Fingerprints deepen a mystery

Authorities look at possible link between kidnap suspect, Calif. slaying

Kidnap suspect Clark Rockefeller has repeatedly told investigators he cannot recall who his parents are or where he was born.

BALTIMORE - Authorities are actively investigating the possibility that accused kidnapper Clark Rockefeller is concealing a violent past, after his fingerprints provided an unusual, but still unconfirmed, link to a killing in California from many years ago, according to two law enforcement officials.

Rockefeller's fingerprints, taken after his capture here Saturday, were linked to an out-of-state license application under a different name, presumably yet another alias, those officials said. That name, in turn, is on a list of people wanted in a homicide case in California, according to the officials.

"A fingerprint connected him to a license application, and an alias on the application connected him to a murder in California," one of the two officials said yesterday. Both officials provided information to the Globe on condition they not be named, because the investigation is ongoing.

Authorities have not concluded that Rockefeller is wanted in the California homicide and released no details of the crime, except to say it was committed more than a decade ago. But one of the officials said that California authorities have been alerted and are joining the team of detectives trying to learn the particulars of Rockefeller's past.

Rockefeller, sitting in a jail cell here, has been no help, officials said. He has been interviewed for hours by FBI agents and Baltimore police detectives, but has provided no information about his past, including his real identity, an official said. To questions as basic as where he was born and who his parents are, he has repeatedly told authorities that he "doesn't remember," one of the officials said.

Rockefeller has already gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal his past, even refusing to provide proof of his identity in his 2007 divorce case, a decision that cost him custody of the daughter he played an active role in raising.

Yesterday, Rockefeller, dressed in wrinkled khakis and a baby-blue polo shirt and restrained by handcuffs and shackles, was escorted into a Baltimore courtroom, his first public appearance since his arrest Saturday afternoon. He agreed to waive extradition and return to Boston to face charges of kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter, Reigh Storrow Mills Boss.

A slight man with thinning red hair, Rockefeller said little during the brief proceeding in Eastside District Court. Boston police are expected to take custody of him this morning and return him to Boston for booking. Depending on his arrival, he will be arraigned today or tomorrow morning in Boston Municipal Court on a felony count of parental kidnapping, among other charges, said Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney's office.

Prosecutors in Baltimore did not detail the charges or describe the massive international manhunt that was sparked after Rockefeller fled with his daughter from a Back Bay street during a Boston visit supervised by a social worker July 27. Judge Nathan Braverman asked Rockefeller if he really wanted to waive extradition.

"That's correct," Rockefeller said, his voice calm and steady.

As FBI agents and police detectives worked furiously to learn more details of Rockefeller's past, a fuller, but not necessarily clearer, portrait continued to emerge from those in New England and Maryland with whom he has crossed paths.

In Baltimore, Rockefeller went by the name Charles "Chip" Smith, which is distinct from the multiple names he allegedly used in Boston, Nantucket, and New Hampshire. He portrayed himself as a man determined to start a new life as the single parent of a young daughter.

In New England, Rockefeller struck some as a charming if quirky man with an intellectual bearing and distinguished pedigree; to others, he seemed a fraud or a schemer.

In divorce proceedings, Sandra Boss, a senior partner in London with McKinsey & Co. who previously managed the firm's Boston office, accused him of lying about being a member of the famed Rockefeller family.

She was reunited with her daughter, known as Snooks, on Saturday after authorities tracked Rockefeller to a Baltimore house and lured him outside under the pretense that his sailboat, docked a few miles away, was taking on water.

Rockefeller, calling himself Chip Smith, completed his purchase of that house for nearly $432,000 in cash in mid-July. That was more than a month after telling the seller he planned to live there with his daughter and liked the yard and proximity to a local private school, seller John Day of Mount Vernon Portfolio Equities told the Globe Sunday.

Yesterday, Julie Gochar, an executive with the real estate firm that represented Smith, said he contacted her firm by e-mail in late 2007 to seek help in finding a two- or three-bedroom house.

Gochar, managing partner of Obsidian Realty, said Smith told her company that he and his daughter were relocating from Chile. The company worked with him for several months, arranged for him to stay in a Baltimore rental to facilitate his house-hunting, and allowed him to use the Internet at their office, said Gochar, who read a statement to reporters and took no questions.

Rockefeller came to Baltimore last month to finalize the purchase of the brick carriage house on Ploy Street and to pay with cashier's checks, Gochar said.

On Friday, Obsidian employees saw a news bulletin about Clark Rockefeller and recognized the man they knew as Smith from the photographs. They immediately called police, Gochar said.

Rockefeller purchased the home not in his own name, but using a Nevada-based limited-liability company known as P10Y Street Parking. The company's articles of organization were filed May 30, using Nevada Corporation Services Ltd. as registered agent.

Nevada Corporation Services bills itself on the Internet as "The Expert's 'Domestic Haven of Choice' for Business Incorporation & Powerful Asset Protection" and employs a quote from industrialist John D. Rockefeller as its tagline: "Control everything, own nothing." An employee who answered the phone yesterday said the company had no comment about P10Y Street Parking or about Clark Rockefeller.

Clark Rockefeller had used similarly vague-sounding entities to purchase multiple properties in Cornish, N.H., said Peter Burling, a New Hampshire state senator who lived half a mile from Rockefeller in the town. Burling said some were captivated by the Yale hat-wearing, bow tie-clad, Segway-riding Rockefeller, who claimed to own a scientific business in Canada and told stories in town about hosting Helmut Kohl and Britney Spears. Others, he added, were wary.

In trying to acquire real estate, Rockefeller sought to discourage other potential bidders. "He would just say to everybody: 'My name is Clark Rockefeller. I can bid as much as I need to,' " recalled Burling.

But Joan Littlefield, a former neighbor and friend, recalled Rockefeller and Boss fondly, calling him a man of curiosity and aesthetic sensitivity who appeared to be a conscientious husband and father.

"Everywhere Clark went, if the Rockefeller name came up, it was more of a burden than a blessing," said Littlefield.

On Nantucket, Rockefeller rented an off-season cottage for several winters earlier this decade and told his landlord that he used aliases because the Rockefeller name put him at a disadvantage in real estate, recalled Dan Shapiro, of Jamestown, R.I., who leased his former island cottage to Boss and Rockefeller.

Shapiro said he never met the couple but regularly spoke with Rockefeller, who told him he was an MIT graduate and owned a company in upstate New York that was developing a magnetic-propulsion system for space travel.

He seemed like "some sort of genius," Shapiro said. "He was always extremely pleasant, extremely polite, very polished." One year, Shapiro said, Rockefeller even raised his own rent.