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Amy Sue Pagnac: Why has FBI reopened a 25-year-old cold case?

Amy Sue Pagnac went missing 25 years ago at age 13. Now the FBI and local police are searching the home of Amy Sue Pagnac but they won't say why.

  • By Staff Associated Press

| Maple Grove, Minn.

Authorities are searching the Maple Grove home of a girl who disappeared 25 years ago at age 13, but they're not saying what prompted the search or what they're looking for.

Maple Grove police, the FBI and sheriff's deputies searched the home Sunday where Amy Sue Pagnac used to live, Police Captain Keith Terlinden said at a news conference.

"We plan on being on this site for several days and we'll try as much as we can not to disrupt the community," Terlinden said. "The actual details of why we're here today, I can't give them to you at this time. The search warrant that we executed today is a sealed document, so it will not be public data."

Amy disappeared from an Osseo gas station in August 1989. Her stepfather had stopped to use the restroom, and he told police she was gone when he returned.

Terlinden declined to say whether the parents, Susan Pagnac Sr. and Marshall Midden, were suspects. Nobody has been arrested, he added.

Susan Pagnac said she wasn't sure what led authorities back to her home or whether police considered her a suspect. She said she was just glad authorities were stepping up their investigation.

"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," Pagnac said.

Midden declined to comment.

Susan Pagnac Jr. was 8 when her sister went missing. She said she didn't think anyone in the family was a suspect, and that she and her mother believe police didn't take the initial disappearance too seriously because they thought Amy was a runaway.

"I don't know what to tell you," she said. "I'm sad that the only thing they can do is look at the family."

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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