Tag Archives: Chris Chichester

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Charades are over for Rockefeller Impostor

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In his world of pretense, the little man in spectacles became many fabulous people from royalty to a Rockefeller until his charades finally ended with a conviction under his true name — Christian Gerhartsreiter — a German immigrant guilty of a cold case murder.

A jury found Wednesday that the past had caught up with him. He was no longer Clark Rockefeller, heir to a fabled oil fortune, or Chris Chichester, the 13th baronet of England or even Chris Crowe, a producer of an Alfred Hitchcock mystery TV show.

“I’ve never known anyone with the ability to become so many people,” said jury forewoman Kristen Lee, an attorney. “But his character was his character. We were more concerned with the evidence.”

She and other jurors found that Gerhartsreiter, who lived briefly in California in the 1980s, killed John Sohus, a 27-year-old computer programmer who was the son of the defendant’s landlady. Sohus and his new wife, Linda, vanished under strange circumstances in 1985. No trace of her has been found.

But the discovery of a bag of bones in a pit being dug for a swimming pool at his former residence gave new life to the missing persons case in 1994. It took another nine years for authorities to put together the pieces of the baffling circumstantial case.

Gerhartsreiter, 52, was convicted by a jury which needed a mere six hours to find him guilty.

Much of the prosecution’s evidence focused on the strange behavior of the man who went by many names, including Clark Rockefeller. The prosecutor, who had little direct evidence and was dealing with a 28-year-old case wondered if the defendant would escape justice.

“Sometimes you’re afraid that this guy’s conned so many people for so many years that this will be the one last time he pulls off his last con,” Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian said after the verdict. “But that didn’t happen.”

In the courtroom, Gerhartsreiter kept up appearances just as all of his alter-egos would have. He was all smiles when he entered and his lawyers said he believed he would be acquitted.

Defense attorney Jeffrey Denner said in the end his client may have been his own worst enemy.

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/JNoegxbS53s/

News, Politics, Government

Rockefeller impostor convicted of 1985 murder

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A notorious Rockefeller impostor has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of a man whose bones were found buried beneath a California home.

Christian Gerhartsreiter was tried 28 years after the disappearance of newlyweds John and Linda Sohus in a heavily circumstantial cold case. Much of the prosecution’s evidence focused on the strange behavior of the man who adopted many names including Clark Rockefeller. He masqueraded as an heir to the fabled oil fortune for 20 years.

The verdict was reached Wednesday after the jury deliberated about a day.

Authorities said Gerhartsreiter was a German immigrant who lived another life long ago, occupying a guest cottage at the home of Sohus’ mother in the ritzy suburb of San Marino. He was known then as Chris Chichester and intimated he was of royal lineage. He joined the church, befriended residents and told some he was a film student.

A friend said Linda Sohus once described the tenant in the cottage owned by John’s mother as “creepy” and said she and her husband never spoke to him.

The town folk didn’t connect him with the disappearance of the Sohus couple in 1985, but shortly after they vanished, so did he.

No trace of Linda has been found but John’s bones were unearthed during excavation of a swimming pool at the San Marino property in 1994. With no clues, the mystery went cold again.

But across the country, a man variously known as Chris Crowe, Chip Smith and Clark Rockefeller was inventing new lives for himself.

This impostor wormed his way into high society and talked his way into important jobs. He married a wealthy woman and controlled her funds, but his identity unraveled when he kidnapped their daughter during a custody dispute. She testified that he became increasingly paranoid when police begin inquiring about him.

When he was unmasked, he became the subject of magazine articles, true crime books and TV movies that sought to explore his bizarre story and get to the heart of the man behind the pseudonyms.

The resulting publicity led California authorities to revisit the Sohus disappearance. They realized the man in custody in Boston was not an heir to the Rockefeller fortune but was the man who had lived in San Marino decades ago.

Already serving time for the kidnapping of his young daughter in a Boston custody dispute, Gerhartsreiter was close to the end of his sentence and headed for freedom when the murder charge changed that. After a quarter century, authorities believed they had linked him to the disappearance of his old neighbor, Sohus.

Defense attorneys suggested that Linda Sohus, not their client, killed her husband. But no motive was offered for her or Gerhartsreiter to have killed the young man.

Prosecutors filled in the blanks of the defendant’s whereabouts during the decades of his disappearance. But some details were unlikely ever to be explained.

He chose not to testify in his own defense and much of the trial testimony came from people now hobbled by age who knew him in San Marino as Chris Chichester,

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

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Prosecution set for rebuttal in Rockefeller case

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Both a prosecutor and defense attorney denounced a notorious Rockefeller impostor as a liar, but one said he was guilty of murder and the other said there is reasonable doubt.

“He lied at will and his life was based on that,” defense attorney Jeffrey Denner said in his closing argument Monday. “He said he was a filmmaker and he could amend the script anytime he wanted.”

Denner described his client — a German immigrant whose real name is Christian Gerhartsreiter — as “an odd guy” but not a killer.

He suggested it was more likely that Linda Sohus, the wife of the man the defendant is accused of killing, had a “dark side” of her life that led her to kill her husband. But he offered no evidence of that.

“That’s the stuff that reasonable doubt is made of,” Denner told jurors. “You don’t know what happened. If you don’t know what happened, you can’t convict anybody.”

Gerhartsreiter is accused of killing John Sohus in 1985, the year Sohus and his wife disappeared.

The bones of John Sohus were unearthed in the backyard of his mother’s former house in San Marino a decade later. No trace of Linda Sohus was ever found.

Gerhartsreiter lived as a tenant on the property in 1984 and 1985. He vanished around the same time the couple disappeared, according to witnesses.

Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian delivered a carefully constructed closing argument Monday. He was to give his rebuttal to Denner on Tuesday before the case is placed in the hands of the jury.

The prosecutor, acknowledging that a 28-year-old cold case is a difficult challenge, argued there is ample circumstantial evidence for a conviction of the man who has called himself Chris Chichester and Clark Rockefeller.

He called the defendant a master manipulator who “always had a lie in his back pocket to explain things.” But he said Gerhartsreiter slipped up and left clues that he killed a California man.

“This isn’t a movie, a book, a TV show, a docudrama,” Balian told jurors, referring to the fact that the case has been turned into all of those …read more

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Final arguments set in Rockefeller impostor case

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The prosecution and defense are presenting their final arguments Monday in the trial of a longtime Rockefeller impostor who is accused in a decades old murder of a California man.

Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian, who has presented three weeks of circumstantial evidence in the mysterious cold case is expected to argue that all signs point to the defendant, whose true name is Christian Gerhartsreiter, as the killer of John Sohus.

Sohus’ bones were unearthed in the back yard of his mother’s former house a decade after he and his wife, Linda, disappeared. The man who then called himself Chris Chichester vanished around the same time, according to witnesses.

Eventually, he would turn up on the east coast using the name Clark Rockefeller and living well at the expense of his wealthy wife.

Defense attorney Jeffrey Denner is expected to portray his client as a man who lived a life of pretense but didn’t kill anyone. The defense team has said it is just as likely that Sohus’ wife, Linda, killed him. No trace of Linda Sohus was ever found.

The newlywed couple disappeared in 1985 after telling friends they were off to New York to interview for top secret government jobs. They never returned.

Meanwhile, the man who had been renting a guest cottage at the home owned by Sohus’ mother also left town and the couple’s truck was later traced to him on the east coast although it was never found.

He had arrived in the toney suburb of San Marino in the early 1980s using the name Chichester and befriending wealthy residents. He said he was a film student at University of Southern California and boasted of having royal lineage.

Prosecutors say he was a German immigrant who came to the United States when he was 17 and began blending into wealthy communities. He would later say he grew up in New York and lived on elegant Sutton Place. .

There were strange stories told on the witness stand by former friends from San Marino. A woman remembered seeing dirt in his yard where a large hole had been dug. Another friend said he tried to sell her a rug but it had what appeared to be a blood stain on it. And an employer remembered Linda Sohus …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

News, Politics, Government

Rockefeller impostor on trial for murder

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To his neighbors in an upscale Pasadena suburb, he was the man from nowhere, a newcomer who joined the church, ingratiated himself to elderly residents and called himself Chris Chichester.

They invited the stranger into their homes in San Marino, shared dinners with him and thought of him as a friend.

But he seemed to have no past and, when he suddenly vanished, it left everyone puzzled. The town folks didn’t immediately connect him with the disappearance of two other residents, Linda and John Sohus, who lived in the house where Chichester was a tenant.

That was 1985, the start of a wide-ranging odyssey across America for the man who would also call himself Christopher Crowe, Chip Smith and, most notoriously, Clark Rockefeller, a pretender to the fabled oil fortune.

Now he has another identity, his birth name: Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter (GAYR’-hahrtz-ry-tur), a German immigrant who is charged with murder in one of the most bizarre cold cases to hit the district attorney’s office in years.

Already serving time for the kidnapping of his young daughter in a Boston custody dispute, Gerhartsreiter was close to the end of his sentence and headed for freedom when the murder charge changed that. After a quarter century, authorities believed they had linked him to the disappearance of his old neighbor, John Sohus.

His trial, set for opening statements this week, will write the most important chapter in his colorful story, determining if he walks free or spends his life in prison.

“He is upbeat and he’s looking for closure,” defense attorney Jeffrey Denner. “He’s been in limbo with this case for so long. Of course he’d like it to be resolved in his favor.”

He is charged with murdering Sohus, a 27-year-old computer programmer who was linked to bones unearthed from the backyard of the home where he lived and Gerhartsreiter was a tenant. No trace has been found of Sohus’ wife, Linda.

The prosecution is based on the bag of bones, traces of blood found in the cottage where Gerhartsreiter lived and the admittedly fuzzy memories of long ago acquaintances. It is a classic cold case.

Whether the highly circumstantial evidence will convince a jury remains to be seen. Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian said after a preliminary hearing that “the age of the case poses some challenges,” but he’s confident of a fair verdict.

Gerhartsreiter has pleaded not guilty and his lawyer said he expects him to be exonerated.

“It’s our position that the state of California cannot prove that the defendant killed John Sohus,” said Denner.

A questionnaire submitted to prospective jurors last week asked whether they could convict someone of murder without a motive. No one has suggested why Gerhartsreiter would have wanted to kill Sohus, the son of his landlady.

“Do you believe that every action that a person takes is done for an obviously identifiable reason?” the questionnaire asked.

Motive is not legally required for a murder conviction, but jurors often want to know the reason for a killing.

Denner and his partner, Brad Bailey, who practice in Boston and represented Gerhartsreiter in …read more
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