VANISHED in Michigan - The Afternoon Paige Renkoski Disappeared Without A Trace

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Ready to be seen? Download the ZocDoc app today. Every town has a dark side. There are cases that haunt us because of how violent they are. And then there are cases that stick with us because of how ordinary they begin. And this is one of those. It starts on a random Thursday afternoon when people are heading home. Thinking about seeing their families and what's for dinner. And somewhere along a busy stretch of highway, dozens of drivers pass the same spot. And none of them realize they're witnessing the last confirmed moment of someone's normal life. And there's no screams or chaos. Just a car on the shoulder, a conversation, and a young woman who then vanishes without a trace. Hey guys, it's Andrew. And thanks for tuning in to this episode of Everytown. Where today, we have a strange cold case that very recently got flowing again after 35 years. Let's head over to Michigan together and find out why and what exactly happened the afternoon Paige Rinkoski disappeared. Paige was 30 years old in the spring of 1990. The year she vanished from the side of a highway in broad daylight. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a way of smiling that made conversations with her flow easy. Even with people she just met. Her younger sister, Michelle, has said Paige was someone who moved through the world lightly. She made friends without trying. And did people's hair and makeup just because she liked it. And had a quirky sense of humor that could catch you off guard in the best way possible. At the time, Paige was working at an educational care center in Lansing while studying child development. She liked being around kids, liked structure, routines, and small daily responsibilities that added up to something meaningful. She was engaged to a man named Steve DeBrabender. And together, they were building a life in DeWitt Township. A quiet, simple kind of future that doesn't feel remarkable until it's tragically interrupted. On May 24th, Paige's mom, Artis, needed a ride to Detroit Metro Airport. She was flying to Atlanta to visit Michelle, and Paige offered to take her. They left around 11.30 that morning. Mother and daughter talking through the hour and a half drive. Nothing heavy and nothing out of the ordinary. After dropping Artis off, Paige planned to meet a friend in Canton Township, about 30 miles southwest of the airport. It was a warm day, no tight schedule, just a casual stop before heading home. And Paige spent a couple hours with her friend that afternoon. They walked through a local park, stopped for frozen yogurt at TCBY, and later ended up at another friend's house. By around 2.30, Paige said her goodbyes and headed back to her car. As she was driving home to Okemos, where she had a service appointment scheduled for 4.30, but before getting on the freeway, she made one last stop. A party store on Ford Road, just west of Interstate 275. And that woman working behind the counter would later become an important witness. She remembered Paige clearly, not because anything seemed wrong, but because Paige stood out. She was wearing loose, multicolored pants with a bold flower pattern and a long beaded necklace. The clerk complimented her on it. And they exchanged a few casual words. Paige bought a 40-ounce beer and poured some into a fast food cup, sealed the bottle, and then walked back out to her car. That was sometime between 2.30 and 2.45 in the afternoon. From there, Paige merged onto Interstate 96, westbound, and started to drive home. That trip from Canton to Okemos takes about an hour. And for most of that drive, Paige would have been eaten. It was indistinguishable from everyone else on the road. One car among thousands moving across Michigan's highways on a Thursday afternoon. No one had any reason to notice her. Except that, somewhere along that route, something went terribly wrong. Later, multiple witnesses reported seeing Paige's silver Oldsmobile on I-96. A couple long-haul truckers recalled an attractive blondie, and a young woman behind the wheel driving west. One person believed they may have seen her at a rest stop. Though, investigators were never able to confirm that sighting. What is known for certain is that Paige made it as far as Livingston County, roughly halfway through her drive home. And that's where the record starts to fracture. Sometime between about 3.15 and at the latest, 4.30 that afternoon, Paige pulled her car onto the shoulder, at Interstate 96. Now, the spot was roughly a quarter mile east of the Flowerville exit. It was close enough to the off-ramp that if she needed any help, she could have reached a gas station or a restaurant in under a minute. But, instead, she stopped right there. Now, there was nothing obviously wrong with the car. Investigators would later determine there was no mechanical issues, the gas tank was full, and there was no visible damage. Nothing to suggest, there was just an emergency that required her to pull over. So, why would she stop right there, and where did she go? This is where some of those witness accounts become both crucial and frustratingly incomplete. The people who saw her were passing by at highway speeds. 60, 70 miles an hour. They had only seconds to take in the scene, but several noticed something unusual enough that it stayed with them. Across multiple statements, one detail kept coming up. A maroon, or burgundy, minivan. Now, some witnesses said it was parked in front of Paige's car. Others believed it was behind. Either way, most agreed it was stopped close to her vehicle, right there on the shoulder. And Paige wasn't alone. According to reports, a burgundy minivan had pulled up behind her. And she was supposedly seen talking to two men in between the vehicles. One person recalled that she appeared to be gesturing with her hands, the way someone does when they're explaining something. The man had a hand resting on her shoulder. Nothing about it looked suspicious. It looked frantic, and nothing appeared overly threatening. So to anyone driving past, it would have looked like two people having a conversation on the side of the road. And that, more than anything, is what makes the moment so unsettling. The relative calmness of the scene is creepy. Now, one witness, an off-duty law enforcement officer, later said he came away with a very specific impression as he drove past. He recalled seeing a man standing on the side of the road, standing near the front of Paige's silver Oldsmobile. His arm extended, as if he were showing her something in his hand. In that moment, the officer assumed he was looking at a traffic stop, and that the man might be a plainclothes or off-duty officer displaying a badge. And that detail matters. Now, Paige's father had worked in law enforcement himself. Now, she would have grown up with a clear understanding of police authority, to pull over when signaled, to complain. If someone presented a badge to her, whether legitimate or not, there's little reason to believe she would have challenged it. And there's another detail that deepens the mystery. When Paige pulled over, she took off her shoes. Investigators later found them on the floorboard near the driver's seat. Now, driving barefoot isn't unusual. Plenty of people do it. But leaving your shoes on, your car barefoot. on a gravel shoulder. And stepping away from your vehicle on the side of a busy freeway without your purse, without your shoes, in the middle of the afternoon? Well, that's harder to explain. Unless she believed she was only stepping out briefly, say, to speak with a police officer. By around 6 p.m. that evening, a deputy with the Livingston County Sheriff's Department responded to reports of an abandoned vehicle along the interstate. When he arrived, the Oldsmobile was still running. The headlights were on. A rainstorm had moved through. The windshield wipers were still sweeping back and forth. Inside the car, he saw Paige's purse, her shoes, and the beer she'd purchased earlier that afternoon. And with no missing person report yet filed, no immediate signs of a crime, the situation was treated as what it appeared to be, an abandoned vehicle. The deputy shut off the engine, locked the doors, tagged the car for towing, and left the scene. No photographs were taken at the scene, and nothing was handled the way a proper crime scene would be. The exact location of the car wasn't even properly documented, which means that when investigators later understood that Paige was missing, that this wasn't simply an abandoned vehicle. Whatever potential evidence existed along that stretch of road was already gone. That's one of the most difficult realities of this case. From the very beginning, there were missteps that couldn't be undone. At the same time, Paige's family had no idea anything was wrong. Her mother, Artis, was in Atlanta with Michelle at this point, and Paige's fiancé, Steve, was waiting for her to show up at a softball game, assuming she was just running late. Earlier that evening, the Sheriff's Department had left a voicemail, and Artis had to go to the police station. The police department had left a voicemail, at Artis' house, saying they'd located Paige's car on the side of the road, but Artis wasn't home to hear it, and the message sat on that answering machine unheard as the hours passed. It wasn't until later that the worry really set in. Paige hadn't called to say she'd made it home, something she normally would have done. In a time before cell phones, staying connected meant landlines and answering machines, and silence carried more weight to it. When neither Michelle nor Artis could reach her, they called Steve and asked him to check the messages at the house. That's when he heard the voicemail. And that's when the day shifted from confusion to fear, when the family finally realized this wasn't a delay or a miscall or a harmless mix-up. Something was seriously wrong. Steve contacted the DeWitt Township Police to report that his fiancée was missing, and from there, the case was transferred to Livingston County, where her car had been found. By Saturday, investigators finally processed the Oldsmobile as a crime scene. Paige herself had her fingerprints available through some prior records, not because she was a criminal, but because prints are often taken for things like employment, background checks, licensing, and other routine stuff, which meant they could eliminate her fingerprints. And from there, inside the vehicle, they recovered roughly 20 other fingerprints scattered throughout the car from someone who was not Paige. They also found palm prints on the trunk positioned in a way that suggested someone had been leaning against it. When those prints were run through law enforcement databases, nothing came back, though. Whoever they belonged to had no record in the system. In the weeks and months that followed, investigators worked through every lead they could identify. The maroon minivan seen near Paige's car became a central focus. Witnesses told police they saw Rinkoski standing on the shoulder of a road, speaking with a man next to a minivan. The majority of those accounts, roughly 80%, described the man as black. Others believed he may have been Hispanic. The descriptions varied enough that investigators turned to police sketch artists, producing multiple composite drawings over the years. One sketch from the late 1990s depicted a smaller framed man. Years later, after hundreds of more tips came in, the prevailing description shifted, now pointing towards someone taller. None of these sketches, however, led to any arrest. This case drew an enormous amount of public attention, not just because Paige disappeared, but because of where it happened. In the middle of the afternoon, on a heavily traveled highway, with witnesses who saw her standing there and assumed everything was fine. Over time, investigators received more than 1,200 tips. Every one of them was followed up on, and in the middle of the afternoon, a search was conducted across rural Livingston County using cadaver dogs and ground penetrating radar. Properties were examined, fields and wooded areas were combed. Then in 2011, investigators received something very interesting and also very creepy. It was a hand-drawn map sent in anonymously. It was detailed and carefully labeled, showing what appeared to be directions from the Interstate 96 exit to a wooded area. The map came with a cryptic note suggesting it might be a red herring, but stating that the sender had verified what they could. From there, investigators searched the area shown on the map, and they found nothing. More years passed, and Paige's absence never softened for her family. Her mother became a fierce advocate for missing persons, channeling her grief into action. She helped establish Michigan's annual Missing in Michigan Conference, and worked relentlessly to keep Paige's case visible, not just for her daughter, but for other families navigating the same unanswered questions. In December of 2017, Artis passed away without ever learning what had actually happened to Paige. quiet. Not because it stopped mattering, but because there was nowhere left to push. Last year, though, 35 years after Paige disappeared, something new finally happened. Paige Renkoski, missing since May 24th, 1990. The Livingston County Sheriff's Office unable to share details, but confirming the Renkoski case is open and has been open, and they are looking at 69-year-old Buster Robbins. Detectives in neighboring Washtenaw County made an arrest in an entirely separate cold case. A man named Buster Robbins was charged with the murder of Beverly Wivel, a 30-year-old woman who had been killed back in September of 1989. A DNA collected from her at the time of her death had been preserved, and in 2024, it was sent in for forensic genealogy testing, and the result pointed to Robbins. And that's when investigators began looking more closely at the details of Beverly Wivel's case and noticed similarities that were difficult to ignore. Beverly had been sleeping in her car in Canton Township after dropping her son off at school. At some point, she was abducted from the vehicle, assaulted, and then shot. Her body was later found along Gotfordson Road in Superior Township. But what stood out most was what happened to her car. It was discovered later that same night, back in Canton Township. The engine was still running, the driver's door was open, and her purse was still in the car. The driver's car was still in the car, and the driver's car was still in the car. still inside. And when investigators laid the two cases side by side, the overlap was striking. Both women were 30 years old, and both cases involved Canton Township. In both, the victim's vehicle was found running, with shoes and purse left behind. Beverly was killed in September of 89, and Page vanished just eight and a half months later, in May of 1990. And there was one more detail. According to investigators, Robbins was driving a vehicle in 1989 and 1990 that resembled an unmarked police car, a late model Chrysler New Yorker. A witness in Beverly Wivel's case reported seeing a blue vehicle with a white top speeding away from the scene, matching that description. And none of this proves what happened to Page, but for the first time in decades, investigators had a name and a pattern that forced them to take another look. And there's another detail investigators couldn't ignore. And court records show that Robbins had worked as a reserve police officer during that period. If he had access to a badge, even a reserve officer's badge, it raises a trouble. And despite the DNA evidence linking Robbins to Beverly Wivel's murder, a district court judge declined to bind the case over for trial. over for trial in March of last year. Robbins' attorneys are arguing that DNA evidence only proves he had sex with her, but not that he killed her. The judge saying in court yesterday, quote, I believe there's more to this story. At the same time, the judge acknowledged Robbins is both dangerous and a flight risk, ordering him held on a $5 million bond. And prosecutors immediately appealed the decision. During those proceedings, prosecutors also referenced other investigations involving Robbins. These included allegations raised by his wife during divorce filings, describing coercive and non-consensual arrangements involving other men. Investigators also reported finding inappropriate and illegal materials on a tablet belonging to Robbins. And none of those allegations have been adjudicated in court, but taken together, they paint a picture investigators say is deeply concerning, of someone accused of long-term predatory behavior operating for years without being stopped. And for Page's family, and for detectives who've lived with this case for decades, it raises a difficult question once again. Was this the man they'd been looking for all along? Setting aside everything surrounding Robbins, investigators continue to work Page's case. Even with advancements in forensic technology right now, there still isn't a clear answer. And the fingerprints and palm prints recovered from Page's car have been run through law enforcement databases multiple times over the years, always with the same result, no matches. And in terms of connecting those to Robbins, well, the results have not been publicly released. Whether they match or not, either way, it would change how investigators work the case. And so, at some point, we should all hear the truth on that front. But right now, with physical evidence offering few answers, the cold case team has focused on three primary theories as to what really went down out there on Highway 96. The first is that Page knew the person who took her. While investigators haven't ruled it out, there's little evidence to support it. I mean, the odds of encountering someone she knew on a random stretch of interstate, someone with both the opportunity and intent to harm her, are considered low. The second theory involves a staged accident or request for help, a scenario where someone created a situation that caused Page to pull over. But again, the physical evidence doesn't strongly support it. There was no meaningful damage to Page's car, and the maroon minivan witnesses described didn't appear to be disabled or damaged either. And the third theory centers on authority. Investigators believe Page may have been convinced to pull over by someone posing as a law enforcement officer. This explanation accounts for details that otherwise don't make sense. Why she stopped just short of an exit instead of continuing to safety. Why she stepped out of her car barefoot. And why she left her purse behind. If Page believed she was being stopped by police, compliance, or a police officer, would have been instinctive. She wouldn't have questioned it, and she wouldn't have felt immediate danger. And by the time she realized something was wrong, investigators believe it may have already been too late. For now, the connection to Buster Robbins remains under investigation. The similarities between Beverly Wivel's murder and Page's disappearance are significant enough that detectives can't ignore them. But similarities are not proof, and Cole, Kay's team knows that better than anyone. It's still too early to say whether Robbins played any role in what actually happened to Page. But as changed as this, for the first time in years, investigators have a lead they can actively test. And prosecutors in the county continue to fight to bring Robbins to trial in Beverly Wivel's murder. The appeals process is ongoing, and in the meantime, Robbins remains in custody on a $5 million bond facing allegations that stretch back decades. Page Rinkowski, she'd be 59 years old today. She would have lived a full life, built a career, grown older alongside the people who loved her, and marked time in ways none of us ever think about until they're taken away. Instead, she exists in fragments. A photograph on a missing persons poster, a case file in a sheriff's office. 35 years is a long time, but it's not long enough, to stop looking for someone you love. And if you happen to have any information about Page's disappearance, you're urged to contact the Livingston County Sheriff's Office, 517-540-7880, or email coldcasetips at livegov.com. Even now, after more than three decades, a single detail could be the only thing that finally brings answers home. She'd be 59 years old today. She'd be 59 years old today.