The Murder of Charline Rosemond (Massachusetts)

Charline Rosemond left home in Everett, Massachusetts one day in April of 2009 excited to buy a new car, but the evening took a deadly turn. Now for more than fifteen years, her family has waited for justice and answers in the still unsolved homicide.

Someone knows something about Charline’s death. Someone is concealing the truth. It’s time to speak up.

Charline is Missing

When 23-year old Charline Rosemond drove off in her father’s car around 7 a.m. on April 7, 2009, it was the beginning of a typical day that, if everything worked out, would be the last time she had to borrow her dad’s gray Honda Civic. According to reporting by Bob Ward for Boston 25 News, Charline had made plans with a friend to go look at a new-to-her car after she got out of work that evening. If she loved it, she was gonna buy it on the spot. She had $4000 cash in her wallet ready to go.

Charline arrived to work at the Herb Chambers car dealership on Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton that morning as usual. When her workday wrapped up around 5 o’clock, Charline briefly called home to talk to her mom who told Charline that she needed to bring their car back as soon as possible because her dad needed it. Charline assured her mother that she’d be back to hand over the keys by 6 or 7, no later.

Charline’s mother and father waited as 6 p.m. passed and then 7 o’clock without the headlights of their car appearing outside of their home in Everett. She wasn’t picking up her phone when they called either. They went to bed without any sign that Charline would return, and she never did walk back through the door.

The next morning, Charline’s mother woke up Charline’s sister, Roserlie, who also goes by the nickname Rosey. 

Her mother was concerned. She told Rosey that Charline hadn’t come back when she said she would the night before, and she still wasn’t home yet.(12)(1) Rosey has said that she actually wasn’t too concerned at first. She and Charline occasionally stayed out late hanging with friends – after all, they were both in their 20s and liked to have a good time – and sometimes they got into fun that had them coming home the morning after. 

Charline’s mother and father continued calling Charline but the calls kept going to voicemail. Still, there was a degree of hope knowing the kind of person, and the kind of employee, Charline was. No matter what had her out late the night before, Rosey and Charline’s family knew that Charline did not miss work. Charline had worked in the office at the car dealership for about four years and was known to be a reliable, responsible employee, not someone who missed work or even showed up late.

Jumping in to help her parents track down Charline, Rosey called the office at the car dealership that morning and asked one of Charline’s coworkers if she’d shown up yet. Charline usually got to work around 7 or 7:30 a.m. but what the coworker told Rosey was surprising and unsettling. No Charline yet. Checks back in throughout the day revealed that Charline never made it to work at all.

Now that was definitely not like Charline. Rosey’s worry was growing, but she still wasn’t convinced something was wrong or that something bad had happened. She and her parents kept calling Charline’s phone, still with no answer. A few hours later Rosey’s dad walked into her bedroom with a look of concern and pain written all over his face. It had been a full day without any sign of Charline, so he told Rosey it was time to go down to the Everett police station to report Charline missing.

Search for Charline

Charline’s sister Rosey has been Charline’s voice from the earliest days of her case. Being only two years apart, they were an inseparable duo growing up. They wore matching outfits, styled their hair the same, and kept each other’s secrets. They were as close as close could get…But the sisters were not without their disagreements and quarrels.(1) It was all part of their special sisterly bond. 

Rosey shared Charline’s story and the impact it had and continues to have on her family in an episode of her podcast, The Rosey Perspective. She no longer updates the podcast, but the episode titled “Unsolved Murder of My Sister Charline Rosemond” was the 23rd episode of the show first published on August 23, 2020. Roserlie says she chose to publish the 23rd episode on that date because Charline was 23 years old when she was killed.

I’ve been in contact with Rosey throughout my reporting process for this episode, but we weren’t ever able to connect for an interview. However, she wants Charline’s case to get more attention and wants more people to know her sister’s name and story so I’ve leaned on her recollections and the narrative of her personal experiences throughout the timeline of the case that she shared in her podcast to help tell a complete story here on Dark Downeast.

Rosey shares on her podcast that this car Charline was planning to go see that day, it was really exciting. Not only did it mean gaining some independence back because she would no longer have to ask her parents for the keys to their car every time she needed to go somewhere, but it was also a good deal. It was a Lexus that she believed was valued at about $6000 but the friend who offered to take her to see the car said she could probably get it for more like $4000.

Not wanting to miss the chance to get a discount on a car like that, Charline had gathered up the four-grand in cash so she could buy it right then and there. Despite her mother’s word of caution, Charline carried the cash with her to work on April 7th.(11) As far as her family knew, she was supposed to come home right after seeing and possibly buying the car, but she never returned.

Down at the Everett Police station on the morning of April 8th, Rosey and her father explained everything to officers as they tried to report Charline missing. They told them how Charline hadn’t come home the night before, that she never showed up for work, and that she hadn’t answered any of their calls to her cell in almost 24 hours. It was all out of character and it was all extremely worrisome. 

Unfortunately, Charline’s family members were met with a response far too familiar when an adult disappears. They were told they needed to wait 48 hours before a missing persons report could be filed. Charline was 23-years old, police reasoned that maybe she didn’t want to come home.

But Rosey wasn’t about to just sit and wait. She started investigating her sister’s disappearance herself. As she explains on The Rosey Perspective podcast, because she and Charline were only two years apart, they hung out with a lot of the same people and did a lot of the same things, so her first phone calls were to their friends to figure out the last time they had seen or heard from Charline. 

Rosey says she spoke to one person who was in regular contact with Charline. They were close friends and talked all the time but when Rosey told this person that Charline was missing, Rosey got the sense that the person didn’t care. She said they were “unbothered” by the news that no one could reach Charline and that she never came home after work the night before. According to Rosey, this person suggested that maybe Charline was somewhere drunk. Rosey was offended by the response. She just knew that couldn’t be the case.(1)

Rosey says she also reached out to the friend who was supposed to be taking Charline to look at the Lexus for sale, but she claims that this person also was not concerned about the fact that Charline was missing. She did not elaborate on the content or tone of their conversation.

Rosey and Charline’s parents went to bed on the night of the 8th still with no idea what was going on or where Charline might be. Every day and night after that, more and more family members arrived from out of town to support the search effort. They all hunkered down at Charline’s parents’ house in Everett, doing everything they could to maintain hope that Charline was out there somewhere and they’d find her soon, but fear seeped into every passing moment without her.

By Friday the 10th, Everett Police finally issued a missing person alert. According to reporting by Jessica Fargen and O’Ryan Johnson, the alert stated the last known sighting of Charline was around 5 p.m. on April 7 when she left the Herb Chambers car dealership in Brighton driving the Honda Civic she’d borrowed from her parents.

As part of the missing persons investigation, police checked the activity on Charline’s bank accounts and found that her debit card had been used twice on the day of her disappearance, but they did not elaborate on if the activity was suspicious in any way. It’s possible, and this is very much an educated guess, that the transactions were related to the cash she’d gotten to buy the car, but I can’t be sure. 

Police had also attempted to triangulate the position of her cell phone, but it had been turned off so it wouldn’t be useful in tracking Charline’s movements. The source material I’ve been able to access for this case does not indicate if there were any further sightings of Charline after she left work that day.

Something that was so confusing about Charline’s disappearance during those first few days of the missing persons investigation was how a woman and a vehicle could seemingly vanish. Because along with Charline, her parents’ gray Honda Civic she drove that day was missing, too. Rosey believed that if they found the car, they’d find her sister, or at least, clues as to where her sister ended up.

Each day was excruciating. Rosey’s birthday was April 11, but there was no celebration. Charline’s other sister in Florida was supposed to get married in the span of days that Charline was missing, but nearly the entire family was in Massachusetts to support the search for Charline.

On April 13, six days after Rosey last saw her sister, she received a call from a friend. The friend told Rosey that she and her family needed to speak with the Somerville Police Department. 

Simultaneously, Rosey’s father’s phone rang. The caller was his cousin who was a taxi driver in the city. It was hard to make out what his cousin was saying in the busy house. Rosey’s father handed the phone off to his son-in-law, who stepped into the other room. A few minutes later, he delivered news that shattered the delicate hope they’d clung to for nearly a week. 

Somerville Police had found the missing Honda Civic. It was parked behind an apartment building in Union Square a few miles away, and Charline’s body was in the driver’s seat.