The Search for Missing North Carolina Girl Madalina Cojocari Has Turned the Spotlight on a New Suspect
Police in North Carolina said Tuesday that the girl’s mother is now a suspect in her disappearance in November 2022.
At the time, Madalina Cojocari was 11 years old. She was last seen getting off a school bus at 4:59 p.m. on November 21, 2022.
“Diana Cojocari, Madalina’s mother, is thought to be involved in her disappearance,” Cornelius Police said in a Facebook post. “We need to find Madalina.” This has been our main goal ever since we found out she was lost.
In May, Cojocari admitted that she had broken the law by not reporting a lost child. It wasn’t until December 15, 2022, that she told cops that Madalina was missing. She also told them she hadn’t seen her daughter since November 23, 2022.
There have been no arrests or charges filed against Cojocari, but police have not said why they think he is now a suspect.
Lawyer Timothy Cannady, who is not involved in the case, told WCNC Charlotte that he thought there might have been new information that led police to officially name Cojocari a suspect.
“There’s probably some level of new evidence that they’ve got,” he said. That new proof might be “something that points to not just her failure to report her daughter missing but that she played an active role in her daughter going missing.”
“If they’re (Cojacari’s parents) charged with, say, murder, or some kind of homicide offense or some kind of kidnapping offense, they could be essentially tried twice or charged for the different things,” he told the local newspaper.
The last time anyone saw Madalina was on November 30, 2022. Cojocari and her stepfather, Christopher Palmiter, did not tell the cops that Madalina was missing until December 15, 2022.
They even told the cops that the last time they saw Madalina was on November 23, 2022, at home in the evening.
Based on leads, police have searched from the Charlotte area to the woods in western North Carolina, but the girl hasn’t been seen in almost two years.
That woman who was meant to take care of her daughter is now being looked at by police in Cornelius.