we were investigating people outside of [Pennsylvania],” Trooper Long told CBS News, adding that the FBI joined the investigation.
Related: Police Can't Verify Woman's Claims to Be Missing Cherrie Mahan, Say Fingerprints Aren’t a Match
McKinney traveled with the authorities and cadaver dogs to the property noted in the letter.
But again, they ran into a dead end.
“Unfortunately that letter as a whole hasn't been very fruitful at this point,” Long said at the time.
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
Cherrie Ann Mahan, around the age of 8 years old in a photograph taken circa 1985, when she went missing off her school bus in Cabot, Pa.Her Mother's Theory
McKinney was 16 when she gave birth to Cherrie, and McKinney said she became pregnant with her daughter after she was raped. (The biological father was never charged with rape.)
“She was 'IT' for me. Everything!,” she told CBS News. “I never left that house without her, we were always together, we grew up together, she was my life.”
Although she does not believe that McKinney’s biological father is “personally” responsible for Cherrie’s disappearance, she does believe that “the people that he knows” were involved, she told CBS.
“I believe that but I can't prove anything,” she added.
Police have interviewed the father, the outlet reported, and he denies any connection.
Speaking generally about suspects in the case in the interview with CBS News, Trooper Long said: “Anybody that was implicated, until we find evidence otherwise, they still would be considered a suspect.”
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