LA investigators ask for help after 'positively identifying' Rockefeller

August 11, 2008 04:06 PM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

By Michael Levenson and John R. Ellement, Globe Staff

The Los Angeles County’s Sheriff’s office said today that investigators have confirmed what had become abundantly clear in recent days: that accused kidnapper Clark Rockefeller’s true identity is Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter.

Through “numerous interviews back East and here,” and “other investigative tools,” investigators also learned that Gerhartsreiter used the alias Christopher Chichester when he was living in San Marino, Calif. in the mid-1980s, according to Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the LA Sherriff’s Office.

Boston investigators said this afternoon that they have not reached the same conclusion and have yet to confirm that Rockefeller and Gerhartsreiter are the same person, according to Jake Wark, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley.

"To our mind, the efforts undertaken by this defendant to avoid conclusive identification are simply too extensive for us to take anything at face value,'' Wark said. "Any identification we make must be checked, double checked, supported, and verified by every means possible. Those efforts remain ongoing at this hour.''

Los Angeles authorities say that Gerhartsreiter, 47, who was born in Germany, left San Marino in 1985, before detectives could question him in the disappearance of his landlords, John and Linda Sohus. In 1994, workers digging a backyard pool for the new owners of the Sohus home discovered human remains believed to be those of John Sohus. Neither Linda Sohus nor her remains were ever found.

“What it means is that we’re asking anybody who knew him or was associated with him between 1985 and 1988 to come forward,” and contact the Sherriff’s Office, Whitmore said in a telephone interview.

The official confirmation buttressed the account of Alexander Gerhartsreiter, who identified Rockefeller as his brother on Friday in Germany after being shown a photo of Rockefeller that was distributed by police after the man allegedly abducted his 7-year-old daughter in Boston July 27.

Asked about the announcement by the sheriff's office, Rockefeller's lawyer, Stephen B. Hrones, said this afternoon that he would speak to his client and make a public statement at about 5:30 p.m.

Two Los Angeles County homicide detectives traveled to Boston to interview Rockefeller last week but he turned them away. Rockefeller, who is being held without bail in the Suffolk County Jail, rejected the detectives' request for an interview because he is under no obligation to cooperate with them.

The Globe reported Friday that investigators matched Rockefeller's fingerprints to a thumbprint included on immigration records submitted by Gerhartsreiter in the late 1970s when he was entering the United States as an exchange student in Connecticut. Those prints have also been matched to a stockbroker license application filed under the name Christopher Crowe, believed to be an alias used by Christopher Chichester, who has long been a suspect in the 1985 disappearance and presumed slayings in San Marino.

After Gerhartsreiter arrived in Connecticut, he moved to Wisconsin to marry a young woman in 1981. That woman's sister told the Globe today that she suspects her sister and Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter got married so he could get a green card.

“It wasn’t like they dated,” said Beth Litza in a telephone interview today from Wisconsin. “To me, it seems like it was kind of on the quick side.”

Litza said her sister did not explicitly say that it was a green-card marriage, and Duhnke could not be reached for comment.

After Wisconsin, Gerhartsreiter headed to California in the mid-1980s as Chichester. He returned East to work on Wall Street as Crowe, and eventually married Sandra L. Boss on Nantucket in 1995 as Clark Rockefeller.

Police say on July 27 Rockefeller kidnapped his 7-year-old daughter, Reigh Storrow Mills Boss, off a street in Boston. Authorities said that he had left a fingerprint behind on a wine goblet, a print that matched the stockbroker application filed by Christopher Crowe.

Rockefeller was captured last month in Baltimore after an international manhunt and was extradited to Boston.