A colorful clue in the deepening Rockefeller mystery
(Photo by Lydia Marano)
By Globe Staff
It's a beautiful and cheery postcard, apparently sent by a happy couple from Paris. But is it real? Or is it part of a scheme to cover up a terrible crime?
When John and Linda Sohus disappeared in 1985 from San Marino, Calif., some friends believed they had gone on an extended sojourn to Europe.
Linda's half-sister Kathy Jacoby, who filed the initial missing persons report in April 1985, said she suspected something was not right because Linda had disappeared without her cats, which she left at a kennel.
Jacoby said she thought that John and Linda were planning a trip to Connecticut, not Europe, so that John could interview for a job, when they disappeared. But later her family received a postcard purportedly from Linda from France.
Lydia Marano also a received postcard, which is shown above.
Marano, who ran a science fiction bookstore called Dangerous Visions where Linda Sohus worked for her for three years until she disappeared in 1985, said the couple were "very much in love."
"Linda just didn't show for work one day," she said.
She said John and Linda may have met in her store. She also said they were both involved with the Los Angeles Science Fiction and Fantasy Society, a group of writers and fans who met regularly then and today. "They were both kind of introverted but came out with the sci-fi crowd,'' she said. She said friends in the LA science fiction community frequently speculated about where the couple went, but never suspected they may have been murdered.
Marano said she got just one postcard. She believes it is in Linda's handwriting. Between 1985 and 1994 -- she cannot remember when -- she was twice contacted for a reference about Linda Sohus, once by a clothing store and once by a credit card company.
“I think part of me still thinks Linda is alive. She was not a weak woman. She was tall. She was strong. And if somebody wanted to kidnap her, they really would have had their hands full,’’ Marano said Wednesday.
She said, however, she has been convinced since 1994 that John Sohus is dead.
In May 1994, workers digging a pool at the home where the Sohuses had once lived discovered human remains wrapped in plastic bags and buried about 4 feet underground. The remains are presumed to be those of John Sohus, but their identity has never been definitively determined.
Los Angeles County detectives are wondering if there is a link between Clark Rockefeller, the accused kidnapper who is being held in the Suffolk jail, and Christopher Chichester, the prime suspect in the disappearance of the couple.
(Photo by Lydia Marano)
