Latest / Crime Night / The Vanishing of Cherrie Mahan: 40 Years of Cold Leads

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The Vanishing of Cherrie Mahan: 40 Years of Cold Leads · Crime Night

0:00
Speaker 1: I want you to just close your eyes for a
0:01
Speaker 1: second and transport yourself to a very specific moment in time.
0:05
Speaker 2: Okay, already.
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Speaker 1: It is Friday, February twenty second, nineteen eighty five. The
0:10
Speaker 1: time is exactly four point ten pm, and you're in
0:13
Speaker 1: the quiet, really heavily wooded town of Cabot, Pennsylvania.
0:18
Speaker 2: Right, so we're talking rural winter in the northeast exactly.
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Speaker 1: The air is this crisp, biting forty degrees. There's a
0:25
Speaker 1: fresh busting of winter snow clinging to the ground on
0:28
Speaker 1: the pine trees. And in the distance you can hear
0:31
Speaker 1: that heavy, methodical crunch of large tires rolling over loose gravel.
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Speaker 2: Ah. Yeah, you can almost hear it.
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Speaker 1: Right, And then comes the unmistakable mechanical hiss of a
0:40
Speaker 1: yellow school bus just coming to a halt and opening
0:43
Speaker 1: its accordion doors.
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Speaker 2: You know, it's a deeply nostalgic sound, honestly, because for
0:47
Speaker 2: most kids, that hiss means the school week is over,
0:50
Speaker 2: the weekend has officially begun. It's supposed to be a safe,
0:54
Speaker 2: completely routine sound.
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Speaker 1: Ye, that's basically the soundtrack of a normal suburban afternoon
0:58
Speaker 1: and stepping off that bus into the cold. There is
1:01
Speaker 1: eight year old Cherry Mahan. She is wearing a denim skirt,
1:04
Speaker 1: thick leg warmers, a pair of gray and beige boots,
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Speaker 1: and she's carrying this very bulky blue backpack.
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Speaker 2: Just a typical eighties kid, really exactly.
1:13
Speaker 1: And she stands right at the end of her family's
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Speaker 1: five hundred foot gravel driveway, just watching the bus driver
1:18
Speaker 1: wave goodbye. But this is where the timeline fractures. Oh Manah,
1:24
Speaker 1: it's because of one microscopic, seemingly harmless twist of fate.
1:28
Speaker 1: Because that specific Friday afternoon was the one single day
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Speaker 1: her mother Janie and her stepfather Lroy decided not to
1:37
Speaker 1: walk down that long driveway to meet her Wow.
1:39
Speaker 2: And it is exactly the kind of agonizing, everyday decision
1:42
Speaker 2: that will just haunt a family for the rest of
1:44
Speaker 2: their lives. I mean, Janis could see the road from
1:46
Speaker 2: her trailer window right, she could hear the bus arride.
1:49
Speaker 2: It was only five hundred feet of driveway.
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Speaker 1: Right, So the bus doors close, the driver pulls away
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Speaker 1: down the two lane road, and minutes start to tick by,
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Speaker 1: and she doesn't come up the driveway. No, when le
1:59
Speaker 1: ROI he finally puts on his coat, you know, and
2:02
Speaker 1: walks out the front door of their trailer to check
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Speaker 1: on Cherry. He looks down the five hundred feet of
2:05
Speaker 1: gravel and the road is completely empty. The driveway's empty.
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Speaker 1: She is simply gone. It's just chilling, it really is.
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Speaker 1: So today we are taking you deep into the twisting,
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Speaker 1: forty year labyrinth of this haunting, unsolved mystery. We're pulling
2:20
Speaker 1: from decades of cold case files, recent interviews with private investigators,
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Speaker 1: and newly unearthed, unsealed prison correspondence.
2:29
Speaker 2: There is so much to cover.
2:30
Speaker 1: There is. We are tracking the clues from that snowy
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Speaker 1: driveway in nineteen eighty five all the way to a
2:35
Speaker 1: chilling revelation in a local bar decades later.
2:39
Speaker 2: Right, because what begins as a frantic, desperate search for
2:42
Speaker 2: a missing child eventually peels back the layers of an
2:46
Speaker 2: entire community.
2:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really does, and.
2:48
Speaker 2: Well it reveals a very dark truth about where the
2:50
Speaker 2: greatest dangers actually hide.
2:53
Speaker 1: So the panic that sets in for Janis and Leroy
2:55
Speaker 1: is immediate and it is absolute. I mean they quickly
2:58
Speaker 1: realize Cherry isn't just linger in the bottle of the
3:00
Speaker 1: driveway or you know, playing with a neighbor.
3:02
Speaker 2: Of course not.
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Speaker 1: She's eight, right, So they physically jump into their car
3:06
Speaker 1: and they chase down the school bus.
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Speaker 2: Wow, they actually chase the bus.
3:10
Speaker 1: Yes, they managed to catch up to it down the road,
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Speaker 1: and the driver confirms it. He says, yes, Cherry was
3:16
Speaker 1: on the bus, and yes I watched her get off
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Speaker 1: at your driveway.
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Speaker 2: That is every parent's worst nightmare, it is.
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Speaker 1: This sends the parents rushing back in absolute terror to
3:26
Speaker 1: call nine one one, and within twenty minutes the police
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Speaker 1: are swarming the property and the response is massive.
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Speaker 2: Which is what you want to see in a missing
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Speaker 2: child case.
3:35
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, We're talking helicopters chopping through the winter sky,
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Speaker 1: bloodhounds scouring a five mile radius, local volunteer fire departments
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Speaker 1: tramping through the freezing.
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Speaker 2: Woods, just a massive dragnet.
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Speaker 1: But amidst all this chaos, there is one terrifying detail
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Speaker 1: that stumps everyone. Despite the fresh snow still lingering in
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Speaker 1: the ground, there is zero physical.
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Speaker 2: Evidence, which is frankly incredibly rare.
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Speaker 1: Right, No footprints leading off the driveway into the woods.
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Speaker 1: There's no discarded bulky blue backpack in the.
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Speaker 2: Brush, no sign of a struggle at all, nothing.
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Speaker 1: No gray in beige boots left behind. The scene is
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Speaker 1: completely pristine.
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Speaker 2: You know, from an investigative and forensic standpoint, that absence
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Speaker 2: of evidence is actually a massive piece of evidence in itself.
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Speaker 2: How so, well, when law enforcement encounters a scene with
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Speaker 2: no footprints in the snow and no dropped items, their
4:26
Speaker 2: entire strategy has to shift immediately. They can rule out
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Speaker 2: a child simply wandering off and getting.
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Speaker 1: Lost, right because there'd be tracks.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, and they can rule out a runaway situation, which
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Speaker 2: is always their initial hopeful theory. The total lack of
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Speaker 2: physical disruption means Cherry was likely placed directly into a
4:46
Speaker 2: vehicle at the bottom of that driveway.
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Speaker 1: Just scoop right up. Yeah.
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Speaker 2: And historically, when a child vanishes that quickly and that
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Speaker 2: cleanly from the edge of their own property, police protocol
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Speaker 2: dictates pivoting focus directly to the people closest to the victim,
5:00
Speaker 2: meaning the parents exactly.
5:02
Speaker 1: Which when you look at the case files, you can
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Speaker 1: understand why investigators went there first. Janice and Leroy had
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Speaker 1: some heavy complexities in their background they did.
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Speaker 2: It wasn't exactly a picture perfect suburban setup.
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Speaker 1: No, it wasn't. Both of them were actively struggling with
5:17
Speaker 1: Substance use disorder at the time. LaRoy suffered from severe
5:21
Speaker 1: PTSD from his service in the Vietnam War.
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Speaker 2: Which adds a lot of volatility to the household.
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Speaker 1: It does, and most notably, both of them actually had
5:30
Speaker 1: ties to local motorcycle gangs. So the police are naturally thinking,
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Speaker 1: you know, are they involved, did someone they owe a
5:37
Speaker 1: drug debt to take her as collateral.
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Speaker 2: It's a logical investigative leave, honestly.
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Speaker 1: But both Janis and Leroy voluntarily sit down for polygraph
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Speaker 1: tests and they both pass no deception indicated. Wow. Okay, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: And even Cherry's biological father, who was high up in
5:53
Speaker 1: a different motorcycle gang and had explicitly said he wanted
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Speaker 1: nothing to do with her, while he is thoroughly investigated, allied,
6:00
Speaker 1: and cleared.
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Speaker 2: So it creates this staggering investigative bottleneck right out of
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Speaker 2: the gate. I mean, you have cleared the immediate family,
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Speaker 2: you have ruled out a runaway, but you still have
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Speaker 2: this completely pristine crime scene staring you in the face.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this for a second, because I find
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Speaker 1: this baffling.
6:15
Speaker 2: It is baffling.
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Speaker 1: It's like a classic locked room mystery, but the room
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Speaker 1: is a five hundred foot snowy driveway in broad daylight.
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Speaker 1: How does a child just vanish into thin air without
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Speaker 1: making a sound, without a struggle, and without leaving a
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Speaker 1: single trace.
6:30
Speaker 2: Well, to understand the mechanics of how that happens, you
6:33
Speaker 2: really have to look at what was going on in
6:34
Speaker 2: Cherry's life in the months leading up to that afternoon, right.
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Speaker 1: And that detail is genuinely terrifying. It is before the
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Speaker 1: family moved to this trailer in Cabot, Janis and Cherry
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Speaker 1: lived about twenty minutes away at Jennie's mother's house in
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Speaker 1: a town called Saxonburg, Okay. And at first Cherry was
6:50
Speaker 1: thrilled because she finally had her own room. But just
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Speaker 1: a few months in her behavior drastically changed. She became
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Speaker 1: absolutely paralyzed by fear over what She started telling her
7:01
Speaker 1: mother over and over that someone was watching her from
7:03
Speaker 1: her bedroom window at night.
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Speaker 2: See this is a crucial detail. It wasn't just a
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Speaker 2: fleeting childhood nightmare about a monster under the bed. It
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Speaker 2: was a persistent, localized, terrifying reality for her.
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Speaker 1: It was so severe that Janie actually moved her to
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Speaker 1: a smaller room closer to where the adult slept. She
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Speaker 1: bought heavy blackout curtains to cover the glass.
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Speaker 2: Good mom move, honestly.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, But Cherry was so deeply terrified that she started
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Speaker 1: sleeping completely flat on the hardwood floor.
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Speaker 2: Oh my god.
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Speaker 1: She absolutely refused to use pillows or blankets, just so
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Speaker 1: she could make herself as flat as possible to hide
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Speaker 1: from whoever was out there in the dark.
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Speaker 2: You know what's fascinating here is how this single haunting
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Speaker 2: detail fundamentally reframes the entire profile of the crime. Ohso well,
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Speaker 2: when you look at the statistics of child deductions, a
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Speaker 2: random snatch and grabbed by a stranger just driving by
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Speaker 2: is incredibly rare. Right, But if Cherry was being actively stalked,
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Speaker 2: if someone was physically standing outside her bedroom window for months,
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Speaker 2: tracking her movements, learning her family schedule, then this was
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Speaker 2: not an opportunistic crime.
8:09
Speaker 1: It was planned.
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Speaker 2: This was highly calculated. The perpetrator didn't just stumble upon
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Speaker 2: her at the bottom of the driveway. They knew exactly
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Speaker 2: when she got off the bus, and they knew exactly
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Speaker 2: when she would be vulnerable.
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Speaker 1: But then, right as police start trying to build this
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Speaker 1: profile of a calculated soccer, the eyewitness testimonies come in
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Speaker 1: and the investigation takes a bizarre, almost unbelievable term.
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Speaker 2: Right the van.
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Speaker 1: Yes, police are interviewing the other kids on the school bus,
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Speaker 1: and they also speak to a mother named Debbie Burke
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Speaker 1: who was parked in her car near the drop off
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Speaker 1: spot waiting for her own kids.
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Speaker 2: So they have solid adult eyewitnesses.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and multiple people report seeing a highly specific, very
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Speaker 1: loud vehicle trailing the school bus that day. They describe
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Speaker 1: a blue green van with a massive custom mural painted
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Speaker 1: on the passenger side, a mural of what a mural
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Speaker 1: of a skier descending a snowy mountain. See.
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Speaker 2: It sounds almost like an urban legend, But in the
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Speaker 2: nineteen seventies and early eighties, these elaborate, air brushed custom
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Speaker 2: van murals were actually a huge automotive trend.
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Speaker 1: But I have to push back on this because it
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Speaker 1: makes zero sense. Why not, if you're a calculated predator
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Speaker 1: planning to abduct a child in broad daylight, why on
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Speaker 1: earth would you drive the vehicular equivalent of a neon sign.
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Speaker 2: That is a very fair point.
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Speaker 1: Right, How do you disappear in a van that unique?
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Speaker 1: It completely defies all logic of committing a covert.
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Speaker 2: Crime, your right to be skeptical, because it perfectly highlights
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Speaker 2: the chaotic, sometimes destructive nature of eyewitness testimony and police hyperfocus. Yeah,
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Speaker 2: when a detail is that vivid, a mountain skier mural,
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Speaker 2: it creates intense confirmation bias. The police, the media, the public,
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Speaker 2: they all latch onto it because it's a tangible, highly
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Speaker 2: visible target.
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Speaker 1: It gives them a boogeyman to chase, exactly.
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Speaker 2: It gives them something to hunt. They think, you know,
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Speaker 2: if we find the van, we find the girl.
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Speaker 1: And they poured everything ou into finding that van, and
10:01
Speaker 1: it led to an absolute heartbreaking dead end.
10:03
Speaker 2: They actually found one, didn't they They did.
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Speaker 1: Police actually found a matching blue green van with a
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Speaker 1: skier mural just five miles away from the disappearance. It
10:12
Speaker 1: was owned by a local woman named Donna Patterson.
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Speaker 2: Oh wow, five miles away. That's too close to be
10:16
Speaker 2: a coincidence, you would think.
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Speaker 1: But here is the tragic kicker. On that specific Friday afternoon,
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Speaker 1: her brother in law had the van. He had parked
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Speaker 1: it at a local steel corporation where he was working
10:28
Speaker 1: a double shift.
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Speaker 2: Let me guess his alibi had checked out.
10:31
Speaker 1: His alibi was rock solid management confirmed he was there,
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Speaker 1: the van was there. The police cleared the van entirely.
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Speaker 2: But the public didn't let it go, did they not?
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Speaker 1: At all? By that point, the public hysteria was completely
10:43
Speaker 1: out of control.
10:43
Speaker 2: That is the tragic side effect of a high profile,
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Speaker 2: emotionally charged case. The public's desperation for a resolution often
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Speaker 2: ruins innocent lives.
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Speaker 1: Donna Patterson was constantly harassed. People were following her, taking
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Speaker 1: down her license plate, yelling at her that is off.
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Speaker 1: She was repeatedly pulled over by well meaning but frantic
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Speaker 1: citizens who thought they were solving the case. And while
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Speaker 1: everyone was chasing this spectacular mural van, they were completely
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Speaker 1: blinded to a much smaller, far more important detail.
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Speaker 2: What was that?
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Speaker 1: It was sitting right in the early police files, in
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Speaker 1: the very first missing person posters, right above the sketch
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Speaker 1: of the skier van, there was a tiny line of
11:22
Speaker 1: text mentioning a small blue vehicle seen in the area.
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Speaker 2: Small blue vehicle.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, But because the brain craves the spectacular, the small
11:31
Speaker 1: blue car was essentially swallowed by history.
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Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean, a mountain skier van is a
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Speaker 2: movie villains car, right, a small blue car is invisible.
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Speaker 2: It blends right into the suburban background.
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Speaker 1: And that invisibility stretches out into decades of ice. We
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Speaker 1: are fast forwarding through an agonizing passage of time. Now
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Speaker 1: the years are exceptionally cruel to Janice. The leads dry.
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Speaker 2: Up, detectives retire, cold case boxes get moved.
11:57
Speaker 1: To storage exactly, and by nineteen ninety eight, thirteen years
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Speaker 1: after that snowy Friday, a judge legally declares Cherry Mahan dead.
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Speaker 2: God that legal declaration is a devastating milestone for any family.
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Speaker 1: I can't imagine.
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Speaker 2: It's the bureaucratic formalization of a nightmare. It's basically the
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Speaker 2: state telling you to stop looking, but the.
12:15
Speaker 1: Nightmare refuses to stay quiet. Because let's jump to twenty eighteen.
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Speaker 1: Janis experience is the most vicious, emotional whiplash imaginable. What
12:24
Speaker 1: happens out of nowhere. She receives an anonymous, handwritten letter
12:27
Speaker 1: from someone signing it pastor.
12:28
Speaker 2: Justice pastor justice Yeah.
12:30
Speaker 1: And this letter weaves this elaborate tale that Quaker cult
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Speaker 1: murdered Cherry to help her biological father evade child support,
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Speaker 1: and that her body was dumped and cemented a place
12:39
Speaker 1: called the Lock eight Dam.
12:40
Speaker 2: That is insanely specific it is.
12:43
Speaker 1: Police actually took it seriously enough to deploy dive teams
12:46
Speaker 1: and search the area, but it yielded absolutely nothing. It
12:49
Speaker 1: was a complete fabrication.
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Speaker 2: See the cruelty of anonymous tipsters in cold cases is
12:54
Speaker 2: something that always astounds me.
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Speaker 1: It's disgusting it is.
12:58
Speaker 2: These hoaxes are often driven by individuals who just want
13:01
Speaker 2: to inject themselves into a famous tragedy. They do it
13:04
Speaker 2: for a twisted sense of power or control, completely exploiting
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Speaker 2: a grieving mother's desperate need for answers.
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Speaker 1: And as if that wasn't traumatic enough, that exact same year,
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Speaker 1: Janie gets a phone call at work from a woman
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Speaker 1: claiming to physically be Sherry.
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Speaker 2: You're kidding.
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Speaker 1: No, imagine answering the phone and hearing that. But police
13:25
Speaker 1: step in. They track the caller down, compare her fingerprints
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Speaker 1: to the ones taking a Cherry's elementary school back in
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Speaker 1: the eighties, and conclusively rule her out.
13:33
Speaker 2: The emotional toll of being dragged back to that five
13:36
Speaker 2: hundred foot driveway over and over is just staggering.
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Speaker 1: But those false leads eventually give way to something very real.
13:42
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm listening, because here is.
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Speaker 1: Where it gets really interesting. Let's set a new scene.
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Speaker 1: It is the spring of twenty twenty three. Janice is
13:50
Speaker 1: having a quiet drink at her local VFW bar.
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Speaker 2: Just a quintessential small town spot where everyone knows everyone.
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Speaker 1: Exactly, and a man approaches her. He's a childhood friend
14:01
Speaker 1: she hasn't spoken to in years, and right there at
14:03
Speaker 1: the bar over a drink, he drops an absolute bombshell.
14:07
Speaker 2: What does he say?
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Speaker 1: He claims that the former neighbors who lived directly across
14:11
Speaker 1: the street from Janis's mother in Saxonburg, the house with
14:14
Speaker 1: the window Cherry was so terrified of we're secretly abusing
14:18
Speaker 1: Cherry and other local children.
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Speaker 2: Oh my god.
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Speaker 1: He specifically names a man named John Montgomery and another
14:23
Speaker 1: unnamed individual.
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Speaker 2: Stop and consider the sheer gravity of that moment. For Janis,
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Speaker 2: it has to be reality shattering completely. For nearly forty years,
14:32
Speaker 2: she has believed her daughter was the victim of a random,
14:34
Speaker 2: faceless monster who snatched her off a rural road. Now
14:38
Speaker 2: she is sitting in a bar being told that the
14:40
Speaker 2: monsters were the people waving to her from across the street.
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Speaker 1: It totally shatters her reality. But here's the thing. It
14:48
Speaker 1: actually aligns perfectly with a very quiet, very specific statement
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Speaker 1: the Pennsylvania State Police made to CNN way back in
14:57
Speaker 1: twenty eleven.
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Speaker 2: Really, what did they say?
14:59
Speaker 1: State? The trooper went on record stating they believe Cherry
15:02
Speaker 1: was lured by someone she knew, someone who had the
15:05
Speaker 1: ability to get her into a vehicle without her panicking
15:08
Speaker 1: or putting up a fight.
15:10
Speaker 2: Wow. Well, if we connect this to the bigger picture,
15:13
Speaker 2: this fits the textbook psychology of child abuse and predatory grooming.
15:16
Speaker 1: Because they don't usually grab kids off.
15:18
Speaker 2: The street great exactly. Offenders rarely snatched children from the
15:22
Speaker 2: street in a chaotic struggle. Instead, they weaponize trust. They
15:25
Speaker 2: ingratiate themselves with the family. They become a familiar safe.
15:28
Speaker 1: Face, which explains why there were no footprints in the snow.
15:31
Speaker 1: She walked to the car willingly, yes.
15:33
Speaker 2: And the fact that Cherry was terrified of her window
15:35
Speaker 2: yet never explicitly named her abuser to her mother speaks
15:38
Speaker 2: volumes about how these perpetrators manipulate their victors through shame
15:42
Speaker 2: and fear, locking them into absolute silence.
15:45
Speaker 1: And that silence was fiercely guarded by the community. Because
15:49
Speaker 1: as investigators peeled this back, it turns out this informant
15:52
Speaker 1: of the VFW hadn't just been holding onto this secret.
15:55
Speaker 2: He had told someone he had actually.
15:57
Speaker 1: Gone to the police way back in twenty ten.
15:59
Speaker 2: Wait twenty ten, Why did anything come of it?
16:02
Speaker 1: Well, he went to them because he saw an old
16:04
Speaker 1: anniversary flyer for the case, and he suddenly remembered that
16:07
Speaker 1: John Montgomery drove a blue car, the exact same kind
16:12
Speaker 1: of small blue car that was mentioned in those nineteen
16:15
Speaker 1: eighty five flyers, and quickly forgotten there is the blue car. Yes,
16:19
Speaker 1: this informant actually wore a police wire to confront John Montgomery.
16:24
Speaker 1: But on the wiretap, John denied involvement and conveniently blamed
16:28
Speaker 1: the other guy. Of course he did, and John ultimately
16:31
Speaker 1: took whatever secrets he had to the grave when he
16:33
Speaker 1: died in twenty twenty two.
16:34
Speaker 2: It's a classic deflection tactic, though, by blaming an unnamed accomplice,
16:38
Speaker 2: he creates reasonable doubt while subtly acknowledging that he knows
16:42
Speaker 2: something happened.
16:42
Speaker 1: I am struggling to wrap my head around this though.
16:45
Speaker 1: Part Well, if John Montgomery was on police radar in
16:48
Speaker 1: twenty ten, how does this stay buried? How does an
16:51
Speaker 1: abuse network operate? Right? Across the street without someone.
16:54
Speaker 2: Noticing, because the digging didn't stop with John right.
16:58
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty five, Ennis's friend, a woman named Bailey,
17:02
Speaker 1: decides she has had enough for the official channels dragging
17:05
Speaker 1: their feet good for her. She starts independently searching through
17:08
Speaker 1: public sex offender registries around the Saxonburg area and she
17:12
Speaker 1: finds a name. Let me guess, William Buddy Montgomery, John Montgomery's.
17:17
Speaker 2: Son, and suddenly the proximity goes from merely suspicious to
17:21
Speaker 2: deeply alarming.
17:22
Speaker 1: Buddy Montgomery is currently sitting in a Pennsylvania state prison
17:26
Speaker 1: for failing to register as a sex offender, and when
17:29
Speaker 1: you look at his actual criminal record, it is horrifying.
17:32
Speaker 2: What did he do?
17:33
Speaker 1: In two thousand and four, he cut a sweetheart plea
17:35
Speaker 1: deal for severe child sex crimes, including the corruption of
17:38
Speaker 1: miners and endangering the welfare of children. He was facing
17:41
Speaker 1: a potential seventy five years in prison, but he walked
17:44
Speaker 1: away with just two years behind bars and ten years
17:46
Speaker 1: of probation.
17:47
Speaker 2: That is a staggering failure of the justice system.
17:50
Speaker 1: It is, and here is the absolute chiller for this case.
17:54
Speaker 1: Buddy was in his early twenties living right there in
17:57
Speaker 1: the neighborhood when eight year old Cherry.
18:00
Speaker 2: Wow, the timeline and the geographical overlap are just impossible
18:05
Speaker 2: to ignore.
18:05
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? I mean, if John
18:08
Speaker 1: was the initial suspect on the wire tap, but his
18:10
Speaker 1: son Buddy has the convicted record, are we looking at
18:13
Speaker 1: a generational cycle of abuse hiding in plain sight?
18:17
Speaker 2: I think we absolutely are. To answer your earlier question
18:19
Speaker 2: about how this stays hidden, abuse networks very often operate
18:23
Speaker 2: within families and geographically isolated communities, like a small.
18:27
Speaker 1: Town, where everyone protects their own exactly.
18:30
Speaker 2: The loyalty to the family unit combined with the shared
18:33
Speaker 2: leverage of mutual crimes, meaning you know, if I go down,
18:36
Speaker 2: you go down, it creates a formidable wall of silence.
18:39
Speaker 1: It's basically mutually assured destruction.
18:41
Speaker 2: Right, It's an entire ecosystem of predation that can exist
18:44
Speaker 2: right next door without the outside world ever catching on.
18:47
Speaker 1: And janis desperate, Foreclosure decides she's going to breach that
18:51
Speaker 1: wall herself.
18:51
Speaker 2: What does she do?
18:52
Speaker 1: In April twenty twenty five, she writes a letter directly
18:56
Speaker 1: to Buddy Montgomery in prison.
18:58
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that takes credible bravery.
19:01
Speaker 1: It really does, And The resulting correspondence is a masterclass
19:05
Speaker 1: in psychological manipulation.
19:06
Speaker 2: On his part.
19:07
Speaker 1: Yes, at first, Buddy plays along. He writes back, acting sympathetic,
19:12
Speaker 1: saying he wants to help her find the truth. But
19:14
Speaker 1: as soon as Janis tries to set up an actual
19:17
Speaker 1: face to face contact visit, the games begin.
19:20
Speaker 2: Of course they do.
19:21
Speaker 1: He dodges her. He claims he suddenly had a heart
19:24
Speaker 1: attack and was rushed to the hospital. Finally, he sends
19:27
Speaker 1: a message through an intermediary outright refusing to see her.
19:31
Speaker 2: See this is a textbook powerplay. Really yeah, For an
19:34
Speaker 2: incarcerated defender, they have lost all physical autonomy, right, so
19:38
Speaker 2: maintaining control over the narrative and specifically over the victim's
19:41
Speaker 2: family becomes their last remaining form of power.
19:44
Speaker 1: So it's about control completely.
19:46
Speaker 2: He is dangling the carotive truth only to snatch it away.
19:49
Speaker 2: He is asserting dominance.
19:51
Speaker 1: Well, his demands prove your point exactly. Because he doesn't
19:54
Speaker 1: just refuse the visit. He states he will only tell
19:57
Speaker 1: his story if it is televised live, and he wants
20:00
Speaker 1: to be hooked up to a polygraph exam while he
20:03
Speaker 1: does it.
20:03
Speaker 2: A live television broadcast, a live television broadcast. The grand
20:07
Speaker 2: standing there is staggering, but it makes perfect psychological sense. Unfortunately,
20:11
Speaker 2: how does that make sense? Well, demanding live television isn't
20:14
Speaker 2: about clearing your name. It's pure narcissism. It's about being
20:18
Speaker 2: the center of attention bypassing the police and dictating the
20:21
Speaker 2: exact terms of engagement to the world. It's narrative control
20:25
Speaker 2: on a massive scale.
20:27
Speaker 1: Well, the researchers working on this case recently pressed him
20:30
Speaker 1: on these ridiculous demands, and in response, Buddy sent them
20:34
Speaker 1: a densely packed, eight page handwritten letter.
20:37
Speaker 2: I can only imagine what's in there.
20:39
Speaker 1: Oh, it's intense. In it, he aggressively denies having anything
20:42
Speaker 1: to do with Sherry's disappearance. He tells his accusers to quote,
20:46
Speaker 1: go straight to the enslavements of hell. Very dramatic, but
20:49
Speaker 1: tucked inside all that rage, he drops an incredibly cryptic line.
20:54
Speaker 1: He says the truth will be found when quote the
20:57
Speaker 1: right questions are asked to those within his my father's
21:01
Speaker 1: little circle. I was never part of this circle.
21:04
Speaker 2: Wow. Notice the linguistic gymnastics he is doing right there.
21:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, shifting the blame right exactly.
21:10
Speaker 2: He is shifting the entirety of the blame onto a
21:12
Speaker 2: dead parent. By pointing the finger at his father's little circle,
21:17
Speaker 2: he is essentially confirming that a network of abuse existed
21:20
Speaker 2: and that they are responsible for Sherry.
21:22
Speaker 1: But he's innocent, of course, right.
21:24
Speaker 2: He is desperately trying to surgically remove himself.
21:27
Speaker 1: From that narrative, and the final unconfirmed clues that have
21:30
Speaker 1: surfaced recently paid a very dark picture of what his
21:34
Speaker 1: father's circle might have been doing.
21:35
Speaker 2: What kind of clues well?
21:37
Speaker 1: A private investigator looking into the case received a tip
21:40
Speaker 1: from a local that a backpack matching the exact description
21:43
Speaker 1: of Sherry's bulky blue one was allegedly submerged in a
21:47
Speaker 1: pond somewhere on the massive twenty eight acre Montgomery family property.
21:51
Speaker 2: Oh my god. If that tip is accurate, it means
21:54
Speaker 2: the physical evidence that was completely absent from that snowy
21:57
Speaker 2: driveway in nineteen eighty five wasn't lost. It was just
22:00
Speaker 2: hidden on private, tightly controlled land a few miles away.
22:04
Speaker 1: And then there is a man named Mike, a former
22:06
Speaker 1: friend of Buddy's. Mike recently came forward claiming that years
22:10
Speaker 1: ago he walked in on Buddy having a hush phone
22:12
Speaker 1: conversation he clearly wasn't supposed to hear.
22:14
Speaker 2: How about the case.
22:15
Speaker 1: Yes, Buddy was talking about Cherry Mahan. When Mike confronted
22:19
Speaker 1: him about it, Buddy allegedly confessed that his dad, John
22:23
Speaker 1: quote chose her and admitted that his father was directly
22:27
Speaker 1: involved in her disappearance.
22:29
Speaker 2: It's just staggering when you synthesize all of this to data,
22:32
Speaker 2: Buddy's aggressive grandstanding, his narcissistic demands for live TV, shifting
22:37
Speaker 2: the blame entirely to a dead father, and the whismers
22:40
Speaker 2: of submerged evidence on family land. It suggests a deeply
22:43
Speaker 2: fractured narrative.
22:45
Speaker 1: A guilty conscience maybe, or at.
22:46
Speaker 2: Least self preservation. He is a man cornered by his
22:49
Speaker 2: own history trying to sacrifice his father's ghost to save himself.
22:53
Speaker 1: It is a dizzying, heartbreaking journey. We started this deep
22:57
Speaker 1: dive looking at five hundred feet of snowy gravel and
23:00
Speaker 1: a mysterious painted van, thinking this was a random act
23:04
Speaker 1: of chaotic.
23:04
Speaker 2: Evil, right the stranger danger myth.
23:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, And forty years later, the labyrinth has twisted its
23:10
Speaker 1: way to a prison cell and a twenty eight acre
23:12
Speaker 1: property right across the street from the bedroom where a
23:15
Speaker 1: little girl once felt safe.
23:16
Speaker 2: It reminds us that the truth in these decades old
23:19
Speaker 2: cold cases is rarely clean. It is muddy, it is generational,
23:23
Speaker 2: and it is deeply tragically rooted in the community itself.
23:26
Speaker 1: He really is. Now before we close, we have to
23:28
Speaker 1: acknowledge that we have explored some incredibly heavy, dark themes
23:32
Speaker 1: today regarding child abuse and predation. If you are someone
23:35
Speaker 1: you know as a victim, please know that you are
23:37
Speaker 1: not alone, and there's a real confidential help available right now.
23:41
Speaker 1: You can contact the rain and National Sexual Assault Hotline,
23:44
Speaker 1: which is available two four seven It is completely free.
23:48
Speaker 1: If you need immediate help, you can text the word
23:50
Speaker 1: hope Hope to six four six seven three.
23:53
Speaker 2: This raises an important question, and it's one that I
23:55
Speaker 2: want you to really mull over as you go about
23:57
Speaker 2: your day. Was that when we teach children about we
24:00
Speaker 2: conjure images of boogeymen and customized vans snatching them from
24:05
Speaker 2: the side of a lonely road. But the most terrifying
24:08
Speaker 2: aspect of Cheering Mahen's story isn't the mysterious stranger in
24:11
Speaker 2: the painted van. It's the chilling reality that the monsters
24:14
Speaker 2: we tell our children to fear might not be strangers
24:16
Speaker 2: at all. They might be the people smiling at them
24:18
Speaker 2: from across the street, the ones watching them through the
24:21
Speaker 2: bedroom window.