A North Carolina jury took just 15 minutes to return a guilty verdict on Friday for Christopher Palmiter, who was charged with failing to report his stepdaughter, Madalina Cojocari, missing in late 2022.
Palmiter was sentenced to 30 months of supervised probation and ordered to pay $30,000 in attorney’s fees, WCNC reported.
Madalina Cojocari was 11 years old when she last seen getting off a school bus in Cornelius on November 21, 2022, as CrimeOnline reported. But neither Palmiter nor her mother, Diana Cojocari, reported her missing for nearly a month, when Cojocari admitted to school officials that she didn’t know where the girl was.
Cojocari and Palmiter were both charged with failure to report, but Palmiter was released in August when his bond was dropped from $200,000 to $25,000. Cojocari remained behind bars and pleaded guilty on May 17. She was released from jail shortly afterward and is expected to be deported to her native Moldova.
Madalina Cojocari has not been found, and both Palmiter and her mother have said they don’t know where she is.
Cojocari told detectives that she didn’t immediately report Madalina missing because she was concerned that Palmiter would put her family in danger and that it “might start a conflict” with him. Last July, Cornelius police obtained photographs of a girl resembling Madalina and an unidentified man in western North Carolina.
Testimony during Palmiter’s trial did not bring any clarity to the now-13-year-old girl’s whereabouts. Palmiter testified that he didn’t even know she was missing until he met with school resource officers inquiring about her absence from school in December, the Charlotte Observer reported. He said his wife believed “Russian entities” were watching her and wanted to marry her to obtain land she owned in Moldova.
She was subpoenaed to testify in the case but was not called to the stand during Palmiter’s trial, but the Observer said she stayed at their home with him in Cornelius at least one day this week.
He explained a mysterious trip to Michigan he made in November as a visit to retrieve winter clothes his wife left there. Testimony during the trial indicated Cojocari was engrossed in the religious teachings of Elizabeth Clare Prophet and often behaved oddly in the home.
But no one knew the location of the missing girl. Cornelius Police and the FBI are still searching for her.
