Annette Sagers & Korrina Malinoski
On the morning of 4 October 1988, 11-year-old Annette Sagers was last seen standing at a bus stop near her home in Mount Holly, South Carolina. Despite Annette reportedly leaving behind a note explaining her absence, she has not been seen or heard from in over 30 years. Neither has her mother, Korrina, who disappeared approximately eleven months before Annette...
In many ways, the case we’ll be looking at today is unfortunately a tale as old as time - a young woman and her daughter vanish into thin air, presumably murdered, the main suspect being the woman’s abusive husband, the girl’s stepfather. However, what makes the case of mother and daughter so strange is that while they disappeared from almost the exact same location, they didn’t disappear at the same time - instead, mother and daughter both individually disappeared from the same location almost a year apart. Over 30 years out from these two disappearances, this case continues to baffle investigators, and has left the victims’ family wondering - what could have caused mother and daughter to both disappear a year apart from one another?
This is the story of Annette Sagers and Korrina Malinoski.
While there’s not an enormous amount of information about Korrina Malinoski and Annette Deane Sagers prior to their disappearances, their family has provided some information that allows us to construct a picture of their lives before these unfortunate incidents.Through an interview with Korrina’s brother Leon and his wife Sandy conducted for the show ‘Up and Vanished,’ we know that Korrina and Leon had a rough childhood - their mother died very young, and their father was rarely around, leaving the two kids to mostly fend for themselves. Despite this, Korrina grew up into a kind, fun-loving young woman, who loved kids, and who always called on holidays and birthdays.
In 1978, at 16 years old, Korrina became pregnant. For one reason or another, she kept the identity of the child’s father secret. After Annette’s birth, Korrina worked hard to raise the little girl as a single mother, with the help of Leon and Sandy. Then, in 1981, when Korrina was 20 years old, she met Steven Malinoski, who at the time was 32. Steven had recently left the army, and had been taking up odd jobs ever since, which brought him all around the country. The couple met at a carnival, where Steven was working as a ‘carny’ at the time, and the two were married in Texas only 6 months after they met, on October 16th, 1981.
Shortly after their marriage, Steven landed a job as a caretaker on the Mount Holly Plantation in Berkeley County, South Carolina, and the family of three moved there in 1982. This historic plantation was located on 6,000 acres of swamps and wetlands, 30 miles away from Charleston. Corrina got a job at the Oasis convenience store, in nearby Summerville. That same year, Korrina and Steven’s first child, a son they named Thomas, was born - their second son, James, was born two years later in 1984.
Annette was reportedly a sweet, smart little girl, well liked by her teachers and classmates - though one of Annette’s 6th grade teachers reportedly claimed that she thought something was ‘off’ about Annette from the first time she met her - that she seemed in some way unhappy.
Indeed, all was not well within the family - over time, Korrina and Steven’s marriage had grown to be quite rocky, to say the least. Leon claims that Steven was into drugs, and that the couple fought all the time, mainly about Steven’s drinking and money. It was also pretty well known that Steven was abusive towards Korrina, and Leon often encouraged his sister to leave her husband, telling her that he and his wife would help her out if she decided to get out - Korrina, however, chose to stay.
On November 21st, 1987, the day of Korrina’s disappearance, Korrina and Steven had a huge argument, apparently related to Steven’s drinking. According to Steven, Korrina left to go for a drive, leaving the Mount Holly Plantation and driving towards the nearby Highway 52 sometime between 11:00 and 11:30pm. She didn’t return that night.
The next day, November 22nd, 1987, Korrina didn’t show up to work at the Oasis convenience store. This was extremely out-of-character for Korrina, so her boss, Bruce Clarkson, began looking for her, thinking that perhaps her car had broken down. He headed for the most obvious place first, Korrina’s house, and found her car parked and locked outside the gated entrance to the plantation, but no sign of Korrina herself in or around the car. He claimed that there was a layer of dew on the car, which would indicate that the car had been sitting there all night. Later that day, Steven filed a missing person’s report, and called Korrina’s brother Leon to inform him of Korrina’s disappearance.
Authorities searched the area around the plantation for any signs of the 26-year old Korrina, but found nothing - no signs of a struggle, of foul play, no items belonging to Korrina, nothing. The idea that Korrina would willingly up and leave her children seemed unbelievable to those who knew her - but the alternative, that she had been taken against her will, was even more unthinkable. Steven submitted to a polygraph test regarding his wife’s disappearance, but the results were inconclusive.
With no real leads to go off of, this is where the case of Korrina would have began and ended had it not been for what happened the following year. On October 4th, 1988, just 11 months after her mother’s mysterious disappearance, Annette Deane Sagers walked to her bus stop on Highway 52 with her dog, as she did every school day. She was wearing red pants, a red shirt, and white shoes. Around 7am, she was seen waiting patiently at the bus stop by the bus driver as he made the stop across the road, on the other side of the train tracks. No other children were picked up at this bus stop, so we can be quite certain that this was Annette. However, when the bus driver arrived at Annette’s bus stop about 20 minutes later, the 11-year old girl was gone. While the area wasn’t didn’t have a ton of traffic at this time, it also wasn’t exactly abandoned, and no one reported seeing Annette get picked up by someone else, or walk off - seemingly, she simply vanished into thin air.
Her stepfather Steven didn’t realize she was missing until around 4pm that day, when she didn’t show up after school, and he later found out that she had in fact never made it to school that day. When Steven set out to search for Annette, he found a crumpled note written on school binder paper, left in the small wooden hut that Steven had built to shelter Annette from bad weather at the bus stop. The note read “Dad, mom came back. Give the boys lots of kisses and hugs, and also you too - Love, Annette.” There were several words crossed out and added in this clearly quite hastily-written note.
Around 4:15pm, Steven alerted authorities to Annette’s disappearance, and turned the note in to law enforcement. Handwriting experts would later confirm from writing samples provided by Annette’s teacher that this note was indeed written by Annette, although they were unable to determine whether or not the note was written under duress. Oddly, Annette’s dog was also missing, and was never found.
Following Annette’s disappearance, the plantation and surrounding area were thoroughly searched, on foot and from the air - but again, just like with her mother, there were no signs of Annette whatsoever.
Since their disappearances, no one has seen or heard from either Korrina or Annette, nor have there been any signs of their bodies, or any solid clues as to what could have happened to the mother and daughter. An anonymous letter was sent to the local police department in 2000, which claimed that Korrina and Annette were buried in Sumter County, South Carolina, along with a detailed map of the location the bodies were supposedly buried. Police thoroughly searched the area detailed on this map for the bodies, but this search came up empty. The chief of the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office at the time, Chief Randy Herod, stated in an interview with The Charlotte Observer that “We had a cadaver dog that could find Civil War-era bones, in a jar, buried four feet in the ground. We didn’t find anything.” The letter was sent to a lab for analysis, but no fingerprints or any other identifying information were found.
Unfortunately, in 1987, crime scene investigation techniques simply weren’t what they are today, and combined with the lack of physical evidence in this case, investigators were very limited as to what they could accomplish. When asked about the 1987 investigation of this case, Chief Herod said that “it was very frustrating. You have a missing person’s report, and that’s it until something else comes forward.”
The sheer lack of evidence in this case unfortunately means that any attempts to determine what happened to Korrina and Annette falls mostly into speculation - but, based on the little evidence we do have, investigators seem to have three broad theories as to what could have happened to Korrina and Annette.
The first theory, and the most unlikely, is that Korrina and Annette were both victims of some extremely bad luck, and both happened to be kidnapped and/or murdered by strangers in almost the exact same location. Obviously, while this isn’t totally impossible, it is extraordinarily unlikely that a mother and daughter would both be randomly kidnapped off the side of the road from the same spot within a year of each other. Add in Annette’s note, and the fact that there was no sign of a struggle in either case, and this theory can pretty much be dismissed out of hand.
Investigators did explore the possibility of a serial killer operating in the area - there had been other unexplained disappearances around that time, such as the April 3rd, 1987 disappearance of Linda McCord, Sarah Boyd, and Sarah’s daughter Kimberely Boyd. These three went missing while driving home from a gospel concert in Dorchester County, South Carolina, about 20 miles from the Mount Holly Plantation. The Berkeley and Dorchester County areas were rural and heavily wooded, meaning that there were ample places to hide a body, and the somewhat similar nature of these cases raised the possibility of a serial killer being responsible for the disappearances of all 5. However, the curious circumstances behind Korrina and Annette’s disappearances - coming back again to the strangeness of a mother and daughter disappearing from the same location a year apart from one another - has lead investigators to believe that these 2 disappearances, at least, were not the work of any serial killer who may have been operating in the area. The fact that Annette disappeared within a very short window of time, in broad daylight, also leads investigators away from the serial killer theory.
A subtheory here could be that Steven was involved in one of the two disappearances - likely Korrina’s - but that the other was the work of a stranger. While technically possible, we have to again acknowledge that the idea of a mother and daughter disappearing from the same location, a year apart from one another, for two entirely unrelated reasons, is difficult to swallow. The much more likely possibility is that, one way or another, these two disappearances were linked.
The second theory is the most hopeful, and it is that Korrina ran away from her husband of her own volition, and later came back to retrieve her daughter. If we are to take Annette’s note at face value, then Korrina did actually run away purposefully on that fateful November night, and later returned for her daughter. This might also explain why Annette’s dog wasn’t found after her disappearance, as Korrina and Annette naturally would have taken the dog with them, and would explain why there were no signs of a struggle at the scene of both crimes.
However, this theory also raises a lot of questions, some of which can be explained away, and others not so much. For one, if Korrina chose to run away, it doesn’t really make sense that she would leave her car behind, as it would be her easiest and most obvious means of escape. One could argue that she left the car behind in fear that Steven would be able to track the car down more easily, but that would mean she either ran away on foot, via public transport of some kind, or had an accomplice - all technically possible, but unlikely given that there were no reported sightings, and none of Korrina’s family and friends have admitted that they assisted her escape over the past 34 years. Then there’s the simple fact that Korrina and Annette themselves haven’t themselves come forward during the last 30 years, despite the fact that family and friends, especially Korrina’s brother and her two sons with Steven, have been searching for them quite extensively. To this day, no one has heard a word from either of them.
Another question this theory raises is why Korrina would come back for Annette, but not for her other two children? It’s rare enough for a mother to run away and leave her children behind, but to come back for only one of them seems extremely odd. Many who knew Korrina, including her brother and sister-in-law, say that they just can’t imagine Korrina coming back for one child, but not for the others. This question, however, may have a somewhat logical explanation - since Annette was Steven’s stepchild, and not his biological child, he didn’t actually have legal guardianship over Annette, whereas he did with the two boys, his biological children. Korrina’s brother Leon and his wife were in fact attempting to convince Steven to give them custody of Annette following Korrina’s disappearance, and according to them, they had almost convinced Steven to send Annette to spend the summer with them, but he cancelled at the last minute. Had Annette come to spend the summer with them, Leon and Sandy say that they never would have sent her back to Steven.
Since Steven didn’t have legal guardianship, it would be much easier for Korrina to get Annette away from Steven than it would be for her to get the boys away from Steven. In addition, the boys were both very young at the time, both age 5 and under, and so it was likely rare that they were alone, without Steven or some other guardian around. Annette, on the other hand, obviously was trusted to at least walk to the bus stop by herself, giving Korrina an opportunity to pick her daughter up when she knew Steven wouldn’t be around. Although Korrina’s family doesn’t seem to think it would be possible for Korrina to have returned only for Annette and not the boys, from Korrina’s perspective, it may have been a choice between having one child with her, or none at all.
While it is certainly possible that Korrina ran away and later returned for her daughter, and the only real piece of evidence we have - Annette’s note - does indeed point to that, unfortunately at this point, it seems unlikely. Most of Korrina’s family lived in Iowa, a long ways away from where she and Steven lived in South Carolina. Supportive family members that live far away would seem to be the logical place to go if one were trying to escape an abusive family member - and yet, if Korrina and Annette are or were still alive, they never got in contact. Remembering that, according to Leon and Sandy, Korrina called her family members all the time and kept them updated about her life, it’s unusual that she wouldn’t at least give them a quick call to let them know that she was ok, and that she had Annette with her. Investigators flagged everything they could possibly flag that might help them locate Korrina and Annette, such as school records and social security numbers, and no leads ever arose.
That leads us to the third and final theory, and perhaps the most obvious conclusion - that Steven Malinoski had something to do with both disappearances. Unfortunately, this would hardly be the first time that the husband/stepfather was the culprit behind such disappearances, and the abusive nature of the relationship certainly doesn’t cast Steven Malinoski in a good light. Steven himself doesn’t even fully deny that he was abusive towards Korrina - in a brief interview on ‘Up and Vanished,’ a reporter asked Steven point blank if he ever laid a hand on Korrina, and his response was a rather lackluster, “I don’t remember. To the best of my memory, I don’t think so.”
Steven was also the only witness to Korrina’s whereabouts and movements the night of her disappearance, meaning his accounts very easily could have been fabricated, and he in fact gave differing reports of that night to the police and Korrina’s brother - he told law enforcement that he didn’t see anything after Korrina stormed out that night, but he told Leon that he had watched Korrina drive to the entrance of the plantation, get out of the car, and into another car being driven by someone else. When Leon informed law enforcement of what Steven had told him, they found this story curious, as not only is the caretaker’s cabin about half a mile away from the entrance to the plantation, the road leading there is very curvy - in other words, the entrance to the plantation can’t actually be seen from the caretaker’s cabin. Steven later denied that he had ever told Leon that he had seen Korrina get into a car with someone else, claiming that the story he told police was the truth, and the only story he had ever given about that night.
This theory posits that Steven killed Korrina, then killed Annette the following year after forcing her to write a phony note stating that her mother had returned. One factor pointing towards this possibility is that Stephen seemed completely unfazed that Annette’s note apparently claimed that his wife was still alive somewhere out there. Although he was never arrested due to lack of evidence, Steven was certainly the primary person of interest in Korrina’s disappearance. Sheriff Herod confirms this in an interview with the TV network Oxygen, saying, “He was the one we were looking at the hardest. We put him on a state polygraph, we talked with him . . he didn’t seem very upset, not much emotion.”
Now, we can never really judge how someone is going to react to the disappearance or murder of a loved one - sometimes, people react in ways that may look suspicious or confusing to outsiders, even if that person is completely innocent. However, it does seem odd that Steven didn’t make a bigger deal of this supposed evidence that Korrina was alive and well, especially given that many thought he may have been behind her disappearance - in fact, Steven didn’t even call Korrina’s brother Leon to inform him about this note and Annette’s disappearance.
Some have also noted that it seems unlikely that a sheet of binder paper would sit, undisturbed by wind, other people or animals, at a bus stop for the entire day - since Annette disappeared sometime between 7am and 7:20am, and Steven didn’t find the note until after the school day was over.
The theorized motivation behind this version of the story is that Annette knew something about her mother’s disappearance, and that Steven took and likely killed her to keep her quiet. Annette was 10 at the time of her mother’s disappearance - so, unlike her brothers, who were both 4 or under at the time, she was old enough to have noticed that something was amiss, or to have retained memories of something suspicious that she may have seen or heard. If Annette did indeed witness something regarding her mother’s disappearance, then she absolutely would have been a liability for Steven. If we look at the timeline, this could have been why Steven backed out of letting Annette go and stay with her uncle and aunt that summer, only a couple of months before her disappearance - if he thought that Annette knew something, it would have been dangerous for him to allow her out from under his thumb, to stay with other relatives several states away.
The idea that Annette may have known something about her mother’s disappearance is also backed up by an incident that happened in the time between mother and daughter’s disappearances - two weeks after Korrina disappeared, her father and step-sister Cheryl travelled to South Carolina to check in on Korrina’s children. While they were at the house, Annette told her aunt Cheryl she wanted to show her something in the attic and tried to get Cheryl to go upstairs with her. Steven apparently prevented Cheryl from going upstairs with Annette. Leon and Sandy believe that Annette could have been trying to show Cheryl Korrina’s body, hidden upstairs in the attic - sadly, we’ll never know if this was the case, but nevertheless, this was a very odd and suspicious incident. Steven, for his part, claims that he had never even been in the attic of the house, and has no idea why Annette would want to go up there.
Finally, Steven’s behavior after the crime was quite suspicious - he took the boys and moved to Florida only three months after Annette’s disappearance. Even though Steven was the main person of interest in Korrina and Annette’s disappearances, there were no actual charges brought against him, so he was free to leave the state if he so chose - however, in most cases of kidnappings or disappearances, the family members of the missing person or persons generally want to stay put, in hopes that their missing loved ones will make their way back home. So, Steven’s decision to move several states away just a year after Korrina’s disappearance, and a mere three months after Annette’s, struck many as unusual.
Not long after arriving in Florida, Steven abandoned Thomas and James, leaving them with a neighbor and never returning. The boys were put into the foster care system. He didn’t inform any of Korrina’s family members that he intended to give the boys up, despite the fact that Korrina’s brother Leon and his wife were more than willing to take them in, as they had been trying to take Annette in prior to her disappearance.
This also was not the first time Steven had abandoned his children - prior to marrying Korrina, Steven had a daughter with another woman, but left before his daughter was born, and later told relatives that his first wife and child had died in a fire, which of course was not true.
Luckily, both boys were happily adopted, and turned out quite well despite their rather turbulent early childhood - today, both are actively searching for their mother and sister, although unfortunately both boys were far too young at the time of the disappearances to have memory of any potentially useful information. In fact, the brothers claim that their original understanding of their family situation was that their mother had left when they were young - not disappeared mysteriously, but purposely left. The older brother, Thomas, has vague memories of Annette, but nothing more concrete than a young girl who used to play with them.
Eventually, Thomas and James were able to get back in touch with their extended families, and learn what had happened to their mother and sister. They’ve been looking for answers ever since. Both believe that their father had something to do with the disappearances, and that the only way the truth will come out at this point is if Steven willing decides to confess, or if the bodies are found.
After leaving Thomas and James behind, Steven later remarried and had more children. However, as of August 2019 it appears that he is actually in jail in St. Petersburg, Florida, for one charge of domestic-related child abuse, and one charge of tampering with a witness. This arrest was unrelated to Korrina and Annette’s case.
Most who look into this case tend to come to the conclusion that Steven was at fault for both Korrina and Annette’s disappearances, and that unfortunately he was simply able to cover his tracks well enough to get away with it. Korrina and Annette’s family members seem to have come to the same conclusion, with her brother and two sons all stating publicly that they feel that Steven was involved.
For many years, this case was dead in the water - with no real, concrete evidence, and no sign of either Korrina, Annette, or their bodies, investigators seemed to think that this simply wasn’t a case that they were able to effectively pursue. However, this changed in 2018, over 30 years after both Annette and Korrina’s disappearances, when two police officers at the Berkeley County Police Department decided to start looking into cold cases in the area. Korrina and Annette’s case was one of the first one that Lt. Kokinda and Detective Lewis reopened, and they’ve logged hundreds of hours investigating the case since they reopened it.
“Just know we haven’t forgotten,” said Lt. Kokinda in an interview with ABC News 4.
The duo are treating the case as a murder case - both feel quite strongly that the mother and daughter never left the 6,000 acre property, saying that in their investigation, they haven’t found any information that would lead them to believe Korrina and Annette are alive. As Lt. Kokinda said in the same interview, “because so much time has gone by, and there has been no contact with family, we’re treating it as if something has happened.”
As a result, the bulk of their investigation has been focused on searching the property for Korrina and Annette’s bodies. As of February 2019, the two officers were working with the College of Charleston to develop a formula that would calculate high probability areas where Korrina and Annette’s bodies could be located, looking specifically at soil and typography, in order to narrow the 6,000 acres down to 100 or 200. This search would be completed using drones, ground penetrating radar, and other resources that simply weren’t around in the 1980s when these disappearances occurred. DNA testing is also an avenue the detectives are exploring, as DNA technology was of course, incredibly new at the time, and not nearly at the level that it’s at today.
In their investigation, Lt Kokinda and Detective Lewis discovered that sometime in the 1990s, a pond on the Mount Holly Plantation property was drained for maintenance, and a rolled up carpet tied with an electrical cord was pulled out. While the plantation’s new caretaker reported this to authorities, it was never investigated as part of Korrina and Annette’s case, and was never tested for evidence. The detectives believe that this carpet may have been linked to the case, potentially even used as a hiding place for Korrina and Annette’s bodies, since the pond that this carpet was found in is rather secluded and out of the way, likely a place only the caretaker of the grounds would have access to. Sadly, however, the carpet was disposed of, so we’ll never know for sure if it was linked to Korrina and Annette’s disappearances. Lt. Kokinda and Detective Lewis have since had the pond searched by divers, but no other evidence has emerged.
For now, that is where the trail runs cold - there unfortunately haven’t been any public updates on the case since 2019, although it appears that Lt. Kokinda and Detective Lewis are still investigating. We can only hope that one of these days, there will be some breakthrough in the case that will bring answers about what happened to Korrina Malinoski and little Annette Deane Sagers - after all, over 30 years later, their family members are still in the dark, left wondering what fate could have befell them.
As Leon Sagers said in his interview for ‘Up and Vanished, “I feel like the system just let me down, and let my sister down. . . I’ve been hurting all these years. I think about my sister all the time. I’m lost without her.”
If you have any information about the disappearances of Korrina Malinoski or Annette Deane Sagers, please contact the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office at (843) 719-4465, or via their website: sheriff.berkeyleycountysc.gov.
As of this episode’s recording, the stories of Annette Sagers and Korrina Malinoski remain unresolved.
Episode Information
Episode Information
Research & writing by Olivia Paradice
Hosting & production by Micheal Whelan
Published on on May 2nd, 2021
Producers: Roberta Janson, Ben Krokum, Gabriella Bromley, Travis Scsepko, Quil Carter, Bryan Hall, Steven Wilson, Laura Hannan, Damion Moore, Amy Hampton, Scott Meesey, Marie Vanglund, Scott Patzold, Jo Wong, Astrid Kneier, Aimee McGregor, Sara Moscaritolo, Sydney Scotton, Thomas Ahearn, Marion Welsh, Patrick Laakso, Ruth Durbin, Meadow Landry, Sally Ranford, Tatum Bautista, Rebecca O'Sullivan, Denise Grogan, Jared Midwood, Michele Watson, Kevin McCracken, Ryan Green, Jacinda C., Stephanie Joyner, Teunia Elzinga, Cherish Brady, and Lauren
Music Credits
Original music created by Micheal Whelan through Amper Music
Theme music created and composed by Ailsa Traves
Sources and other reading
The Charley Project - Annette Deanne Sagers
The Charley Project - Korrina Lynne Sagers Malinoski
The Times and Democrat - “Search yields no clues about missing trio”
The Times and Democrat - “Girls disappears near where mother vanished”
The Charlotte Observer - “Girl, Mom Vanish In The Same Spot”
The Tribune - “Please Help Us Find Them - Annette Deanne Sagers”
The Charlotte Observer - “Girl follows her mother into thin air”
The Greenville News - “Berkeley girl, 12, vanished in 1988 a year after mom, leaving cryptic note”
Oxygen - “Cryptic Note Leaves Investigators Puzzled In Double Disappearance Of Mother And Daughter”
“Up and Vanished,” The Vanished Family. Oxygen, aired 22 Feb, 2020
Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office - Malinoski, Thomas Stephen