CNN’s decision to focus on the February 1985 disappearance of 8-year-old Cherrie Mahan of Winfield Township resurrects the question of why the case has remained unsolved for so long.

CNN will feature the case as part of its network series on the nation’s top 10 cold cases. It is to air at 10 p.m. and again at 11 p.m. today.

The longtime mystery is familiar to this state’s baby boomers, who can easily recall other cases — some decades old — that continue to baffle investigators and others who have maintained an interest in them.

One of those other cases is Philadelphia’s 1957 “Boy in the Box” mystery, in which a young boy’s nude, badly bruised body was found in a cardboard box dumped in a remote, rubbish-strewn lot on the northern outskirts of Philadelphia. His identity never has been determined, and he has come to be known as “America’s Unknown Child.”

Another is the March 1965 kidnapping of 6-year-old Kathy Shea of Tyrone, Blair County, who had only to cross a street to get to her afternoon kindergarten class. She never arrived and no trace of her ever has been found.

Cherrie Mahan disappeared right after she got off her school bus near her home.

Meanwhile, a mystery besides the Mahan disappearance continues to haunt Butler County. It is who and what circumstances caused the deaths of Scott Fosnaught and Shawn Bauer, both 15, in July 2002 on rural Cashdollar Road in Forward Township.

As many residents of this county prepare to watch CNN’s report on the Mahan case, there is a glimmer of hope that a new tip might be a key to bringing closure to the case. Investigators here say that a promising tipster has come forward with information about the case, but even Trooper Robert McGraw, who took over the investigation about seven months ago, acknowledged that he tries not to get too excited about information because so many leads do not pan out.

However, he said, the person or persons who provided the newest tip had revealed the information in a “desire to bring closure to Cherrie’s family.”

McGraw did not predict when the state police might be able to provide an indication of the validity of the tip. Still, the tip is something to pursue, and in so many such cases years pass between each new tip.

The name Cherrie Mahan is well known in Butler County homes and no doubt is a basis for precautions by some families regarding their children’s travel to and from school bus stops.

Likewise, the names of Scott Fosnaught and Shawn Bauer remain familiar here — as is their unresolved story.

In all such cases, someone harbors the critical piece of information needed to solve them.

And, for those who believe that “there’s no such thing as a perfect crime,” the Mahan, Shea, “Boy in the Box,” Fosnaught and Bauer, and numerous other cases prove otherwise.

It’s good to retell the stories of such unsolved cases. There’s always the chance — however remote — that it will reach the conscience of someone who has been withholding information for a long time. There have been instances where a person with critical knowledge about a cold case finally came forward because he didn’t want to take that information with him to the grave.

Cherrie Mahan’s case, despite being classified as a cold case, continues to be a target of determined investigation anytime a new fragment of information surfaces. It is to be hoped that the information with which the state police currently are working turns out to be the information that has remained elusive for nearly 26 years.

Time will tell.