I'm a journalist in Wisconsin. A few years ago, I worked with Ruth Parker to try to get her story out there. Long story short, this is a parental abduction where the father, nor the sons he stole from their mother, were ever found. The FBI does not believe Charlie would have hurt or killed his sons. Her sons are probably alive. They probably have no idea they were kidnapped. They probably have no idea their mom has been longing for them, searching for them, for decades.
I don't know if Ruth has submitted her DNA to GEDmatch (it has been submitted to Ancestry). I'm positive someday they could find her boys through familial DNA.
Forgive my work here, looking back it's a little corny and there are so many ways I would do this story differently - mostly because of experience gained! This is the first cold case I ever got to tackle in my career, and it still haunts me.
Video link:
WKOW Still Searching from Ed Reams on Vimeo
Text version of my story:
A Wisconsin woman needs your help finding her missing sons, abducted 30 years ago, who could be anywhere in the nation... and have no idea who they are.
Ruth Parker is searching for the most precious things she's ever held in her arms. She's searching for her two kids, taken from her in 1986.
“On October 9 of this year, I'm 30 years in,” said Parker. “I don't even know that they're still alive."
Her babies were only three and two years old when they were taken. “CJ was wonderful,” Parker beamed. “I would have to walk the floor with Billy, and he would put his hand in my pocket, CJ would, and he walked with me. Along to help the baby."
It was a magazine in Madison, while Ruth was working for the library in the 1970s and 1980s, that would eventually turn her life upside down. She had mainly worked in “helping professions,” she explained, and didn't meet a lot of men that way. When she had decided she was ready to get married and settle down, she took advice from a friend, and picked up a magazine. “Found an ad in the Mother Earth News that appealed to me and we started corresponding," Parker said.
After letter-writing, phone calls, and a few trips, Ruth moved to New Hampshire to marry Charlie Vosseler, the man from the Mother Earth News ad. Ruth and Charlie would have two bouncing baby boys. Eventually though, they went their separate ways, as so many couples do.
Fast forward to October 1986, when Ruth reported the boys' abduction to Rochester, New Hampshire, police. At first they didn't see this as a kidnapping at all… because CJ and Billy were taken by their father.
“He [Rochester officer] said to me words I will never forget... which is 'what's the big deal? They're with their dad.'” Charlie had picked up his kids for a weekend visit, never to come back.
“Children just shouldn't be treated as cattle and as property of their parents, and shouldn't be hurt,” cried Ruth.
Parental abduction wasn't taken as seriously in the 1980s as it is today. “The officer's face was kind of stunned,” remembered Ruth. “At that point, child abduction wasn't much in the news, in the press, anything of the sort. Let alone parental abduction wasn't known well at all.”
It took Ruth seven months to get the FBI involved, and they've had the case ever since. The bureau still offers a $25,000 reward for information leading to Charlie's capture.
Authorities have only gotten really close to catching Charlie once. In 1986, a woman in Oklahoma saw CJ and Billy on a poster and reported that she was dating their father, and he told her never to talk about the boys' mother because she had died in a terrible accident. He was using fake names for himself and the boys, and even had I.D. to match.
But by the time the FBI got to Stillwell, Oklahoma, 11 days after she called… it was too late. “The property he'd been living in had been burned to the ground, as well as the vehicle that was in the yard,” said Parker. “He was in the wind again."
While the FBI keeps looking for Charlie, CJ and Billy, Ruth buries her heartache. “You can't stay in that worry place. It's crippling,” Ruth said as her eyes welled up. “In order to do this, to find your kids, you cannot be crippled. You need to work and fight and research and do what you need to do."
Even if the boys, now men, are found, Ruth's story may not have the fairy-tale ending you might want. “In the beginning, you had those kinds of thoughts. Their little legs running down the street and you getting to scoop them up,” Parker said. “Now... I don't know that I have that vision."
Ruth has said she wouldn't even push for a relationship between her and her sons. She said she knows Charlie has traumatized them, and she doesn't want to traumatize them any further. “I'd like to have a relationship with them, but that's up to them at this point. They are adults."
But until that day, this mother wanders through life... still searching. “I need to find them. It is more than a want, it is a need. I need to find them."
Ruth said after all these years, she doesn't really care what happens to Charlie. To her, this is about her boys.
It could be as simple as knowing someone who looks like those age progression renderings, and has never known their mom's side of the family, and helping them do some digging. That person you help could be one of Ruth's sons.
Ruth has also done an
Ancestry.com DNA test, thinking maybe CJ or Billy will be curious about the other half of their family, and take one themselves. She got her results back already, and so far she hasn't been linked with her sons.
CJ and Billy probably have different names, and could be anywhere in the country. The more people who hear Ruth's story, the higher the chance her boys hear about it too.
