Faculty voice: Using documentary film to reclaim buried stories

I live in a suburb of Detroit, where we are raising four children who attend four different schools. I am close to where I grew up — Flint — which is the backdrop to most of my documentaries, and to East Lansing, where I work, teach and have the agency to pursue hypotheses through film. I am deeply grateful to Michigan State University, which, through its mission to engage communities, pulls me to excavate stories buried by time.

As a documentary filmmaker, I reconstruct history through recollections. Facts and fantasies — such as dreams with themes of the supernatural — intersect as we chase closure in my latest documentary, Missing Paige, which is built on the ongoing investigation into the disappearance of Paige Renkoski, a 30-year-old substitute teacher from Okemos who was last seen on May 24, 1990, standing next to a parked car on the side of Interstate 96 near the Fowlerville exit.

I spent the day with Missi Hollis-Renkoski and Nikki Hollis, Paige’s sister and niece, at Missi’s home, where she grew up with her three sisters: Tami, Paige and Sherill. We have been here before. In May 2023, we followed the family during the Missing Persons of Michigan annual event and interviewed them at this home, except for Sherill, who did not attend. In April 2024, the film aired on WILX as Missing Paige: The Case of a Woman Who Vanished Without a Trace on I-96 Over 30 Years Ago and again in May as Missing Paige (Missing Persons Day cut).

The crew — Jason Howard, an MSU media and information graduate and broadcast engineer; Aidan Binford, a recent MSU journalism and music graduate; and Elysium Virnich, an engineering Honors College first-year student — interviewed Missi and Nikki about three tips that recently emerged:

The crew — Jason Howard, an MSU media and information graduate and broadcast engineer; Aidan Binford, a recent MSU journalism and music graduate; and Elysium Virnich, an engineering Honors College first-year student — interviewed Missi and Nikki about three tips that recently emerged:

1. Tip 957: A letter and map, scrawled after a dream and mailed in 1999 to the Michigan State Police. The map indicated that Paige’s remains could be found at Paige Cemetery in Fowlerville. Livingston County Detective Sgt. Matthew Young rediscovered the evidence during our visit in summer 2024. For the first time, Young unsealed items removed from the passenger seat of Paige’s car: her shoes, purse, and a partly consumed 40-ounce beer.
2. A three-page email sent to me in January 2025 alleging that a Renkoski family member abducted and murdered Paige.
3. Convinced by the credibility and detail of that lead — and encouraged by the family — we shared the email with the Livingston County Cold Case Team. The team replied that it was pursuing another lead: Buster Robbins of Almont, recently arrested by the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office for the September 1989 rape and murder of Beverly Wivell, who was abducted from Griffin Park where she had parked overnight in her car. It was the same park Paige had visited before her disappearance eight months later.

At the Renkoski home, Nikki and Missi did not skip a beat when asked about their reactions to each tip. In front of the camera, we also learned from Missi that her sister Sherill had passed away last fall. The water levels rose in her eyes.

We then followed the map described in Tip 957, ending the day at Paige Cemetery, a family graveyard with indiscernible tombstones, some dating back to the 1800s. Nearby, in a small patch of trees and grass, Missi and Nikki found the skull of a buck with its teeth intact. They waited for a sign from Paige but felt nothing — a space they have experienced many times in the 35 years since Paige’s disappearance.

This is what we do as documentarians: capture feelings such as the ambiguity of their loss to show the human condition.

By Geri Alumit Zeldes