Searches come up empty in Mahan hunt
WINFIELD TWP — Cherrie Mahan is irrefutably Butler County's most publicized missing person.
The disappearance of the hazel-eyed third-grader — nearly three decades in the rearview mirror — is deemed a “cold case” by the state police.
But the investigation is anything but stagnant with forensic teams conducting searches twice this week, once by a special dog team from New Mexico on Monday and another by a forensic anthropology team on Thursday.
However, those searches did not turn up any evidence.
“We will find her eventually,” said state police Trooper Chris Birckbichler. “This mother's daughter never came up the driveway ... I pray that we find her. ”
Birckbichler, who took over the cold case duties last fall for the state police in Butler, was a high school senior delivering newspapers and working at grocery store when Mahan went missing.
That was Feb. 22, 1985. Cherrie was 8.
Witnesses recalled seeing Cherrie get off a school bus near her home on Cornplanter Road in Winfield Township. She was wearing a little gray coat, a blue denim skirt, blue leg warmers and boots.
Some claimed to have seen in the area a bluish-green van with a painting of a mountain and a skier behind her school bus as well as a small blue compact car.
After that, there's been no information.
But that is not for a lack of attention. Her case was the first to appear on one of the national “Have you seen me?” missing person, direct mail fliers.
Experts have produced a depiction of what they believe Cherrie would look at as a 33-year-old. In 2011, CNN revisited the case as part of its network television series on the nation's top 10 cold cases. And Cherrie's case has its own Wikipedia page.Still, nothing.In 1998, Cherrie was declared dead by the Butler County courts, but her case still is in the “missing person” stack.Birkbickler, who supervises about 30 cold cases, says at least two calls relating to them come into the Butler barracks weekly. Investigators follow every lead.“Somebody knows what happened, and someday we will get that tip we need,” Birckbichler said.In this case, Birckbichler said, interviews done in the past two years seemed to bring a particular piece of property in Winfield Township to interest. He doesn't want to identify the property because of the ongoing investigation.However, he said with the property owner's permission troopers on Monday employed the use of a special team of three border collies.The dog team, which was in the region for additional other business, searched all morning without results. But Birckbichler said the search did uncover and area that appeared “suspicious” due to topography.Based on that, a team of anthropologists visited the site Thursday.The 8-member team from Mercyhurst University specializes in outdoor crime scenes and is led by forensic anthropologist Dennis C. Dirkmaat.Dirkmaat said the group spent about five hours excavating a landscape feature, but found no evidence of human remains.“It was a natural feature,” Dirkmaat said of the topography.He applauded investigators for taking the extra step to be careful.“In other jurisdictions they might just pull out a shovel and start to dig and that would be the worse thing to do” because it might harm the potential evidence, Dirkmaat said.Birckbichler, who is a lead investigator in the Mahan case as well as a father, said he's undaunted and continues to pursue information related to Cherrie's whereabouts. He's especially optimistic that a tip will arrive this winter, when the disappearance hits the 30th anniversary.“Anniversaries trigger conversations. Conversations trigger memories. Memories are going to lead to the tip we need,” Birckbichler said.People with information about Cherrie or any cold case in the region can call Birckbichler at 724-284-8100.
