No!
Oh, no!
My son was my whole world,
and one day I'm gonna find him.
Everything had been thrown out, and the entire place was cleaned.
They were just gone. There was nothing left.
Oh, my God.
He took the kids.
Every day our hope was that he's coming back, but there was nothing.
He disappeared without a trace.
Everything was turned upside down,
and everything that I believed to be true is not true.
There is no playbook for kidnapping.
Marty, you're up!
You can't go down.
You can do whatever you want!
When I dream about my kids,
sometimes they're in trouble, and I have to get to them.
And sometimes we're just spending time doing the things
that we like to do together.
For that moment...
they're alive,
and they're with me.
So I love dreaming about my kids because they're actually there.
I met Ahmed Kandil when I was 28 and he was 30.
I was planning to go to medical school,
and he was pursuing an MBA in order to spend more time in finance.
When we initially started dating, all of our dates were sports,
whether it was playing soccer, going to volleyball group, racquetball.
Gosh, we used to go dancing a lot.
Every Friday, it was either East Coast Swing, West Coast Swing.
We did all sorts of great dance routines, and it was really fun.
Ahmed grew up in Cairo. He's Muslim.
I grew up in Berlin.
And my background was Christian,
but what I felt really brought us together
is that we both came from a very middle-class upbringing,
and so we had some of the same values
even if we came from different religious backgrounds.
Ahmed and I knew each other a couple of years before we got married.
And then, nine months later,
my daughter Amina was born September 1st, 2003.
It was just about three weeks after I started medical school.
Then right between second and third year,
my son Belel was born on January 4th, 2006.
Amina is such a warm person.
She's a little bit more shy than her brother,
but she has this core of inner strength that comes through every once in a while.
Belel is more outward and fun-oriented in a lot of ways.
And he engaged everyone.
Rebecca and I met first day of residency in Boston
and subsequently followed each other to Virginia for a job.
And when Rebecca and Ahmed first moved to Virginia...
Every Wednesday was dinner night.
Hey!
We had sleepover nights for the kids,
game nights,
and Ahmed was always very welcoming.
He took good care of the kids.
He was a good dad.
But he, at that point, was actually not working.
He had a job in Boston.
And then, in the financial crisis, had lost his employment there.
After 2008, finance was just not a very good area to be working in.
From that point,
Ahmed did not ever show interest in getting a job.
He smiled less, and he was less positive
and not open at all to any dialogue or discussion.
He regarded me solely focused towards the children,
and within my function as a mother,
more so than as a woman or a professional.
So he really was not the same person that he was when I met him.
Ahmed would have just stayed together the way that we were,
but I was the one who was not happy.
So Ahmed and I separated in June 2013.
After we separated,
I would get the kids for two weekdays
and Ahmed would have them the other weekdays.
And then we would basically split the weekends.
But Ahmed tried to make it very difficult for Rebecca to see Amina and Belel
because Rebecca was the working parent.
He was also moving in a much more conservative religious direction,
and Amina and Belel were attending the school at the mosque on Saturdays.
So it became abundantly clear
that Ahmed was on one trajectory in how he wanted the kids to be raised,
and I felt I was pretty squarely on a very different trajectory.
It was the Thursday before Labor Day.
The children were gonna go with Ahmed to Toronto to look at a college
for their cousin.
He said that he was gonna be returning on September 1st, that Monday,
which is Amina's birthday.
She was turning 11 years old.
So he expected to be back in the country at that point.
When Ahmed came to pick up the children,
we were sitting on the couch, watching something on the iPad.
Belel immediately ran over to the front door
and had to show it to his father, then immediately ran out to the car.
And I told Amina that it was time to go.
And right at the door, she gave me a hug, gave me two kisses.
I told her that she should have a good weekend in Toronto with her cousins
and that I was looking forward to wishing her a happy birthday
not too much longer after that.
I watched them driving off.
That was the last time I saw my kids.
On Friday, the day after the kids got picked up in the evening,
I texted Ahmed and told him that I want to call Amina on her birthday.
He confirmed that he was gonna be back on the first.
I didn't have any contact with them on Saturday and Sunday,
but on Monday, I tried to call him multiple times on his cell phone,
and he wouldn't pick up.
And at that point, September 1st, he really should have been back.
It was infuriating not to be able to reach my children.
I called multiple times from the hospital and couldn't get a response.
It was a little disconcerting, although it wasn't unusual for him.
Just a passive-aggressive move
not to let me talk to my daughter on her birthday.
So that night, I texted Ahmed to please tell Amina happy birthday.
That Tuesday, September 2nd,
Amina was gonna go to middle school for the first time,
and Belel was going back to elementary school.
So my sense was that if the kids were in school,
then everything was fine.
But I called both schools in the morning.
They told me that they weren't there and that they hadn't shown up that day.
At that point, I got really concerned,
and panicked, and angry, and...
ugh, just hurt, and really concerned about the kids.
The problem was that I was at my remote clinic,
where I'm the only anesthesiologist around and there was still patients to be seen.
And I can't leave.
I contacted the police that day, and I called every hospital in Toronto
just to see if maybe they had possibly gotten into an accident.
And then I called Ahmed's father in Egypt,
and I asked him where Ahmed was and what had happened.
He didn't know what I was talking about.
And he wasn't concerned, which concerned me.
And that, to me, was a real warning sign that he must have known something.
So I called Daphney
and I asked if she could please check Ahmed's house for me.
When I went to the house, there were no cars.
And nobody was home.
And the windows were blocked.
So I went to the back of the house.
There was a curtain that was pulled aside,
and I looked through a glass door,
and I knew that something bad had happened.
I called Rebecca and I told her,
"The house is empty, completely empty."
She told me that everything was gone. There's nothing left.
The bottom just fell out...
and I was in a free fall.
There's just no other way to describe it.
I mean, everything is torn away from you, and everything was turned upside down.
I don't know what's going on.
But moments later, they'd said that we needed to intubate a patient.
So I remember going right back to work.
I was in tears. I couldn't stop crying.
The surgeon and entire team looked up and said, "Are you okay?"
And I said, "I'm really not."
"I don't know where my kids are."
It's just like simultaneously being crushed, and panicked,
and just sliced open.
On that Friday,
the James City County Police Department
explained that the flight records had been found,
and it was clear that Ahmed and the kids did not in fact travel to Canada.
They actually flew from JFK through Kyiv,
and from Kyiv then to Istanbul, then in Turkey.
That was really shocking,
and that frightened me in ways I can't even describe to you.
The FBI became involved with the case in September 2014,
and immediately after the FBI was tipped off
that Amina and Belel had been taken by their father,
a federal arrest warrant was issued for Ahmed
by the Eastern District of Virginia
for two counts of international parental kidnapping,
one for Belel and one for Amina.
And one of the first steps to the initial part of the investigation was
to do a thorough review of his financials,
looking for anything that would lead to Ahmed and the children.
When I looked through bank records
and credit card records from the FBI,
it was shocking to me.
Ahmed had gone to a survivalist camp that was up in the mountains.
He went to a shooting club to learn how to shoot guns multiple times.
He was never a gun fanatic.
Survival training would be helpful to anyone
if they were crossing through borders, doing some things on foot,
spending a couple days outside.
He also bought different types of camping equipment,
such as sleeping bags, boots for the children,
and he sent them overseas.
So those are little things that showed that Ahmed
didn't just take his children on a whim.
He had a well-oiled plan before he left the country.
But now I needed to find my children.
I checked Amina's email account multiple times,
and the tablet that the children had
was used to check Amina's email address in December 2014.
When I looked at the IP address of where that tablet was,
it was in the Hatay province close to the city of Reyhanli,
which is in that little southern tip of Turkey
that's right on the border to Syria.
That was close to a war zone.
That frightened me. That really, really frightened me.
Because I thought, "What does that mean?"
Has Ahmed joined something that he was not supposed to...
that he was not supposed to join and pulled my children into?
That maybe he was in a really unsafe place with my kids right now,
and I don't know where they are.
I can't keep them safe anymore.
We don't know where he was going.
And whether Ahmed has changed his name, his children's name,
created new identities.
These are all possibilities.
And potentially that's a reason they can't be tracked.
I was actively involved
in just trying to find any way to reach my children.
I've hired three different private investigators,
and I've contacted congressmen and senators.
I set up a web page that allowed me to say,
"I am looking for my children."
"If you know anything, please get in touch."
But nothing seemed to be substantive...
until September 2015,
about a year since Ahmed had abducted the kids,
I received an email that was simply called "Kids are okay."
And it was from Ahmed.
"Just wanted to let you know that they are well and doing great."
"We live on a small farm, and they are loving it."
"They got all kinds of animals, and it's keeping them busy."
"I understand you must be angry at me, but you left me no other choice."
"I knew long before you asked for a divorce that it is coming,
and I wasn't going to wait till you find a job somewhere
and take full custody of them."
"So once they're old enough and can distinguish right from wrong,
they will contact you."
"And at the right age, they can decide where they want to live."
It was an infuriating email.
On the one hand, it was a relief to hear that my kids were alive.
It was also clear to me that the kids were being heavily influenced
to adopt whatever approach to life Ahmed felt was appropriate,
and he was gonna influence them
to the point that they probably would never want to contact me.
What was found out about the email was that the recovery email address
was one of Ahmed's known email addresses.
It was clearly from him,
and it originated in that same area in Turkey
where Amina's email address had previously been checked.
That same small part that's close to Syria.
I got the contact of a Turkish detective
who went down to Southern Turkey that's close to the Syrian border,
looking for the kids there,
looking for the IP address of this particular email.
He found an Internet café that this might have been attributable to,
but he really did not find out any information over and above
what the state department, the police, and the FBI were able to recover.
So there had been absolutely nothing for quite a while.
That was a really hard period of time.
And then I found out that Ahmed applied for an Egyptian ID card in 2016.
And he registered his ID at his parents' address in Giza.
If that is true, and along with Ahmed's email in 2015
saying they're on a farm surrounded by animals,
tied with Rebecca's understanding that Ahmed's father also owned a farm
located midway between Cairo and Alexandria.
It's probably the best clue that we have that they are possibly in Egypt.
So I hired an investigator
trying to work together with people in Egypt
to see if there was any trace of the kids
or if they were seen anywhere around Ahmed's parents,
but they didn't come up with anything.
I really wanted to go to Egypt,
but I've been intently warned against going there.
I am not protected overseas.
Anyone can come up with any kind of charges.
So it's, from what I hear, a very unwise idea.
The fact that we believe Ahmed is overseas
makes things a lot more challenging because, specifically in Egypt,
parental kidnapping is not considered a crime.
He's a biological parent of these children.
They're his children, just like they're Rebecca's children.
The father can decide what he wants to do with those children.
I, as a mother, don't have any possibility of getting those children back
or even forcing communication with them.
There's really no recourse...
and that's so unfair.
I don't know why they haven't contacted Rebecca,
but I'm wondering if he didn't stage some accident
and told the kids she's dead
or just banned them from the Internet
because there's absolutely no way in the world
Amina and Belel would not have contacted Mom.
They adored their mom, and their mom adored them.
"January 4th, 2017."
"Belel, today's your birthday,
and though I'm sad that I'm not with you,
I hope you're surrounded by happiness, hope, fun, and kindness."
The loss of not having my kids is so great.
It would be crippling to feel that emotional impact
every time I enter the house.
So, I write in a journal to them every day,
and that's when I really allow myself to feel.
And to feel close to them again.
She writes to them every single day.
She made it very personal. These are her children.
She didn't deserve to have them taken from her.
So my heart breaks for Rebecca, and the fact that she has gone so long,
and that we haven't been able to provide the answers for her
that she and her children deserve.
It's not their fault,
and they deserve to know that their mother cares about them.
Mom! Mom!
I miss both of you, Amina and Belel, so much.
And...
I hope that I have an opportunity to see the people that you've grown into,
the people that you are now,
and how lovely you must be, and how curious about the world.
Aziz was born on November 13, 2010.
And that day changed my life.
We were all there the day that he was born,
and Aziz was the greatest blessing to our family.
He brought such joy to our house...
Yay!
...and Abdul really loved spending time with him.
- Go! Catch him! - Oh, my God! Catch him!
- Catch him! - Go left! Go left!
Aziz's mother, Rabia, was born in Columbus, Georgia.
Her family's originally from India and Pakistan.
We met in Alabama when we were in school,
and, uh, it was actually my mom introduced us.
Rabia was in undergrad.
She's a very strong personality.
She's somebody that makes it a point to know what she wants
and demand what she wants.
And for someone who also has a strong personality,
we were attracted to each other.
Over the course of a few years, we realized that we wanted to get married.
And when Aziz was first born, we actually lived with my parents in New Orleans.
Oh, wow!
But Rabia had a hard time getting along with them.
And it was very clear that we couldn't live in the house.
And so we moved out.
I'm a pulmonologist that works in an intensive care unit,
and Rabia initially worked at the same hospital I did
for a very short period of time, and then she quit that job.
And then she worked at a local cancer agency.
And then she left that job.
She would always find a reason to change her jobs.
She didn't like somebody. She didn't like her boss.
Her personality was, um, very guarded.
And you never got the feeling that you really knew who she was.
As Aziz grew older, we started having lots of problems.
You know, fighting was almost daily.
There were arguments in front of Aziz.
So in April 2014, we decided to separate.
She requested that she go back to Atlanta
because that's where her family support was.
I really agreed with her initially
because I thought if she needs help with Aziz,
that it might be a good idea.
And she made it seem like,
"We're still working on this marriage. Let's try to make this work."
It was hard for me,
but we basically had an agreement where we did every other weekend.
So I just thought, "This is temporary."
And after several months, out of left field,
Abdul was served with divorce papers.
And it was a shock.
It all changed.
Rabia would put up hindrances and roadblocks,
trying to stop me from seeing Aziz.
She would schedule soccer games during my weekends
and would make up excuses about him being sick.
She would try to prevent him from seeing me.
It seems that during that whole period,
she was meeting with lawyers.
She was finding out about custody.
She was figuring out what she needed to do
in order to keep Aziz in Atlanta.
Ultimately, Rabia wanted Aziz
to have nothing to do with his life in New Orleans.
And then once she filed divorce papers,
Rabia blocked Abdul from seeing Aziz,
and he had to go to court,
and have her served with papers...
Rabia.
...to have them inform her that he had a right to see his child.
The divorce was finalized in 2015.
But Rabia still kept Aziz from his dad.
And that's what led me to push hard for a custody evaluation.
I wanted to have the right to spend as much time with my son
that was allowed.
And it was right about a year later when the custody evaluators recommended
that I get primary custody of Aziz because they felt like Rabia
was not allowing me to spend my due time and be a good dad for Aziz.
When Rabia found out
that Abdul was going to be awarded full primary custody of Aziz,
she went to the courts
and made these horrific, baseless abuse allegations against Abdul.
She went into the criminal court system
making accusations that me and my family were abusive
in order to delay the court evaluation from happening,
and it turned into this whirlwind where a lot of lawyers got involved,
and it became about a year and a half of investigation.
But what made it so hard was that I wasn't allowed to see Aziz.
That was really tough.
And then as all of the court stuff progressed,
we became aware that Rabia had been in a relationship with someone else.
Elliot Bourgeois was a friend of hers that she knew in college.
Towards the end of our marriage, when we were having problems,
there were some phone calls between them.
So at some point, when our marriage was ending,
was when they were reconnecting.
Elliott started coming to court with Rabia.
And that's how we found out that Elliott and Rabia were actually married.
He wasn't a lawyer, but she fired three or four lawyers.
Her and Elliot became their own lawyers,
and they represented themselves when they came to court.
And with time, every judge that they went in front of
started seeing their lies and manipulation.
And then finally, after 18 months of thorough investigation,
the DA in Atlanta realized that all the accusations were all false,
and I was going to get full custody for Aziz.
We were to meet on November 28, 2017 in an Atlanta courtroom,
and that's when all the restrictions were gonna be lifted.
It was really gonna happen. So there was this joy.
We get to the Atlanta courtroom. We're waiting for our case.
The judge shows up, and Rabia is not there.
There was a momentary panic amongst our family,
but we just thought, "Okay, this is Rabia being Rabia."
"She's gonna try to throw something else at us to try to prolong this."
We waited several hours thinking or hoping that there was a delay.
But Rabia didn't show up.
I left the courthouse,
and I didn't have my son.
At this point, I'm very worried. I'm calling his school.
His school says that they haven't seen him for a week.
He didn't come to school the week before Thanksgiving.
The last time they saw him was the Friday before.
I make phone calls to her family and we don't get any response.
And then finally, we realized that she kidnapped him.
That's what was happening.
She kidnapped him and ran.
Devastating.
Horrific.
It was confusing.
You know? It didn't seem real.
And Abdul was terrified.
It was as if... removing his heart.
He always said the nights were the toughest for him,
like in the quiet.
That's when he
has time with his thoughts, you know...
to think about his life with Aziz.
I remember the last time I saw Aziz.
It was March 2016.
It was just a normal weekend.
He had a lot of fun. We took a lot of pictures.
But I said, "Hey, Aziz, it's time for you to leave."
And I put him in her car.
And he used to always, uh...
...he'd put up his hands, and he'd say,
"Baba, how many days before I see you again?"
I was like, "Five more days."
They drove off, and my thought was,
"Hey, I'm gonna see you in five days, 'cause it's my weekend."
"I'm on spring break."
That was, you know, four... four-plus years ago.
We thought Rabia was crazy.
We thought that she was vindictive,
but we never thought that Rabia was capable of this.
We hired private eye after private eye
in Atlanta, in New Orleans,
in other places around the country to find any information about Aziz.
The first thing that everyone said was
that I need to get national law enforcement involved
to investigate Aziz's abduction,
but there has to be a felony warrant out for Rabia.
And, initially, there was some disagreement between police departments
that the jurisdiction is in Atlanta or New Orleans.
Finally, after two years,
the court gave a felony kidnapping warrant
against Rabia for the abduction of Aziz.
Once there was a felony kidnapping warrant against Rabia,
the US Marshals got involved in the case.
The US Marshals got involved in early 2020,
and the US Marshals involvement
was about three years or so behind the actual disappearance.
So we're basically starting off way behind already.
We conducted multiple interviews in several states.
Deputy US Marshals from the Northern District of Georgia
went out to Duluth
and attempted to interview Rabia's mother and father.
They were being evasive during questioning,
and they appeared to not be concerned about where their daughter was,
where their grandchild was, or where Elliot was located.
They just referred everything to their attorney.
After talking to the US Marshals,
I found out that this was something that Rabia and Elliott planned out.
I mean, it was cold and calculated.
Rabia and Elliot had taken Aziz out of school
ten days prior to November 28.
They sold their cars to CarMax in Atlanta.
Elliot had quit his job.
They both shut down their cell phones, closed their bank accounts,
closed all their social media, and they disappeared.
If they assume new identities, they could get new employment.
Maybe establish lines of credit, create a whole new lifestyle.
It's obviously been done before.
Or, if somebody were to finance them, they could also be living off cash.
Could be friends. Could be family. I don't know.
This is the day he was born.
God.
We've done everything that we can think of
to find some trace of Aziz, Rabia, Elliot.
His laugh...
Was contagious.
- Was everything. Contagious. - Yeah.
And outside of when they sold their cars in 2017,
we have yet to find any credible link to them in any way.
That's what makes this so hard.
Four years later, we still don't have any sign of them.
But if you think that we're going away...
If you think that Abdul, or me,
or my family is ever gonna stop looking for Aziz,
you are sorely mistaken
'cause we will never, never rest
until he's returned.
When Aziz disappeared,
time literally stopped.
So to me...
he left yesterday.
And so I think about him every day,
and I do things every day to try to find him.
I'm gonna keep fighting till I see him.
And one day he's gonna walk through a door,
and I'm gonna be standing on the other side.
It's time for him to come home.
WANTED CHARLES VOSSELER - WARRANT: 4/3/1987