Missing Madalina: Last independent sighting Nov. 21, 2022 on CMS bus

Nov. 18. By Mark Washburn. Nearly two years have passed since a Cornelius girl vanished, leaving a mystery and international investigation that is still progressing.

Madalina Cojocari as last seen in public about 5 p.m. Nov. 21, 2022 getting off her school bus from Bailey Middle School.

D Cojocari

Her mother, Diana Cojocari, and her stepfather, Christopher Palmiter, were arrested about three weeks later after telling school authorities they didn’t know what had happened to the girl or where she was. They were charged with failing to report a missing child.

Cornelius Police, the State Bureau of Investigation and the FBI have continued to follow leads since. Gov. Roy Cooper recently announced a $25,000 state reward for information that could break the case.

Flyers with the missing girl’s face remain posted throughout the area, and police say the case remains a priority.

The mother

Cojocari, 37, pleaded guilty in May after 17 months in jail and was released for time served. She returned to the Victoria Bay neighborhood where the family lived and basically lived on the porch and, neighbors say, showered at the development’s recreation center after her husband refused to let her in and served her with divorce papers.

“During the divorce, my ex-husband granted me the honor of sleeping on a desk in front of the house,” Cojocari recently posted on Facebook, referring to a collection of goods left on the porch of their home.

In June, Cornelius Police announced that Cojocari was officially a suspect in Madalina’s disappearance. But with no pending charges against her, she left the country in late August and returned to her native Moldova.

Because of her felony conviction in failing to report her daughter missing, she faced possible deportation if she stayed in the United States.

The stepfather

Palmiter, her husband, stood trial in May and was found guilty, but also sentenced for time served.

Palmiter

Palmiter’s defense was that, misled and browbeaten by his domineering wife, he actually believed that the girl was still around despite not seeing or talking to her in their Cornelius home for more than two weeks.

From his view, the defense maintained, he worked long hours away from home, was sent on various prolonged errands by his wife and believed she was sometimes out of town with the girl in the late autumn of 2022.

He said he didn’t know she was gone until he was summoned to Bailey Middle School on Dec. 14, 2022 where his wife had told police that 11-year-old Madalina had vanished.

Coming to America

In explaining the family dynamics, Palmiter, 63, testified that he hadn’t had a serious romantic interest since college. In his mid-50s, he met a woman from Moldova, an impoverished former Soviet bloc country, through an online site. Cojocari said she was a teacher there and they began to explore a relationship.

After more than a year, he visited her in Moldova. Some months later, he visited her again and they agreed, he said, that they should continue to explore the relationship.

But they later lost contact. Finally she got back in touch, admitting that she’d gotten pregnant by a local man between his two visits. But if he were still interested, so was she.

Finally, he proposed and after hiring lawyers to go through a two-year immigration process, she came to the United States on a visa with her toddler daughter. They were married a few weeks later in January 2016.

Their marriage was never consummated. Cojocari withheld affection aside from the kiss on special occasions, he said.

Difficulties mount

Cojocari grew to be a demanding authority figure in their household and Palmiter seemed to accede to her commands, even when they became extreme.

Cojocari grew evermore unhinged, Palmiter said. She became a religious zealot, chanting prayers for hours into the night. She told him in the summer of 2022 that Russian president Vladimir Putin and rock star Michael Jackson were stalking her because she had certain Russian nobility titles they coveted.

Though he found the plot unlikely, he arranged for Cojocari and Madalina to go to Michigan and hide out for a time from the pursuers with relatives in his large Lansing-centric clan.

On the day before Thanksgiving 2022, she ordered him to drive from Cornelius to Michigan to pick up some clothes she and Madalina left there. He complied, packing immediately and starting the 12- to 13-hour trip within minutes. He didn’t see Madalina that morning – Cojocari told him she was asleep upstairs – nor any day afterward.

In the following week, he was unable to work from home because the internet cable had been mysteriously cut. He made the 90-minute each-way commute to Greensboro, where he worked as a draftsman for a defense contractor. He said he usually got home after Madalina’s bedtime and didn’t see her that week.

AT&T reported that when a technician was sent to the home, no one answered the door; Cojocari told him that she and Madalina were out together in town at the time of the appointment.

Other times Cojocari would leave word that she and Madalina were on short trips to the mountains.

Police findings

Whenever he asked where Madalina was after Thanksgiving 2022, Palmiter said, Cojocari would cruelly mock him, parroting his words back at him, asking whether he knew.

Cornelius detective Gina Patterson, a 21-year veteran of the department, told the jury that she went with Palmiter to the home after school authorities said Madalina was missing.

During the search, a number of Western Union receipts were found, Patterson said. Cojocari had wired a total of $7,000 to relatives in her native Moldova, she said. Cojocari’s handbag contained about $7,500 in cash, Patterson said.

In the 17 days that Madalina was missing before being reported, Patterson said, Cojocari’s car was detected through law enforcement license-plate scanners in Cornelius, Boone and the Gatlinburg, Tenn., area.

She was briefly interviewed in her car by a deputy in Madison County, in the North Carolina mountains and seen on security cameras in various places in the highlands. Madalina was never seen with her.

She also said that Palmiter had admitted during a police interview that when he returned from Michigan over Thanksgiving, Cojocari had apparently burned everything in the house with Madalina’s image on it.

What’s next

Palmiter has appealed his conviction. Sterling Rozear, an assistant appeal defender in Durham, is handling his case and plans to file specifics on the appeal by Nov. 18, according to court documents.