Woman claimed to be Cherrie Mahan on social media; fingerprints not a match, police say
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Pennsylvania State Police are investigating after a woman claimed to be Cherrie Mahan on social media.
>> 11 Investigates the disappearance of Cherrie Mahan
Missing for nearly 40 years, Cherrie’s mom, Janice McKinney, is still searching for closure.
“As of next February, it’ll be 40 years that Cherrie’s been missing. It breaks my heart,” McKinney told Channel 11 Thursday. “I pray every single day of my life that she would just come home. If that is not God’s will, I hope that he will allow me to find out for sure exactly what happened to her.”
Cherrie disappeared when she was just 8 years old, on Feb. 22, 1985, after getting off the school bus on her street, Cornplanter Road, in Winfield Township, Butler County.
“I expect craziness in February, on the day she was kidnapped, and I expect it on her birthday in August. This really caught me by surprise,” McKinney said.
That surprise was a Facebook post two weeks ago by a woman claiming to be Cherrie.
“On the post, it said, ‘I’m Cherrie Mahan and [she left] a phone number,’” according to McKinney.
The woman, later traced to Tennessee by State Police, also called the barracks in Butler and left a voicemail.
That led to further investigation by PSP and authorities in Tennessee.
An announcement by State Police Thursday confirmed the fingerprints of that woman do not match Cherrie’s.
“She knew what she was doing and whether it was to get in the spotlight, I don’t have a clue. He checked on it, he went about it the way he was supposed to. It’s just sad that there’s nothing that is true about it,” McKinney said.
While some got their hopes up, McKinney didn’t allow herself to do that.
“My mother sense was like, number one, I wish it could be, number two, I knew it wasn’t. I can’t explain how or why, I just felt that it wasn’t Cherrie,” she said.
State Police say troopers have not heard from the woman claiming to be Cherrie again.
If they do, they say they will investigate further.
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