Rockefeller refuses to meet with LA investigators

(Photo by Lydia Marano)

John and Linda Sohus in happier times.

By Shelley Murphy, Maria Cramer, and John R. Ellement, Globe Staff

Accused kidnapper Clark Rockefeller has refused to talk to two homicide detectives from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department who have called him a "person of interest" in the disappearance and presumed slaying of a newlywed couple from a wealthy California suburb in 1985.

The detectives showed up at the Suffolk County jail on Nashua Street today requesting to meet with Rockefeller, but were not allowed to see him because he declined to meet with them, said Steven Tompkins, a spokesman for the Suffolk County sheriff's office.

"He said he was not speaking to anyone,'' Tompkins said, adding that Rockefeller also declined numerous requests from the media for interviews.

"He has nothing to do with this murder,'' said Stephen B. Hrones, the attorney representing Rockefeller. "He's saying he knows nothing about it. He denies it vehemently. He denies ever living out there.''

Rockefeller is being held in the general population at the jail and has been a "model inmate," Tompkins said. "He's not causing any trouble. I think he's doing fine. He's behaving himself.''

The two homicide detectives from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department arrived in Boston Tuesday night to try to determine whether Rockefeller is the mysterious guesthouse tenant who disappeared at about the same time that his landlords, John and Linda Sohus, were last seen alive in San Marino, Calif. The tenant, Christopher Chichester, who also used multiple aliases, was always a focus of the investigation, but left before he was ever questioned, according to authorities at the time.

Nine years after the couple vanished, a construction crew digging a pool in the yard unearthed several trashbags holding human remains that authorities believe -- but could never prove -- were those of John Sohus. Neither Linda nor her remains were ever found. Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, declined today to discuss today whether DNA evidence could be used to positively identify the remains found in 1994.

"I will tell you that we're going to use all tools available to us to try to determine who that individual was, who the remains belonged to, and who this individual in Boston is," Whitmore said.

LA County homicide detectives became involved over the weekend when Rockefeller's fingerprints, taken after his capture in Baltimore Saturday afternoon, apparently matched the prints on an old license application under a different name. That name, in turn, has been linked to the Sohus case. A law enforcement official said yesterday it was an application for a stock brokerage license filed with a federal regulatory agency. The Globe first reported in Tuesday's editions that authorities were investigating a link between Rockefeller and a long-unsolved California slaying.

Rockefeller, 48, was extradited from Baltimore Tuesday and arraigned on charges that he abducted his daughter on a Back Bay street July 27. A judge ordered him held without bail. No plea was entered.

Prosecutors said in court that they have been unable to find any information about Rockefeller before 1993, when he met Sandra L. Boss, whom he married in 1995 in Nantucket. Boss, a 41-year-old senior partner at McKinsey & Co., thought her husband had obtained a marriage certificate, but later she learned he never got one, prosecutors said. They divorced in 2007, and Boss was given full custody of their child, while Rockefeller was granted only supervised visits three times a year.

Assistant District Attorney David Deakin said in court that Rockefeller planned for at least a year and a half to abscond with his daughter, Reigh Storrow Mills Boss. He met with realtors in Baltimore to look for homes and then began telling friends he planned to take her on a trip to Bermuda or Peru on his sailboat. Deakin said Rockefeller's purpose was to misinform his friends so that "those people would inadvertently give false information to cover his tracks."

"We can't even verify that he is a United States citizen," Deakin said.

Rockefeller's attorney said today that his client "doesn't remember anything before 1993. He thinks his name is Rockefeller.''

"He's not claiming amnesia," said Hrones, who met Rockefeller through a mutual friend before he was charged with kidnapping. "He's just saying he doesn't remember.''

A half-sister of John Sohus said today that his disappearance broke the heart of their father, Robert Sohus.

"When he found out where his remains were, it devastated my father," Ellen Sohus said. "My father died six years ago but he often said he thought about my brother every single day and would never be at peace until his murder was solved."

Ellen Sohus described her older brother as a "very thoughtful and caring … gentle soul" who worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and "was a computer nerd before they were even popular.''

His wife, Linda Sohus, was a powerfully built, 6-foot-1-inch tall woman who had a mane of red hair. She towered over John Sohus, who was barely over 5 feet tall.

"They were very much in love,'' said Lydia Marano, who ran a science fiction bookstore called Dangerous Visions where Linda Sohus worked for three years until her disappearance.

"Linda just didn't show for work one day,'' Marano said today by phone, recalling that she received one postcard from Paris that bore what appeared to be her signature.

Between 1985 and 1994, Marano said, she was twice contacted for a reference about Linda Sohus by a clothing store and a credit card company, but she cannot recall the exact date.

“I think part of me still thinks Linda is alive," Marano said. "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."

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