A private investigator plans to offer a $100,000 reward to anyone with information leading to the discovery of Cherrie Mahan, who vanished 40 years ago from a school bus stop in Winfield.
Steve Ridge, an Iowa-based private eye, took on Cherrie’s case pro-bono nearly three months ago. Backed by a small fortune from when he was an executive at media research firm Magid, he has posted $100,000 and $50,000 rewards in the disappearances of Iowa news anchor Jodi Huisentruit and Kansas mother Angela Green, respectively.
Now, he’s dangling cash in the search for Cherrie.
Ridge will host a news conference Tuesday in Butler, where he plans to announce a $100,000 reward for the location and positive identification of the girl’s remains.
“I have found that rewards can be a very effective incentive,” Ridge said.
Though no one has ever claimed his rewards, they tend to generate new leads, he said. And Ridge brings more than money to the table. His investigative chops, honed by years as a broadcast news reporter, helped unearth new information in the Huisentruit case.
In late March, Ridge and his attorneys persuaded a judge to partly unseal a 2017 search warrant connected to her disappearance, including GPS data from trackers placed on two vehicles owned by a person of interest, according to a Mason City Globe Gazette news story.
The $100,000 offer in that case will expire June 27. He doesn’t expect anyone to come forward at this point, which is part of why he has decided to get involved in the hunt for Cherrie.
Green’s case is more fluid, in his view.
“I’m still optimistic that somebody is going to claim that reward,” he said.
Remains make a successful prosecution far more likely, according to Ridge. Such discoveries also allow families to have proper funerals, and “perhaps that’s more important than seeing someone go to prison,” he added.
Ridge’s reward offer isn’t the first made in Cherrie’s case, though it is the largest.
State police have long promised $5,000 for information that helps find Cherrie or arrest her captor.
A $50,000 reward funded through private donations also was posted shortly after her vanishing. Cherrie’s mother, Janice McKinney, gave the money to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children after her daughter was declared legally dead in 1998.
“Money was not an issue then, and it didn’t bring anybody out,” McKinney said.
Still, she’s grateful for the help, not just from Ridge.
Cherrie’s Angels, a group started last year by Bailey Gizienski and Alyssa Dietz, both of Butler, has injected energy into the case. They’re working to obtain cadaver dogs and ground-penetrating radar, and keeping the public informed via Find Cherrie Mahan, a Facebook page run with McKinney’s blessing.
“We’re still looking for that last puzzle piece,” Gizienski said. “We have so much hope.”
The search for answers on how the third grade student at Winfield Elementary School disappeared about 100 yards from her home on Feb. 22, 1985, was further bolstered by a wave of tips that followed an event marking the 40th anniversary.
State police are on the case, too.
Cpl. Max DeLuca, the lead investigator in Cherrie’s case since the 2010s, emphasized law enforcement has no direct role in what Ridge is doing. He added Ridge is not licensed as a private investigator in Pennsylvania, meaning he cannot access case files.
“He would pretty much be acting as a citizen,” DeLuca said.
Like McKinney, DeLuca is skeptical the sum, as staggering as it is, could motivate the right person to speak up.
“I’ve worked on a lot more cases that have been solved through tips and leads that came in that weren’t monetary-based,” he said.
State police do not have a prime suspect or specific areas where they believe Cherrie might be buried.
But after decades of dead ends, McKinney, 64, and a group of friends believe the truth is finally coming into focus.
Their hunches hardened Friday after Ken Mains, another private investigator, met with them in Winfield and came to similar conclusions as them: Cherrie was likely abducted by someone she knew, sexually abused and killed.
“I believe she was targeted,” Mains said in a subsequent YouTube video.
His theory focuses on a blue compact car observed at the bus stop, rather than a van with a mural of a skier that absorbed much investigative energy over the years.
Information that emerged from the anniversary event also led McKinney to believe her daughter was sexually abused by her eventual captor before she was taken.
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McKinney has the suspect narrowed down to an incarcerated man who has previously spoken with Cpl. DeLuca.
She recently sent him a letter. He replied that he’s willing to meet and “has a lot to tell” her, according to McKinney.
“I just hope it’s what I want to hear, not what he thinks I should hear,” she said.