CORNELIUS, N.C. — The Cornelius Police Department and the state and federal bureau of investigations continue the search for missing 11-year-old Madalina Cojocari.
It’s been more than 40 days since Madalina was last seen in Cornelius, North Carolina, and details on where the investigation stands have been limited. But on Tuesday, her mother and stepfather were indicted by a grand jury on felony charges of failure to report a missing child. As of Wednesday evening, they are both still in custody.
A grand jury indictment is a standard part of the process. It means a jury of county citizens determined there’s enough information to support the felony charges of failure to report a missing child for both her mother Diana Cojocari and her stepfather Christopher Palmiter. It’s not a conviction and simply moves the case out of district court and into superior court.
“It doesn’t mean a whole lot," Aaron Lee, a Charlotte-area defense attorney with Lee and Lee Law Firm who is not associated with the case, said. "Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of cases are going to be indicted, so it doesn’t mean you have a bad case, it doesn’t mean you have a good case, it just is the form that a case moves from district court to superior court."
He said the procedure is more or less a safeguard to ensure there’s enough evidence to move on to the next steps.
“For the defense attorneys, it is at least a mechanism for them to receive discovery, or the evidence in the case, to really start working on a defense for the individual who has been indicted,” Lee said. “For the state, it just means you’ll get a different district attorney assigned to the case.”
A grand jury is always held in secret. In this case, it once again allowed prosecutors to keep what they know close to the chest in an effort to protect the investigation.
TIMELINE: Madalina Cojocari's disappearance
Cornelius Police have shared they’ve chased down hundreds of leads worldwide despite Madalina’s parents not telling them everything.
The search warrants for Palmiter’s cell phone, call detail records for him and Cojocari, and for the search of the family’s home are all sealed until at least the end of March. The judge who signed the order to seal them said it was to protect the investigation.
But what they have likely means investigators are looking into where Palmiter was and who he was talking to.
“A lot of crimes that were committed when they had cell phones on, it results in a lot of convictions because your cell phone gives so much data about where you are, when you were there. Now it’s not precise but depending on how many cell towers are there it can triangulate it pretty well,” Lee said.
There is notably no search warrant for Madalina’s mother’s phone.
“It may not be there; it may already be destroyed; it may be a simple flip phone where you don’t even have data,” Lee conjectured. “I would be curious as to why, for sure, that’s a big question. As a defense attorney, I want to know why that phone wasn’t seized and searched.”
At last check, there is still no date set for when Cojocari and Palmiter will appear in superior court. They’ll have an initial hearing there and the judge could decide to make any changes to their bond or the conditions of it.
If other charges were to come, the process would start over again and likely lead to another grand jury indictment.
Contact Chloe Leshner at cleshner@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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