The Abduction of Billy and CJ Vosseler

Apr 14

Charles M Vosseler with his sons, Billy and CJ Vosseler

The simple life: Charles Vosseler meets Ruth

Charles Vosseler looked good on paper. The paper in question? The personal ads section of Mother Earth News, a magazine that Ruth Gotliebson liked to read from time to time. She enjoyed the articles on gardening, raising free-range chickens, and living off the land. Ruth, a 32-year-old social worker living in Madison, WI, sometimes dreamt of “a simpler life.” She had grown up on a dairy farm in rural Wisconsin—in the tiny town of Colfax, about 90 miles west of Minneapolis.

Charlie, then 38, was intelligent and polite. He seemed like a real gentleman. But he was twice-divorced and he had not yet found his career. He had worked in banking, as an elementary school teacher, and for his uncle’s construction company. At the time that he met Ruth, he was buying and subdividing small plots of land near his home in Newton, NH.

Over several months leading up to this moment, the pair had corresponded via letters and telephone. Though Charlie’s ad hadn’t included a photo of himself, he had mailed Ruth a photo—she had an idea of who she was looking for.

Ruth had not been previously married. Her parents were “despairing of the fact that it didn’t seem like she ever was going to get married.” And Charlie seemed like a good fit. He had a certain charm about him, and an enthusiasm for living outside of societal norms that appealed to Ruth.

Charlie had some quirks. He had prominent ears and his blue eyes often moved rapidly from side to side, a condition called horizontal nystagmus. It was out of his control. He generally held his head tilted slightly to the right, and it would sometimes bob, giving the impression of following a conversation closely and being engaged.

Not long after their first meeting at Niagara Falls, Charlie convinced Ruth to give up her job Madison, Wisconsin, and to join him in Newton, New Hampshire.

Ruth Ann Gotliebson and Charles Martin Vosseler married on June 30, 1981, only about 6-9 months after she first answered his classified ad. Their wedding was a very small private ceremony that was conducted in the backyard of Charlie’s parents’ cottage. It wasn’t important to either of them to have a big party. They wanted a simple life.

Early marriage years

After living for a short time in Lubec, Maine, Ruth became pregnant and Charlie bought a fixer-upper in Raymond, New Hampshire. They moved in despite it not having a functioning bathroom for the first month-and-a-half they lived there. The repairs and upgrades to the property were a family affair—everyone pitched in. Ruth, Charlie, his mom, his dad, they all worked on it.

On December 9, 1982, Ruth gave birth to a son, whom they named Charles Jason Vosseler, or “CJ” for short.

Around 1983, the family of three moved again, settling in the town of Rochester, New Hampshire. Charlie got his broker’s license and opened his own company, Onway Realty. Soon, Ruth would be looking after two children—William Martin Vosseler, or “Billy,” was born on April 21, 1984.

It was Ruth’s job to take care of the kids. Charlie wouldn’t do baths, feedings, getting them dressed, changing their diapers. He told her, “When they’re two, I’ll be more involved.”

After the kids were born, Ruth wanted to go back to work. She thought they didn’t have a lot of money. In addition to caring for the kids, doing cooking and cleaning, and helping with the house rehabs, she was also tending a garden. They were fairly self-sufficient, cooking many of their meals from what they grew. Ruth wanted to return to social work, but Charlie said that it required too much of her. She found simpler work instead—she had a newspaper route for a while, she worked fast-food, she tried to find part-time evening jobs so that the kids wouldn’t have to be put into daycare.

Living with Charlie

In 1985, they moved into a house in Rochester, New Hampshire, that was barely habitable. They had lived in several rehab projects that Charlie had successfully flipped, but this one was the “most distressed” that they had ever been in. As the year passed, it seemed like Charlie made little progress fixing the fixer-upper. She could not recall a single thing ever being repaired.

If the house was in poor shape, Charlie and Ruth’s relationship was not faring much better.

Charlie was controlling—especially when it came to money. For instance, if Ruth needed money for groceries, he would review her shopping list, estimate the cost, and give her that exact amount. If she came up a few dollars short at the checkout counter, something would have to be put back on the shelf. And, at the same time, he put limits on the type of work that he wanted her to do. She should focus on being a mom to CJ and Billy, Charlie told her.

Since their wedding, Ruth had become increasingly isolated from her friends and family, and she was losing her sense of self. She would later reflect a moment in which she looked in the mirror and did not recognize woman looking back.

But one thing never wavered for Ruth, and that was her devotion to her children. She loved spending time with them and watching their personalities emerge.

Blond-haired, blue-eyed CJ was a gentle child, eager to please. His brother, Billy, shared his blue eyes but had brown hair that glinted red in the sunlight. He was more of a trouble-maker than his older brother, and even as a baby showed an adventurous and inquisitive nature. CJ was a bright, cerebral child. He could sit for hours and do little puzzle games. He liked building things. Billy was much more of a physical child—he ran from the moment he got up until he went to sleep. CJ would build things, and Billy would knock them down.

By early 1986, the boys were getting older and more mobile, exploring their surroundings more often. The Rochester house had some hazards around, and Billy couldn’t be left for a moment without the fear that he might hurt himself. After an incident in which Billy pulled a cabinet door riddled with nails onto himself, Ruth knew that something needed to change. She told Charlie that they needed to move out of the house.

To his credit, Charlie complied, and he found an apartment for her within two days. He paid the first month’s rent and the security deposit, but did not move in with them. At this point, Ruth had limited belongings for herself and the boys, as most of the family’s things were in storage in an out-building at the dilapidated property. Of her marriage, Ruth would later say, “it was getting rough at that point, but it was still intact.”

What she didn’t know was that, in his mind, Charlie had already decided that the marriage was over. Ruth, in asserting herself about the condition of the house, had chiseled a crack in the near-total control he had over their relationship.

One day Charlie came over and told her that he wanted to make their separation official. It was a shock to Ruth—she didn’t believe that their marriage was ending. She believed that the apartment was a temporary solution to a temporary problem. When the house renovations were finished, she planned to return—or to move to yet another property together.

During this period of separation, they shared custody of the kids. Ruth found a job at Wendy’s. Often when she worked, Charlie would take the kids and leave them with his parents. Sometimes he would drop the kids off at the library and leave them for hours at a time. Charlie was inconsistent in returning the kids at agreed-upon times. He would take them to his parents’ cabin, and make excuses for why they couldn’t come home to Ruth.

Ruth said that his personality really changed around this time saying “he had become more controlling and a little weird.”

Billy and CJ are gone

Ruth was getting nervous. Charlie’s aunt had just informed her that her sons and estranged husband had never arrived at her house in Connecticut—where he told her he was going for a visit. In fact, the older woman told Ruth that they had never even made those plans. It was Saturday, October 11, 1986, and she had not seen her sons since their father took them on Thursday. She had spent the last few days trying not to worry. She and Charlie had been co-parenting amicably enough.

Charlie told her that he’d gotten an attorney and filed some paperwork, but he couldn’t seem to remember the details—the name of his attorney, what kind of custody he had petitioned for, what he had suggested in terms of child support. Ruth knew she needed to get her own attorney to start filing her own paperwork with the court. Though she was willing to be liberal with visitation, she wanted primary custody of the boys. She thought of Charlie as a good playmate, but she saw herself as the more responsible and reliable parent, capable of taking care of their needs.

Ruth had been working the night of Thursday, October 9th, at Wendy’s, and she had her niece, Lisa, watching the boys in her absence at her apartment. Charlie had a scheduled multi-day visit beginning that night with the boys. He arrived, shooing away the babysitter, saying that he needed to help the boys pack their things for a planned road trip to visit family in Connecticut. He had the boys for two nights—it was supposed to be Thursday and Friday night, with Charlie returning the boys on Saturday morning, Ruth’s day off. But Saturday morning came and went with no sign of Charlie or the boys.

It wouldn’t be the first time that Charlie was late.

Her telephone rang that evening, and she picked up. It was Charlie. She could hear the boys in the background of the call, but Charlie refused to let her speak with them. This dynamic had happened before. It felt to Ruth like he was trying to keep her from speaking to them. But he had a way of making it sound perfectly reasonable—they were getting ready for bed, he didn’t want to get them wound up, they were in the bath. It was always something.

Charlie said that not only would he not be returning the boys Saturday night, he would not be returning them on Sunday, either. Ruth was not happy.

She called his mom to see if she could talk some sense into Charlie. Her mother-in-law told her to relax—he was probably just enjoying a nice visit with family. “What family?” Ruth wondered. She had no idea where they were—Charlie hadn’t revealed that on the call.

She would soon learn a few days later that Charlie had closed the office permanently on Friday, giving his employees just five minutes’ notice. She peeked through the window and saw that many of the office’s furnishing were even gone.

She called his parents. They said that they were just as shocked as she was.

Charlie dismissed the babysitter so that he could “finish packing for the boys,” he had taken far more than clothing and toothbrushes. He had taken the credit cards, the address books, even the Christmas card mailing lists—anything that would make it easier for Ruth to contact his family members and friends. Not only that, but Charlie had taken every photo she had of the boys—even the one that she kept in her wallet. He had combed through the apartment with a thoroughness that sent a chill up Ruth’s spine.

The reality of the situation came starkly into focus for Ruth at that moment. There had been nothing strange or erratic about her husband’s behavior. He had been enacting a plan that he must have been building for some time, maybe months. He had no intention of bringing the boys back to her. Looking around the apartment, with its scattered toys and sticky fingerprints on the coffee table, it felt eerily empty, as though she were sharing it with nothing more than ghosts.

Part 2 of this story will be released on April 22nd.

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 1. 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 Gotliebson as a teenager in Colfax, WI with her father, sitting (ID)

Blanche “Beth” Vosseler, Charles Martin Vosseler, Ruth (Gotliebson) Vosseler, Charles Leon Vosseler, left to right (ID)

Charles Vosseler, Ruth (Gotliebson) Vosseler (ID)

Ruth Vosseler, Charles Vosseler (Facebook)

Charles Vosseler, Ruth Vosseler, baby (Facebook)

Charles Vosseler, Ruth Vosseler (Facebook)

Charles Vosseler, Ruth Vosseler (“Missing: Reward”)

Charles Vosseler, Ruth Vosseler, and the boys (ID)

Charles Vosseler, Ruth Vosseler, the boys, 12-25-1985 (NCMEC)

Billy Vosseler, still from video footage (ID)

CJ Vosseler, photo held by his maternal grandfather, Gisle (ID)

Billy Vosseler, still from video footage (WMUR)

CJ Vosseler, still from video with some distortion (ID)

CJ Vosseler, ~3 years old, behind, Billy Vosseler, ~1 year old, front, 12-25-1985 (NCMEC Facebook)

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.

1980sNew HampshireMissing PersonsCold CasesUnsolvedCharles VosselerBilly VosselerCJ Vosseler

Kristen Seavey