28 Years Gone: The Disappearance of Paige Marie Renkoski

It has been 28 years to the day since Paige Marie Renkoski disappeared. Paige was a modelesque blonde from Okemos, Michigan. She stood at about 5'6" to 5'7" and weighed a svelte 125 pounds. The vibrant 30-year-old had no real reason to vanish, but she did. Hers is now one of Michigan's oldest cold cases.

May 24, 1990 was a busy day for Paige Renkoski. At 11:30 am, she dropped her mother Ardis off at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport. After that, she paid a visit to a friend in Canton Township, which is about a 20-minute drive northwest of the airport. After 3:30 that afternoon, Paige was gone, her '86 Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais left idling on the shoulder of westbound I-96 about half a mile from the Fowlerville exit.

Paige's shoes and purse were found inside the car, along with a beer she bought at a store in Canton just west of I-275. The store clerk there recalled seeing Paige dressed in "distinctive multi-colored, loose-fitting, flower-patterned pants and a distinctive necklace."

Passing motorists saw Paige standing on the shoulder of westbound I-96 between 3 and 3:30 pm talking to several males posed next to a maroon minivan.

Police did not respond to the report of the abandoned car until 6 pm. Paige's car was not initially processed as a crime scene because it was simply marked as an abandoned car. However, when investigators finally processed the vehicle for prints, they found several as-yet unidentified palm and fingerprints.

Despite multiple eyewitness accounts of the suspects and maroon minivan and the prints in the Oldsmobile, no trace of Paige has ever been found. Several searches were conducted over the years.

In May of 2011, police searched a pond in Handy Township using ground-penetrating radar. At this site, back around the time of Paige's disappearance, a woman had found boots covered in cement. However, seemingly nothing turned up in the search.

In November of 2011, the FBI, along with state and local police, dug around in Conway Township using cadaver dogs after discovering a case file from 1999 that mentioned this was where Paige would be found.

28 years later, nothing has come from the reports or searches for Paige Marie Renkoski. In February of 2018, around the time when Paige would've celebrated her 58th birthday, a double memorial was held for her and her mother Ardis, who passed away in December of 2017, never knowing her daughter's fate.

Police had ruled out the possibility of a homicide back when the case was fresh, but after 28 years, this missing person case is, unfortunately, more than likely a homicide. Nobody has yet faced charges for Paige's disappearance. Will they ever?

References:

​"Disappearance of Paige Renkoski"
​"Missing in Michigan: Paige Renkoski's case still baffles investigators nearly 30 years later"