Korrina Malinoski and Annette Sagers: Mother and Daughter Vanish A Year Apart

In November 1987, 26-year-old Korrina Malinoski disappeared from the isolated South Carolina plantation where she lived with her husband and three children. The following morning, her abandoned car was found near the entrance to the property, but there was no sign of Korrina.

Almost eleven months later, her 11-year-old daughter, Annette Sagers, waited for her school bus close to the same spot. She was seen there at around 7:00 am. Twenty minutes later, when the bus returned to collect her, Annette had vanished too.

More than three decades later, neither mother nor daughter has ever been found.

Were their disappearances the result of the same chain of events, or did two very different things happen to Korrina and Annette almost a year apart?

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Korrina’s Disappearance

Korrina Lynn Sagers was born on 19th January 1961. Her early life was marked by hardship. Her mother died when she was very young, while her father was often absent, leaving Korrina and her brother Leon largely to fend for themselves. Despite this difficult start, those who knew Korrina described her as kind, thoughtful, and caring.

In 1978, at the age of 16, Korrina gave birth to her first child, Annette Deanne Sagers. She raised Annette alone for the next three years and never revealed the identity of her daughter’s father.

In 1981, when Korrina was 20, she met Thomas ‘Stephen’ Malinoski, a 32-year-old carnival worker who had recently left the army and was travelling the country doing odd jobs. The couple married in Texas on 16th October 1981, just six months after meeting. They went on to have two sons, James, born in 1982, and Thomas, born in 1984.

Stephen had already been married twice and had a daughter from each marriage. However, he told Korrina that his first wife and eldest daughter had died in a fire. This was untrue; both were still alive. Why Stephen fabricated the story is unclear, although it was not the first time he had walked away from a family.

By 1982, Korrina and Stephen had settled in Berkeley County, South Carolina. Stephen found work as caretaker of the Mount Holly Plantation, while Korrina worked at the Oasis convenience store in nearby Summerville. Located off Highway 52, the plantation covered around 6,000 acres of woods, swamps, and wetlands. The family lived in a cabin on the property, some distance from their nearest neighbours.

Their marriage was troubled. Stephen drank heavily and used drugs, and the couple reportedly argued frequently, particularly about money and his drinking. Members of Korrina’s family also said that Stephen was abusive towards her. Her brother Leon had offered to help her leave, assuring Korrina that she and the children could stay with him and his wife, Sandy, if she ever decided to do so.

On the evening of 21st November 1987, Korrina and Stephen argued again. What happened afterwards has never been established.

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Stephen told police that Korrina left the house to go for a drive and calm down. He said he last saw her sometime between 11:00 and 11:30 pm, driving towards the plantation entrance and Highway 52.

The following morning, Korrina failed to arrive for work. Her boss, Bruce Clarkson, immediately became concerned because, according to him, this was completely out of character. Thinking she might have broken down on the way, he went looking for her.

Instead, he found Korrina’s car abandoned just inside the plantation’s locked entrance gate.

According to Bruce, the vehicle itself was locked and there were no obvious signs of a struggle. A layer of dew on the car suggested that it had been sitting there overnight. Korrina, however, was nowhere to be found.

Later that day, Stephen reported his wife missing and contacted Leon to tell him what had happened. Search and rescue teams from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division searched the plantation and surrounding area from the ground and air, but found no trace of Korrina.

Annette’s Disappearance

In the months after Korrina disappeared, her three children were left to adjust to life without their mother. James and Thomas were still very young and would grow up with only faint memories of her. Annette, however, was old enough to understand that her mother was missing.

Born on 16th March 1977, Annette was 11 years old and attended Westview Middle School. Teachers described her as a quiet, intelligent girl who appeared deeply affected by her mother’s disappearance. Some recalled that she had become increasingly withdrawn, although whether this was entirely due to her mother’s absence or whether something else was troubling her remains unclear.

Then, less than a year after Korrina vanished, Annette disappeared too.

On the morning of Tuesday 4th October 1988, Annette went to wait for her school bus at a wooden shelter just outside the entrance to Mount Holly Plantation, close to where her mother’s car had been found eleven months earlier. Stephen had built the makeshift shelter to protect her from the weather while she waited. Annette was wearing red trousers, a red shirt, and white shoes, and had her dog with her.

At around 7:00 am, the school bus passed the stop while travelling in the opposite direction. The driver saw Annette waiting at the shelter, sitting on top of her schoolbooks with her dog beside her. The bus would turn around farther along the route before coming back to collect her, and because Annette was the only child picked up at that stop, both the driver and several passengers were confident it was her they had seen.

Around twenty minutes later, the bus returned.

Annette and her dog were gone.

The dog later returned to the plantation, but Annette was never seen again. Despite the shelter standing beside a relatively busy stretch of road, no witnesses reported seeing her leave, enter a vehicle, or encounter anyone during those twenty minutes.

It was not until around 4:00 pm, when Annette failed to return home from school, that Stephen discovered she had never boarded the bus that morning. He went to the shelter where she had last been seen and found a note written in pencil on a sheet of school binder paper.

It read:

Dad,
Mom came back. I have to go with her. Give the boys lots of kisses and hugs and also you to [sic].
Love, Annette.

At 4:15 pm, Stephen contacted law enforcement and handed over the note. Annette’s teacher provided samples of her schoolwork for comparison, and handwriting experts concluded that Annette herself had written it. What they could not determine was whether she had written it willingly or under duress.

Approximately one month later, law enforcement carried out an extensive ground and aerial search of Mount Holly Plantation and the surrounding area. As with the search for Korrina almost a year earlier, nothing was found.

Neither mother nor daughter has ever been seen again.

After the Disappearances

As investigators searched for answers, details began to emerge about events surrounding both disappearances, while later developments would raise further questions about what might have happened to Korrina and Annette.

Court Hearing

In the months between Korrina and Annette’s disappearances, Korrina’s family became increasingly concerned about Annette’s welfare. Because Stephen was not her biological father, they began pursuing the possibility of taking custody of her, and a hearing was eventually scheduled for October 1988.

That hearing would never take place. Annette disappeared during the same month.

The Attic

Around two weeks after Korrina disappeared, her father and stepsister Cheryl travelled to South Carolina to check on the children. During the visit, Annette reportedly asked Cheryl to go upstairs with her, saying that she wanted to show her something in the attic.

According to Korrina’s family, Stephen would not allow Annette to be alone with her relatives and prevented the two from going upstairs together.

The incident later took on greater significance for the family. They came to wonder whether Korrina’s body had been concealed in the attic and whether Annette had been trying to show Cheryl something connected to her mother’s disappearance.

Stephen later said that he had never been in the attic and did not know what Annette had wanted to show her.

Detectives eventually searched the space but found nothing.

Stephen Leaves South Carolina

Three months after Annette disappeared, Stephen moved with James and Thomas to his parents’ home in Florida. No charges had been brought against him, and there was nothing legally preventing him from leaving South Carolina. However, the timing of the move has attracted attention because both his wife and stepdaughter were still missing, and investigators were continuing to search for answers about what had happened to them.

Stephen later relinquished his parental rights, after which the boys spent the next eleven years in foster care. Korrina’s relatives have said that they would have been willing to take James and Thomas but were never informed that Stephen intended to give up custody.

The decision also formed part of a wider pattern in Stephen’s life. He had previously left children from his earlier marriages, yet later married again and had three more children. He continued to struggle with addiction. As adults, James and Thomas have chosen to have no relationship with him and reportedly do not refer to him as their father.

The Anonymous Letter

In 2000, police received an anonymous letter claiming that Korrina and Annette were buried in Sumter County. It included a map indicating a location roughly an hour from Mount Holly Plantation.

Investigators searched the area with the assistance of a cadaver dog, but found no evidence of human remains. Chief Herod of the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office later told the Charlotte Observer:

“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 submitted for forensic examination, but investigators were unable to recover fingerprints or other information identifying its author. Who sent it, and whether the writer had any genuine knowledge of the disappearances, remains unknown.

The Friend’s Account

In 2016, a friend of Stephen’s came forward with an account of a conversation he said had taken place before Korrina disappeared.

According to the friend, he and Stephen had been driving together when Stephen pointed towards a mound of dirt near a pond and remarked that it would be a good place to bury a body.

Investigators subsequently searched the area. Dogs reportedly alerted to the possible scent of human decomposition, but no remains were found.

The Case Is Reopened

In 2018, thirty years after Annette disappeared, two officers with the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office began reviewing the department’s cold cases. Korrina and Annette’s disappearances were among the first they revisited.

Lt. Dean Kokinda later told ABC News 4:

“Just know we haven’t forgotten.”

Investigators came to believe that Korrina and Annette had never left Mount Holly Plantation and began treating the case as a suspected double homicide. Their efforts therefore concentrated heavily on the 6,000-acre property and the possibility that their remains were somewhere within it.

By February 2019, investigators were working with the College of Charleston to identify areas where a burial was most likely to have taken place, using factors including soil conditions and topography. The aim was to narrow the potential search area from 6,000 acres to fewer than 200.

Those areas could then be examined using drones, ground-penetrating radar, and other technology that had not been available when Korrina and Annette first disappeared. However, no remains or other conclusive evidence have been publicly reported as a result of the renewed searches, and the disappearances remain unsolved.

The Carpet

As part of the renewed investigation, Lt. Kokinda and Detective Lewis learned of another potentially significant discovery that had been made years earlier.

Sometime during the 1990s, a pond on Mount Holly Plantation was drained for maintenance. During the work, a rolled-up carpet tied with electrical cord was pulled from the water.

The caretaker reportedly alerted authorities, but the carpet was never tested and the discovery was not documented in the case file. Investigators later noted that the pond was in a remote, difficult-to-access part of the property known to relatively few people, raising questions about why someone had disposed of a carpet there.

By the time the cold-case investigation began, however, the carpet had long since been discarded, making forensic examination impossible. Divers subsequently searched the pond but found no further evidence connected to the disappearances.

Stephen’s Later Conviction

Years later, Stephen was charged with child abuse in Florida in a case unrelated to Korrina and Annette’s disappearances. He later pleaded guilty.

While Stephen was incarcerated, Lt. Kokinda interviewed him about the disappearances. Stephen continued to deny having any involvement in what happened to Korrina or Annette.

Theories & Speculation

In the absence of physical evidence, numerous theories have emerged over the years about what happened to Korrina and Annette. Broadly, they fall into three possibilities:

1. Korrina and/or Annette left voluntarily.
2. Someone outside the family was responsible for one or both disappearances.
3. Stephen was involved in what happened to Korrina and/or Annette.*

*The theories discussed below are based on publicly available information and are included to examine the different possibilities raised by the circumstances of the case. They should not be taken as evidence of guilt. Thomas ‘Stephen’ Malinoski has consistently denied any involvement in either disappearance and has never been charged in connection with them.

Domestic Violence

One of the most significant factors surrounding Korrina’s disappearance is the reported volatility of her marriage. Her brother Leon had encouraged her to leave Stephen and offered her and the children somewhere to stay if she decided to do so. Given that background, one possibility is that their argument on 21st November prompted Korrina to leave.

However, that explanation creates another question: if Korrina successfully left her marriage, why did she never contact the family members who had offered to help her?

Stephen has never given an unequivocal answer about whether he was physically abusive towards Korrina. During an interview for Up and Vanished, he was asked whether he had ever laid a hand on her and replied:

“I don’t remember. To the best of my memory, I don’t think so.”

The answer is notable because it stops short of a clear denial.

There are also accounts suggesting that physical confrontations occurred within the marriage. Korrina’s sister-in-law recalled that Korrina sometimes fought back during arguments and, on one occasion, struck Stephen over the head with a skillet.

None of this establishes what happened on the night Korrina disappeared. However, it provides important context for investigators’ belief that she may never have left Mount Holly Plantation. One possibility is that the couple’s final argument escalated into a physical confrontation, particularly given the reported alcohol and drug use in the home.

Stephen later took a polygraph test in connection with Korrina’s disappearance, but the results were inconclusive.

Did Annette Know Something?

If Stephen was responsible for Korrina’s disappearance, an obvious question follows: why would Annette disappear almost eleven months later?

One theory is that Annette knew, witnessed, or had discovered something connected to what happened to her mother.

Her attempt to take Cheryl into the attic has inevitably attracted attention in this context. Korrina’s relatives came to believe that Korrina might at one stage have been concealed there and that Annette had been trying to show Cheryl something. However, detectives eventually searched the attic and found nothing to support that theory.

The rolled-up carpet recovered years later from a remote plantation pond has also fuelled speculation that it could somehow have been connected to the disposal of Korrina’s body. Again, because the carpet was discarded without being tested, there is no evidence establishing any connection between it and Korrina.

There were other reasons for Korrina’s family to question Stephen’s behaviour towards Annette. According to relatives, he would not allow her to spend the summer with Leon and Sandy, who were seeking custody of her, and had previously prevented her from being alone with Cheryl.

If Annette did know something about her mother’s disappearance, keeping her away from relatives would have reduced the opportunities for her to speak to them privately. Equally, there could have been other reasons Stephen did not want her staying with Korrina’s family. Without knowing what Annette wanted to show Cheryl, or what she knew about her mother’s disappearance, the significance of these incidents remains uncertain.

Concerns About Annette’s Welfare

There were also concerns about the conditions in which Annette and her brothers were living after Korrina disappeared.

According to one account, Annette contacted another caretaker at the plantation asking for food and said that she and her brothers had not eaten for three days. The caretaker subsequently contacted the Department of Social Services.

Stephen’s later conviction for child abuse in an unrelated case inevitably raises further questions about his behaviour around children. However, there is no evidence that the later offence involved similar circumstances or that Stephen was abusing Annette, so it cannot establish what was happening in the Malinoski home in 1988.

It does leave the reported lack of food and the family’s concerns about Annette’s welfare particularly important in their own right.

The Note

The note found at the bus shelter is arguably the most puzzling piece of evidence in Annette’s disappearance. Taken at face value, it provides a simple explanation: Korrina returned, Annette went with her, and mother and daughter disappeared together.

But almost every aspect of the note raises another question.

Handwriting experts concluded that Annette had written it, although handwriting comparison cannot establish the circumstances in which something was written. Even accepting that Annette was the author, investigators could not determine whether she wrote the note voluntarily or under duress.

There were crossings-out and corrections on the page, which have sometimes been interpreted as signs that Annette was hurried or under pressure. They could, however, have an entirely innocent explanation and cannot tell us what was happening while she wrote it.

Stephen’s reaction to the note has also attracted attention. He reportedly crumpled it after finding it, explaining that he was angry with Korrina for what he believed she had done. Some have questioned why the apparent confirmation that Korrina was alive did not produce a different reaction, although emotional responses to traumatic events cannot reliably establish guilt or innocence.

Chief Herod later told Up and Vanished that Stephen appeared to show little emotion over Annette’s disappearance. Korrina’s family were also troubled that he did not contact Leon to tell him that Annette was missing or that a note apparently claiming Korrina was alive had been found.

One theory is that Annette’s disappearance was staged. She was seen at the bus shelter at around 7:00 am, establishing that she had arrived there safely, but had disappeared by the time the bus returned approximately twenty minutes later. If the note was part of such a staging, however, there is no evidence establishing when it was written or when it was placed at the shelter.

That timing creates another unanswered question. Stephen said he found the sheet of binder paper at around 4:00 pm. If it had been left at the open roadside shelter that morning, it would apparently have remained there for most of the day without being blown away, damaged, or noticed by anyone else. That is possible, but it also leaves open the question of whether the note was placed there later.

Ultimately, the handwriting may tell us who wrote the note. It cannot tell us why Annette wrote it, when she wrote it, or whether its message was true.

Could a Stranger Have Been Responsible?

Korrina and Annette were not the only people to disappear from the region during this period.

On 3rd April 1987, several months before Korrina vanished, Sarah Boyd, her 2-year-old daughter Kimberly, and her friend Linda McCord disappeared while returning from a gospel concert in Dorchester County, around twenty miles from Mount Holly Plantation. Their abandoned vehicle was discovered several days later, but none of the three has ever been found.

The proximity and timing led investigators to consider whether the disappearances might be connected to a serial offender. However, investigators working on Korrina and Annette’s case have said they do not believe the mother and daughter were victims of a serial killer.

A stranger cannot be completely excluded, particularly in Annette’s case. She was waiting beside a public road and disappeared during a twenty-minute period in which nobody is known to have witnessed what happened.

It is also possible that the two disappearances involved different people. Even if Stephen were responsible for Korrina’s disappearance, it would not necessarily follow that he personally harmed Annette almost eleven months later. Some theories suggest that another person could have become involved in Annette’s disappearance, possibly someone Stephen knew through his drug use. Speculation has ranged from someone helping to take Annette away to claims that she was handed over in connection with a drug debt, although there is no evidence establishing that either occurred.

Such a scenario could explain why Annette apparently left the bus shelter without an obvious struggle. Someone approaching her with the promise that they were taking her to see her missing mother might have been enough to persuade an 11-year-old girl to go with them willingly.

The note raises another interesting question in this context. Annette addressed it to “Dad”, apparently referring to Stephen, but it is unclear whether she normally called her stepfather by that name. If she did not, the wording could be significant: someone unfamiliar with the family might simply have assumed that “Dad” was how Annette addressed him. Without knowing how she normally addressed Stephen, its significance remains uncertain.

The crossings-out and corrections on the note have sometimes been interpreted as signs that Annette was hurried or under pressure. While they cannot establish that, they leave open the possibility that the note was written in circumstances very different from those its message suggests.

That possibility remains speculative, but it illustrates one of the difficulties with the case: the circumstances strongly encourage the two disappearances to be viewed together, even though there is no physical evidence proving that the same person was responsible for both.

The Dog

Annette’s dog adds another small but intriguing detail.

The dog was with her when the school bus first passed the shelter and was gone when the bus returned. It later made its way back to the plantation without Annette.

Chief Herod noted that it was a large dog and questioned how easily a stranger could have taken Annette without the animal reacting. If Annette left willingly with someone she knew or trusted, the dog’s behaviour might be easier to explain.

However, too little is known about the dog’s temperament or exactly when and how it returned to the plantation to draw any firm conclusion from its behaviour.

Korrina’s Sons

One of the strongest arguments against Korrina deliberately disappearing for good is the family she left behind.

Her relatives in Iowa and Illinois, with whom she was reportedly close, have always rejected the suggestion that she would willingly abandon James and Thomas. Neither they nor the boys have heard from Korrina or Annette since the disappearances.

If the note was genuine and Korrina really did return for Annette, however, it is possible that she intended eventually to retrieve her sons as well. James and Thomas were Stephen’s biological children, which may have made taking them more complicated, and Stephen moved them to Florida several months after Annette disappeared.

These possibilities could explain a temporary separation. They are harder to reconcile with Korrina remaining out of contact with both sons, and the rest of her family, for the decades that followed.

Did Korrina Leave With Someone?

Korrina’s abandoned car raises the possibility that another person was involved in her disappearance, whether voluntarily or otherwise.

According to Leon, Stephen once told him that on the night Korrina disappeared, he had seen her drive to the plantation entrance, leave her car, and get into a van driven by someone else.

That account is significant because it differs from the version Stephen reportedly gave police, in which he last saw Korrina driving away after their argument. There is also a practical question over whether Stephen could have seen what happened at the entrance from the caretaker’s cabin, which was approximately half a mile away along a winding road.

Stephen later denied ever telling Leon that he had seen Korrina get into another vehicle and maintained that he had given only one account of the night she disappeared.

Korrina’s family do not believe she was having an affair. More importantly, even if she did leave the plantation in someone else’s vehicle, there is no evidence establishing who that person might have been or why she went with them.

The Car

The location of Korrina’s car remains difficult to explain.

If she intended to leave Stephen that night, abandoning her own vehicle might seem an unusual choice unless someone else was waiting to collect her. No confirmed sighting of Korrina using public transport or leaving in another vehicle has ever emerged.

The car was found just inside the plantation entrance, behind a locked gate. Stephen, as the plantation caretaker, had access to the property and its gates, which has contributed to speculation that the vehicle could have been deliberately left there.

However, there was no apparent sign of a struggle around the car, and its location alone cannot establish whether Korrina parked it herself or whether somebody else was responsible.

Like so much of the evidence in this case, the car supports several possible explanations without conclusively establishing any of them.

Aftermath

Korrina’s brother Leon never stopped looking for answers about what had happened to his sister and niece. He died in 2022 without ever learning the truth.

His wife, Sandy, later told WCIV that she believed the years of grief had taken a profound toll on him:

“He just wished he knew where his sister was. He loved and missed her. He wished he could hold his niece again, but he knew in his heart he would never be able to. I wish there was a sign that he could let me know that he’s home with his sister and niece.”

James and Thomas eventually entered foster care and were later adopted. Both went on to attend college and serve multiple tours in Iraq before leaving the military and starting families of their own. As adults, they reconnected with members of Korrina’s family and have continued searching for answers about what happened to their mother and sister.

Stephen has consistently denied any involvement in either disappearance and has never been charged in connection with them.

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Almost four decades have now passed since Korrina disappeared from Mount Holly Plantation, followed eleven months later by her 11-year-old daughter. Despite repeated searches, renewed investigations, and advances in forensic technology, neither has ever been found.

For the family members who remain, the question is no longer simply why Korrina and Annette disappeared, but where they are.

Until that question is answered, both women remain missing.

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Sources & Further Reading

Charley Project | Annette Deanne Sagers

Charley Project | Korrina Lynne Sagers Malinoski

Oxygen | ‌Cryptic Note Leaves Investigators Puzzled in Double Disappearance of Mother and Daughter

WCIV | Bring Them Home: “Secrets in the Swamp” Explores the Story of a Missing Mother & Daughter

WCIV | Experts Take New Look at Berkeley County Cold Case of Missing Mother, 11-Year-Old Girl

Websleuths | Thread: SC – Annette Deanne Sagers, 11, Mount Holly, 4 Oct 1988

Court Documents:

Petitioner Vs. Thomas Stephen Malinoski. (n.d.). UniCourt. August 12, 2019

Newspaper Articles:

Herald-Journal – Mom-Daughter Disappearance Still Puzzling. Mar 24, 2002. Via Google Books

The Charlotte Observer. Girl Follows Her Mother into Thin Air. March 25, 2002. Via Newspapers.com

The Dispatch – Mother Missing Since Last Year; Daughter Vanishes 5 Weeks Ago. November 9, 1988. Via Newspapers.com

The Item – Cryptic Note Interests Officials in Mirror-Image Disappearances. March 25, 2002. Via Google Books

The Times and Democrat. Search Yields No Clues About Missing Trio. April 28, 1987. Via Newspapers.com

The Tribune. Please Help Us Find Them. May 25, 1996. Via Newspapers.com

Audio & Visual Media:

 Up and Vanished. The Vanishing Family. Oxygen. Aired February 22, 2020