A woman is claiming to be long-lost Cherri Mahan, a missing Pennsylvania girl who was dropped off by her school bus in February 1985 and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
Pennsylvania State Police are investigating the unidentified woman’s claims that she was 8-year-old Mahan, who vanished from the bus stop in front of her home in Winfield Township, Butler County, nearly four decades ago.
The woman claimed Cherrie’s identity in a post to a “Memories of Cherrie Mahan” Facebook group last month, which was flagged to state police, the Butler Eagle reported.
Cherrie was last seen getting off the bus at the stop at the bottom of her driveway just after 4 p.m. on Feb. 22, 1985, according to her active missing persons case.
A blue 1976 Dodge van with a mural of a skier on a mountain was seen nearby and may have been involved in her disappearance, investigators said.
Cherrie’s mother, Janice McKinney doesn’t believe the woman claiming to be her now 46-year-old daughter is actually Cherrie, according to the local news publication.
“I truly believe she thought in her mind that she was Cherrie,” McKinney told the Eagle. “It did not look anything like Cherrie at all.”
She is the fourth woman to claim to be Cherrie in the years since the girl disappeared. A $5,000 award has long been offered to anyone who provides information that leads to Cherrie and/or an arrest.
The heartbroken mother said she is used to seeing tips about Cherrie come in around the anniversary of her disappearance and her daughter’s birthday in August — so this post, in May, was unexpected.
“In February and August, I expect craziness. This just hit me different,” she told the local publication. “I didn’t even see it. Someone called me and told me about it.”
McKinney said that every time someone claims to be her daughter, it hurts — even if she doesn’t believe them.
“If you wanted your 15 minutes of fame, you’ve already blown it,” she said. “People are mean, they are cruel, but this affects me really crazy. It’s gonna be 40 years since Cherrie’s been missing.”
Still, state police are working to identify the woman and are working with an out-of-state agency to try to contact her.
The woman’s posts have since been removed from the Facebook group.
For McKinney, she knows the real Cherrie is being cared for, whether dead or alive.
“I’ve always felt that she was OK,” she said. “If she was dead, she is in heaven with my parents and my brothers. If she was alive, someone was taking care of her. I don’t know why I feel that way.”
But that doesn’t mean the mom has closure.
“I wish that we [every investigator who has looked into Cherrie’s case] could all get together and sit and talk,” McKinney said. “There’s something somebody missed somewhere, and somebody knows.”
Pennsylvania State Police didn’t immediately return a request for information.
