Charles M. Vosseler, aka “Charlie”
Billy Vosseler, age progression
CJ Vosseler, age progression
Read Part One of the Abduction of Billy and CJ Vosseler here.
Billy and CJ are missing: unraveling Charlie Vosseler’s lies
Ruth Vosseler felt isolated from her friends and family, and she wanted to reconnect. She called her parents, back home in Wisconsin, and started talking to them more regularly. She couldn’t understand how things had grown so distant, but as she spoke to them it became clear. Charlie had driven a wedge between them. She was 1,300 miles away in New England, living her life, and she assumed that they were doing the same. It seemed that Charlie, like many abusers, was trying to isolate Ruth—trying to reduce her network of support.
Charlie had told Ruth that he was handling the taxes for the family, but Ruth learned that he had never filed her taxes, and she was in trouble with the IRS for unfiled returns. He had filed extensions, forging her name, and never followed up with the documents.
Through deception, Charlie had amassed a little bit of money before his flight—about $200,000. He had drained and closed the shared checking account the they had used together, leaving Ruth destitute. He had stopped paying Ruth’s car payment. He had kept secret accounts that Ruth would later learn about that he also drained. He even embezzled money from his own real estate clients.
As the divorce proceedings went on, Ruth was beset at every turn by obstacles. The thorniest issue was that Charlie’s father claimed to own many of the properties that actually belonged to his son, and by extension, were part of the marital assets. Charlie’s father’s name is Charles Leon Vosseler. Charlie’s legal name is Charles Martin Vosseler. They were not “senior” and “junior.” They never used their middle initial on legal documents. There were real estate deeds in the name of “Charles Vosseler” — but which Charles Vosseler? It was difficult for the court to determine. Ruth, of course, knew the truth, but Charlie, and by extension, his father, was going to extract every penny he could out of the divorce. Charlie’s father successfully claimed that many of the marital assets actually belonged to him, undermining Ruth’s legitimate claim to half of their value.
But there was one incident, that even today, stands out in Ruth’s memory above all the rest. She went, one time, to Charlie’s parents’ home soon after Charlie’s disappearance. While she was there, she saw the family’s cat—a cat that had supposedly died—a cat named Muggins. Charlie had told her that the cat had died and that he had buried the cat with the boys. She thought the boys were a little too young to be told about death and that Muggins’ funeral could be a potentially traumatic event the boys’ childhood.
Now, here she was, face-to-face, with the cat. She knew, at that moment, that Charlie’s parents were not just being passively unhelpful to her, but were truly complicit in Charlie’s plotting against her.
She recalled the words that CJ had told her — “I can’t play with her anymore.” — he would just keep repeating it. It was as if Charlie had given him those words. She wondered what words Charlie had given CJ about her.
Fighting on all fronts
The kids were missing, and Ruth needed the cops to help find them. One of the first things they asked her for were photographs of the boys, but Charlie had cleaned her out. There were hundreds of photos of the kids—but they were all gone. Ruth had only a couple of photos left—for Billy, an image from his baptism. But for CJ, she was striking out. When CJ disappeared, he was 3 years and 10 months old—a toddler who could be recognized—more distinct in appearance than his younger brother who was just 2 years and 6 months. She asked everyone in her life for photos of her boys, and the best thing that she could find was a video from a coworker that captured CJ in the background for 13 precious seconds. She managed to get a frame from that home video, and that was the image that was circulated by the police.
As the weeks and months passed without the children reappearing, the Rochester PD took the case more and more seriously. But their jurisdiction was restricted to the city limits of Rochester and the boundaries of Strafford County. Charlie could be anywhere. Ruth wanted the feds involved. Ruth was going to law libraries, scouring the statutes, trying to find a reason for the FBI to get involved. And she found what she was looking for—there was a statute that made it the FBI’s responsibility to investigate interstate child abductions. The only trouble was that she couldn’t prove that Charlie had left the state of New Hampshire.
And then the phone rang from American Express.
They asked her if she was Ruth Vosseler, and if she was married to Charlie Vosseler. They were trying to collect a debt. Evidently, he had stopped paying on an American Express credit card, and they wanted to see if Ruth was good for the money. She said that she might be interested in settling with them, but that she would need to see the itemized billing. They balked at first because she was not the account holder, but after some legal wrangling, she eventually got the documentation. There were charges from New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. And the charges were made after Charlie had vanished with the boys.
On Thursday, February 5, 1987, Charlie was charged with two felonies for intentional interference of custody—or, in common parlance, parental abduction. Two months after that, on April 3, a federal warrant was issued for Charlie’s arrest on the charge of “unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.” At last, the FBI were able to become involved and pour their considerable resources into the search for CJ and Billy. Charlie’s parents would have to be very careful because they were now staring down the barrel of both state and federal charges, if they continued to blatantly assist their son.
That said, the local FBI office was not thrilled to be working on Ruth’s case. They were more interested in bank robberies than parental abductions.
Oklahoma - 1988
Stilwell, Oklahoma, is a small town near the eastern border of the state—ten miles from Arkansas. It’s technically in the sovereign territory of Cherokee Nation and the final point along the Trail of Tears.
Sometime in 1988, a local librarian named Patricia began seeing a new man in town who went by the name Charlie Wilson, or sometimes “Dr. Charlie Wilson.” Charlie was a single parent, raising two small boys, “Chuck” and “Will.” The boys were homeschooled and didn’t leave the house much. Later, several people in Stilwell acquainted with Charlie would say that they didn’t even know that he had children. Patricia did not know much about the family’s background, but Charlie had told her never to speak to his sons about their mother. She assumed that it was a painful topic—perhaps the woman had died or had left the family.
One day, Patricia was in the nearby town of Tahlequah with her mother for a doctor’s appointment, and there was a poster in there of two missing boys and their father. She took a closer look and immediately recognized them. She hadn’t been seeing Charlie long, but she would know that face anywhere—and there was no mistaking that strange condition that caused his eyes to flick rapidly from side to side. Patricia contacted the organization that had distributed the flyer, Child Find of America, who in turn contacted the FBI.
FBI Oklahoma contacted the local child protective services, and perhaps local law enforcement too. Eventually, they were satisfied that the tip was solid. On August 11, they told Ruth that they were prepared to move in on Charlie’s new location, and that she should be ready to fly to Oklahoma to retrieve her children. Ruth took off work, gathered documentation, and sat by the phone. This nightmare would soon be over.
But what the FBI found in Stilwell, however, was a pile of ashes. The house that Charlie and the boys had been living in was burned to the ground, as well as the vehicle he had been driving. Gone, too, were any clues as to where they were heading next.
Somehow, Charlie had gotten wind that the authorities were closing in on him. Ruth was devastated by the failed raid—they had been so close to reuniting her with her sons. It was the last confirmed sighting of CJ and Billy by anyone outside of the Vosseler family.
In the years that followed, other leads would place Charlie in Arkansas, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan. Monty believed it likely that he and the boys had gone abroad and were living in another country. Since Charlie spoke Spanish fluently, Mexico was a strong possibility in his mind. He believed that Charlie may have taken to going by his middle name, Martin, perhaps “mar TEEN”, and that the trio might be living under the last names Amidon, Foster, or Wilson.
Ambiguous loss
Today, in 2025, the boys have been missing for 39 years. And for 39 years, Ruth has been stuck in a kind of limbo. She told us,
“I applied to some graduate schools but didn’t really follow through—I was always ready for the boys to come home, and I didn’t want to be in the middle of something. I really can’t plan a future. [In contrast], if you lose a spouse, after a time, you decide, at some point, that it’s time to make a life for yourself. I wonder [to myself], if I put all my money and time in graduate school, am I abandoning my kids? I can’t rent a 1-bedroom apartment, it’s got to be at least 2... Whenever I plan for myself, I have a sense of guilt.”
She has a word for it, too—ambiguous loss.
Ruth says that following the abduction, she did not have the choice of falling apart. She knew she had to keep herself together so that she could focus on searching for them. She said, "I would wake up in the middle of the night and hear my children calling my name. I would hear them calling, but I couldn’t find them. You lose all the breath in your body.”
Ruth wants her sons to know that she has not stopped looking for them. “I’m a mom until my last breath.”
Find Charlie Vosseler and we’ll find Billy and CJ
NCMEC has used software to create age-progressed photos of CJ and Billy. They’ve also produced a number of photos of what Charlie might look like in his old age—he would be 83 years old. CJ would be 42 years old as of the release of this episode; Billy would have just turned 41 on April 21st.
Charlie was born in Connecticut in March of 1942. He is an only child. He was born and raised in Connecticut, and has a good knowledge of New England.
He is polite and well-spoken. He is tall—6’1”. He has a medium to heavy build at 220 pounds. He had brown hair, which may now be gray or thinning. He has blue eyes. He may wear glasses or contacts—he was last known to wear contacts. He often wears flannel shirts, blue jeans, and work boots. He could be going by his first name and a different last name. Other names that he may use are Malcolm, Martin, Amidon, Foster, or Wilson.
Charlie has a degree in economics from Coe College in Iowa. He speaks Spanish. He is uncomfortable around blood—it makes him faint. He has a tic—he tilts his head to the right, and bobs his head slightly up and down when concentrating.
He hates the government and loves the writings of Ayn Rand. The book, “Atlas Shrugged,” is a favorite of his. He has a particular interest in the stock market—he has dabbled in trading penny stocks and options. He reads the Wall Street Journal. He is very interested in real estate—he often buys rehab properties, does the work himself to improve them, and then flips them. He is interested in horses—breeding them, training them, and selling them.
Charlie is very concerned about his health. He takes lots of vitamins. He buys healthy food and grows his own vegetables. He’s particularly concerned about his heart.
His most distinguishing physical feature is a condition in his right eye called horizontal nystagmus. It causes it to vibrate back and forth.
Charlie could be living anywhere. Charlie is hiding in plain sight. Charlie is probably alive—his family seems to have longevity in their genes. And if everyone in the world knew this description, Charlie would be found.
If you have any information on the location of Charles Martin Vosseler or the abduction of his children, Charles Jason “CJ” Vosseler and William Martin “Billy” Vosseler, please contact your local FBI office or the Boston field office at (857) 386-2000.
Submit an anonymous tip online: https://tips.fbi.gov/home
The FBI is offering a $25k reward for information that leads to locating either Charles Martin Vosseler or his two sons.
This portion of text has been adapted from the Murder, She Told podcast episode, The Abduction of Billy and CJ Vossler, Part 2. To hear Billy and CJ’s full story and Ruth’s interview, find Murder, She Told on your favorite podcast platform.
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Ruth Vosseler, as featured in Missing: Reward ~1990 (Missing: Reward)
Joint check account, wiped out by Charlie
Apartment house that Ruth got in divorce settlement, 17 River St, Rochester, NH (Google Maps)
Apartment house that Ruth got in divorce settlement, 17 River St, Rochester, NH (Google Maps)
Ellen C. (Gunderson) Gotliebson, Gisle M. Gotliebson, Ruth’s mother and father (ID)
Ruth (Vosseler) Parker (ID)
Ruth (Vosseler) Parker (WKOW)
Ruth (Vosseler) Parker (NAMUS)
Monty Curtis, private investigator (ID)
Blanche “Beth” Vosseler, Charles Martin Vosseler, Ruth (Gotliebson) Vosseler, Charles Leon Vosseler, left to right (ID)
Charles Vosseler, Ruth (Gotliebson) Vosseler (ID)
Charles Vosseler (Facebook)
Charles Vosseler (Facebook)
Charles Vosseler, Ruth Vosseler, baby (Facebook)
Ruth Vosseler, Charles Vosseler (Facebook)
Charles Vosseler, Ruth Vosseler, and the boys (ID)
Charles Vosseler, Ruth Vosseler, the boys, 12-25-1985 (NCMEC)
CJ Vosseler, ~3 years old, behind, Billy Vosseler, ~1 year old, front, 12-25-1985 (NCMEC Facebook)
Charlie Vosseler, age progression 1
Charlie Vosseler, age progression 2
Charlie Vosseler, age progression 3
Charlie Vosseler, age progression 4
Billy Vosseler, age progression 1
Billy Vosseler, age progression 2
Billy Vosseler, age progression 3
CJ Vosseler, age progression 1
CJ Vosseler, age progression 2
CJ Vosseler, age progression 3
Sources For This Episode
Newspaper articles
Various articles from Chippewa Herald-Telegram, Dunn County News, Foster's Daily Democrat, Leader-Telegram, Montgomery Adviser, Morning Sentinel, New Hampshire Union Leader, Newsweek, and the Portage Daily Register, here.
Written by various authors including Blythe Bjerkeset, Bob Brown, Brad Morin, Dan Tuohy, Danielle Curtis, Dave Diel, Max Kutner, Mike Recht, Randy Skjerly, and Samantha Allen.
Official documents
Divorce decree, Ruth and Charles Vosseler (Feb 9, 1988)
Interviews
Special thank you to Ruth for speaking with us
Video sources
'Reward for missing children; the abduction of the Vosseler boys' (YouTube), 10/8/2011 (This is the “Missing: Reward” segment that aired in ~1990)
'Mother's message to abducted boys' (YouTube), 3/30/2011
'Missing CJ and Billy Vosseler' (YouTube), 3/29/2011
'Missing for Decades: The Vosseler Abduction' (YouTube), 4/18/2024 (WMUR mini-documentary)
'Never Stop Looking' (IMDB), http://imdb.com 8/15/2017 (This is the Tamron Hall documentary IMDB page, with places to stream)
Online written sources
'Charles Jason Vosseler' (The Charley Project), 10/12/2004, by Meaghan Good
'Charles Jason Vosseler' (Doe Network), 5/18/2010, by u/kc
'Blanche Decker Vosseler' (Introvigne Funeral Home), 12/19/2010
'Blanche Decker Vosseler' (Find A Grave), http://findagrave.com 12/19/2010, by no author credited
'Cold Case Parental Abduction' (American Heroes Radio), 4/30/2011
'Ruth Meets Charlie' (Never Stop Looking), 8/31/2011, by Ruth Ann Gottliebson
'Charles L. Vosseler' (Introvigne Funeral Home), 4/29/2014
'Charles Leon Vosseler' (Find A Grave), 4/29/2014
'CJ and Billy Vosseler' (Unsolved Mysteries Wiki), 11/29/2016
'Charles Martin Vosseler' (Unsolved Mysteries Wiki), 11/29/2016
'Charles William Vosseler' (FBI), 12/29/2016
'After 31 years, Ruth Parker Still Hopes to See Sons Billy and CJ Again' (NBC), 10/8/2017, by Logan Johnson
'A Christmas Wish, Greensboro woman still searching for missing sons' (Carolina Journal), 12/29/2022, by Dallas Woodhouse
'Mother's Day, "I'm a mom till my last breath"' (NCMEC), 5/12/2023, by Sarah Baker & Haley Gillespie
'Former real estate broker still wanted by FBI' (WMUR), 10/9/2023
Podcasts
'A Mother's Nightmare' (Unsolved Mysteries), 8/2/2022
Photos
As credited above
Credits
Research, vocal performance, and audio editing by Kristen Seavey
Research, photo editing, and writing by Byron Willis
Writing by Morgan Hamilton
Additional research by Chelsea Hanrahan and Kimberly Thompson
Murder, She Told is created by Kristen Seavey.