Amy Pagnac went missing months before Jacob Wetterling was abducted. Her case remains open

MAPLE GROVE, Minn. — Thirteen-year-old Amy Pagnac was last seen in the passenger’s seat of her family’s car at an Osseo gas station around 5 p.m. on Aug. 5, 1989.

That’s what her stepfather, Marshall Midden, told law enforcement when the family reported her missing, according to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

Midden said he went to use the bathroom — and returned to find the passenger’s seat empty.

Her disappearance came after a day of tending crops on the family’s 140-acre farm, located roughly 45 minutes north near Stanchfield. Amy Pagnac and Midden arrived at their farmland around noon, where they worked on the field until roughly 4 p.m. before driving back to their Maple Grove home, just miles from the Osseo gas station where she went missing.

At first, her disappearance was deemed a runaway by local law enforcement. Her family members thought otherwise.

Amy Pagnac’s mother, Susan Pagnac, told the Star Tribune in 2014 she believed her daughter had been abducted, possibly for sex trafficking. She couldn’t imagine a scenario where Amy, who regularly took medication for a seizure disorder, would possibly leave voluntarily.

Amy Pagnac’s disappearance came months before Jacob Wetterling was abducted from St. Joseph, roughly an hour northwest from Osseo. Wetterling’s case went on to become a nationally known case. Amy Pagnac’s case did not.

Her runaway status meant Pagnac’s case didn’t receive a full, initial investigation. Security cameras around the gas station weren’t searched. Gas station employees weren’t questioned. Law enforcement didn’t reach out to patrons, either.

The only movement in her case came through dead-end tips sent to family members from those who claimed they saw her in surrounding states. In one instance, she was allegedly spotted at a train station. In another scenario, she was alleged to have been employed as a dancer.

Eventually, though, her case went cold — until investigators showed up at her parents’ home and family farm in 2014 with a search warrant following tips received by the Maple Grove Police Department.

“We received some tips around that 2014 time frame,” Maple Grove Police Department Cmdr. Jon Wetternach told Forum News Service. “Some people who had a close connection to the case reached out.”

Authorities with the FBI, Maple Grove Police Department and the Osseo County Sheriff’s Office began their search of Amy’s former home on May 18, 2014.

Image courtesy of Newspapers.com / Original image appeared in a 2014 edition of the Star Tribune

With a sealed search warrant, law enforcement didn’t immediately admit the search of the Maple Grove home was related to Amy’s disappearance. Her family did confirm to local media outlets, though.

The search, which lasted a week and included an excavation of the yard, the removal of the deck, and a full search of the interior of the home, did not yield any known evidence. Midden and Susan Pagnac have not been named as suspects.

Then-Maple Grove Police Capt. Keith Terlinden told WCCO radio following the search that the investigation was far from over, claiming “DNA evidence will become a focus.”

The comment came a year after an Associated Press article on DNA advancements, specifically related to cases of unidentified remains. Susan Pagnac was among the Minnesota family members asked to provide a DNA swab for entry into a national database. The hope — then and now — is that human remains that were otherwise unidentified can be paired, through DNA testing, with those who have gone missing.

“I am so pleased the BCA is doing this because every one of those unidentified persons has family members, and every person has a right to know what happened to their family member,” Susan Pagnac told The Associated Press in May 2013.

In June 2014, roughly two months after the Pagnac home was searched, investigators took their search to the family farm near Stanchfield, Minnesota, in Isanti County.

The search of the property included large-scale excavation digs under the supervision of the FBI, BCA, Maple Grove Police and Isanti County Sheriff’s Department.

The search lasted four days. Cadaver dogs were used to direct law enforcement to specific dig sites, according to Wetternach.

Thirty-five years later, law enforcement has yet to indicate if any information of value to the investigation was discovered during the dig.

“We are trying to find Amy, and that might be a long process or it might be a short process,” Terlinden said during a news conference following the search, according to Minnesota Public Radio. “But our goal is to find her.”

The only known searches related to Amy Pagnac’s disappearance were aimed at the two properties owned by her parents.

That, according to her family members, is unfortunate.

During the May 2014 search of Amy Pagnac’s former home, then occupied by her parents and sister, Susan Pagnac Jr., the family expressed both gratitude and frustration.

They were grateful investigators were actively pursuing leads in Amy Pagnac’s case. They were also concerned that investigators were searching in the wrong direction.

“I have been trying to get law enforcement to do things for 25 years now, and having the fact that they’re going to do something, even if it doesn’t make much sense to me, is wonderful,” Susan Pagnac told the Star Tribune in the wake of the 2014 search of her home. “I just gave them permission to do whatever they wanted to do, so I don’t know what’s going on.”

Amy Pagnac’s investigation remains active. The Maple Grove Police Department has followed up on a number of tips in recent years, all of which yielded no new credible information.

“Her information is still out on several missing person websites,” Wetternach said. “So occasionally we’ll get a tip through one of those.”

The Maple Grove Police Department does not have any suspects at this time. As far as persons of interest, Wetternach said names on the list have not been backed up by information necessary to classify them as suspects.

Amy Pagnac’s family declined to provide Forum News Service with comments related to Amy Pagnac’s disappearance and investigation.

Wetternach said his department is hoping for the public to step forward with the next piece of critical evidence.

“We’re still actively pursuing what happened to Amy,” he said. “We just hope that somebody that knows what happened reaches out to us and helps us close the case.”

Information related to Amy Pagnac’s case can be directed to the Maple Grove Police Department at 763-494-6100 .