Mom of Missing Madalina Cojocari Discussed Theory Father May Have Given ‘Girl Away for Money’

Unsealed docs suggest Madalina Cojocari, who was last seen in November, was also spotted with a family member after she was reported missing … and her mother may have allegedly lied about the timeline.

In December, the FBI, North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and the Cornelius Police Department started looking into Cojocari’s disappearance. Her mother, Diana Cojocari, didn’t report the girl missing to school officials until December 15 — nearly a month after she and stepfather Christopher Palmiter told authorities they last saw her on November 23.

The two were arrested December 17 for Failure to Report the Disappearance of a Child to Law Enforcement; they were indicted on those charges in January. While authorities have extensively searched for the child, there haven’t been too many leads — though investigators said in a warrant unsealed earlier this year that one of Diana’s relatives told them she wanted help “smuggling” herself and the child from their home and was in a “bad relationship” with her husband.

In other documents newly unsealed this week, via WBTV, it was revealed investigators looked into surveillance photos taken December 16 in Sugar Mountain — the day after Madalina was reported missing by her parents.

According to the warrant, the photos showed a child and man who were “physically consistent” with the girl and a man who is reportedly the child’s only other blood relative in the United States.

Cornelius Police Department

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The docs also suggest Diana may have seen the child between the time her parents claimed they last saw her in November and when she was reported missing. A text message from December 2 reportedly “indicated she was in the presence of the missing child,” two days before she claimed to be traveling to North Carolina to look for her daughter.

In a recorded jail call between Diana and her mother, Diana also allegedly talked about “a theory that Chris gave the girl away for money,” and also discussed a big bag of money and withdrawing cash. Palmiter, meanwhile, was allegedly heard in another recorded jail call talking to his brother and sister-in-law claiming Diana “had a lot of cash with her” — adding that he didn’t know where it came from.

Included in the docs was also an alleged Facebook message from Palmiter to a family member reading, “we are in some kind of investigation, Madi is missing and the local police have taken all our electronics, luckily I have an old phone, although they did not take my person computer, prob cause they overlooked it, Diana is using it now to call her parents.”

The records also revealed police intentionally placed Palmiter with an informant in jail and later seized his notebooks.

The search for Madalina continues. Now 12, she’s described as a white female weighing approximately 90 pounds. She was last seen wearing jeans, pink, purple and white Adidas shoes, and a white t-shirt and jacket.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Cornelius Police Department at 704-892-7773 or 1-800-Call FBI.