i can t imagine the pain that her mother and stepfather must wake up with every day. i wouldn t imagine that. reporter: today, cherrie would be 34. if she s alive, this is what investigators think she might look like. cherrie could be married and have children and have graduated and i could be a grandmother. reporter: after all these years, janice mckinney still isn t ready to say goodbye to her daughter. at the cemetery, no gravestone, just an angel. until i see something or hold something or know something, i can t put it to rest yet. reporter: janice still hopes her daughter is alive. but alive or dead, she says, she just needs to know what happened and why someone would have snatched her little 8-year-old girl. randi kaye, cnn. what is your message to parents after a case like this?
guilt should be put on the person who got cherrie and hasn t been caught and found. john, you make it easy. thank you. my pleasure. we have more news ahead. in his first tv interview, ricky gervais tells piers morgan what happened behind the scenes. we have details next. a group of teens allegedly break into a woman s home in florida. that s bad enough, but it s what police say they stole that landed them on tonight s ridicu-list. it rushes multiple cold fighters, plus a powerful pain reliever, wherever you need it! [ both ] oh what a relief it is! [ male announcer ] we asked people all over america where the best potatoes come from. the best potatoes? idaho. idaho! idaho. [ male announcer ] and how do you know you re getting idaho potatoes? well, uh. um. [ male announcer ] not all potatoes come from idaho. so if you want the best, you have to do one important thing.
the ability to basically lure cherrie to their vehicle without her giving it a second thought prior to her disappearance. reporter: he took the lead on the case last summer and after poring through the 3,600 page case file, she s closer than ever to cracking it. we are highly optimistic that this lead is has the potential to bring closure to cherrie s family. reporter: mcgraw says he gets tips about once a week, but most don t pan out. this one, he feels, especially good about. although he will not give us specifics. we will pursue this lead until if we find out if it s viable. so we try not to get too excited. it s difficult, but you have to stay grounded because this lead could take us nowhere. reporter: working the case of a missing child is difficult, even for the most hardened law enforcers. i can t imagine if that was my child.
that anybody can be a crime victim at any time. there are people who surf buses, who follow children, look for that child who is by the bus stop by themselves. it s a horrible case that hasn t been solved, but some good has come out of that. a man named vince juliano, he works for a company called ad phone. you get them in the mail. she was the first child on those cards, and they found 200 kids because of those cards. but cherrie was the first kid that advo put on the card and they mailed billions of them. vince juliano said the movie about the murder of our son and as a private businessman he decided to do something about it, got his company to do that and spread pictures of missing kids in the mail all over this country. it s a horrible, tough case. she was one of the first kids
kids on the bus described a blue van right behind the bus with a skier painted on the side. investigators checked out hundreds of leads. no van. no cherry. i think that the last words that i told her was, have a good day and i do love you. that was probably, as i took her down to the bus stop and she got on the bulls. reporter: did she tell you she loved you back? yes, she always told me that. reporter: cherrie was eight when she first disappeared. the first child ever on a have you seen me mailer? still delivered to homes across the country. but today, for the first time in decades, janice mckinney has hope, thanks to this man, pennsylvania state trooper robert mcgraw. i believe cherrie was abducted by somebody show knows very well, and this person had