Woman Claims She’s Cherrie Mahan, Missing 39 Years in PA; Police Unable to Verify

According to police, an early check of fingerprints indicates that a lady claiming to be Cherrie Mahan is not the missing girl from rural western Pennsylvania 39 years ago.

Pennsylvania State Police are looking into a recent online message and voicemail from a woman claiming to be Mahan, an 8-year-old girl last seen stepping off a school bus in Butler County in 1985. Police claimed they were unable to reach the woman at the phone number or address supplied, and no one from law enforcement has been able to contact her since.

Police reported that they were able to collect fingerprints for the caller’s name. Police did not provide any other information about how they obtained the fingerprints, but an early review suggests that she is not Mahan.

If the caller chooses to make herself available to law enforcement again, authorities say her accusation will be examined.

Mahan went missing on February 22, 1985, after her school bus dropped her down at the bottom of a hill near her house on Cornplanter Road in Winfield Township, some 45 minutes from Pittsburgh. People who watched her get off the bus reported seeing a blue or green van behind her and a blue-colored vehicle in the neighborhood. Those vehicles and their drivers have not been identified or traced.

“It’s like a black hole opened up and she fell in,” her mother Janice McKinney told KDKA-TV on this year’s anniversary of her abduction.

Mahan would be 47 today.

“The unknown is what takes the life from you. It really beats you down every day, and for the past 39 years, this has been the most difficult time of my life,” McKinney stated.

Throughout the years, three additional women have claimed to be Mahan. A $5,000 cash prize remains available for anyone with information that leads to an arrest, the resolution of the case, or the location of Mahan.