Detective leading hunt for missing North Carolina schoolgirl Madalina Cojocari: ‘I believe she’s still alive’

A detective leading the hunt for North Carolina schoolgirl Madalina Cojocari said she’s convinced the 11-year-old is still alive more than a year after she was last seen walking off her school bus.

“I believe she’s alive — I do, I do,” Major Jennifer Thompson, second in command at the Cornelius Police Department, told WCCB of her force’s biggest case.

“I believe it in my heart. And it’s not one of those feelings where that’s just what I want to believe — it’s truly what I believe,” she stated firmly.

“I think it would be a disservice to Madalina if we lost hope — we’re just not going to do that.”

The sixth-grader was last spotted getting off a school bus in November 2022 — but her mother, Diana Cojocari, and stepfather, Christopher Palmiter, did not report her missing for weeks, ruining the crucial early days for a search.

Thompson was the first officer to interrogate the couple who were both arrested last December for failure to report their child as missing.

“I won’t comment specifically on their demeanor, but … neither of them reported her missing,” the officer said. “So you can take that for however you want.”

She was equally as vague about what officers saw while searching the family home, saying that she couldn’t “go into details about specifically what we saw and what we observed or what felt odd in the house.

“But still, that’s Madalina’s house, so we knew that that’s where we needed to start with the investigation,” she said.

While the girl’s mom remains behind bars, with a court date set for February, the stepdad was released on bail in August.

Asked if more clues might have emerged had the couple been left free, Thompson insisted: “I stand by the decision we made in arresting the parents.”

The top cop sounded emotional as she sent a message directly to the missing preteen.

“I want Madalina to know that there’s a lot of people looking for her,” Thompson said. “There’s a lot of law enforcement work in this to bring her home, and if she’s able to see it, I want her to know that she has a whole community that loves her and an agency that is devoted to bringing her home.”