To his neighbours in Connecticut, Clark Rockefeller was a seemingly
respectable retired physicist, a scion of the American oil dynasty, who
boasted that he had once hosted Britney Spears to dinner.
Later, in California, a man calling himself Christopher Chichester claimed to
be British royalty and bragged that he was moving his castle to America
brick by brick.
On Wall Street, the almost identical-looking Christopher Crowe said that he
was the head of the Battenberg-Crowe-von-Wettin Family Foundation but used a
social security number of a notorious serial killer called “The Son of Sam”.
All three identities, police now believe, belong to the same man who is
currently sitting in the Suffolk County jail in Boston.
Last night this extraordinary web of lies and deception started to unravel.
Best known to the British public as the father of Reigh, 7, the girl
abducted during a supervised custody visit in Boston on July 27, the man
calling himself Clark Rockefeller has now emerged as an accomplished
imposter.
Arrested in Baltimore – where he was known as Chip Smith – on August 2 after a
week-long hunt, he has been charged with kidnapping and assault for
allegedly snatching the girl, the daughter of Sandra Boss, a London-based
management consultant for McKinsey & Co. Police also consider him a
“person of interest” in the unsolved disappearance of a California couple
who once rented him their guest house.
Investigators were at first stymied because he had no US birth certificate,
driving licence or social security number. However, detectives found a
fingerprint on a wine goblet in the carriage house in Baltimore that set
them on his elusive trail.
Authorities have now identified the phony Rockefeller as Christian Karl
Gerhartsreiter, a German exchange student who came to America at the age of
17 in 1978 and never went back.
“I can say he is very able to do what they are saying he has done,” Gwendolyn
Savio, who took him in as a lodger when he first arrived in the US, told The
Times yesterday.
Some claim that they always had doubts about him. Merilynn Bourne, chairwoman
of the local council, said that he never fit in when he was living with Ms
Boss in Cornish, New Hampshire – the former artists colony famous as the
home of the reclusive J. D. Salinger.
“He is a very egocentric, narcissistic individual,” she said. “He said he was
retired, that he was a physicist. I guess the American term would be a
‘blow-hard’ – speaking all the time about his intelligence, his wealth, his
world knowledge. He was just a show-off. I told people, ‘This guy is not a
Rockefeller’. He is not even American.”
Family members and former friends in the rustic Bavarian village of Bergen,
near the German border with Austria, have confirmed that the fake
Rockefeller is Mr Gerhartsreiter.
They say that Mr Gerhartsreiter, the son of a landscape painter and a
stay-at-home mother, stayed in touch until the mid1980s, when he told the
family that he was changing his name to Christopher Chichester because his
German name was too hard for Americans. “I think Germany was too small for
him,” Alexander Gerhartsreiter, his younger brother, told The
Boston Globe. “He wanted to live in the big country and maybe get
famous. Now that I see all this, he’s really famous.”
Mr Gerhartsreiter attended high school in America as an exchange student in
Berlin, Connecticut. A slight, blond teenager, he stayed with the
Roccapriore family in nearby Meriden until his exchange period came to an
end.
In August 1980 he put an advertisement in the local newspaper for new lodgings
under the name Christian Gerhart Reiter. He moved in with the Savios,
presenting himself as the son of a Bavarian industrialist. He annoyed the
family by demeaning their Italian roots and Italian cuisine, telling them
that his father had instructed him not to talk to peasants.
Mrs Savio threw him out in January 1981. The following month he married a US
citizen named Amy Jersild in a civil ceremony in Madison, Wisconsin, almost
1,000 miles away.
Ms Jersild, then 22, has since remarried and is refusing to comment. Beth
Litza, her sister, says that she was conned by Mr Gerhartsreiter to get a
green card, a US residency permit. “They didn’t date. They were introduced.
They decided to get married – and then he divorced her – to get his green
card,” she told the Boston Herald.
Soon afterwards Mr Gerhartsreiter turned up in the wealthy southern
Californian enclave of San Marino, calling himself Christopher Chichester –
a surname apparently taken from a popular teacher at the Berlin High School.
He joined the Episcopal church, the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce
and hosted a monthly public-access cable television show.
His lawyer says that he changed his name to Chichester to try to become an
actor in Hollywoood and began presenting himself as a financier when he
failed. Friends noticed, however, that his sports jackets smelt as though
they needed to go to the cleaner and he drove an old Datsun or Toyota. He
rented the guesthouse of a young couple named John and Linda Sohus, who
dabbled in mysticism.
In 1985 the couple disappeared. Family members said that they had been heading
to Europe for a honeymoon but never made it to the airport. Relatives later
received postcards from Europe, however, purportedly sent by Linda. In 1994
workmen digging a swimming pool at the Sohus former home found three rubbish
bags containing the remains of a dead man who has never been identified.
The tenant known as Mr Chichester left town after Mr and Mrs Sohus
disappeared, before he could be questioned by detectives. Neighbours said
that he had borrowed a chainsaw. The garden was dug up because, he said, of
a plumbing problem.
Mr Gerhartsreiter moved back to the East Coast and took on a new identity as
Christopher Crowe. Using contacts with members at the Indian Harbour Yacht
Club in the exclusive town of Greenwich, Connecticut, he got a job as a
sales representative at a brokerage house, S. N. Phelps & Co.
Living in a sparsely furnished converted garage on a large local estate, he
presented himself as a graduate of the University of Southern California who
had worked as a producer for the television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
He was fired when it emerged that he had tried to use a social security number
of the “Son of Sam” serial killer, David Berkowitz, to get his Wall Street
broker’s licence. His next job at Nikko Securities came to an abrupt end in
1988 when the firm was reportedly notified of his false social security
number. He then managed to get hired by Kidder Peabody.
In 1988 a man calling himself Christopher Crowe tried to sell a pickup truck
belonging to John Sohus in Greenwich to the son of a local pastor. When he
could not produce the vehicle’s paperwork, the buyer reported him to police.
The man known as Mr Crowe quit his job at Kidder Peabody, saying that his
parents had been kidnapped in South America, a day before police arrived at
his office to question him about the Sohus case.
Mr Gerhartsreiter married Ms Boss at a Quaker ceremony on Nantucket in 1995,
the island off Massachusetts, where no marriage licence was required. The
couple reportedly never received a marriage certificate.
In 1999 the pair bought a 25-acre estate called Doveridge. It remains unclear
how much Ms Boss learned of her husband’s identity.
“The essential conflict for this character is his insatiable desire to be the
centre of attention while avoiding anyone figuring out who he is,” said
Peter Burling, a New Hampshire state senator who was a neighbour in Cornish.
“He has discovered something about human nature which is that the power of a
name and a family history can cause people who may otherwise be put off to
accept the most bizarre behaviour as appropriate.”
1961: Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter is born in Bavaria, West Germany.
He goes to school in the village of Bergen
1978: leaves Germany for America
1979: “Chris Gerharts Reiter” attends high school in Berlin,
Connecticut, as German exchange student
1981: marries Amy Jersild in a civil ceremony in Madison, Wisconsin.
Leaves the next day, according to divorce records
1982-85: “Christopher Chichester” appears in San Marino suburb of Los
Angeles, renting from John and Linda Sohus. Hosts weekly TV show
1987-88: “Christopher Mountbatten Crowe” obtains jobs on Wall Street as
a sales representative. Fired for allegedly using false social security
number
1988: in Greenwich, Connecticut, “Christopher Crowe” tries to sell a
truck registered to John Sohus. His fingerprints are reported to match
prints left by Chichester in San Marino
1993: “Clark Rockefeller”, a mathematician, surfaces in New York and is
introduced to Sandra Lynne Boss, his future wife
1995-2007: Rockefeller and his wife live in the small town of Cornish,
New Hampshire, and the exclusive Beacon Hill area of Boston. They have a
daughter, Reigh. Rockefeller also calls himself “Clark Mill Rockefeller”,
“James Frederick” and “Michael Brown”
2008: Clark Rockefeller is arrested in Baltimore, extradited to
Massachusetts and charged with Reigh’s abduction
