SC Annette Deanne Sagers (11) - Mount Holly SC, 1988

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SheWhoMustNotBeNamed

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Missing Since: October 4, 1988 from Mount Holly, South Carolina
Classification: Non-Family Abduction
Date Of Birth: March 16, 1977
Age: 11 years old
Height and Weight: 4'8, 95 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Brown hair, brown eyes. Sagers has small gaps between her upper front teeth. She had a slight speech impediment at the time of her 1988 disappearance.
Clothing/Jewelry Description: Red pants, a red shirt and white shoes.

Details of Disappearance

Sagers was last seen at approximately 7:00 a.m. on October 4, 1988 in her hometown of Mount Holly, South Carolina. She was standing with her dog at the bus stop in front of the Mount Holly Plantation at the time. When the bus arrived twenty minutes later, Sagers was gone. She has never been seen again.

Sagers vanished from the same location as her mother, Korrina Lynne Sagers Malinoski, disappeared from nearly one year earlier, five days before Thanksgiving in November 1987. When she did not show up for work, her boss went looking for her and found her car parked at the entrance to Mount Holly Plantation. An extensive search turned up no sign of Malinoski and she is still missing. Photographs and vital statistics for her are unavailable. She was 26 years old at the time of her disappearance, and has relatives living in Iowa.

Authorities discovered a penciled note at the bus stop after Sagers was reported missing. The note was addressed to Sagers's father and said, "Dad, momma came back. Give the boys a hug." Handwriting experts determined that the note was written by Sagers. There has been no other sign of either Sagers or Malinoski since 1988. No one saw anyone pick Sagers up.

Authorities do not know if Malinoski did return for Sagers; the child could have written the note under duress. Some theorize that Sagers knew something about her mother's disappearance and was silenced, but there is no evidence to support any theory.

In 2000, an anonymous caller directed police to search for a body in Sumter County. Investigators took a cadaver-sniffing dog to the location, but found no sign of any remains.

Sagers's case is classified as a Non-Family Abduction due to the lack of evidence regarding her and her mother's fates.

Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Berkeley County Sheriff's Office
803-761-7190
OR

803-737-9000
 
http://archives.postandcourier.com/archive...324522596.shtml

Mom, daughter missing since 80s still a mystery
Published on 03/24/02
BY KATHY STEVENS
Of The Post and Courier Staff
MONCKS CORNER—Twelve-year-old Annette Deanne Sagers and her dog left the caretaker's cabin at Mount Holly Plantation and walked to a wooden shelter along U.S. Highway 52 where she awaited a school bus.

She never boarded the bus.

The only real clue she left was a note, found on Oct. 4, 1988. It was scrawled in pencil on a sheet of notebook paper found near the narrow shelter and said only: "Dad, momma came back. Give the boys a hug."

The sixth-grader's message baffled the detectives who, nearly one year earlier, had launched a weeklong search of the 6,000-acre plantation for Annette's mother, Korrina Lynne Sagers Malinoski, who disappeared from the same spot Nov. 21, 1987.

The note was the last communication from Annette, who, if she is alive, would have celebrated her 25th birthday March 16. To this day, police say the mother-daughter disappearance is a mystery.

"We just don't know if they were killed, or whether the mother came back for her daughter," says Chief L. Randy Herod of the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office.

The mystery began five days before Thanksgiving 1987, when Malinoski didn't show up for work at a Summerville convenience store. The store manager began looking for his 26-year-old employee of six months and discovered her car parked and locked near the plantation's gated entrance.

Malinoski's husband, Steven Malinoski, told Berkeley County deputies his wife left the cabin between 11 and 11:30 the night before, saying she was going for a drive. Police called investigators from the State Law Enforcement Division, search and rescue crews, and combed the grounds on foot and by air.

They asked the public for help, interviewed Steven Malinoski, and alerted Korrina Malinoski's parents in Iowa. But no one had seen or heard from her.

Almost one year later, Annette vanished from the same spot. Herod remembers the phone call, recalls Steven Malinoski's strained voice saying he could not find his 12-year-old stepdaughter. Malinoski's two boys, however, were safe at home.

"It was 4:15, I was in the office and the phone rings," Herod says. "He says the little girl is missing, that she hadn't made it to school and hadn't come home."

A bus driver who had driven past the wooden shelter told detectives he had seen Annette and her dog about 7 a.m. When her bus arrived at 7:20 a.m., she was gone. Steven Malinoski apparently didn't realize she was missing until that afternoon, when he found the note.

Herod says the letters were big, and written in haste. A handwriting analysis later concluded that Annette had penned the letter. Whether someone forced her hand remains a mystery.

"She could've been under duress, or, it's possible, her mother was alive and came back to get her," Herod says.

Folks then speculated that the girl might have known something about her mother's disappearance and perhaps she was silenced. Others figured Malinoski left her husband for a better life and returned for Annette, who was Malinoski's daughter from a previous marriage.

"There were a lot of red flags but nothing we could ever pin down," Herod says.

Steven Malinoski and his two boys left Berkeley County several months after Annette's disappearance. Herod says they moved to his parents' home in Florida. Since then, detectives have followed several dead-end leads.

Herod says he received an anonymous call March 30, 2000, from someone who claimed Annette's body was buried in Sumter County. Detectives from Sumter and Berkeley counties and SLED searched the undisclosed area along with forestry and Natural Resource workers.

"We had a cadaver dog that could find Civil War-era bones, in a jar, buried four feet in the ground," Herod says. "We didn't find anything."

Detective Sgt. Pamela Lee of the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office first reviewed the two-inch-thick file in 1996 in hopes of finding something others had overlooked.

"It's just the mystery. I cannot imagine a mother leaving her children," Lee says.

She says Iowa state police still contact Korrina Malinoski's parents. They have not heard from their daughter or granddaughter in nearly 14 years. Photographs of the mother and daughter are posted in police agencies nationwide; their names are included among thousands of missing persons.

"Nobody in the viewing public ever came forward to say, "We saw a car, saw someone pick (Annette) up," Herod says. "Most people, you would think, would get in touch with their families. The note is the only thing that makes us hope she could be alive."

Police ask anyone with information to contact the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office at 723-3800.



Kathy Stevens covers crime in Berkeley and Dorchester counties. She may be reached at (843) 745-5858.
 
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