FBI Say Rockefeller Definitely Gerhartstreiter
Fingerprints Link Dad Accused Of Kidnapping To German Past
the bostonchannel.com
POSTED: 2:00 pm EDT August 15, 2008
BOSTON -- Boston police and FBI agents said Friday they have conclusively proven that the Boston dad accused of kidnapping his daughter who has been identifying himself as Clark Rockefeller really is a German national who came to the United States close to 30 years ago.
In an afternoon news conference at Boston's federal building they said Rockefeller's fingerprints, analyzed at FBI headquarters at Quantico, Va., show he really is Christian Karl Gerharstreiter, who was born in West Germany in 1961.
The prints were taken from a wineglass Gerharstreiter had used in Boston before he allegedly kidnapped his 7-year-old daughter Reigh "Snooks" boss and fled to Baltimore, where he was arrested after a massive international search.
Gerhartstreiter, 47, is being held without bail in Boston, charged with kidnapping and assault and battery for allegedly snatching the child during a supervised visit.
"I don't think any of us could have predicted the turns this case would take," said Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley.
"Gerhartstreiter is at the center of the longest con I have ever seen in my professional career," he added. "But although the story is something out of a crime novel or a movie, the underlying offense is very real and very serious. At the heart of this case is a little girl. This defendant put her at risk, put her in fear and threw her family into turmoil. That he is her natural father does not excuse his actions. Massachusetts law is very clear on that point," Conley said.
The prosecutor said authorities will now amend the complaint that's been filed against Gerhartstreiter to reflect his true name and additional charges may be added in the future.
"It's important to remember the children, like the victim in this case. Defenseless boys and girls are at the mercy of the adults who are around them. When they go missing it is very tragic and it happens with all too much frequency," Conley said.
"We're very happy that this case has worked out the way it has and we've been able to definitively prove that the various identities used by this individual are one and the same person," Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said.
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PerryPeabodyPosted:
Fri Aug 15, 2008 8:55 pm
He's a con and a fraud--and his lawyer is full of shit:
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Posts: 1085
PerryPeabodyPosted:
Sat Aug 16, 2008 7:09 pm
Rockefeller prints linked to '81 immigration paper
His German identity is confirmed, officials say
By Maria Cramer
BostonGlobe Staff / August 16, 2008
As the man who claimed to be Clark Rockefeller insisted he had no memory of being German Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, FBI and Boston police unearthed further evidence of his real identity through a piece of paper he touched 27 years ago.
Officials announced yesterday that Rockefeller is Gerhartsreiter, a conclusion they reached after fingerprints Boston police recently lifted from a wine glass were matched to a print on an immigration document Gerhartsreiter filed in 1981. Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said prosecutors will make sure the kidnapping charges pending against "Rockefeller" are changed so they are lodged against Gerhartsreiter instead.
Authorities in Los Angeles, who are investigating whether the man charged with kidnapping his young daughter in Boston last month may have been involved in the presumed killings of a San Marino couple, said Monday that Gerhartsreiter was Rockefeller's true identity. The Globe reported Aug. 8 that authorities were developing evidence the two are the same person. His brother in Germany also said Rockefeller and Gerhartsreiter are the same man after a reporter showed him photos.
But Boston authorities said they needed forensic evidence before they could say who Rockefeller really was.
Investigators have "developed the strongest evidence yet of who this defendant is and where he has been," Con ley said at a news conference yesterday at the FBI's Boston office. "The FBI's fingerprint technicians brought science to bear where mere suspicion had prevailed."
Gerhartsreiter's lawyer, Stephen Hrones, told reporters after the news conference that his client does not remember being a German national and that his true identity is irrelevant to the criminal case against him.
"You don't need to know his birth name in order to prosecute these offenses, not at all," he said. "We're going to beat the charges on their own merits."
In the days after Gerhartsreiter allegedly kidnapped his 7-year-old daughter, on July 27 in the Back Bay, Boston police recovered a fingerprint from an unwashed wine glass Gerhartsreiter had handled. The glass was found at the Boston home of an acquaintance of Gerhartsreiter, said Deputy Superintendent Thomas Lee.
FBI technicians then learned that the fingerprint matched those on a fingerprint card belonging to a man called Christopher Crowe, an alias authorities knew Gerhartsreiter had used.The FBI had first learned of Gerhartsreiter's identity around 1994, when police from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department asked the agency for help locating Christopher Chichester, a man they wanted to question about the disappearance of Linda and John Sohus.
Officials learned then that Chichester was using the alias of Crowe, who they believed was Gerhartsreiter, a German immigrant who entered the country on a student visa in the late 1970s.
In 1981, Gerhartsreiter married a young woman in Wisconsin whom he later divorced. But the marriage allowed him to get permanent legal status in the country, a law enforcement official said yesterday. Gerhartsreiter remains a legal resident of the United States, said Matthew Etre, deputy special agent in charge of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations in Boston.
When Rockefeller was captured in Baltimore on Aug. 2, police took his fingerprints and found they matched the fingerprints for Crowe. FBI technicians then began analyzing documents from Gerhartsreiter's immigration file until they found one from 1981 with his fingerprint on it.
That print matched the two fingerprints from the wine glass and the fingerprint card of Christopher Crowe, investigators said.
Law enforcement officials have told the Globe that the fingerprint card was part of an application for a stockbroker license that Crowe filed in the 1980s.
Since his capture in Baltimore, Los Angeles detectives have tried to interview Gerhartsreiter, who left San Marino in 1985, soon after the Sohuses disappeared.
In 1994, human remains were found in the couple's backyard, but authorities have not been able to determine whether they belong to John Sohus. Linda Sohus was never found. Gerhartsreiter has been called a "person of interest" in the California case.
Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, said yesterday there are no new developments in that investigation.
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PerryPeabodyPosted:
Wed Aug 20, 2008 10:33 am
Sohus, mother had strained relations
08/19/2008 09:54:31 PM PDT
San Gabriel Valley Tribune
By Frank C. Girardot and Nathan McIntire, Staff Writers
SAN MARINO - A man who went missing with his bride 23 years ago was written out of his mother's will shortly before her death in 1988.
Ruth "Didi" Sohus, whose son, John, and daughter-in-law, Linda, vanished in February 1985, put explicit instructions in her will that stripped John of any claim to an estate valued at $180,000, according to court records.
"I intentionally and with full knowledge of any consequences specifically disinherit and omit any provisions for John Robert Sohus," Didi wrote.
The 23-year-old mystery of John and Linda's disappearance remains unsolved, and Didi died never knowing the fate of her son.
Authorities believe a skeleton dug up during a pool excavation in May 1994 at the former Sohus home in San Marino is the remains of John Sohus.
Linda's whereabouts are still unknown.
Didi was devastated by the loss of John, friends at the time said, and eventually came to believe that he was on a secret mission. Rumors that the couple bolted to New York, or Paris, were never verified.
A man using the name Christopher Chichester lived in the guesthouse on Didi's Lorain Road property in the early 1980s. He disappeared a few months after the Sohuses went missing.
Authorities determined last week that Chichester is actually Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, 47, a German exchange student who has travelled under many names. Using the alias Clark Rockefeller, Gerhartsreiter is in custody in Boston for allegedly kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter.
Los Angeles County sheriff's homicide detectives hope to question Gerhartsreiter as a person of interest in the Sohuses' disappearance. They also want to talk to Gerhartsreiter about human remains discovered at the Sohus home.
Blood was found in the guesthouse where Gerhartsreiter resided shortly after the bones were found in the backyard.
Grief-stricken and in failing health, Didi Sohus died Feb. 2, 1988. She spent the last years of her life living in a mobile home park in La Puente, a far cry from the San Marino estate she shared with her adopted son, John, and his wife, Linda.
Sandra N. Baldonado, the attorney who represented Didi's executrix and family friend, Linda Wetherbee, in the probate case, remembered Didi's decision to disinherit her son.
"She left him out," Baldonado said. "I don't know why other than she said she hadn't had any contact with him for a couple of years."
Her estate, which included investments, her mobile home and other assets, was valued at almost $180,000, according to court records.
She left $50,000 to her grandson, Harry Lee Sherwood IV, through a trust. He was the only family member to inherit anything.
"I have intentionally omitted to provide for any of my heirs," wrote Sohus, offering no further explanation. Two other grandchildren, Juliette Sherwood and Sabrina Sherwood, were also specifically disinherited.
Didi gave $2,000 gifts to the Braille Institute, City of Hope, and the John Tracy Clinic for the Deaf. A $40,000 debt that Linda Wetherbee and her husband, Don, owed to Didi was forgiven as a provision of her will. The Wetherbees also received $32,000 from the sale of Didi's mobile home.
Suffering from complications of her diabetes and other ailments, Linda Wetherbee resides in a rest home in Hemet. Her sister-in-law, Connie Williams, said sheriff's detectives visited Wetherbee last week.
"Some detectives went out to interview her and she was able to answer questions," said Williams, who didn't know what the questions were.
Wetherbee's granddaughter, Melinda Knemeyer, who lives in Florida, said she remembered Didi was ill when her grandmother knew her.
"She was a frail woman - she was a pack rat. She smoked like a chimney."
Other people who knew Didi said that she could be difficult to deal with because she drank heavily, usually bourbon.
"She was an alcoholic," said Jann Eldnor, who cut John Sohuses' hair when he was a teenager.
"She was ill and she had a problem with alcohol."
Didi was forced to sell her home in late 1985 because of mounting medical bills, the Wetherbees said in an interview in 1994. She suffered from a heart condition and died of a heart attack, they said.
Married three times, Didi raised John with her husband, Bob, until he left her in December 1960.
In a diary entry, Didi wrote that Bob's decision to file for divorce was abrupt.
"Bob moved out. Had already had apartment for over two weeks," she wrote at the time.
"We had a lovely Christmas. He was in good humor. From then on, everything was as nice as pie until he mentioned he had been to see a lawyer."
Ellen Sohus, Bob's daughter from another marriage, recalled his relationship with Didi after the divorce as tumultuous.
"When I was a child, I remember (Didi) going to pick John up," she said.
"I remember her as being odd, bizarre. There was a lot of tension between the two of them."
Bob left San Marino for Arizona with a less-than-stellar reputation. He was known for borrowing, and not paying back, money from friends.
"He was always in financial trouble," said Bruce Stewart, a friend of Bob's at the time.
"He borrowed a lot of money from me and skipped town and we never saw him again."
Another acquaintance, Fred Finocchiaro, said that Bob worked as a stock broker at one point and was indebted to several San Marino residents.
"Everybody loaned him money," he said.
Finocchiaro recalled loaning Bob "a few grand here and there" until he left town.
Bob lived in Arizona at the time of John's disappearance. He was in regular contact with John and became alarmed when he stopped calling in early 1985.
"My father had informed me that he wasn't able to contact John and couldn't figure out why," Ellen said.
"He believed that something very wrong had happened because my father and John were very close. My father said John would never have just stopped calling."
Ellen believes Didi and Bob each hired private investigators to track down the couple, to no avail.
Lydia Marano, Linda's boss at the Sherman Oaks bookstore where she worked, remembered the couple was not living with John's mother by choice.
"I know that they were not happy there," Marano said.
Marano remembered Didi having an unpleasant manner and a particular aversion to John's wife.
"I knew that there were problems with John's mother," Marano said.
"I know that she disliked Linda. She used to call the store and rag on Linda. I don't think Linda was good enough for her baby."
After the couple went missing, Didi had a variety of explanations for their disappearance. She told Marano that her son and his wife traveled to Paris for second honeymoon. An art collector who wanted to purchase some of Linda Sohus' work understood that they were moving to New York for a new job John just got.
Didi told Linda Wetherbee that John and Linda took several of her credit cards before they vanished. Charges were made on those cards in New York, Wetherbee said in 1994.
A few months after the couple disappeared, the family and Lydia Marano each received postcards signed "Linda and John" with Paris postmarks. Familiar with her handwriting, Marano believes the postcard was authored by Linda Sohus.
Didi eventually came to believe her son and his wife were away on a secret mission. She claimed to be communicating with them through a third party, whom she later identified as Christopher Chichester, according to an episode of "Unsolved Mysteries."
Whether in New York, Paris, or on a classified mission, Didi never knew where her son went and grew more distraught in her final years.
"We would go to her house and find her sobbing uncontrollably, saying they could have at least sent a letter saying they weren't going to come back," Don Wetherbee said in 1994.
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gwenPosted:
Wed Aug 20, 2008 11:38 pm
NBC LANDS FIRST WITH CROCKEFELLER
Last updated: 6:51 pm
August 20, 2008
Posted: 6:46 pm
August 20, 2008
"TODAY" host Natalie Morales has scored the first sit-down interview with the phony Rockefeller who sparked an international manhunt after being accused of snatching his daughter, 7-year-old daughter Reigh "Snooks" Boss.
The jailhouse interview between Morales and "Clark Rockefeller" was conducted yesterday at Suffolk County Jail at Nashua Street in Boston. It is slated to air next Monday and Tuesday on "Today." The interview will also be part of a larger "Rockefeller" "Dateline" edition planned for September.
Morales was able to quiz the suspected kidnapper/con man about his marriage, life on the run and his murky past.
Since being outed as a phony, investigators have determined that Rockefeller is really Christian Gerhartsreiter, a German national who arrived in the United States in the late 1970s. He also is suspected of using the alias, Christopher Chichester.
He is being held in Boston after being busted earlier this month for the kidnapping of his daughter.
Gerhartsreiter is also under investigation for the disappearance of a California couple who went missing in 1985 - when he was a guest at their house. Nine years after the couple vanished, a male skeleton was found on the property and dried blood in the guesthouse, where Gerhartsreiter stayed.
Natalie Morales interviews the phony Rockefeller at Suffolk County Jail at Nashua Street in Boston.
Clark Rockefeller: I Miss My Daughter Very Much
People
By Stephen M. Silverman
Originally posted Thursday August 21, 2008 05:00 PM EDT
Clark Rockefeller, the controversial figure at the center of a number of criminal investigations – including, most recently, the alleged abduction of his own 7-year-old daughter – is about to shed some light on his mysterious past.
In his first TV interview, to air next Monday and Tuesday on the Today show and in September on Dateline, Rockefeller speaks to Natalie Morales of NBC News about his identity, as well as his daughter and his own origins.
His answers to questions are not always clear, however. [Duh!]
Regarding his bloodlines – given that a genuine member of the Rockefeller oil family has disputed Clark's claim that he is related – the man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller said, "I really couldn't tell you. Perhaps at some point we can do a DNA test to really find out."
He says the Rockefeller name "was given to me by the one person to whom I've always looked up to, one person whom I've known since I was small." He adds that he has been advised by his lawyer not to identify that person.
And, although he says he should be called Clark Rockefeller, because that is his name, he does admit, "Well, from what I've heard lately, that it might not be. But as far as I know, it's my name."
In terms of being related to John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil, Clark says, "I never said that, stated that in any specific way, one way or the other."
Speaks of His Background
According to a joint statement by the FBI, the Suffolk County (Mass.) District Attorney, the Boston Police Department and the Massachusetts State Police, Rockefeller's real name is Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, and he was born in 1961 in what was then West Germany.
In addition, authorities announced on Aug. 15 that he has been identified as a person of interest in a double-homicide that took place during the mid-'80s in California.
"I believe I grew up in ... New York," Rockefeller, who reportedly has gone by many past aliases, tells Morales. "I'm quite sure I grew up in New York City."
"What about Germany?" she asks, according to a partial transcript of the interview provided by NBC News.
"I don't know what to say about this," he responds. "I – don't have a particular knowledge of any of that."
Misses Daughter
As for his daughter Reigh, "I miss her unbelievably much," he says. "I cannot even begin to tell you just how much I miss her. She is really the love of my life. And – not being with her, not seeing her, not holding her is very, very, very difficult."
In terms of what his future might hold, "Well, for one thing, I'm – not really thinking about anything in specific in regards to – the case. I can't predict the future. No one can. But I do think about my little girl every day, every moment I'm awake, the moment I go to sleep I think of her. The moment I wake up I think of her. I wonder what she's doing and whether life is good for her."
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PerryPeabodyPosted:
Fri Aug 22, 2008 1:00 pm
Boston man had nothing to do with disappearance of San Marino couple in 1985, his attorney says
LATimes
By Richard Winton and Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
August 22, 2008
A Boston man whom authorities describe as a "person of interest" in the 1985 disappearance of a San Marino couple barely knew Linda and Jonathan Sohus and left town months after they vanished, his attorney said Thursday.
In an interview with The Times, attorney Stephen Hrones acknowledged that Clark Rockefeller lived in the couple's back house and used the name Christopher Chichester but said his client had nothing to do with their disappearance.
The man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller, one of many aliases the FBI says he used over decades since coming here from Germany as a student, is being held in a Massachusetts jail on an unrelated charge of kidnapping his daughter.
The arrest reopened a 23-year-old mystery over what happened to the couple. Los Angeles County sheriff's detectives and numerous witnesses have said that Rockefeller and Chichester are the same person.
Authorities said they have been wanted to interview Rockefeller about the disappearance since 1994, when workers installing a pool in the San Marino home's backyard dug up human remains wrapped in plastic bags. Forensic tests so far have not identified the remains, but detectives said they suspect they are those of Jonathan Sohus.
Hrones said the mere fact he was living on the property proves nothing. "I have heard people say, 'Why did you put him at the murder scene?' Well, they have already put him at the murder scene. I wasn't about to give up anything," he said. "Everyone says he is a peaceful guy. . . . He has no idea what happened to them."
Hrones said his client's use of aliases is no different than that of any actor coming to Hollywood and changing his name.
The attorney also attempted to poke holes in some of the evidence the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has made public trying to link Rockefeller and the couple.
Officials have said that three years after the couple disappeared, Rockefeller tried to sell a truck registered to Jonathan Sohus in Connecticut.
But Hrones said his client purchased the car from Sohus' now-deceased mother and made payments on the vehicle.
Some have also speculated that Rockefeller sent postcards from Paris purportedly signed by Linda Sohus in the months after the couple vanished. But Hrones said his client could not have sent the cards because he did not travel outside of the country during that period.
Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said detectives met with coroner's officials Thursday to go over "all the evidence on hand."
He said authorities plan new tests where necessary of the human remains found in the backyard of the San Marino house. "It is too important a cold case to ignore, and all evidence is going to be explored forensically."
So far, officials have not been able to link any of the forensic evidence to either the couple or Rockefeller.
Rockefeller granted interviews with the Boston Globe and NBC's "Today Show" on Wednesday. NBC will air the interview in two parts Monday and Tuesday.
Hrones said he agreed to interviews so his client can get his story told.
"He is being tried in the press, and he will be already convicted unless he puts his best foot forward," he said.
Hrones also said his client was a good father.
Sheriff's officials said they hoped the man who initially refused to talk to their investigators when they went to Boston recently would now be forthcoming. "Since he is talking to the press, we are encouraging him to talk to the investigators about our case," Whitmore said.
. . . .
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PerryPeabodyPosted:
Sat Aug 23, 2008 2:00 pm
Ready-Made Rockefeller
NewYorkTimes
By PAM BELLUCK and SARA RIMER
Published: August 22, 2008
IN the understated town of Cornish, N.H., where it is considered bad form to exhibit your wealth, the man calling himself Clark Rockefeller was driven around in an armored black Cadillac with bulletproof windows. He affected silk ascots and bragged that when it came to acquiring property, he could outbid anyone. He said that Helmut Kohl and Britney Spears were coming to dinner.
If it seemed odd for a Rockefeller to violate such unwritten class rules, some wrote it off as the eccentricity of an heir to a legendary fortune.
“What Clark figured out,” said Peter Burling, a New Hampshire state senator and Cornish resident, “was the truth that novelists sometimes find and write about. That the power of a name can blind you to the behaviors that would otherwise make you say, ‘This is nuts.’ “
But Mr. Rockefeller was not only not one of the Rockefellers. He was not any sort of Rockefeller at all.
That became joltingly clear three weeks ago when, the authorities say, he kidnapped his 7-year-old daughter on a Boston street and fled with her to Baltimore. The subsequent swirl of attention began the unmasking of Clark Rockefeller, exposing a long-running charade. He is now wanted for questioning in the 23-year-old disappearance and presumed death of a couple in California.
Under the name Christopher Chichester, he is considered a “person of interest” in the 1985 case. As Mr. Chichester, he rented a guest house in San Marino, Calif., from the missing couple, John and Linda Sohus, but left town not long after their disappearance.
“He’s somebody we want to talk to,” said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which had made little progress in the case since 1994, when bones believed to be those of John Sohus were found in the yard. Linda Sohus has never been found.
“Everything that is available is going to be re-examined, reanalyzed using the most advanced technology available today,” Mr. Whitmore said. “Every new lead will be followed.”
The man with the eccentric accent, the tantalizing hints of family fortune and the impressive conversational knowledge of everything from physics to art to the stock market is actually Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, who grew up in Germany, came to the United States as a teenage exchange student and never left, not even contacting his family back home for the last 20 years.
“Gerhartsreiter is at the center of the longest con I’ve seen in my professional career,” Daniel F. Conley, the Suffolk County district attorney in Boston, said on Aug. 15 in announcing that authorities had confirmed his identity by matching a fingerprint on a wine glass with a decades-old print on an immigration document.
THE portrait that emerges from the recollections of those who knew Mr. Gerhartsreiter, or one of his aliases, is of a man with an extraordinary talent for concocting personas and stories to go with them. Even the way he met his former wife, Sandra Boss, had elements of charade.
It happened, according to his lawyer, Stephen B. Hrones, at a party he gave in 1993 in his Manhattan apartment. The theme of the party was the mystery board game Clue. Mr. Rockefeller was dressed as Professor Plum, Ms. Boss as Miss Scarlet.
Among the autobiographical details he reportedly told various people at various times: his parents had been kidnapped in South America and he needed to pay ransom; he and his friends were “Star Trek” groupies who conversed in Klingon; a private chef made four-course meals for his dogs; and he became mute as a child for 10 years because he was distraught at the death of his parents in a car crash. (In truth, his mother is still alive and his father died of natural causes a few years ago.)
He even told people that he had the key to Rockefeller Center.
“I’m thinking, ‘There can’t be one key to Rockefeller Center,’ ” recalled Maggie McGuane, a writer who lives in Montana and met Mr. Rockefeller when he adopted a dog from the animal shelter where she volunteered.
As authorities continue to unravel the 27 years that Mr. Gerhartsreiter lived under assumed names, many mysteries remain. When and how did his wife of 13 years, a partner at the management consultants McKinsey & Company — whose money apparently paid for a Boston town house and properties in Cornish — learn that he was a fake? What traits of background and character drove him to concoct his aristocratic aliases, which convinced some who met him, even as others were dubious?
Peggy Stone, an owner of an art gallery on the Upper East Side, said that the man she knew as Mr. Rockefeller owned a collection of “textbook examples” of Modernist paintings by the likes of Mondrian and Rothko that, to her trained eye, were “absolutely genuine and fabulous” and “along the lines of what the Rockefeller family collected.”
Basically we never questioned what he was,” said Ms. Stone, who, with her husband, Lawrence Steigrad, owns Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts, specialists in Old Masters. “The most amazing thing to me was that I grew up in a German-speaking household, and he sounded to me like he was from New England. I just did not detect anything.”
Last month, freshly divorced and denied custody of his daughter, Reigh Storrow Mills Boss, Mr. Rockefeller, during his first supervised visit, shoved a social worker out of the way, and jumped in a waiting car with Reigh, the authorities say.
An international manhunt ensued and, on Aug. 2, Mr. Rockefeller, 48, was found in Baltimore, where he had leased a carriage house and called himself Chip Smith. The authorities caught him by telephoning to say that his 26-foot catamaran, in a city marina, was taking on water.
Reigh, who is nicknamed Snooks, was unharmed and returned to her mother, who has declined all requests for interviews. Mr. Gerhartsreiter has been charged in Boston with felony custodial kidnapping, assault and battery, and battery with a dangerous weapon.
His lawyer, Mr. Hrones, says his client’s decision to take his daughter did not constitute kidnapping, and that the divorce and custody order are not valid because the couple, wed in a Quaker ceremony on Nantucket, never took out a marriage license, so were never legally married.
In an interview that will be telecast on the “Today” show on Monday and Tuesday, Mr. Gerhartsreiter maintains that Ms. Boss knew “early on that I had virtually not much in common with the Rockefeller family,” according to a transcript. He adds that she, too, “wanted to keep the appearance of it going.”
People who know Ms. Boss said she never used the name Rockefeller in any professional or personal documents. A spokesman for Ms. Boss said Friday that, given her ex-husband’s “history of deceitful behavior,” his statements “should be viewed with extreme skepticism.”
In the television interview, Mr. Gerhartsreiter claims to have grown up in New York City and cites memories of visiting Mount Rushmore and picking strawberries in Oregon in the 60’s.
Mr. Hrones says his client has only vague memories of being in California as an adult, at the time the Sohuses disappeared.
“He liked to tell stories,” said Mr. Hrones, contending that because Mr. Gerhartsreiter is under 5-foot-5, he concocted “tall tales” to build himself up. “The stories were so wild, people knew they weren’t true,” Mr. Hrones said.
Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter grew up in the small Bavarian town of Bergen. His mother was a homemaker and seamstress; his father was a landscape painter. Childhood friends say he showed an early tendency for fakery.
“Christian liked to play games in which he adopted another identity,” said Thomas Schweiger, a onetime close friend.
At 13, Mr. Schweiger said, Christian telephoned a government office that registered cars, “and he changed his voice and said that he was a millionaire from Holland and that he wanted to register his two Rolls-Royces.” Although the clerk was skeptical, Christian persuaded him, his friend said. “He really played this role perfect.”
At 17, Mr. Gerhartsreiter headed to Connecticut as an exchange student in the town of Berlin, where he attended the local high school. He apparently never returned to Bergen. His mother and brother, who had last heard from him in 1986 or 1987, when he called and told them he had become Christopher Chichester, have left their homes to avoid the news media.
In 1981, for reasons that are unclear, Mr. Gerhartsreiter moved to Elm Grove, Wis., where, in short order, he married Amy Jersild, apparently to get a green card. “I think she thought it was something more,” said John Litza, Ms. Jersild’s brother-in-law. “After they got married, he was basically gone.”
Ms. Jersild, who is remarried, has declined to discuss Mr. Gerhartsreiter.
In 1982 or 1983, Mr. Gerhartsreiter showed up in well-heeled San Marino, calling himself Christopher Chichester and saying he wanted to be an actor or producer. The most he produced was a local public cable-access interview show. Kenneth Veronda, then the president of the chamber of commerce, remembers that Mr. Gerhartsreiter attended the chamber’s mixers.
“He was friendly, casual, correct,” Mr. Veronda wrote in an e-mail message. “He asked me once if I knew of Lord Mountbatten,” and said, “ ‘He was a distant relative of mine and I regret I never interviewed him before his death.’ Chris seemed affected, with stories not quite reliable, but never asked me or others that I know for money.” Jann Eldnor, a hairdresser in San Marino who cut Mr. Chichester’s hair, said Mr. Chichester ingratiated himself with women at the Episcopal church, getting free meals and concert tickets in return.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Mr. Eldnor, a native of Sweden. “He would just go up to people and make friends right away. He was a fellow who looked like he played and acted all the time.” Mr. Chichester lived in a guesthouse owned by the Sohus family, although it was not clear that he knew Linda, John or John’s mother, Didi, very well. After Linda and John disappeared, Mr. Chichester stayed a few more months, then left town.
Three years later, calling himself Christopher Crowe, a bond trader, he tried to sell a truck belonging to John Sohus in Greenwich, Conn., without the truck’s registration, authorities said.
“It’s very confounding to me, all the bits and pieces,” said Ellen Sohus, John’s sister. “It’s so frustrating because I think he has all the answers in his head and he’s just toying with everybody.”
By the early 1990’s, Mr. Crowe had become Mr. Rockefeller and was spending time in Manhattan, joining a Fifth Avenue church and rubbing elbows at the Metropolitan Club.
“He lived as Clark Rockefeller and he presented that and his whole persona was that,” said Robert Beau Leonard, a lawyer who met Mr. Rockefeller at church. He even gained admission to the exclusive Lotos Club, whose 2003 yearbook lists Clark Rockefeller on the same page as Laurance S. Rockefeller, a grandson of John D. Rockefeller.
It was as Clark Rockefeller, apparent member of America’s aristocracy, that in 1993 he met Sandra Boss, a graduate of Stanford University and the Harvard Business School and seven years his junior. Connecting with Ms. Boss, who eventually became a partner at McKinsey, where salaries can reach seven figures, seemed to enable Mr. Rockefeller to play out his upper-crust fantasies.
Ms. Stone, the Upper East Side art dealer, recalled meeting him when they were walking their dogs in Central Park and he instantly recognized that her husky, Leyster, was named after a little-known Dutch Master, Judith Leyster. She was impressed.
He told her he advised small countries on financial problems. Ms. Stone and her husband, Mr. Steigrad, were soon dining and socializing with the couple. “He came to a lot of our parties,” Ms. Stone said. “He met a lot of people we knew. He was a nice, intelligent, charming sort of eccentric individual. He just seemed real.”
Mr. Rockefeller volunteered to create a Web site for the Steigrad gallery. When the couple offered to pay, he said, “ ‘Well the only thing I really need is two tuxedo shirts,’ ” said Ms. Stone, so they sent him to their tailor. “I know he was very difficult about the order. He drove the poor guy nuts.”
Most mysterious was the impressive collection of paintings in his East 56th Street apartment. Mr. Hrones, Mr. Rockefeller’s lawyer, said the paintings were not originals, just very convincing “derivatives.” But Ms. Stone and Mr. Steigrad, who saw them, say that does not make sense.
“I don’t care how fake he is, but the paintings, the art — that was right,” Mr. Steigrad said. “If he’s not a Rockefeller, where the hell did he get the paintings?”
Mr. Rockefeller even contributed an essay to ARTnews, published under Ms. Boss’s name, about the hazards of owning dogs in an apartment with a Rothko and a Clyfford Still. “Whenever we speak to our restorer,” Mr. Rockefeller wrote, “he asks which paintings need drool removal.”
Around the time that their daughter was born, the couple moved to Cornish; Ms. Boss transferred to McKinsey’s Boston office.
Two years ago, Ms. Boss, an Edith Wharton devotee, joined the board of trustees at the Mount, the Wharton estate in Lenox, Mass. Noting her love of Wharton, Gordon Travers, a fellow member of the board (from which Ms. Boss recently resigned as chair), said she must have seen parallels between her life and that of her literary heroine.
“They both married when they were young and inexperienced,” explained Mr. Travers, who is acting as a spokesman for Ms. Boss. “Teddy Wharton was considered to be the right sort of guy. In his case, he had real social credentials. But both men weren’t really what they appeared to be outwardly. Teddy was a cad. They both lived off and wasted their wife’s money.”
Two years ago, the couple bought a second home, a $2.3-million town house on Beacon Hill in Boston. He joined the old-line Algonquin Club in the Back Bay.
Their Cornish home had once belonged to the jurist Learned Hand. In settling in a town of only 1,600, whose most famous resident is the recluse J. D. Salinger, Mr. Rockefeller may have picked too small a stage, and too ostentatious a name. Up the road in Woodstock, Vt., real Rockefellers, including David Rockefeller Jr., have properties.
“He made such a show of himself, which is so antithetical to New England,” said Jean Burling, the wife of Mr. Burling, the state senator, recalling a welcome party for the couple. “He started telling me he was collecting art, and asking me, did I know what Abstract Expressionism was? He was instructing me that he knew about Motherwells and Rothkos.”
For a blue blood, he seemed oddly lacking in social skills. “He talked about money,” she said. “He was a name-dropper.”
In short, she said, “I smelled a rat.”
AND it was bound to happen: Phil Burling, Ms. Burling’s brother-in-law, ran into David Rockefeller — who had been a year ahead of him at Harvard. “I asked him, ‘Have you ever heard of this guy?’ ” Mr. Burling said. “He said no.”
In Cornish these days, people are retelling their Clark Rockefeller stories, trying to figure how some were taken in and others were not. And they are speculating about what drove the man. For someone who was hiding from his past — a past that California authorities say may include a connection to two deaths — he paradoxically sought the spotlight. Why else, suggested Peter Burling, would he pick the name Rockefeller — and, decades earlier, claim to be a Mountbatten. Even the name Chichester belonged to an adventurer: Sir Francis Chichester, who sailed around the world alone.
“He must have been a superb student of the kind of American fascination with names and powerful families,” Mr. Burling said.
Even after his marriage broke up last year, he was still at it. A few months ago, after having been out of contact for years with Ms. Stone and Mr. Steigrad, he showed up at their gallery, Ms. Stone said. “He said he was looking for a town house in the East 60’s,” she said. “He talked about buying a boat.”
A few weeks later, in May, he attended a gallery party. “He was the life of the party that night, he really was,” Ms. Stone said. “He was just running around introducing himself to everyone and putting people together, and I thought, this is fabulous.”
http://tinyurl.com/3pdp66
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1085
PerryPeabodyPosted:
Sun Aug 24, 2008 11:45 am
Exclusive Clark Rockefeller Jail Interview Audio
On Wednesday morning, Aug. 20, 2008, [Boston]Globe photographer John Tlumacki photographed and Globe reporters Maria Cramer, John R. Ellement, and Michael Levenson interviewed Clark Rockefeller at the Nashua Street Jail, where he is being held for the alleged July 27 kidnapping of his daughter. These audio clips were taken from a recording of the interview. [There are eight audio clips on this page.]
The following is a very short transcription:
Excerpts from the Clark Rockefeller interview above (http://tinyurl.com/5vvnos):
Q: Did you tell people that you weren't a Rockefeller, from the New York family?
A: I never said anything about it one way or the other.
Q: Are you related?
A: As far as I know, I'm not. I could very well be.
Q: How did you get the name?
A: My godfather gave it to me.
Q: Was his last name Rockefeller, or did he just bestow that upon you?
A: No, no. He insisted that that's what my name is.
Q: What's your godfather's name?
A: Harry Copeland.
Q: Where is he from?
A: New York.
Q: Is he still alive?
A: No.
Q: When did he die?
A: The . . . late '90s.
Hrones (Rockefeller's lawyer): Hey, we're not going into this. Let's get on to after '93.
On the book he is writing:
A: I am writing a novel on this four amazing years. I have about 40,000 words right now. It's a novel, a novel about, um, not the Big Three, not the Council of Four, not the Council of Five, or the Supreme Council. It's a novel about three young participants in the Paris Peace Conference and how they perceive, specifically, how Chaim Weizmann and Gertrude Bell, how Gertrude Bell helped Chaim Weizmann find a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
On his memory:
Q: Why can't you remember certain things? Why is it so difficult?
A: I couldn't tell you. I just don't know.
Q: Does that trouble you, not being able to remember?
A: I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to remember.
Q: Most people can remember their childhoods. That gives them a sense of who they are and where they are.
A: Mm hm. Mm hmm. Not for me.
Q: How does that sit with you? Does that worry you?
A: I don't lose much thought over it.
Q: I'd imagine you'd be curious about it. It's your own background.
A: Well, you know, I try to look forward, rather than look into the past.
Q: What are your dreams about?
A: I very rarely remember dreams.
On proposing to Sandra L. Boss in 1994:
Q: How did you propose to your wife?
A: Very traditionally.
Q: Can you tell us about that?
A: Well, very much in the old style, you might call it, 19th century. You go down on one knee, and you present the ring and ask, "Will you marry me?"
Q: How did she respond?
A: A very delighted yes. And there's an additional story I should tell. It was, of course, meant to be a big surprise. And the evening before, we were at the Whitehall Inn in Camden, where we stayed. And she mentioned over dinner that she would love to get married at some point, at which point I said, 'Well, you'll have to wait for quite a while.' And of course I had the engagement ring in my pocket at the time. It was meant to keep the suspense going. It was very funny.
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1085
PerryPeabodyPosted:
Sun Aug 24, 2008 12:03 pm
Kidnap suspect 'Rockefeller' gives NBC interview
By Beth Boehne
wsbt.com
BOSTON (AP) — A man using the name Clark Rockefeller says in an upcoming television interview that he had hoped to live an "obscure life" in Baltimore with the 7-year-old daughter he's accused of kidnapping in a custody snatch.
Christian Gerhartsreiter (GAYR'-hahrtz-ry-tur), a German immigrant who assumed the Rockefeller name, says on the NBC "Today" show that he wasn't sure he would return his daughter, Reigh Boss, back to her mother, Sandra Boss, who lives in London.
"I hadn't really thought about it. Just being together with her was, almost as if, almost, almost like a drug," he said. His attorney has said he was a primary caretaker for the child during his marriage, which ended last year.
A brief excerpt of his first public interview, to be aired on the "Today" show beginning Monday, was shown Thursday night on Boston's NBC affiliate, WHDH-TV.
Gerhartsreiter is accused of taking his daughter during a supervised visit with a social worker in Boston on July 27. She was found safe at a home in Baltimore where he was arrested Aug. 2. He has pleaded not guilty to charges in Boston of kidnapping the girl and assaulting the social worker.
California authorities want to question Gerhartsreiter about the 1985 disappearance of a wealthy young couple who lived at a Los Angeles area estate where he rented the guesthouse. His attorney has said he remembers the couple but had nothing to do with their disappearance.
Gerhartsreiter said in the NBC interview he took his daughter to Baltimore because he could not afford the life he wanted in Boston.
Asked if he planned to go into hiding, he said "That's perhaps an extreme way of saying it. I just wanted to live an obscure life in Baltimore."
He said he has been using the name Clark Rockefeller as long as he can remember. "It was given to me by the one person to whom I've always looked up to, one person whom I've known since I was small," he said.
He said he would not name that person on advice of his lawyer Stephen Hrones, who sat with him in the interview at Boston's Nashua Street Jail. [But he named him in the radio interview (above) with his lawyer sitting right next to him.] His attorney has said his client doesn't remember being Gerhartsreiter.
Authorities have said Gerhartsreiter lived all around the U.S., including California, Wisconsin and Massachusetts, using several aliases. People who knew a German student in Connecticut in the early 1980s also say he was the same man.
An interview with Clark Rockefeller
'I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to remember. I don't lose much thought over it.'
In a jailhouse talk, an alleged kidnapper with multiple aliases speaks of a Brahmin life, a father's love, but tiptoes around his past
This story was reported by Maria Cramer, John R. Ellement, and Michael Levenson of the [Boston]Globe staff and was written by Levenson.
http://tinyurl.com/5z6h5r
He burst into the room smiling, with the cheerful demeanor of a host welcoming guests to a party. "Clark Rockefeller," he said, fixing his gaze on a visitor and extending a hand. His nails were manicured. He wore tasseled loafers with his gray, jail-issued scrubs. He turned to another visitor and another, bowing slightly to each.
"Clark Rockefeller, Clark Rockefeller," he said in a Brahmin accent. "Nice to see you. How are you, everyone?"
Settling into a wooden chair in a drab classroom in Nashua Street Jail last week, the man authorities have identified as Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, the German-born son of a modest Bavarian couple who has lived in the United States under a dozen aliases, wanted one thing to be clear, saying, "I am Clark Rockefeller."
Speaking to reporters for the first time since he allegedly whisked his 7-year-old daughter off a Boston street and led authorities on an international manhunt, Rockefeller amicably spun stories of the last 15 years.
Peppering his speech with verbal filigrees such as "quite so" and "rather," he rambled on about the "five or six or seven" languages that he speaks, the historical novel about the roots of Israeli statehood he is writing, and his work as a researcher of "anything from physics to social sciences." He painted himself as a devoted father who read the Tennyson poem "The Daisy" to his daughter 25 times in a single evening and who taught her to read newspapers and scientific journals before she was 3.
His 45 minutes of musings provided the closest glimpse yet of a man who authorities say has spent most of his life happily duping people. His accounts of the past often wandered from the plausible to the far-fetched and showed the lengths he will go to buttress the identity he has cultivated as an erudite aristocrat. Throughout, he was unashamed and unapologetic, even rhapsodizing about the "six glorious and wonderful days" he spent with his daughter evading authorities.
"We had such a wonderful time," he said. "It was my six days of being - well, it was like a trance. It was so wonderful. It was so great to be with my daughter again."
Rockefeller insisted that he had decided to take his daughter only the day before he picked her up, though authorities say he had been planning a kidnapping for months. And he said he had bought a house in Baltimore under an assumed name months ago because he wanted to "live quietly."
Questioned repeatedly about the alleged kidnapping, he said: "Well, there's nothing I have to say about that. I love my daughter very much. But, you know, I lost, and I lost big time in Boston."
Rockefeller spoke to three Globe reporters and a Globe photographer. His lawyer, Stephen B. Hrones, sat at his side throughout the interview and interjected each time a reporter asked Rockefeller about his life before 1993, a time when authorities say he lived under another alias and his landlords went missing and were presumed killed. Rockefeller also cut short certain questions about his past.
Pressed about why he refused to show proof of his identity during his divorce proceedings in December, for example, he shook his head emphatically.
"I couldn't. I couldn't," he said.
Pressed again, he said, "But here we go into an area that we can't."
At other times he professed not to remember large chapters of his life. "I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to remember," he said. "I don't lose much thought over it."
Authorities say Rockefeller came to the United States when he was 17 seeking fame and wealth and lived with a series of host families in Berlin, Conn., before moving to Wisconsin, where he married a 22-year-old woman and obtained legal residency. Over the course of the next decade, he used at least two aliases and lived in San Marino, Calif., where he claimed to be a European aristocrat, and in Greenwich, Conn., and Manhattan, where he worked as a bond salesman.
Los Angeles County homicide detectives want to question him in connection with the 1985 disappearance and presumed slaying of his San Marino landlords, John and Linda Sohus.
The Globe asked Rockefeller about his memories of Germany and of John and Linda Sohus. Each time, Rockefeller fell silent and smiled tightly, as Hrones told reporters to "move on to something else."
Rockefeller willingly discussed his courtship of Sandra L. Boss, then a student at Harvard Business School, and described how he fell in love with her "aura, I suppose," and her "cheerful speech."
He said he met her at his East 57th Street apartment in Manhattan in 1993 during one of his "Clue parties," in which friends came as characters from the board game. She came as Miss Scarlett, he said. He was Professor Plum.
He said he saw her across the room and was immediately smitten. "Yes, that's the way to put it," he said. "Quite so, quite so."
The two dated, shuttling between Boston and New York. He said Boss never met his family. "I don't have much family," he said. "I don't have any family."
Rockefeller said he was working as a researcher during their courtship, a job he trained for by "auditing various classes at various universities over time."
"My subject was whatever my clients deemed worthy," he said. "It could have been literally anything."
He said he built a good reputation but would not give details about the work and could not name any clients. "No one that I really remember," he said.
He proposed to Boss in summer 1994, he said, at an Episcopal church in Isleboro, Maine, off the coast of Camden. The couple wed a year later in a ceremony on Nantucket, but they never obtained a marriage license.
Rockefeller said the couple had simply let that detail fall through the cracks.
"There is some disagreement as to who was supposed to take care of the legalities of the wedding, the marriage," Rockefeller said. "Ultimately, neither one of us took care of it."
In 2001, Boss gave birth to their daughter, Reigh.
"I had never, never thought of becoming a father, and then suddenly this little bundle came along," he said. "And everyone always told me that this will change your life going forward. I always thought, 'No, it can't.' But it did. It clearly, clearly positively did. And it made a huge, huge impact on me. It was a life-changing experience."
Rockefeller said he was a "stay-at-home father" at their home in Cornish, N.H., and that he taught Reigh to read at 2.
"I started her on Alfred Lord Tennyson," Rockefeller said. "She loved Tennyson. And we spent hours and hours and hours reading 'The Daisy.' "
At 2 1/2 years old, she read him the newspaper in the morning, he said. At 3, she could read an article in the scientific journal Nature on the use of statistics. He said he made a video recording of the feat.
"I'd love for you to see it," he said. "Unfortunately, I have no access to it at the moment."
In September 2006, the family moved to a Beacon Hill townhouse. By then, he said, the marriage was falling apart.
He recalled sitting at "the dining table in the evening, and everyone is tired, and somewhat bored, and the discussion is not really going anywhere."
The couple divorced in December. During the divorce proceedings, Rockefeller was asked to provide proof of his identity. He refused, a decision that contributed to the court awarding custody of Reigh to her mother.
A report by a court-appointed advocate for Reigh concluded that Rockefeller was an unfit father and recommended that custody be awarded to Boss, Rockefeller said.
"Everything about the report was negative," Rockefeller said. "There was not one single positive line about me in the report. Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. Even witnesses who had testified on my behalf apparently gave negative testimony on me."
He said that his lawyer at the time told him: "This is a terrible report. We've lost. There is nothing you can do."
According to authorities, Rockefeller soon planned his daughter's kidnapping, paying for the house in Baltimore with $400,000 in cash. Police say he kidnapped her during a July 27 visit, shoving aside a social worker who was supervising and pushing Reigh into a waiting sport utility vehicle.
Rockefeller said that while he was on the lam in Baltimore, he never saw Boss's video, posted on YouTube, pleading with him to return their daughter, and was "not really" aware that he was wanted because he had a "very poor Internet connection."
Gary Koops, a spokesman for Boss, said: "Sandra's sole focus is on the health, well-being, and safety of her daughter, Reigh. In light of Mr. Gerhartsreiter's history of deceitful behavior, any statements made by him should be viewed with extreme skepticism."
During the interview, Rockefeller offered an explanation for the origin of his name, saying it had been given to him by a man named Harry Copeland, whom he described only as his godfather from New York who died in the late 1990s. "He insisted that that's what my name is," Rockefeller said.
Even so, he was unwilling to dismiss the possibility that he might in some way be related to the Rockefeller dynasty.
"As far as I know, I'm not," he said, but then added: "I could very well be."
In jail, Rockefeller is being held in the general population, in a single-bunk cell on the seventh floor. Inmates ask for his autograph. He said he is completing a historical novel connecting the 1919 Paris Peace Conference to the founding of Israel in 1948.
"It's an absolutely fascinating story as to why Zionism had its birth," he said.
He said he has not talked to his daughter but has just received stationery and hopes to write her a letter. He said that one day, he would like to see her again.
"Everyone has hopes," he said. "Everyone has wishes."
This guy is both nutty and an excellent con. His attorney is as weird as he is!!!
AKA Gagal_05
Joined: 24 Feb 2007
Posts: 14370
PerryPeabodyPosted:
Sun Aug 24, 2008 2:12 pm
gwen wrote:
This guy is both nutty and an excellent con. His attorney is as weird as he is!!!
I think he believes himself after a while; I won't even comment on his attorney (although he might believe himself after a while too).
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1085
PerryPeabodyPosted:
Sun Aug 24, 2008 3:20 pm
[This guy does take liberties.]
Rockefeller showed quirky side in NH road-naming
Lebanon, N.H. (Map, News) - The man accused of abducting his young daughter 10 days ago in Boston showed a quirky side when he lived in Cornish, New Hampshire, six years ago.
Clark Rockefeller wrote the Cornish, N.H., selectmen in 2002 to object to calling an easement near his home "Dennis Drive," the last name of a neighboring family.
The Valley News of Lebanon says Rockefeller asked the town to use another, historical name in the neighborhood, or name it "Shelby Drive" after his late Gordon setter.
Prosecutors question whether Rockefeller is the man's real name. That is the name he used in Cornish, including when he registered to vote in 2000.
--
Information from: Lebanon Valley News, http://www.vnews.com
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1085
PerryPeabodyPosted:
Sun Aug 24, 2008 3:27 pm
[I am finding all kinds of crazy stuff in the local newspaper]:
New subject: "Clark Rockefeller," breakaway Episcopalian!
Reporting by my friend John Gregg in the Lebanon (N.H.)-based Valley News reveals that, in addition to his other oddities, Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter/Christopher Chichester/Clark Rockefeller bankrolled a new, conservative Episcopal parish in his former hometown of Cornish, N.H.
According to the Valley News, Rockefeller gained control of the historic, dormant Trinity Church in return for a $110,000 donation to the town. At his request, Trinity, which had been mainstream Episcopalian, joined the Anglican Church of America, a conservative offshoot of "God's Frozen People." The Anglicans don't like the "new," 1979 Book of Common Prayer, they don't like the lady preachers, and they don't like the idea of gay men preaching from the pulpit, to say nothing of gay marriage.
In 2004, Rockefeller told the newspaper that the 1979 prayer book reminded him of "bell bottoms and lava lamps . . . I just got disaffected with the Episcopal Church after the '79 book came out." The current rector, Dr. Brian Marsh, told me that his congregation plans to stay in the building, currently administered by Rockefeller's ex-wife, for the foreseeable future.
It is a tribute to the great state of New Hampshire that both avowedly gay Bishop Gene Robinson and this little church full of Anglo-Catholic throwbacks can co-exist in relative harmony within its borders.
There's no place like home: First photos of Crockefeller's 'Snooks' since kidnap ordeal
BY LARRY McSHANE
NY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
August 26th 2008, 9:53 AM
Little 'Snooks,' Reigh Boss, seems right at home back in her normal life in London after her phony father, Clark Rockefeller, snatched her in a Boston park.
With mom Sandra Boss.
Snooks is back home.
Walking hand-in-hand with her mom near their London home, Reigh Boss - known to her parents as Snooks - was all smiles today as the 7-year-old took a morning stroll with her mom.
Snooks was carrying her favorite doll and headed to a local coffee shop for a milkshake. The morning photos are the first glimpse of the girl since she was reunited with her mother, Sandra Boss, after her dad kidnapped her during a supervised visit in Boston.
Mom and daughter ventured out for about 40 minutes, although Sandra Boss declined to answer questions about the bizarre case. Both were smiling during their stroll through the streets of London, where Snooks was also carrying a small shopping bag.
The girl is scheduled to start classes tomorrow at the Hill House International School near their home.
Her oddball dad, who feigned ties to the Rockefeller family and used several aliases over the last three decades, has been unmasked as the German-born Christian Gerhartsreiter.
The man who billed himself as "Clark Rockefeller" is in a Boston jail charged with kidnapping the girl and assaulting a social worker. He has pleaded not guilty.
In recent jailhouse interviews, he called Snooks the love of his odd life.
Authorities in California are investigating his role in the disappearance and possible murder of a couple in 1985. Jonathan and Linda Sohus were the conman's landlords when they disappeared.
Their tenant, who moved out shortly after the couple went missing, used the name Christopher Chichester.
Los Angeles County sheriff's detectives have confirmed Rockefeller and Chichester are one and the same: German exchange student Gerhartsreiter.
http://tinyurl.com/5gx6ns
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1085
PerryPeabodyPosted:
Wed Aug 27, 2008 12:02 pm
London calling for Reigh Boss
By Jessica Van Sack and Laurel J. Sweet
BostonHerald.com
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
As the fame-seeking phony who calls himself Clark Rockefeller appeared on TV to plead his case, the adorable daughter he snatched was out of hiding and with her mother in London yesterday.
Meanwhile, the Herald has learned that Sandra Lynne Boss had hired a private investigator to tail her former husband prior to the alleged kidnapping.
According to a law enforcement source, Boss, 41, used the detective to keep an eye on Rockefeller - who authorities have identified as Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter - during his first supervised visit with 7-year-old Reigh “Snooks” Storrow Mills Boss on July 27.
The mother’s fears were realized when he snatched Snooks off a Back Bay street, touching off a five-day international manhunt.
Rockefeller has since been unmasked as Gerhartsreiter, 47, a German immigrant who entered the United States in 1978 before embarking on a three-decade charade of assumed identities.
Court papers list Robert Warren of Diverse Investigative Services in Marshfield as a witness to the abduction. He has referred questions to Boston police, saying “It’s their investigation.” He said he was hired by a third party, not Boss directly.
Photos taken yesterday showed Boss and Reigh, who carried a doll and small shopping bag, walking through their London neighborhood. “Sandra’s sole focus is on the health, well-being and safety of her daughter Reigh,” said Boss’ spokesman, Gary R. Koops of the firm Burson-Marsteller.
The accused kidnapper is scheduled to appear in court one week from today for a pretrial hearing.
In an interview with NBC, he asserted unverified memories of a Manhattan childhood and spoke of the pain of being away from his daughter.
The phony blue-blood avoided questions about the disappearance and potential murder of his former landlords, John and Linda Sohus. Authorities have named him “a person of interest” in the case.
http://tinyurl.com/6g6684
