NC Gov. Roy Cooper joins search in Madalina Cojocari’s mysterious disappearance
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper has joined the search party for Madalina Cojocari, the Cornelius girl who mysteriously disappeared two years ago.
Cooper is offering $25,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the 11-year-old girl’s 2022 Thanksgiving disappearance. Two arrests, hours of questioning, and a confidential informant have failed to lead local police and the FBI to the girl.
Her parents’ conflicting statements haven’t helped, either.
Madalina was last seen getting off her school bus on Nov. 21, 2022. Her mother and stepfather — Diana Cojocari, 39, and Christopher Palmiter, 61 — didn’t report her missing until school officials confronted them on Dec. 15, 2022.
Both parents have said they thought the other knew where Madalina was.
What happened to Madalina Cojocari?
Cojocari in May pleaded guilty to failing to report a child missing. She had already served 17 months in jail — the maximum sentence for the Class I felony— and was promptly released. A judge told her that deportation back to Moldova, where she lived before meeting Palmiter on the online dating site GlobalLadies, was likely.
It’s unclear if she was deported, but her Facebook page says she lives in Moldova. She has photos of herself on an airplane and recently of yellow flowers.
On Madalina’s 12th birthday — 141 days after her disappearance — yellow ribbons and missing persons posters put up by her community led the way to her home. On her porch, more yellow ribbons and a yellow Easter wreath waited for her.
Diana Cojocari has not posted — at least not publicly — about Madalina’s disappearance.
Palmiter, who was also charged with failing to report Madalina missing, didn’t plead guilty. He opted for a jury trial.
In the Mecklenburg County Courthouse in June, his lawyer argued that Cojocari had kept Madalina’s absence from him.
“I think Diana took her somewhere, maybe with her Moldovan family, I don’t know, but I think Diana has tucked her away somewhere she won’t be found,” he said. He said his spouse mainly took care of Madalina, and she’d never indicated their daughter was anywhere but under their roof.
She even kept Madalina’s bedroom light on, he said. She also burned photos of Madalina that once hung around the house, stashing any extras in the attic, he said.
The theory isn’t far out, his lawyer argued. Cojocari, whose spirituality had grown into paranoia, believed “Russian entities” were tracking her, waiting for the right time to take her and Madalina. She once asked Palmiter to create a plan to hide Madalina with his family in Michigan.
Palmiter tried, he said in court, but Cojocari aborted the plan after she became convinced Palmiter’s sister-in-law recorded a conversation.
But Cojocari said equally concerning things about Palmiter.
During a jail call to her mother, she said she thought Palmiter gave Madalina “away for money,” according to court records. She also told police she didn’t talk to Palmiter about Madalina’s disappearance because she feared it would start a fight between the two.
Cojocari also called people involved in ongoing drug trafficking investigations, police said when asking a judge to grant search warrants for the couple’s Cornelius home. People “associated with narcotics activity are also associated with human smuggling,” police wrote.
The jury found Palmiter guilty of failing to report Madalina missing.
According to North Carolina law, parents and other caregivers must report missing children within 24 hours of their disappearance. The “disappearance of a child” is defined as “when the parent or other person providing supervision of a child does not know the location of the child and has not had contact with the child for a 24-hour period.”
Palmiter was her caregiver, her stepfather, prosecutors said, an involved one.
He would make sure she got home from school safely, play games with her and chase their 15 cats around the house with her. He should have known she was missing, and he should have reported it when he didn’t see her, prosecutors argued.
A judge sentenced Palmiter — who had already served 244 days in jail — to 30 months of supervised probation at the end of his trial. The highest sentence would have been 17 months in jail, but Palmiter’s otherwise clean record kept him from a cell.
How to report a tip
With both parents found guilty and out of jail, the search for Madalina forges on.
Cooper on Thursday asked anyone with information about Madalina to contact the Cornelius Police Department at (704) 892-1363 or the State Bureau of Investigation at (919) 662-4500.
This story was originally published August 29, 2024 at 6:49 PM.
