A child gets off the school bus and begins walking home but is never seen again. Such a story is an all-too-common occurrence, and the ending is often unknown. Cherrie Mahan’s disappearance is such a story.
On February 22, 1985, along the outskirts of Cabot in rural Butler County, Pennsylvania, approximately thirty miles northeast of Pittsburgh, eight-year-old Cherrie exited the Winfield Elementary School bus at approximately 4:10 p.m. Three other children departed with her and observed Cherrie walking toward her home, but she never arrived. Searches failed to find her.
Cherrie Mahan’s disappearance served as a catalyst for a program that has helped locate over one thousand missing children, but she is not among them. For nearly three decades few substantive leads have surfaced indicating what may have happened to her.
If the information received by Pennsylvania police in the last decade is accurate, the final chapter in Cherrie’s story will, unfortunately, not have a happy ending.
Cherrie Mahan
Cherrie was last seen turning a corner off Cornplanter road and walking the roughly one-hundred-fifty-yard uphill driveway to her home. Her footprints in the snow disappeared shortly after rounding the corner and a set of tire impressions was found approximately fifty yards from the home; they have never been matched to a vehicle.
Bloodhounds could not pick up Cherrie’s scent. Aerial and ground searches of the rural terrain found no trace of her.
The Road To Cherrie’s Home
Because there were no signs of a struggle or of an accident leading to her home, police concluded Cherrie had most likely been abducted by someone she knew and that she had willingly entered her abductor’s vehicle. Her mom and stepfather, Janice and LeRoy McKinney, along with other family members, were cleared of any involvement.
Cherrie Probably Knew Her Kidnapper
The most promising possible lead in Cherrie’s disappearance was a green or light blue van seen by the bus driver, children, and multiple motorists driving behind the school bus and parked near the bus when she and the three other children exited. As Cherrie’s classmates had entered a car driven by Debbie Burk, mother of one of the girls, Cherrie was observed walking past the van before turning the corner to her home.
A mural of a man in red and yellow clothing skiing down a snow-capped mountain made the vehicle hard to miss. The consensus was the van was a 1970s-era Dodge; the majority of witnesses thought it a 1976 model.
Several motorists later reported seeing a blue car following the distinctive van traveling southbound in New Kensington, eighteen miles south of Cabot. No one recognized the van nor could anyone recall if it had Pennsylvania license plates. No area auto shops or artists had painted the van’s mural, which was described as beautiful and looking professional; it appeared the work of a bona fide artist as opposed to an amateur. Despite the unique painting, the van was never located.
Efforts to locate the vehicle were highly publicized, and many believe if its driver were not involved in Cherrie’s disappearance, he or she would have come forward. An article published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette shortly after Cherrie’s disappearance states authorities believed the van was repainted black one or two weeks after the incident, suggesting an effort to make it less noticeable.
Those who believe the van was involved in Cherrie’s abduction suggest it served as the “decoy vehicle” by attracting people’s attention and that the occupants of another car, possibly the blue car later seen following the van, took Cherrie.
A Drawing Of The Van
For nearly thirty years after Cherrie’s disappearance, few solid leads surfaced. Then in 2014, police received several tips saying the long missing girl, who would have then been thirty-eight-years-old, was living in Michigan. A woman that age who had been adopted as a young child and who did not know her family origins bore a resemblance to the computer-aged image of Cherrie below.
DNA testing, however, showed she was not Cherrie Mahan.
Computer-Aged image of Cherrie
To Approximately Age Thirty-Eight
One year later, in 2015, police announced they had received more promising information regarding Cherrie’s disappearance. They would only say the information is from a person who “would have known Cherrie, that it “has the potential” to lead them to specific people, and that it makes it unlikely that she is alive.
Three years later, an anonymous letter reiterated those contentions, saying Cherrie’s life came to a brutal end shortly after her kidnapping.
Ominous Information Received
In August 2018, Cherrie’s mother, Janice McKinney, received an anonymous handwritten letter saying her daughter had long ago been murdered. The letter, mailed around the time of Cherrie’s fortieth-second birthday, detailed who the author contends killed her, the person’s reason for doing so, and where her body could be found. The writer also identifies several other suspects involved in the crime. Janice says none of the names are familiar to her.
The letter ended: “I pray you find some peace after you find her body.” It was signed “Pastor Justice.” The author claimed Cherrie’s remains were buried near a hunting camp along the Allegheny River near Kittanning, approximately twenty miles northeast of where Cherrie was last seen. The area was searched, but nothing was found.
Police have not divulged the specific contents of the letter, saying only they are gruesome. They have also not said if they believe the letter to be related to the information received in 2015 or to the van seen behind the school bus on the day of Cherrie’s disappearance.
A Disturbing Letter
Janice McKinney was only sixteen-years-old when she gave birth to Cherrie. In an interview with Pittsburgh CBS affiliate KDKA-TV in 2020, she said Cherrie was conceived through rape. The man was never charged with the crime because, Janice said, the police did not believe her claims.
Janice decided to have the child and Cherrie give her the last name of Mahan. Several years later, Janice married LeRoy McKinney who adopted Cherrie.
Janice And Young Cherrie
In the interview, Janice said that while she does not believe Cherrie’s biological father was involved in her disappearance, she does believe people with whom he associated are responsible. She concedes this is her opinion and that she has no proof.
Authorities have interviewed the man Janice says raped her and who she claims is Cherrie’s biological father. They say he adamantly denies any involvement in her disappearance and that, as of now, they have no evidence indicating that he or any of his associates were involved. The man has not been publicly identified, and I could not find anything stating if he has been proven to be Cherrie’s biological father.
Janice Has A Theory
As To Who Took Cherrie
In November 1984, three months before Cherrie’s disappearance, she and a friend were passengers in a car struck by an ambulance during an emergency run. Cherrie suffered a broken arm and was awarded $3,500 in a settlement. Her injury had healed by the time of her abduction.
In 1998, Cherrie was declared legally dead so that the money could be put in a trust fund for her half-brother, Robert, who was born in 1989, four years after Cherrie’s disappearance. Cherrie’s life insurance policy was donated to the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children.
I found nothing suggesting that anyone involved in the accident is suspected of involvement in Cherrie’s disappearance.
Legally Dead
Cherrie Ann Mahan has been missing since February 22, 1985. Her disappearance is classified as a non-family abduction, but police believe she was taken by someone she knew. Several sightings of Cherrie have been reported over the years, but none have been confirmed.
At the time of her disappearance, Cherrie was eight-years-old, four-feet-two-inches tall and weighed sixty-eight pounds. She had hazel eyes and brown hair with a cowlick on the right side. Her hair was slightly longer than in the pictures shown in the write-up. Both of her ears were pierced. She was wearing a gray coat, a white leotard, a blue denim skirt and legwarmers, beige boots, and Cabbage Patch earmuffs. Cherrie had a noticeable dog bite scar on her left arm.
Cherrie Mahan would today be forty-seven-years-old.
Age-Progression Images
If you have any information on the disappearance of Cherrie Mahan, please contact the Pennsylvania State Police at 412-284-8100 or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678.
Still Searching For Cherrie
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was founded in 1984, the year before Cherrie Mahan vanished. In conjunction with the direct-mail marketer company ADVO the NCMEC launched the “Have You Seen Me?” program to help locate missing children through the mass distribution of the children’s pictures on detached address labels. Cherrie Mahan was the first missing child whose picture was printed on the labels.
Vlassis, the company which acquired ADVO in 2007, continues the “Have You Seen Me?” program today. The NCMEC says of the approximately 2,100 children spotlighted nearly 1,200 have been recovered.
Cherrie Mahan, the inaugural child, however, is still missing.
The First ADVO Child . . .
The success of the ADVO program also led to missing children being featured on cardboard milk cartons.
. . . And Face On the Milk Carton
Sources:
- Butler Dispatch
- The Charley Project
- CNN
- The Doe Network
- KDKA CBS Affiliate Channel 2 Pittsburgh
- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
- WPXI News NBC Affiliate Channel 11 Pittsburgh
I live 45 minutes away from there and it’s the 1st abduction I remember from my childhood. I still think about her and wonder how things like this happen.