Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brit. And the story I have for you today It begins at exactly 4 10 p.m.
In Cabot, Pennsylvania That's the time when eight-year-old Cherry Mayhand gets dropped off by her school bus Come rain snow or shine it is always there near the end of her family's gravel driveway and Friday February 22nd 1985 was no different the big yellow box parked on the side of the road right on schedule and opened its accordion door to deposit Cherry and her big backpack in the one place that a kid should be safest But something happened to cherry after those bus doors closed and somewhere in the 500 feet between the road and her home Cherry disappeared and she hasn't been seen in over 40 years But in the last few months our team has been in contact with a man in prison who says he holds the answers and he agreed to meet with us To share what he knows only one thing was different from the routine cherry may hand followed on February 22nd 1985 That Friday was the one day neither Cherry's mother or stepfather were there to walk her from her bus down the long drive to their front door It was a nice day 40 degrees her mom Janice could see the road from their window She could hear the bus on the gravel as it pulled up like what could possibly happen in your own driveway So she told her husband Lee were they could skip meeting cherry at the stop and every day for 40 years I bet her stomach churns as she replaced that decision when it was so small, but it changed her life forever Janice hears the bus come and go and they wait But when minutes go by and Cherry doesn't walk through the door Leroy heads up to the front of the trailer to check on her Now he doesn't spot her out front So he walks to the end of the driveway thinking maybe she stopped there to chat or play with a friend But she's not there either and as he stares up and down the two lane back road surrounded by woods on either side The first seed of the stomach pit that he'll come to live with begins to grow now Leroy doesn't want to waste anymore time So he gets Janice and they hop in their car to literally chase this bus down because maybe Cherry missed her stop He she'd never gotten on the bus like please have one of these things be one of them But she didn't the bus driver tells them yet She was on this bus and she just got off at her house not too long ago They're not talking themselves out of the panic now like Cherry is the kid who lives by the rules So this is not like her she wouldn't just wander off and she even had a sleepover planned for that night that she was super excited about Like she would be here if she couldn't so they go right back to their trailer to call 911 Officers get there pretty quickly like within 10 20 minutes and they do a preliminary search of the area Even though it's warm There is still some snow on the ground so it's a bit easier to see if there are any footprints or anything They don't see any suspicious ones or any that might suggest which way Cherry walked when she got off the bus They also aren't seeing any of her belongings either like her blue backpack that should stand out in the winter woods But they don't find that or any of the clothes she was wearing which was a denim skirt and leg warmers with gray and beige boots And by the way, not even just in the preliminary search Do they not find these from what Janice told us police end up searching the five mile radius around the home even using blood How to try and track Cherry sent and they also search the surrounding woods with helicopters local volunteers join the searches as well So it was a full blown effort, but there were still no signs of Cherry and have police already talked to all the kids on the bus to see if they Saw anything like when she was getting dropped off They don't do that immediately and that's coming from Janice I would love to give you the play-by-play from police But but Pennsylvania State Police weren't willing to talk to us for this episode and all of our records requests were denied because they said it's an active investigation But Janice's impression was that they first thought Cherry was a runaway and then when they changed their minds about that They then zeroed right in on Leroy and Janice themselves questioning them for hours individually and it wasn't totally unwarranted I mean you have to start closest to the missing person parents if it's a missing child and Janice and Leroy definitely had things to look at Janice told our reporter that both she and Leroy struggled with substance use disorder and Leroy has post-traumatic stress disorder from the Vietnam War along with Other struggles with his mental health and Leroy was also part of a local motorcycle gang at the time So I don't know if they were thinking like the couple did something or maybe like just that they were hanging around in bad crowds Who might have done something to their daughter? But to get to the bottom of it Police asked them both to take a polygraph and they agreed and they will pass with no signs of deception However, according to Janice, they were still treated like suspects though I will say they didn't let the investigation stop there because they start widening that circle and the next closest connection to Cherry is her biological dad Who Janice tells us is also allegedly connected to a motorcycle gang. Oh, this is a different motorcycle gang though Okay, but Janice says that he was like pretty high up in this motorcycle gang and even though him doing something to Cherry didn't really make a whole Lot of sense because truly he never even really wanted much to do with his daughter Like they still got to check this out and interestingly according to the Pittsburgh press when they do go and check this dude is super adamant That not only did he have nothing to do with this. He's like I'm not even her father Oh, yeah, so I'm assuming there are a lot of investigative steps that I'm not ready to in order to get to this next part But all in all police end up ruling him out because there is nothing connecting him to her disappearance Now in the early days of all of this police don't name any suspects and Janice couldn't think of anyone She knew who would have wanted to hurt her daughter.
Cherry was a sweet bright young girl I mean she was Janice's everything to kind of put it in perspective She had her at 16 so like they grew up together They were always with each other The only times they weren't was when Cherry was at school or when Janice had to go to work early and she would drop Cherry off Before school with like a babysitter down the road But while she wasn't suspicious of anyone she knew that didn't mean that there wasn't someone to be suspicious of Someone that Cherry was actually suspicious of shortly before she disappeared The night sky may look at this but its secrets could be closer than we think because in this universe you're never truly alone I'm Yvette Genthile and I'm her sister Rasha Pecarero every Friday on so supernatural We investigate alien encounters haunting tales of the unknown and cosmic mysteries that defy explanation ready to discover what's out there Listen to so supernatural wherever you get your podcast Janice tells police that they only lived in this home for the last six months or so before getting this trailer They actually lived in Janice's mom's house Which is like 20 minutes away in a town called Saxenberg She said at first when they moved that Cherry was super excited to have her own room in bathroom like I mean the dream the dream for a young girl But after a few months in her new room something changed like Cherry went from being excited to afraid because she told her mom that she was afraid Someone was watching her from her bedroom window was someone watching her from her bedroom window Well Janice never saw anyone and at the time she thought maybe it might have just been like new home jitters But it wasn't for Janice to take her concern seriously So she moved Cherry into a smaller room closer to Janice and Leroy and she bought her blackout curtains Like I mean she did everything she could but that didn't change how scared Cherry was even in that small room She was sleeping on the floor. No pillows. No blankets almost like she was hiding That's what I'm envisioning right and it's heartbreaking because this was going on for a couple of months And she was afraid like this up until she disappeared So it's at this point when police are hearing this that they finally go talk to the other kids on Cherry's bus Maybe she told them more than she told her mom now that ends up being a no-go None of the kids know about someone watching her but they are able to give police some other information Important like I bet you wish you talked to them first information One of the kids who was on the bus tells police that there was this like blue green van following behind the school bus The day Cherry disappeared now I have come to learn that blue-green vehicles are like a dime a dozen in the mid-80s But this one was ultra specific this kid said that it had a painting of a person schemed down a snowy mountainside on The passenger side of the van. Yeah, you don't see paintings on the sides of vans every day I've seen that never I heard it's like I was actually doing a little like chat GPT like with this and apparently It's a big thing in the 70s and 80s But like I'm not talking a small painting after getting more witness Confirmations of the sand they actually have a picture drawn and they included in the missing person's flyers put out on Cherry But there's an interesting line in the description written above it so it says possible vehicles involved in abduction Yeah, yeah, blue or green van with mountains seen on pastors I'd know that right also a small blue vehicle seen in the area seen in the area by who so reporting only says that it came from a Witness, but I don't know who that witness was though It might have been a local woman named Debbie Burke who lives nearby She was actually parked at the spot that Cherry got off like she's parked in her car waiting for her own kids to come off the bus Oh, I guess I was picturing Cherry getting off the bus by herself But there were like other people around when she has a bus Yeah, so Cherry's bus dropped off a group of kids at one spot some of them would walk to their homes nearby some parents Wait around for them to be dropped off and pick them up.
It was like a bus stop situation. Yeah, so I don't know She's this witness who saw the blue car in the area, but she says she did see Cherry was maybe even the last to see Cherry Couldn't have been her car that people saw if she's like parks they're waiting No, I checked on this so reporting didn't say what color her car was But I do know for a fact that the blue car was definitely separate from hers now to go back to what she saw So Debbie told police at the time that she was sitting in her car waiting for the bus She saw Cherry get off like she did most days and according to an NBC News article She said that the kids all played for a little while and then Cherry walked past her car in the direction of her home And then Debbie drove off with her kids. Did she see the mountain skiing van? She did she saw the same van the kids did and she even saw trailing the bus beforehand in her mirror I guess she was like parked on the side and waiting and could see like the bus pulling up But like it wasn't weird to her that a van was behind the bus I mean it's not like it was doing anything other than driving down the road It's just like whatever car is behind the bus that and when the bus stops everyone has to stop right?
So like she didn't think much about it So it didn't like stop or do anything that made her think it was like after So it's not for the bus but then it just kept going down the road No again stopping the bus up and that's it But it didn't like pull over or anything she didn't see Cherry interacting It wasn't notable other than it was just like whatever car was behind the bus that day And to be fair I mean this van could theoretically have pulled off into a driveway or something before Cherry got off and waited until Debbie left But Debbie doesn't mention anything like this She just says she didn't see Cherry get into the van And like when Janice hears this she's like well what I know is that Cherry would never have gone off willingly with strangers Or left with someone without permission So her mom thinks if someone did take her van or no van it had to have either been someone she knew or someone who took her by force Do they know someone who drives a van with a painting on it? That's not to say next they don't know anyone who drives that kind of van So then we're looking for a stranger Which means that the circle around Cherry is now infinitely wide Yeah And that's when local police bring in the help of the FBI And they start by looking into other disappearances where a blue or green van was either Involved or seen nearby. Okay, but what about the blue car? You know, I'm not sure if they pursued the blue car or not for some reason it just kind of stops being reported on It seems like their sites are totally set on this unique van And maybe that's because they do actually find disappearances and incidents involving possibly similar vans But they're never the van and there are never any incidents that they end up definitively linking to Cherry Okay outside of the other abductions that anyone recognized just the van I mean, it's it feels like a really unique van Well police said at the time that they were getting thousands of tips that they had to sort through but out of all of that There was one van that was on police's radar Barely a belong to a woman named Donna Patterson Her van was blue with a painting of a skier going down the mountain on the side of it Sounds familiar and she lived just five miles from where Cherry disappeared now according to the Pittsburgh press police looked into this van But on the day and time of Sherry's disappearance It was apparently parked at a local steel corporation where Donna's brother-in-law worked I guess he used the van that day and he was there working So when police confirm his alibi they just rule him out and Donna and her van But that didn't stop people from harassing Donna She said that she constantly saw people like taking down her plate number and she said she got pulled over by police who thought that this was the vehicle connected to Sherry's disappearance But Donna said that she was not going to stop driving the van or even paint over it to stop the constant attention Which I think is what I would have done.
Yeah, immediately So it's not Donna's van that means police think there are two of these vans with these paintings on it I mean in town or there's another one out of town or this van's not connected at all But there does have to be another one who was driving that road that day because it's not just like Donna and her family are saying they weren't involved Like police are saying their van wasn't on the move when Cherry's bus stopped like at the bus. I know I even wondered like could someone have access to his keys while he's working like unless there is a video surveillance of this van park the whole time the van there the whole time Yeah, and I'm not saying there isn't like I just don't know and this is where like these are one of those things where I tend to spiral I'm like map out the drive to work What shit he was on like talk to every person who worked with them to see like how long it would have taken him to get to where he's Best app wise and back and like who had access to your key. Yeah, I don't know again All please say this is not their van and also I go back to maybe the van isn't connected at all But then why isn't someone coming forward saying like hey? It was my I was just driving like that's my route to XYZ I'm just I'm grasping here I'm trying and listen, I don't know if they just like take the alibi for it or if they even process the van forensically I would think so if they ruled it out right and especially I think that because I do know that they process some vans that were kind Of similar looking at that time even if the van wasn't spot on but I go back to they never found the van and they never found Cherry even despite some pretty big campaigns like when her picture was featured on a rerun of NBC's Adam Which was about six-year-old Adam Walsh's abduction Cherry was actually the first missing child to have her picture printed on a postcard and sent around the country as part of the Have you seen me direct mail flyer program and she was one of the first missing children whose missing person's poster was placed on a milk Garden that was a program that started the year she disappeared and according to the Pittsburgh Post is that Nick Mick is putting Sherry's information in different hotels in Canada and Mexico even the UK So they're not ruling out that she was taken out of the country because again How infinitely wide is a circle when you don't have much to go off of you can't rule anything out?
But by 1998 Cherry's case is ice cold and that is when Janice has cherry legally declared deceased She says she isn't moving on or giving up looking But I mean she had another child and she says she needed to come to terms with the fact that Cherry likely wasn't alive And over the next 30 years she did her best to deal with that But in 2018 her entire world was upended when she received a letter in the mail And on a single sheet of wide-ruled notebook paper Someone had handwritten in block letters all the answers that she had been seeking for over 30 years and it was signed Pastor Justice now I can't read you the know in its entirety because it has specific names that we don't want to share But we will put a redacted version of this letter up on the blog post and on social media for this episode If any of the listeners want to go take a look basically It says that cherry was killed by friends of her biological father and these friends are part of a Quaker cult who helped quote Make Cherry disappear for at least the guy Janice claims is Cherry's bio dad And like the motive for this was allegedly all to like evade him paying child support Now the anonymous writer gives specific details on where Cherry's remains are in a place called the lock 8 dam Which is about 25 miles or 40 minutes away give or take and interestingly They ended the letter saying I pray you find some peace after you find her body Now Janice told our reporter that she has no idea who these friends are that is like referenced in this letter And she's not even familiar with the area that they're talking about well And also since when our Quakers kidnapping and murdering people long kids I mean they aren't right they are known to be pacifists right you give you say so I don't know enough But like here's what I'll say it's like and maybe because they haven't gotten anything in so long police at least kind of seem to take this Letter seriously right it's something when they've had a lot of nothing for decades because she shows in this letter And they actually do go out and search this area but unfortunately nothing comes of it So it is another dead end or an incredibly cruel prank Which honestly probably that because there is no evidence that anything in that letter is true But I don't know if this letter unleashed something or what but after this in the same year in 2018 She gets his phone call at work the person on the other end of the line thinks that she might be Janice's long-lost daughter Now Jerry would have been in her early 40s at this point and so as you can imagine like Janice She has spent so much of her life like deciding what she has to live with right like so she's immediately skeptical She's like not convinced I have to imagine she like can't even let herself believe it sounds like a nice moment that you want to be excited for You also have to steal yourself get your hopes up like yeah anything or everything at this point Yeah, because the fall back down if it is not them could be worse Like you're undoing all the healing and forward momentum that you've made over the years and she had a good level of skepticism because when police Compare this colors fingerprints to cherries wait, how do they have cherries fingerprints? They have a month file because they were actually taking her elementary school. So like yeah super useful I don't think that anymore But like probably should but when they do this they determine that this woman isn't charity and even though right like even though she was skeptical Like Janice is still devastated because you tell yourself not to get your hopes up You still get little like spark yeah, you still get your hope you like you wish that it could be true that she would finally be reunited with her daughter But this letdown is a reminder of the fact that she may never know what happened after her daughter got off the school bus that February day Or who was responsible but let this be a lesson even in the coldest of cold cases never say never because in 2023 nearly 40 years after her daughter went missing leads come straight to Janice in the most unexpected place The school year is in full swing and kids have found their footing I excel helps them build on what they've learned so far and stay confident heading deeper into fall I excel covers everything from pre-k to 12th grade plus it saves time and money one subscription covers every child in your household Studies show that students who use I excel perform better academically with proven results in all 50 states in fact one and four US students use I excel and it's used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the US one of the most proactive things I feel like I can do as a parent is help support the learning in the classroom which tools at home and I excel is one of the easiest And most effective ways to do just that make it impact on your child's learning get I excel now and crime junk listeners can get an exclusive 20% off I excel membership when they send out today at I excel calm slash crime junkie Visit I excel calm slash crime junkie to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price What I'm about to share with you has never been reported on in this much detail before and it names a person who has never been Connected publicly to this case before according to Janice one day in the spring of 2023 she went to her local VFW to have a drink it was a regular spot for her She knew most of the locals who came in there But on this night when she's sitting at the bar She sees this man that she doesn't recognize and he's just staring right at her So finally she's like hey man What's the deal and the guy just responds with her name? But it's like a question like he knows her but he wants to be sure and it turns out he does know her She knows him He's someone that she grew up with but she didn't recognize my first because she hadn't seen him since they were like little kids Now our reporter actually spoke with this man And he asked that we keep him anonymous because what he told us the bomb that he dropped on Janice that day could put him in danger He said that he knows one of Janice's neighbors the one who lived across the street from them at Janice's mom's house before they moved to that trailer The guy's name is John Montgomery Now this is a name that Janice knows well Cherry often played with other young kids over at their house and after Cherry disappeared Janice says some of the family members would even check in with her weekly for updates But this guy says that he knew John well too And he knew that John and another man were molesting Cherry before she went missing And he believes that they might be involved in her disappearance And in that moment Janice's world is spinning because this is completely new information I mean she didn't have so much as an inkling like anything like that could have been happening to Cherry She told us that a lot of the hallmark signs of abuse like a sudden change in behavior or fear of being in a room with like certain people Like she didn't see that in her daughter The only thing she ever noticed was that fear that someone unknown was watching her after she moved away from the house that was across the street from Montgomery house And do you know how long it had been going on before she moved or before she went missing?
No, I have no idea how long the alleged abuse was going on before she disappeared The our source didn't have like a timeline for that And how does he even know about this? So I have to keep some of the details back to protect his identity But I can tell you he didn't always know this So it's not like he's like kept his secret for decades and he had tried to go to the police But here's the scoop So he was from the area but he had moved away and around 2010 he moved back to Pennsylvania It was after he moved back that he learned about John and his other guy abusing not just Cherry But he says other kids in the neighborhood as well And the other guy he actually named that other guy but that is someone that we can't name at this point Now when he learned about the abuse he wasn't necessarily connecting it to Cherry's disappearance right away But one day he said he saw this old missing person flyer of Cherry with the blue car and the van that we talked about And that's when he realized that John Montgomery would have had access to a similar blue car around the time that Cherry disappeared And so this is when he said he went to police because this is obviously a major revelation And according to him they took him seriously even set him up with a wire to go confront John But he said while he was wearing the wire John denied involvement and he basically blamed the other guy He also told us that police talked to John and this other guy But I can't confirm any of that from police directly because like I said they wouldn't talk to us Though I will say that authorities did tell a WPXI reporter Rick Earl That they did interview neighbors about Cherry's disappearance but no one has ever confessed to anything related to Cherry So what about the other kids though? Did they investigate any of that? That's the thing I don't think so it seems like when our stores talked to police It was the first they were hearing of any of these allegations So they hadn't been independently reported like these kids even as adults hadn't come forward to them And we even went and checked court records and we didn't find any record for John or this other guy So nothing went through on the legal side and I don't know how much police went looking for victims Right Now John died in 2022 so I can't ask him and our attempts to reach this other guy were unsuccessful So do we think it's true and no one ever reported anything or I don't know I mean for the guy to have no record And this be in his history it's kind of wild to me It's wild but it's not unbelievable if this is true I mean we know that some adults don't report their abuse and for children those numbers skyrocket For sure And there's often a lack of understanding of like what is happening to them or like they're afraid of getting in trouble Because even if they realize like what is happening is wrong often they blame themselves Or they get convinced that if their job to protect their abuse And especially if it's someone they know their abuser will often tell them like oh I'm gonna get in trouble or like This is gonna happen to me or to you and like I think that could fall in line with what police ended up telling CNN in 2011 That they ended up saying that cherry was likely abducted by someone she knew really well I mean literally a Pennsylvania state trooper said quote I believe this person had the ability to basically lure a cherry to their vehicle without her giving it a second thought prior to her disappearance End quote So it's totally possible for someone to operate like this and not have a record Right possible but did he like how do you even go about trying to run this down to find the truth of what happens We need cooperation right which finally came this year.
That's why we're able to report this So when Janice found this out that was 2023 remember like she didn't know what to do Yeah, I mean she didn't have a good relationship with investigators on the case So she felt isolated from what police had going on and so she didn't even tell anyone else Plus we know that the guy who's telling her this already tried to go to police So like what's she gonna do right? So she kind of just held it in for a couple of years But in 2025 Janice confided in her friend Bailey She basically told her like I'm at my wits end like all I want is answers at this point And I feel like I am so close but still just out of reach and bless Best friends like Bailey she sees this as a cry for help and she just jumps into action Bailey starts pushing law enforcement to look into leads She creates a facebook page called find cherry mayhan and even starts a team called cherries angels that ends up working with a private investigator This guy named steve ridge and steve pledges a hundred thousand dollars for anyone who helps with finding cherries remains And so while steve is doing his thing bale starts looking into john montgomery trying to find anything linking him or this other guy to child sex abuse So she's searching all avenues and one of those is on megan's law.com Which is a website that keeps track of sex offenders and to be honest She doesn't really know what she's looking for but I think she's like trying anything and it almost is like a ceiling per her like I'll know it when I see it right? So she's looking around like in the area of both the house that cherry disappeared from and her grandma's house that she lived in Saxonburg and suddenly she sees the name william montgomery john montgomery's son Now he goes by buddy and he'd already done time in prison by the time she came across him And that actually is where he is right now for failing to register as a sex offender He was locked up in 2022 and we don't know when he's getting out But the max sentence for the failure to register is 54 months So it's likely that he'll be out sometime by the end of next year And we actually found his previous record so in 2004 he put guilty to sexual assault corruption of minors Endangering the welfare of children and indecent assault He cut a deal with prosecutors and according to news reports instead of 75 years in prison Like this he got about two years behind bars and 10 years probation Okay, yeah, I'm gonna have to skip past that so I don't see red Did he live at the house across from cherries grandma at the time cherry was living there? So I am not exactly sure where he lived at that time But what I can say is that we interviewed several people who lived in the area at the time who say that buddy was definitely around then So I don't know where he lived but he was definitely around there and he was in his early 20s when cherry disappeared So bailey finds this she of course gives it over to police But she and jana's haven't seen much come of them running down any potential leads So that's when jana's decides to take matters into her own hands And at the beginning of april this year she just wrote to buddy in prison She asks if she can come and talk to him about jerry because she's trying to figure out what happened and she wants closure after 40 years And she acknowledges that his dad wasn't the greatest guy and says listen I'm sorry for all that you have been put through and have seen and it worked because less than two weeks later Buddy actually responds to her The school year isn't full swing and kids have found their footing I excel helps them build on what they've learned so far and stay confident heading deeper into fall I excel covers everything from pre-k to 12th grade plus it saves time and money one subscription covers every child in your household Studies show that students who use i excel perform better academically with proven results in all 50 states In fact one in four us students use i excel and it's used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the us One of the most proactive things I feel like I can do as a parent is help support the learning in the classroom Which tools at home and i excel is one of the easiest and most effective ways to do just that Make an impact on your child's learning get i excel now and crime junk listeners can get an exclusive 20 Percent of i excel membership when they sign up today at i excel dot com slash crime junkie visit i excel dot com slash crime junkie Take the most effective learning program out there at the best price Buddy's first letter back to jana's is pretty vague.
He basically just says he wants to help So jana's writes him back asking like okay put me on your visitation list because again She just wants to get in front of this guy but it's weeks before he responds A letter does eventually come in mid-May and he apologizes for the delay He said he actually had a heart attack and he's been in the hospital But he still wants to talk to her and so she just keeps sending him short messages asking okay great I want to talk to you too, but when can i come see you or when can we at least talk on the phone? Yeah, but she says that buddy just keeps like dodging her So at the end of june jana's schedules i visit to the prison anyway But when she gets there buddy won't come out and i guess jana's tries to schedule another visit But before that one happens buddy writes her this message and he sends it to the person that is helping jana's communicate with him in prison And i'll read what i can from him I just received word that jana's had made arrangements for a contact visit on saturday So please let her know that i will not accept it until i have a chance to set things up the way i want it set up And how exactly is that she found out so he lays out those terms in more letters He says he wants his story televised for his own protection Now mind you we started communicating with jana's like wow this was all unfolded I was gonna say just as a reminder this is happening a few months ago Yeah, so buddy wants a news organization happy to help like put us to work jana's So we even sent buddy a letter of our own in april though I'm not sure if he received that one because he didn't respond to it So in late july we decided to try again And we wrote to him on the prison email system asking if he would speak to us about the case because his name had come up And we send him a list of questions like a few times actually about the things that we've heard and he finally responded with this After reading your questions I am so disgruntled over the fact that you are hearing these lies and would want nothing other than an opportunity to sit down with you and talk great So we kept pressing for that opportunity to talk for a phone call But he kept avoiding us like he did with jana's So in the meantime we tried to verify a specific lead that we heard about and we wanted to talk to somebody who knew buddy So first was the lead so the p.i. Steve Ridge had gotten a tip from someone locally who knew the Montgomery's They told him that a backpack that may or may not have been cherries was allegedly submerged in a pond somewhere on the 28 acre Montgomery property Sometime after cherries disappearance interesting it true So we tracked down the person who gave Steve Ridge that tip They did say some similar things to us But the details they gave us about what actually happened were pretty hazy and for legal reasons for now I can't talk about it Okay And I'm not sure if the Montgomery property was ever searched in connection with cherries disappearance, which I think is like an interesting fact Yeah, so tb on the backpack we're still looking into that I can't tell you a little bit more about what we found when we tracked down a former friend of buddies His name is Mike Now he lives in the area says he's known buddy for a really long time And he'd gone to meet buddy at his house one day and he walked up on him having a conversation that I only might go supposed to hear I can't tell you the full details of this alleged conversation But in it buddy was mentioning cherry on the phone with someone and when Mike confronted him about it He says that buddy told him his dad John quote shows her and then went on to say that his dad was involved in her disappearance Now there are a lot more details that Mike provided and he says that he told police about this incident as well But again, I have not been able to confirm this with cops myself because they didn't talk to us Got we did though ask buddy about all of this first about the backpack and if he knows anything about it He said f no in not so believed out terms and in another more recent letter We actually asked him about the Mike allegations whether he was involved in cherries disappearance and everything that came up in our reporting of cherries case And he basically in a letter said he was going to send us a letter that he was going to be very direct in Okay And we were like waiting holding our breath like you and put off doing this recording because that's what I was waiting for I literally just got it in the mail yesterday. It is like eight pages long So I'm gonna give you the highlights, but for my nosy nellies I will be posting it on the blog post probably heavily redacted But here's the gist He says quote I also want to make it very clear to you Especially those who are formulating such moronic lies and whoever else thinks slash believes that I may have had anything to do with the disappearance of cherry Mayhan to go straight to the enslavements of hell and quote and then in another part He said that we will find the truth when quote the right questions are asked to those within his my father's little circle I was never part of this circle end quote So a lot of the letter was really vague Like the gist of it though is that he says he never met or spoke to cherry And he didn't even know that janice had moved from across the street of the Montgomery house So he's like I wouldn't even know where to get where she was being dropped off after school So I still don't feel like I have a full grasp on what it is He really knows if anything but he says he didn't go to police or janice with the information He still says he has because he doesn't want to spread a false narrative Which I don't understand that I don't understand what that means either And he added in the letter that he will talk to us, but he still has terms He says he wants to be interviewed on live television while hooked up to a polygraph exam And listen, I'm like still trying to make this happen I like I like does like a live stream count I don't know but like I am still unable to like nail this guy down and actually set a time with him And we had to move forward and put this out there And this is where we actually need help from our crime junkies Someone out there knows more about cherry's disappearance and can maybe help corroborate some of the stuff That I've heard that our reporters have gotten that we haven't been able to share in this episode Even if you shared it with police before reach out to us like we're doing our own investigation So if that's you please email us at tips at audiochuck.com We want to help Janice find closure She just wants to know what happened to her daughter and where she is And obviously guys we've talked about some heavy topics in today's episode Child molestation, sexual assault I know it's hard to digest but what I hope that we can take away from this beyond finding closure for Janice Is that we need to protect our kids from strangers from the people they know I mean cherry was always with Janice She always checked in and she was still taking so close to home If you are a victim of child sexual abuse or any kind of sexual abuse I want you to know that there are resources available for you Rain has a national sexual assault hotline available 24-7 You can call text online chat even send them a WhatsApp message Free, confidential, always available, or to have those resources linked out in our show notes And if you need immediate help text hope to 64-673 You can find all the source material for this episode on our website CryingJunkie.com And you can follow us on Instagram at CremeJunkiePodcast We'll be back next week with a brand new episode But stick around because today we have the good Okay Ashley this is like your favorite?
Yes Your favorite thing to do when we're sitting on this couch Listen You're on our microphone Listen It is time for the good Hello Ashley Ridd My name is Liv and I've been a listener since 2019 Early days Who jinxed? I'm writing to you because I believe your podcast saved my life the other day I was flying into Connecticut from Virginia alone My flight was delayed and I didn't land until 2am It's a small airport so at 2am There were almost no staff members around I was walking to get to my rental car when I noticed a man was following me He started making small talk as he noticed my backpack which indicated I worked in healthcare He started asking me questions like where do you work? Where are you from? Are you visiting or do you live here?
They all seem so mundane, right? But as we cry in junkies know this could be dangerous Because of what I learned from your podcast I never gave him any information I kept my answers vague and moved to places where people were I got my husband on the phone and put him on the speaker phone but the man kept following me When I found out they gave away my rental car The man who was still following me asked Absolutely no Where are you trying to get to? That's when I became rude I told him you were making me uncomfortable Get away from me I had my husband on the phone and multiple people tracking my location and waiting for me I was loud and caused the scene to get people to notice He then backed up and said Oh I didn't realize you had someone on the phone And he left I had airport workers stay with me until I got a ride True crime is so much more than storytelling It keeps us alive and safe Because of you I've learned so much about how to keep myself safe And to watch for all the warning signs Maybe this guy was innocent But I had to keep asking myself What if he wasn't? I truly believe your podcast kept me alive that day I'm so thankful for what you do for women and the community Because of you I can write to you today I was weird I was rude And because of crime junkie I'm alive I love it Thank you Live I Those are the stories right?
The best ones are like Well nothing happened Probably Nothing would happen The best stories we ever hear are the ones that don't make it on our show Right? Like we say that all the time Did I tell you about the concert I was being like extra crime junkie? No, but now you have to I was with my husband We went and saw Chris Stapleton And we were leaving We were leaving a little early because I'm 100 years old And I was tired And I ate sleep Let me know that it was like cooling down my bed for me So I was like go And there was like this like we were in the Uber area waiting And they were like these two girls And I'm like overhearing this conversation This like much older guy Much older like 10 years Who's wearing like a boot And he's like oh I'm from California We're in Indiana And he's like I just like Pick a city to go to a concert And I'm like nobody picks Indiana No one picks Indiana And I told my husband I'm like really sneaking photos And my husband was like He's got a boot on I'm like have you never heard of Ted Tandy? Ted Bundy had the fake ass Thank you Thank you so Watch out for your soft ladies But if you're everyone I'll also be watching out for you Know that I'm out there Put trolling gods So if you were the two girls talking to the guy from California And in Indianapolis Chris Stapleton concert I got you girls Crime junkie is an audio chuck production I think Chuck would approve When the nights grow longer The shadows start to start And that can only mean one thing Full body chills is back The season step inside original tales Where every doorway leads somewhere darker Every stranger carries a secret And nothing is ever quite what it seems Each story takes you somewhere new But be careful You never know what might follow you home So gather round Listen close And stream full body chills Wherever you get your podcasts