By Philip Rosenbaum
NEW YORK (CNN) — With the weekend arriving and a long day finally over, 8-year-old Cherrie Mahan stepped off her yellow school bus on a chilly Friday around 4 p.m.
- Cherrie Mahan’s third-grade school photo
The bus stop was about 100 yards from her home in rural Winfield Township in western Pennsylvania. But Cherrie did not make it to the hilltop trailer she lived in with her parents. She was never seen again.
Investigators say her disappearance after the four mile ride home from elementary school on February 22, 1985, remains a mystery.
“It’s like a black hole opened up and she fell in,” said Cherrie’s mother, Janice McKinney. She recalled that she and Cherrie’s stepfather, Leroy, could hear the bus pulling up that day. Soon after Cherrie did not arrive, he went to the stop to look for her.
PHILIP ROSENBAUM 