The firepit where the parents of missing 11-year-old North Carolina girl Madelina Cojocari allegedly burned couch cushions after the little girl disappeared is now the focus of the investigation, DailyMail.com has learned.
Brandon Roseman, the lawyer for Madelina’s stepfather Christopher Palmiter was seen examining the pit with two men believed to be private investigators on Friday.
The three men pulled up around noon Friday and walked through the backyard, then proceeded up a staircase through a rear gate leading to the secluded fire pit, exclusive photos and videos by DailyMail.com show. They gathered around the black, charred circle that burned for several days in late November.
Only after noticing the DailyMail.com reporter, watching from outside, did they step away from the pit. They then examined a patio umbrella in the backyard, before entering the two-story brick house, spending an hour in the now-shuttered home and garage before wrapping up.
The two investigators tried to hide their faces from DailyMail.com’s cameras as they emerged, with one of them carrying what appeared to be a cat carrier. The family owns several cats.
The mother of Madalina Cojocari says she last saw her on November 23 – three weeks before she reported the 11-year-old girl missing to her school. The family lit a fire allegedly to torch couch cushions and other items in the days after Madalina disappeared
Brandon Roseman, in tie, and two investigators pulled up around noon Friday and walked through the backyard, then proceeded up a staircase through a rear gate leading to the secluded fire pit, exclusive DailyMail.com photos show
The black, charred circle burned for several days in late November after Madalina was last seen, but before her family reported her missing to police
Roseman and two investigators circled the fire pit, for several minutes before heading inside the house
The investigators tried to hide their faces from DailyMail.com cameras as they emerged with one of them carrying a cat carrier
Palmiter, 60, and Madalina’s mom, Diana Cojocari, 37, have been charged with failure to report a missing child and continue to be held on $250,000 and $200,000 bond, respectively. Police accused them of continuing to withhold information, now six weeks since the girl was last seen.
The case has prompted anger and bewilderment among locals in Cornelius, an affluent town just north of Charlotte, that the couple has called home since 2017.
‘It’s like living in the middle of a true crime documentary,’ one neighbor told DailyMail.com.
The couple has always been considered an oddity.
Cojocari emigrated from the impoverished Eastern European nation of Moldova, where she reportedly participated in a reality TV show on weight loss in 2014. She showed off her engagement ring on the program, and there’s also a glimpse of a little girl, believed to be Madalina.
‘They didn’t know each other before the engagement,’ Iosefina Pascal, a Romanian journalist who did some research on Cojocari’s life in Moldova, told news station WCCB Charlotte. ‘So all of this was abrupt and sudden.
‘You meet a guy online, he’s like 40 years older than you, he comes to Moldova, you suddenly get engaged.’
Palmiter is actually 23 years Cojocari’s senior.
He worked as a mechanical designer at industrial machinery manufacturer Ingersoll Rand in North Carolina, according to his LinkedIn page, though he told neighbors that he was laid off in 2020 and was working for another company an hour outside town.
He also ran an etching business out of his garage, using a laser to engrave products and selling his works online.
Madalina’s mother Diana Cojocari, 37, and stepfather Christopher Palmiter, 60, were arrested on December 17. Cojocari claims she last saw her daughter at 10pm on November 23, Palmiter thinks he didn’t see her for a full week before making a trip to Michigan on November 24
Investigators searched Madalina’s family home, where her mother claims she was last seen going to bed. ‘It’s like living in the middle of a true crime documentary,’ one neighbor in the affluent town of Cornelius, North Carolina, told DailyMail.com
Locals described Palmiter as a far-right, deep state propagandist, who’d fill his Facebook feed with pictures of armed warriors, the American flag, bible quotes, and anti-Biden vitriol. He also shared links to deep state podcasts with neighbors.
‘When any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it,’ he wrote in one posting January 30, 2022.
He boasted to neighbors about owning a cache of guns and, during the George Floyd protests, threatened to use his weapons if any protester showed up at his house.
‘He had a s**t ton of guns, and said if anything went down, he’d be ready,’ a neighbor said. ‘I mentioned that to the officers. But they said they didn’t find any firearms in the home.’
Cojocari, for her part, described herself on LinkedIn as an independent beauty consultant selling Mary Kay Cosmetics. However, neighbors said they’d never seen her selling. In fact, they said, she’d rarely be seen in public.
‘She was quiet, reserved,’ one neighbor said. ‘We’d see her outside once in a while, but she really would not make eye contact. I got kind of an icy feeling from her, but I really couldn’t put my finger on it.
‘I’d mostly just see the stepdad and the daughter. I thought that was a little bit odd.’
It was Palmiter who’d be seen strolling with Madalina through the neighborhood, wearing a Michigan State sweatshirt as she played with toys. He was the one who took her trick-or-treating on Halloween.
Madalina was last seen exiting a school bus at her stop on November 21, police say
Police accused Madalina’s mom and step dad of continuing to withhold information, now six weeks since the girl was last seen
‘We’ve seen him and the little girl walking around a lot,’ another woman who lives just down the block told DailyMail.com. ‘She would have a Barbie car she’d be walking with, or some other toy. Then he’d be at the pool with the girl.
‘When I saw him with her, he always seemed normal,’ she continued. ‘He was so much older, I always thought he was either single or he was her grandfather. I never knew what the relationship was about.’
‘I never saw the mom,’ she noted. ‘Maybe once, like five years ago.’
Residents learned more about Cojocari from recent police reports and news media than they did during their seven years as neighbors. Some have joined local chat groups to exchange gossip on the couple.
On Cojocari’s Facebook page, one message in particular raised eyebrows – a July 2020 audio posting in which she shares her belief that humans are inherently violent. It made them think of her recent arrest report, which states she told cops that she didn’t report the disappearance because she feared how her husband would react.
‘If you say violence is bad, that means you will end up rejecting a part of yourself and you can never get rid of it because it will not go, it will come out in so many ways,’ she states on Facebook.
‘People are very peaceful on the streets, but pretty violent at home. If they are not capable of physical violence, they are verbally violent or they are violent in their thoughts or emotions, or so many other ways.’
Cojocari said the only remedy is meditation, stating, ‘You will find peace in your heart, your mind and your soul.’
Cojocari’s Facebook page states that she studied at the University of the Spirit.
An arrest report obtained by DailyMail.com reveals Madalina had been missing for three weeks when her mother reported her missing
‘I heard through the grapevine they practiced some weird religion, and I mentioned this to the FBI,’ one neighbor told DailyMail.com. ‘One of the investigators responded, ‘Oh yeah, there’s definitely some sun worshipping going on in there.’
Before the arrests, the couple’s greatest issue with locals came from a more mundane issue – they had an abundance of cats that would roam the streets, drawing complaints from the neighborhood association.
Madalina was last seen on November 21 leaving a school bus, and, according to her mother, vanished on November 23.
But Cojocari did not report her daughter’s disappearance until December 15.
She told police that on the day she vanished, she’d argued with her husband and that he drove in anger that evening to his former hometown in Michigan.
She said she didn’t tell her husband that the girl was missing until three days later, when he returned home to North Carolina.
Investigators noted that the kitchen in the family home had an area blocked with plywood. Palmiter said that he had been building a separate apartment.
He also told police he last saw Madalina a week before she disappeared.
Cojocari said that Madalina’s backpack and some of her clothes were missing from the home.
She told police that the young girl did not have any friends that she would stay with, and being from Moldova, she did not have family in the area.
Cojocari added that she had been in touch with relatives in Moldova, who advised her to go to the police – but she resisted.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk