Parents ‘clearly’ hiding information about missing 11-year-old girl: police

The mother and stepfather of missing North Carolina 11-year-old Madalina Cojocari are “clearly” concealing information about her disappearance, police said in a statement Tuesday.

“We know everyone has a lot of questions,” Cornelius Police Capt. Jennifer Thompson said in a video update on the case. “We also have questions and are doing everything we can, with proper legal authority, to get those answers.”

She added, “This is a serious case of a child whose parents are clearly not telling us everything they know.”

Diana Cojocari, 37, and her husband, Christopher Palmiter, 60, were arrested for failing to report the sixth-grader missing for more than three weeks.

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“Thankfully, the state of North Carolina has a law that makes it illegal if someone fails to report a missing child to law enforcement,” Thompson said.

Cojocari said the child was last seen Nov. 23 at her home but didn’t report her missing until Dec 15.

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“One of the challenges in this case, simply put, we were not notified she was gone – a delay of three weeks,” Thompson said. “School officials had repeatedly tried to contact Madalina’s parents. Finally, on Dec. 15, Madalina’s mother walked into school and said her daughter was missing.”

Since then, police have launched a massive search, enlisting hundreds of agents, detectives, analysts and other employees from the FBI and state agencies.

Investigators have probed more than 250 leads, canvased businesses and “scoured surveillance video,” Thompson noted. Law enforcement has also conducted land and water searches of Lake Cornelius.

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In an affidavit obtained last week by Queen City News, Cojocari told a detective that she “believed her husband had put her family in danger.”

The couple had an argument the night Madalina allegedly vanished, and Palmiter drove to Michigan. But Cojocari didn’t tell her husband that the child was gone for three days, according to the document, cited by the local outlet.

Palmiter told police he’d last seen Madalina one week before he left for Michigan, according to the affidavit.

Last week, the FBI released video footage showing Madalina getting off her school bus on Nov. 21. It is the last confirmed sighting of the child.

Anyone with information about Madalina or her whereabouts is urged to contact the Cornelius Police Department at 704-892-7773.