The stepfather of missing Cornelius girl Madalina Cojocari testified in his trial Tuesday, revealing new details about his loveless marriage with who he described as an increasingly unstable Diana Cojocari.

Christopher Palmiter, 61, was charged alongside Cojocari with failing to report her daughter, Madalina, missing in December 2022. Cojocari, who had already spent 17 months in jail — the maximum sentence for the same charge — pleaded guilty last week.

Madalina was last seen Nov. 23, 2022, police say, but the couple didn’t report her missing until Dec. 15, 2022, when Bailey Middle School administrators called them in to investigate Madalina’s lengthy absence following Thanksgiving break.

Then, she was 11. Now, the 13-year-old is still missing, and neither Palmiter nor Cojocari know where she could be, they’ve told police.

Mother of missing Madalina Cojocari admits she failed to report daughter’s disappearance

In Mecklenburg County Superior Court Tuesday, Palmiter’s court-appointed lawyer, Brandon R. Roseman, called him to the stand.

“This is your opportunity to tell your story,” he said to Palmiter as he faced the jury — 11 men and one woman, plus two female alternate jurors.

In his hourlong testimony, which will resume Wednesday morning, Palmiter recounted his unique home life. He and Cojocari, he said while reaching for a tissue, had never been physically intimate in eight years of marriage. They kissed only on special occasions — birthdays, holidays, after exchanging gifts — he said.

They slept in the same bed for only two years before Cojocari moved into Madalina’s room. When she eventually made it to bed, she’d sleep on a trundle bed pulled out from below Madalina’s mattress.

But before her head hit a pillow, she’d spend hours “screaming at the top of her lungs” as she recited “chants, manifestations and prayers” she’d learned from Elizabeth Clare Prophet, a spiritual leader who died in 2009. The faster and louder she chanted, the more “points” she would get, he said. She taught Madalina the chants, too, he said.

Prophet, a controversial leader of the cultlike Church Universal and Triumphant, has more than 75 books of teachings and several videos on YouTube. At its peak, the church, originally The Summit Lighthouse, had 50,000 members.

Prophet claimed to receive “dictations” from ascended masters like Jesus, Buddha and Saint Germain while in an exalted state of consciousness.

Cojocari would occasionally claim the same, Palmiter testified. He said he interpreted it as her “speaking to angels,” though she claimed she was also “fighting demons.”

Once, Cojocari sat both Palmiter and Madalina in a kitchen chair and “cut the air” around them with a knife. She was cutting the strings demons can use to control humans, she told Palmiter.

Cojocari also became enthralled with burning things, Palmiter said. The firepit the family once used for s’mores slowly became Cojocari’s place to burn journals, cat boxes and “things that aren’t even burnable,” like metal, he said.

On Nov. 30, 2022, seven days after Madalina was last seen, a neighbor reported her mother was burning a couch in the backyard.

Palmiter, one of 11 children in his Michigan-based family, said Cojocari’s spirituality progressed considerably since he met her in 2008. From 2020 to 2022, it dramatically increased.

He said he met Cojocari on an online dating or marriage site called “GlobalLadies.” On it, Cojocari, 39, lied about her age, Palmiter said. She said she was 6 years older than what she was.

After communicating via email, they first met in Moldova, the eastern European country where Cojocari is from, in 2008. Then they lost contact.

A year or two later, Cojocari told Palmiter that she had a child — Madalina —with a local man, but she was still interested in their connection if he was.

He later came back to Moldova, this time with a promise ring, he said in court. Since their marriage in January of 2016, which helped Cojocari obtain a U.S. visa, they have been in a “companionship” rather than a traditional marriage. It is Palmiter’s only marriage.

Cojocari, he said, was “100% in charge of Madalina’s education and development.” For a couple years before Madalina’s disappearance, though, Cojocari would often be too engrossed in her prayers and chants.

In those instances, Madalina would ask Palmiter to play with her, he said. They’d play horse video games, chase their cats and run rounds of hide and seek.

“I’d never turn her down,” he said, tearing up again as he reached for a second tissue.

Palmiter’s trial for the charge of failure to report Madalina missing will continue this week, and Cojocari is expected to appear on the witness stand.

It was expected to be a two-week trial, said Superior Court Judge Matthew Osmond.