Mystery looms over Madalina Cojocari’s disappearance as convicted parents end jail time

Madalina Cojocari didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but she got off her school bus before break ready to do her favorite things: Jump on her bed, play her horse game, chase her cats.

Pounce, click, lunge. It was routine.

Now, the squeaking springs that would keep Madalina’s parents up at night have gone silent. A neighbor says her mother burned the twin mattress in the backyard.

Madalina’s laptop — the one she’d play Star Stable on — is stored inside the Cornelius Police Department.

Some of Madalina’s 15 cats are gone. They squirmed through an open window while her parents sat in jail.

Madalina is gone, too. She got off the school bus on Nov. 21, 2022, and was never seen again.

Eighteen months later, theories about what happened to her still swirl.

Did Madalina’s parents give her “away for money?” Did her mother smuggle her back home to Moldova? Is she hidden in Michigan?

Is she safe? Is she alive?

Two arrests, hours of questioning, and a confidential informant have failed to lead local police and the FBI to the girl. They’ve searched mountains and lakes and phones and laptops.

Little — beyond her parents’ conflicting statements and unique, apparently loveless marriage — has been shared in court. But with every development, the mysterious case of Madalina’s disappearance grows more peculiar and the possibilities more frightening.

‘Tucked her away’

Madalina’s mother and stepfather, Diana Cojocari, 39, and Christopher Palmiter, 61, didn’t report her disappearance until school officials confronted them on Dec. 14, 2022.

That was three weeks after they last saw her, the couple said.

On Dec. 15, 2022, police arrested the pair. Both were charged with failing to report the disappearance of a child.

Both gave police conflicting information.

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.”

Cojocari told police she didn’t report Madalina missing because she thought it would cause a “conflict” with Palmiter. The couple had a bad relationship, she said.

Later, during a jail call to her mother, Cojocari said she thought Palmiter gave Madalina “away for money,” according to court records.

Then Cojocari 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.

While in the Mecklenburg County Detention Center in April 2023, Cojocari was found with a small baggie of white powder later found to be cocaine and fentanyl. She said she found it in the shower, and charges were later dropped.

Palmiter said in court that Cojocari had probably sneaked Madalina somewhere.

“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. Diana Cojocari even kept Madalina’s bedroom light on, he said.

She also burned any photos of Madalina that had adorned the house, stashing any extras in the attic, he said.

In court last month, Cojocari squashed any chance the public had of hearing more from her when she pleaded guilty to the failing-to-report charge. She’d already served 17 months — the maximum sentence for the Class I felony— in pretrial detention under a $250,000 bond.

She was released after entering the plea and was expected to be deported to her home country of Moldova. As Palmiter readied to testify in his own trial, she was in the Mecklenburg County courthouse bathroom on the same floor. She’d spent the night at their home the night before, Palmiter would later reveal.

Following a two-week trial with four days of evidence and three days of Palmiter’s testimony, a jury last week found him guilty.

Madalina’s parents in court

According to arrest and search warrants, Cojocari and Palmiter were fighting the night before Madalina vanished. The next day, Palmiter drove up to Michigan, and Cojocari says she never saw Madalina again.

In court last week, Palmiter testified that he last saw Madalina before Cojocari forced him to make the 14-hour drive to Lansing. He had to get Madalina’s warm clothes — her coats, jackets and hats. He was getting them for her, but she wasn’t with him, he said while under oath.

Those clothes were there, he said, because Cojocari had stashed them away a year prior while concocting a plan: Hide Madalina.

Palmiter said Cojocari, whose spirituality was growing into paranoia, believed “Russian entities” were tracking her, waiting for the right time to take her and Madalina. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Michael Jackson wanted to marry her for her land titles, she thought.

Palmiter had previously asked his family if they would take his wife and stepdaughter in, but Cojocari aborted the plan after she became convinced Palmiter’s sister-in-law recorded a conversation.

After that, Palmiter thought the plan was dead.

He had no reason to believe Cojocari had hidden Madalina — or that Madalina was missing — when he came back from Michigan, he testified.

Palmiter and his lawyer, Brandon Roseman, tried to explain away his charge by bringing the 11-man, one-woman jury into his unique home life. Cojocari, who he’d met through a website called GlobalLadies in 2008, ran the household, they said.

She had “100 percent control over Madalina’s education and development.”

Palmiter simply supported the family, paying for Madalina’s clothes and groceries and family trips. Cojocari typically had Madalina with her, he said, and the child’s bedroom light was on when he got home from work every night while she was missing.

“His only crime was being naive,” argued Roseman as he painted a portrait of a crazed, delusional woman who manipulated Palmiter into doing what she wanted.

When he came home from Michigan, his wife did not meet him with a warm embrace. She sent him to buy cat food.

The errands and elusiveness continued, he testified in court.

After two weeks, he asked his wife: Where’s Madalina?

First, Cojocari said she was in the bathroom. That wasn’t true, Palmiter replied. The light was off, and he had been standing in front of it.

Cojocari taunted his questions, he said.

Do you know where she is? she replied.

No, did you hide her? he asked.

No, did you hide her? she laughed back.

The jury didn’t buy his defense. Under the law, they decided, he was providing supervision, and he should’ve reported the girl missing.

After Palmiter and Cojocari married in 2016, Madalina called her stepdad “Papa” at first, then “Dad.” When she got home from school, she’d ask him to play with her.

He never turned her down, he said while tearing up in court. He loved her. He’d do anything for her. He just didn’t know she was missing for 23 days.

“[Madalina] didn’t pick him to be the person she would call dad,” Assistant District Attorney Austin Butler told the jury, pointing to Palmiter. “He picked her. He promised to protect her, and for 23 days he failed to protect her, failed to act as required by the laws of this state.”

Palmiter had already served eight months in jail in pretrial detention before getting bail in August. His bond was raised from $100,000 to $200,000 in May 2023 and later dropped to $25,000.

On Friday, he was sentenced to 30 months of probation.

A loveless story

Before Friday, Roseman positioned Palmiter on the witness stand for three days, crafting his defense around the peculiarity of his marriage — and Palmiter’s shoddy memory.

Roseman took the jury through Palmiter’s camera roll, which consisted of photos of toothpaste, hair gel, cups and Wi-Fi routers — all things he photographed so he could remember to buy them. Roseman also showed photos of the family — a seemingly normal one.

But the couple, Palmiter said while testifying, had never been physically intimate. Since their marriage in 2015, they’d kissed on the lips only on birthdays or holidays. They had a “companionship,” sharing a bed only until 2017, when Cojocari moved into Madalina’s room.

In 2021, things took a turn. Cojocari, who had always been “spiritual” had become all-consumed by Elizabeth Clare Prophet — a leader of a cultlike church — instead of tending to Madalina.

Cojocari would spend hours “screaming at the top of her lungs” as she recited “chants, manifestations and prayers,” teaching Madalina to do the same.

Her “unstable” behavior extended beyond religion, though, Roseman earlier argued. She dented their kitchen’s bamboo floor by smashing a coffee mug into the ground. It had a snowflake on it, Palmiter said, and she didn’t like symbols on anything that would touch food.

She burned furniture, litter boxes and eventually photos of Madalina.

Madalina’s parents are now both convicted felons and out of jail. She is still missing.

Have you seen Madalina?

Madalina Cojocari was 11 years old in November 2022 when she was last seen wearing jeans, pink, purple and white Adidas shoes, and a white T-shirt and jacket. She is 4 feet, 10 inches tall and weighed about 90 pounds.

Anyone with information on Madalina’s whereabouts is asked to call the Cornelius Police Department at 704-892-7773 or the FBI at 1-800-CALL FBI. Anyone who wishes to remain anonymous can call North Mecklenburg Crime Stoppers at 704-896-7867.