BOSTON — Clark Rockefeller may not be a descendant of the oil tycoon, but if authorities and reports are to be believed, he sure was a lot of other things:
• A German student named Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter who lived with families in Connecticut until he wore their hospitality thin.
• A teen husband who left his wife in Wisconsin a day after they wed.
• A Wall Street bond salesman named Christopher Crowe who talked a good game but rarely closed a deal.
• A guesthouse tenant named Christopher Chichester, long suspected in the disappearance and presumed deaths of the couple who owned a San Marino, Calif., home.
• And Clark Rockefeller, a stay-at-home dad who lived in a $2 million brownstone in Boston’s tony Beacon Hill neighborhood until his wealthy wife divorced him when she grew suspicious of his background.
The twisted life of multiple identities unraveled after Rockefeller allegedly kidnapped his daughter, Reigh, on July 27 during a supervised visit in Boston. He was caught a week later in Baltimore. The girl was found safe and has been reunited with her mother.
Rockefeller refuses to speak to authorities and remains jailed in Boston without bail. His attorney, Stephen Hrones, reiterated Friday that Rockefeller can’t remember anything before 1993.
Hrones said that although his client has no memory, he denies any involvement with the disappearance and presumed deaths of Jonathan and Linda Sohus of San Marino, Calif.
“There are certain things you know you didn’t do,” Hrones said.
But Los Angeles police said Rockefeller’s prints matched those on an old license application submitted by Chichester, who has long been a suspect in the disappearance of Jonathan and Linda Sohus. They also believe Chichester was an alias used by Gerhartsreiter.
Rockefeller’s prints also match those on a stockbroker license application filed under the name Christopher Crowe, The Boston Globe reported Friday, citing unnamed law enforcement sources.
The strongest word on his identity came Friday, when a man in Germany told reporters Rockefeller was his brother, Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, the son of an artist and homemaker in Upper Bavaria.
He said his older brother was born Feb. 21, 1961, in Siegsdorf, Germany, and was raised until 1978 in the same house where his family still lives today. Gerhartsreiter said his brother moved to Connecticut as a student and never returned, initially keeping in contact but out of touch since he called his parents in 1985 — the year the couple in California and their tenant Chichester disappeared.
