'Missing Paige:' Documentary sheds light on one of Michigan's oldest cold cases
A Michigan nonprofit dedicated to finding missing persons hopes to reignite one of the state’s longest-running cold cases: The disappearance of Paige Renkoski.
Crime Stoppers of Michigan, part of the national organization responsible for clearing over 1 million criminal cases nationwide since 1976, asked the public to send in tips Monday on social media more than 30 years since Renkoski vanished. She was last seen on the afternoon of May 24, 1990, after pulling over on the interstate near Fowlerville, around 30 miles southeast of Lansing, and hasn’t been seen since.
In the general area, there were three unsolved abductions/murders of young women in the 1980s, records from The Charley Project showed. At around the same time, there were multiple incidents of people impersonating police officers, and showing fake badges to motorists to get them to stop. It is unknown if the cases are related to Renkoski’s disappearance.
On the morning of May 24, 1990, Renkoski, 30, offered to take her mother to Detroit Metro Airport. The airport was about an hour and a half from Renkoski’s house near Lansing.
After dropping her mother off, Renkoski turned around to drive home. At 3:30 p.m., she stopped on the westbound shoulder of I-96 one-half mile from the Fowlerville exit, according to The Charley Project. She was last seen speaking with two unidentified men. They were standing near a maroon or burgundy minivan. There may have been a third man in or near the van.
“Renkoski was seen gesturing, throwing her hands up in the air, and one of the men put his hand on her shoulder,” The Charley Project wrote in its case summary.
A motorist who saw Renkoski and the individual around 3:30 p.m. became concerned when he passed Renkoski’s vehicle at the same spot four hours later at roughly 7:30 p.m. Investigators were called to the scene around then and found Renkoski’s silver 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais abandoned.
The keys were in the ignition, the lights and radio were on, the doors were unlocked and the engine was idling. The driver’s side door was unlocked. Renkoski’s purse, wallet and shoes were found inside the vehicle, as well as an open bottle of beer. There was no damage to the vehicle.
Authorities are unsure why Renkoski spoke to the unidentified men, and they do not know if they were connected to her disappearance. But, her family said she would have stopped if she saw someone she knew, according to The Charley Project.
Renkoski was close with her mother and was also engaged to be married in November 1990. Family members told investigators that Renkoski may have been having problems with her fiance during the month she disappeared. However, it is not believed she chose to voluntarily leave the area for that reason. Her fiance has been ruled out as a suspect.
She had recently deposited a “large sum” of money in her bank account, which was untouched following her disappearance, per The Charley Project. And she did not have any travel plans.
Authorities reopened Renkoski’s case in the late 1990s. An unidentified inmate in a Michigan prison was named as a suspect in Renkoski’s disappearance in May 2001.
The man was imprisoned for carjacking; his victim was a young woman, and the crime occurred weeks after Renkoski disappeared. Police interviewed him several times and believed he had been one of the men she spoke to shortly before she went missing. But they eliminated him from their inquiry after he passed a lie-detector test.
A documentary by the journalism department at Michigan State University and WILX-Lansing was shared in April with hopes of reigniting the case, too. Renkoski’s family wrote on the Facebook page the documentary “did a great job.”
