The Man in the Rockefeller Suit (44 page)

For me, the Clark Rockefeller story ended in a suburban basement, where I had been invited to see where many of the earthly possessions of Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter had somehow come to rest. How and why these things found their way to the basement I wouldn’t know for certain. But it was all there: his birth certificate; his German passport; the tortoiseshell eyeglasses he wore as Christopher Chichester and the black Ray-Ban Wayfarers he wore as Clark Rockefeller. There was a well-worn brown Ghurka leather wallet with more than a dozen membership cards to private clubs—the Algonquin Club and Harvard Club in Boston, the India House and Metropolitan Club and Lotos Club in New York City. An enormous pack of credit cards—some in his name, some in the name of Sandra Boss—was held together by a rubber band.

A large and impressive collection of Rockefeller memorabilia was gathered in a box: booklets listing the members of the famous family, one dating back to 1932; personal photographs and newspaper clippings of the clan leaders, John D. Sr. and Jr., Nelson, and David; stock certificates from the family’s Chase Manhattan Corporation (signed by David Rockefeller); missives from John D. Rockefeller Jr. (“Dearest, thanks for your beautiful and understanding letter . . .”); and other family artifacts that seemingly only a Rockefeller would have.

Some pieces of artwork, but not the major pieces he loved to show off, were scattered about: some crated, some framed, and some just lying on the floor, including
Abrupt Break
, the small painting by his friend William Quigley that Rockefeller had supposedly found in a secondhand store. His clothing, all from J. Press, was stacked in a large pile—a tuxedo, several bold-plaid sports coats, all in plastic travel bags. For some reason, I reached into the inside breast pocket of one of the jackets and found, to my astonishment, a small glass dildo. There were new J. Press shirts, still in their original packaging, and several pairs of lace-up shoes from Church’s, the British shoemaker, size 9. Thrown casually into a paper bag was the preppy outfit he wore day after day during his trial—the blazer, the white shirt, the khaki pants. The whole lot comprised a sort of do-it-yourself kit for an impostor. Without him, though, it was all just a lifeless collection of stuff.

Were these artifacts of the fraud Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter perpetrated upon America destined for the scrap heap? Or would the prisoner, upon his scheduled release in 2013, pick them up and begin anew, in a new city, with a new identity?

The answers are pending in California, where agents for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI continue their investigation, interviewing an infinite cast of characters who have become entwined with Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, in the hope of completing the “thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle” of his multiple lives and, more important, answering the ultimate question: what happened to John and Linda Sohus?

Their spirits live on in a modest house in Southern California, where Linda’s loyal best friend, Sue Coffman, keeps a constant vigil. “They weren’t allowed to die in a respectful way,” she says. “They didn’t get a service. They didn’t get a farewell. They got nothing.” She hopes to give them a long-overdue memorial someday, once answers to their deaths have been found and justice for their killer has finally been done.

On March 15, 2011, Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter was charged with the murder of John Sohus. The indictment came after Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators claimed to have amassed enough evidence in the case, including positive identification of the remains found in the San Marino backyard as being those of John. Whatever happened to Linda Sohus was not addressed in the indictment. After visiting his client in prison, one of Gerhartstreiter’s attorneys told the media that Gerhartsreiter was “absolutely innocent” and would vigorously fight the charges.

Before receiving the news, Gerhartsreiter had been working on appealing his conviction on kidnapping charges. He told friends that he was confident he would win early release from prison and was looking forward to resuming his life, possibly in the television industry.

Upon hearing of the murder charge, the cast members of Gerhartsreiter’s lifetime reunited, calling each other from around the world, all waiting to see which face the enigmatic impostor would put on next—or whether standing trial for murder might, somehow at last, reach whatever was left of the real man inside.

Acknowledgments

F
irst and foremost, to Alessandra Lusardi, my brilliant editor at Viking Penguin: Thank you for your wisdom, enthusiasm, editing expertise, and patience in our journey to assemble what has been called “the thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle” of a life. And to Viking Penguin president Clare Ferraro, thank you for becoming an early and ardent champion of this book.

The story of Clark Rockefeller was first published in the January 2009 issue of
Vanity Fair
magazine. For that, I want to thank the incredible Wayne Lawson for his editorial genius and guidance, first in editing the magazine piece and later this book;
Vanity Fair’s
great editor Graydon Carter for originally sending me on a quest to find the truth about Clark Rockefeller and showing such enthusiasm for the resulting
Vanity Fair
piece; and Matthew Pressman for his invaluable and intelligent work on both the magazine story and this book.

Thank you to my incomparable literary agent, Jan Miller Rich, of Dupree Miller & Associates, and to my close friend, great story scout, and esteemed adviser Jeff Rich. I treasure your friendship.

Almost every story begins with a source, and in the case of Clark Rockefeller my original source was Roxane West. Having met Rockefeller in New York, Roxane called me one afternoon shortly after he had kidnapped his daughter, literally screaming her insistence that I
had
to write about him. Thank you, Roxane, for that pivotal call and for all of your help, insights, and recollections along the way.

Thank you to Elizabeth Suman, for your indefatigable and invaluable research talents every step along the way; to John Ruddy, for your continued assistance; and to Tom Colligan, for fact-checking the maze that led through so many people and places.

To the staff of the wonderful Taj Boston hotel: Your gracious hospitality and stately accommodations provided me with a second home in Boston. And thank you to Sheila Donnelly & Associates for all of your assistance in Boston.

This book is the product of almost two hundred interviews with people whose paths crossed with the man eventually known as Clark Rockefeller. Many of those who gave me their time and insights have asked to remain anonymous. What follows, then, is a partial list.

In Germany, I was accompanied by Marten Rolff, a newspaper reporter who wrote about Rockefeller there. Thank you, Marten, for your help with translation, introductions, and background information. And thank you to all those in the town of Bergen who spoke to me, a stranger from America, with special thanks to the men who meet to drink beer throughout the day and night at the
Stammtisch
, the regulars in the beer garden in the center of town.

In Connecticut, thank you to Edward Savio, Chris Bishop, Wayne Campbell, Greenwich police lieutenant Daniel Allen, and Jeff Wayne.

In San Marino and elsewhere in California, thank you to Jann Eldnor, Peggy Ebright, Elmer and Jean Kelln, Sue Coffman, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department sergeant Timothy Miley, Frank Girardot (Metro editor for the San Gabriel Valley Newspapers), Wayne Kelln, Kenneth Veronda, Dana Farrar, Carol Campbell, Bill and Cori Woods, Meredith Bruckner, Carol and Warner J. Iliff, Steven J. Biodrowski, Professor Geoffrey Greene, Bernice Sadamune, Tricia Gough, Lilli Hadsell, Marianne Kent, Lydia Marano, Ralph Wikke, the producers of the
Unsolved Mysteries
television series and the members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, who so fondly recalled John and Linda Sohus.

In New York, thank you to Anthony Meyer, Martha Henry, William Quigley, Venanzio Ciampa, Lawrence Steigrad and Peggy Stone, Sharlene Spingler, Dave Copeland, Richard Barnett, Stanley Forkner, Bob Brusca, Eric Hunter Slater, Ralph Boynton, Sheldon Fish, Jeffrey Richards, and Brittney Ross.

In Cornish, New Hampshire, thank you to Peter Burling, Alma Gilbert-Smith, Merilynn Bourne, Don MacLeay, Nancy Nash Cummings, Laura White, Charlie White, and Gregory Schwarz.

In Boston, thank you to Jake Wark, Stephen Hrones, Patrick Hickox, Boston police sergeant Raymond Mosher, Boston police detective Joe Leeman, Bob Skorupa, John Greene, John Sears, FBI special agent Noreen Gleason, Gail Marcinkiewicz, FBI special agent Tamara Hardy, Frank Rudewicz, Gretchen Berg and her colleagues at NBC,
Dateline,
and the
Today
show, Boston Police Department deputy superintendant Thomas Lee, Suffolk County assistant district attorney David Deakin, defense attorneys Jeffrey Denner and Timothy Bradl, Jessica Van Sack, Jonathan Saltzman, Denise Lavoie, Victoria Block, Maria Cramer, and the staff at the Algonquin Club.

In Baltimore, thank you to Julie Gochar.

Thank you to Nancy Doherty, Annie Laurie Hines, Carolyn Hines, Keenan Delaney, and Tom Rizer.

Last but far from least, I would like to thank my family: Evelyn Abroms Kraus and Melvin Kraus, the late Berney Seal, Eddie and Melissa Seal and family, B.J. and Alana Seal and family, Brandon and Jennifer Blocker and family, and all of the many members of the extended Seal, Abroms, Kraus, Blocker, and Gambini clans.

Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, seventeen, arrived in Boston on December 16, 1978. Pictured here: his passport, his resident alien identification card, and his birth certificate. He told his parents that he had gotten a job as a disc jockey in New York City, and they agreed to send him money each month until he got settled. Once he ob tained a tourist visa, he packed up his belongings and flew from Munich to Boston.

Gerhartstreiter stands front and center in a group communion photograph of nine-year-old third-grade boys in Bergen, West Gerany. “That Christian stands in the front may be explained by his body size, or may be by coincidence, though he liked to play the role of a leader whenever possible,” said a classmate.

Bergen looks like something out of a fairy tale, a picturesque hamlet nestled in a verdant valley of the majestic Bavarian Alps. The focal points of the town center are a church and a beer garden. The house where Gerhartsreiter grew up, at 19 Bahnhof (Train Station) Street, was almost the first house off the highway.

“He was always posing,” said a woman who met him when he still lived in Germany. “In his mind, he had to be something someday,” added her husband. “He wanted notoriety.”