Rockefeller saga surprises former friends in German town

By Maria Cramer, Globe Staff

BERGEN, Germany -- Former classmates and acquaintances today struggled to understand how the man they knew as Christian Gerhartsreiter became the object of an intense police investigation.

"It's unbelievable," said 83-year-old Marianne Sander, a neighbor of Gerhartsreiter's mother, during an interview at her house. "It's terrible and surprising because [his parents] are such good people." Sander described Irmgard Gerhartsreiter, Christian's mother, as a talented seamstress who mended dresses and sewed clothes for virtually everyone in town.

"She's very hardworking," Sander said, patting the dirndl, a traditional German dress that Gerhartsreiter once took in for her because it was too big. "She's been working so hard her whole life."

Clark Rockefeller allegedly kidnapped his 7-year-old daughter on a Boston street on July 27. He was arrested six days later in Baltimore and the girl was found safe. He continues to maintain that his true name is Clark Rockfeller. But the Globe has reported that he was born Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter in 1961 in Germany and Clark Rockefeller is just one of several aliases he used after arriving in America in the late 1970s.

Police are probing whether he is also Christopher Chichester, a man wanted for questioning in the disppearance and presumed slayings of a San Marino, Calif. couple in 1985.

Alex Neumayer, who went to grade school with Gerhartsreiter in this resort town in the foothills of the Alps, said there was nothing in his former classmate's childhood that would suggest such a grim future.

Gerhartsreiter played soccer and rode bikes with the other children, had decent grades in school and loved mischief.

"If it came to troublemaking, he was the first to join in," said Neumayer, a tall woodworker who lives just outside of Bergen and spoke as his family packed the truck for a road trip to Croatia.

The Globe today drew a picture of Gehrartsreiter's early life in Germany, reporting that his younger brother had identified him yesterday after looking at photos of both Rockefeller and Chichester.

Rockefeller, who is being held without bail in the Suffolk County jail, said he has "no memory of being from Germany or of having a German brother," Rockefeller's attorney said yesterday.

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