Their stories are eerily similar, but only one, so far, has a happy ending.
When Ben Ownby disappeared in Missouri last week, Janice McKinney, a Pennsylvania woman, shed some tears at the thought of what he and his family must have been going through. Janice, after all, can relate. Her daughter, then 8-year-old Cherrie Mahan, was kidnapped more than two decades ago after getting off her school bus, just like Ben Ownby.
Cherrie, who now would be 30 years old, hasn't been seen since.
Like in Ben's case, there was a witness who saw a vehicle. A student from Cherrie's bus described a blue van with a snowcapped mountain and a skier painted on the side of it. Investigators never found the van. Janice McKinney lives with terrible guilt. It was the first time she hadn't picked up her daughter at the bus stop. She had given her permission to walk the 300 feet from the bus to her driveway.
Next month marks the 22nd anniversary of Cherrie's disappearance. She's happy that William Ben Ownby and another young boy, Shawn Hornbeck, were found. Janice told me it gives her hope that one day she'll have her little girl back too. "Twenty-two years later, I'm still searching for any kind of answer," she said.
As it turns out, Cherrie was the little girl who helped put a real face on missing kids. Hers was the first to appear on those "Have you seen me?" fliers you get in your mailbox.
