BUTLER, Pa. — A local woman claims she and a friend were nearly abducted by a man in a van and it happened just months after Cherrie Mahan disappeared more than 40 years ago.
Mahan’s case is one of the most high-profile unsolved mysteries in our area.
The 8-year old year old vanished after getting off a bus in rural Butler County.
A woman, who was 15 at the time, said she was the victim of an attempted abduction around the same time.
She believes the cases may be connected.
No one has ever been charged in Mahan’s disappearance, and she was never seen or heard from again.
Chief Investigator Rick Earle has covered the Mahan case for years, and he sat down with Lori Bortmas as she described the harrowing ordeal.
Earle: Do you feel lucky to be alive?
Bortmas: Oh, absolutely.
On a spring night in 1985 in the city of Butler, 15-year-old Lori Bortmas and her friend were walking home from an under-21 dance club.
They turned onto the street next to Pullman Park, when they said a man in a white van pulled beside them.
He was a white man in his 20s or 30s with a scruffy beard, according to Bortmas.
“His exact words were ‘Okay, do you need a ride?’ We thought nothing of it. He seemed innocent enough,” said Bortmas.
The man drove away and Bortmas and her friend continued walking to her house.
Bortmas: We’re walking, talking, laughing and the next thing I hear, gravel behind me and I turn around and he was 10 feet behind us, with his lights out.
Earle: What was going through your mind at that point?
Bortmas: I mean, just complete shock, like, not sure you know, obviously, at that point, we knew what his intentions were.
Bortmas told Earle that she and her friend immediately took off running, but Bortmas said she fell.
“I fell. I ripped the pant leg out of my pants, and as I fell to the ground, I turned around and his van was in park, his driver’s door open. He got out, and he stepped out of the van, and by the grace of God, I got up and started running,” said Bortmas, who also lost a shoe.
Following her friend, Bortmas ran across the swinging bridge and safely made it to her house just on the other side.
As they arrived, her mom was just pulling in, and she called the police, but without much to go on, Bortmas said they didn’t send out an officer.
“I had a vague description of the man, but no license plate or anything. There really wasn’t much. They said that, so you know they didn’t come to even take a report,” said Bortmas, who indicated that many in the area were on edge at the time because of the Mahan disappearance.
Her dad and cousin went looking for the man in the van, but never found him.
In Mahan’s case, a few months earlier and ten miles south in Cabot, there was also a man in a van, but it was blue or green with a skier mural.
Police have said that the van with the skier mural was possibly connected to the Mahan case.
While Bortmas saw a white van, she still has her suspicions about a possible link between her encounter and Mahan’s disappearance.
Earle: Do you think that was connected to her disappearance?
Bortmas: At the time, I wasn’t sure, but absolutely I do.
Bortmas said a coworker ultimately convinced her to go public with her story in the hopes that someone would come forward with new information to help the Mahan case.
“I can’t help but think that I’m not the only person that happened to you know. I think that, you know, that there’s probably others out there that face the same thing. I feel fortunate that I’m not a statistic and if anything helps the family with some closure,” said Bortmas.
The Butler police department said they didn’t have records from that far back, and said all tips involving the Mahan case over the years were forwarded to Pennsylvania State Police at the Butler Barracks.
Earle reached out to State Police, but as of this writing, hadn’t heard back.
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