A notorious
Rockefeller impostor has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the
death of a man whose bones were found buried beneath a California home in 1985.
Christian Gerhartsreiter was tried 28 years after the disappearance of newlyweds John and Linda Sohus in a heavily circumstantial cold case.
Much of the prosecution’s evidence focused on the strange behavior of the man who adopted many names including Clark Rockefeller. He masqueraded as an heir to the fabled oil fortune for 20 years.
The verdict was reached on Wednesday after the jury deliberated about a day.
Scroll down for video
Authorities said Gerhartsreiter was a German immigrant who lived
another life long ago, occupying a guest cottage at the home of Sohus’
mother in the ritzy suburb of San Marino.
He was known then as Chris Chichester and intimated he was of royal lineage. He joined the church, befriended residents and told some he was a film student.
A friend said Linda Sohus once described the tenant in the cottage owned by John’s mother as 'creepy' and said she and her husband never spoke to him.
The town folk didn’t connect him with the disappearance of the Sohus couple in 1985, but shortly after they vanished, so did he.
No trace of Linda has been found but John’s bones were unearthed during excavation of a swimming pool at the San Marino property in 1994. With no clues, the mystery went cold again.
But across the country, a man variously known as Chris Crowe, Chip
Smith and Clark Rockefeller was inventing new lives for himself.
This impostor wormed his way into high society and talked his way into important jobs. He married a wealthy woman and controlled her funds, but his identity unraveled when he kidnapped their daughter during a custody dispute. She testified that he became increasingly paranoid when police begin inquiring about him.
When he was unmasked, he became the subject of magazine articles, true crime books and TV movies that sought to explore his bizarre story and get to the heart of the man behind the pseudonyms.
The resulting publicity led California authorities to revisit the Sohus disappearance. They realized the man in custody in Boston was not an heir to the Rockefeller fortune but was the man who had lived in San Marino decades ago.
Already serving
time for the kidnapping of his young daughter in a Boston custody
dispute, Gerhartsreiter was close to the end of his sentence and headed
for freedom when the murder charge changed that. After a quarter
century, authorities believed they had linked him to the disappearance
of his old neighbor, Sohus.
Defense attorneys suggested that Linda Sohus, not their client, killed her husband. But no motive was offered for her or Gerhartsreiter to have killed the young man.
Prosecutors filled in the blanks of the defendant’s whereabouts during the decades of his disappearance. But some details were unlikely ever to be explained.
He chose not to testify in his own defense and much of the trial testimony came from people now hobbled by age who knew him in San Marino as Chris Chichester, a stranger with a murky past.
Yesterday, prosecutor Habib Balian told the jury that Christian Gerhartsreiter murdered John Sohus in San Marino 28 years ago and said that all the evidence they needed to convict him was there.
Christian Gerhartsreiter was tried 28 years after the disappearance of newlyweds John and Linda Sohus in a heavily circumstantial cold case.
Much of the prosecution’s evidence focused on the strange behavior of the man who adopted many names including Clark Rockefeller. He masqueraded as an heir to the fabled oil fortune for 20 years.
The verdict was reached on Wednesday after the jury deliberated about a day.
Scroll down for video
Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter of Germany is
found guilty of first degree murder in his murder trial in Los Angeles
Superior Court in Los Angeles, California, today
He was known then as Chris Chichester and intimated he was of royal lineage. He joined the church, befriended residents and told some he was a film student.
A friend said Linda Sohus once described the tenant in the cottage owned by John’s mother as 'creepy' and said she and her husband never spoke to him.
The town folk didn’t connect him with the disappearance of the Sohus couple in 1985, but shortly after they vanished, so did he.
No trace of Linda has been found but John’s bones were unearthed during excavation of a swimming pool at the San Marino property in 1994. With no clues, the mystery went cold again.
Christian Gerhartsreiter sits with one of his
attorneys as a verdict was reached at the Clara Shortridge Foltz
Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles today
Gerhartsreiter, who went by the alias Clark Rockefeller,was found guilty of killing his landlord, John Sohus, in February 1985
The German native who consorted for years with
New EnglandÃs social elite by pretending to be a Rockefeller was
convicted Wednesday in Los Angeles of first-degree murder
This impostor wormed his way into high society and talked his way into important jobs. He married a wealthy woman and controlled her funds, but his identity unraveled when he kidnapped their daughter during a custody dispute. She testified that he became increasingly paranoid when police begin inquiring about him.
When he was unmasked, he became the subject of magazine articles, true crime books and TV movies that sought to explore his bizarre story and get to the heart of the man behind the pseudonyms.
The resulting publicity led California authorities to revisit the Sohus disappearance. They realized the man in custody in Boston was not an heir to the Rockefeller fortune but was the man who had lived in San Marino decades ago.
Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, 52, was accused
of bludgeoning his landlady's adult son with a blunt object and then
digging a 3-foot-deep grave in the backyard of the victimÃs home
Ellen Sohus, sister of John Sohus whose remains
were unearthed in San Marino, California in 1985, speaks to the press
after Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter of Germany was found guilty of first
degree murder in Los Angeles
A photo of swimming pool area being unearthed
1994 and finding the remains of John Sohus in the backyard of a home on
Loraine Road in San Marino, California
Defense attorneys suggested that Linda Sohus, not their client, killed her husband. But no motive was offered for her or Gerhartsreiter to have killed the young man.
Prosecutors filled in the blanks of the defendant’s whereabouts during the decades of his disappearance. But some details were unlikely ever to be explained.
He chose not to testify in his own defense and much of the trial testimony came from people now hobbled by age who knew him in San Marino as Chris Chichester, a stranger with a murky past.
Yesterday, prosecutor Habib Balian told the jury that Christian Gerhartsreiter murdered John Sohus in San Marino 28 years ago and said that all the evidence they needed to convict him was there.
'This
isn't a movie, a book, a TV show, a docudrama,' the Deputy District
Attorney said in his closing argument, referring to the fact that the
case has been turned into all of those things over the years.
'This case is about two people who lived and died,' Balian said.
Gerhartsreiter is on trial in California, U.S.
for the 1985 murder of John Sohus, who disappeared from his home in San
Marino with his wife, Linda
Defendant
Christian Gerhartsreiter was charged only with the murder of Mr Sohus in
suburban San Marino, but the prosecutor was allowed to say he
believes Gerhartsreiter also killed Mr Sohus' wife, who remains missing
after nearly three decades.
'She's
dead', Balian said repeatedly as he described the disappearance of
Linda Sohus and her husband, John - newlyweds he said had no reason to
vanish.
The
bones of John Sohus were unearthed in the backyard of his mother's
former house in San Marino a decade after he and his wife disappeared.
He was found to have died from multiple fractures to the skull, probably
caused by a blunt instrument such as a baseball bat.
Gerhartsreiter
lived as a tenant on the property in 1984 and 1985, but called himself
Chris Chichester then.
He vanished around the same time the couple
disappeared in 1985, according to witnesses.
As part of his closing argument, Balian used a Powerpoint presentation that showed pieces of a jigsaw puzzle falling into place.
Balian predicted that the defense would seek to paint Linda Sohus as the murderer of her husband.
Previously the trial heard from Gerhartsreiter's ex-wife Sandra Boss, right, to whom he lied about who he was
'They're going to
batter her over and over and say she was the mastermind,' Balian said in
his presentation. 'But all the evidence in this case is going to point
you to the fact that only one person was the mastermind. ... He is
charged with murder.'
However,
defense attorney Jeffrey Denner was less demeaning of Linda Sohus than
he was of his own client. He said Gerhartsreiter, a German immigrant,
was a white-collar criminal with a long list of offenses including
identity theft and immigration fraud.
'Over
a period of time in this country, he committed a lot of crimes with
which he was never charged', Denner said. 'It's no wonder he would want
to stay under the radar.'
But the lawyer said his client had not been running from a murder investigation.
The defendant, seen here with pen in his hand, took copious notes as the prosecutor summed up the case against him
Denner noted that
no trace evidence was scientifically connected to the defendant, and he
suggested it was more likely that Linda Sohus had a 'dark side' of her
life that led her to kill her husband. But he offered no evidence to
support that contention.
'That's
the stuff that reasonable doubt is made of', he told jurors. 'You don't
know what happened. If you don't know what happened, you can't convict
anybody.'
Balian noted that Monday was the 28th anniversary of the day Linda and John Sohus were reported missing.
'What do we do with a case 28 years old?' he said, acknowledging there are no eye witnesses or physical evidence in the case.
'Circumstantial evidence is just as powerful', Balian said as he detailed the pieces of his puzzle.
'Not
only does he flee, he changes his identity and discontinues contacts
with friends. Why? Because he's a murderer', the prosecutor said.
Eventually,
Gerhartsreiter turned up on the East Coast using the name Clark
Rockefeller and living well at the expense of his wealthy wife.
Gerhartsreiter was previously prosecuted for kidnapping his own daughter and is serving a prison sentence for that crime.
Defense
lawyers have suggested that he lived a life of pretense, making up wild
stories about royal lineage, but they say he never killed anyone.
'He
lied at will and his life was based on that', Denner said. 'He said he
was a filmmaker and he could amend the script anytime he wanted.'
Gerhartsreiter was previously accused of kidnapping his own daughter Reigh, above, in 2009
Balian reminded
jurors of testimony by former friends from San Marino. A woman
remembered seeing dirt in his yard where a large hole had been dug.
A
forensic expert said traces of blood were found on the concrete floor
beneath a rug in the guest cottage the defendant occupied, bt it was
never clear if the blood was human or animal, and it was not linked to
Gerhartsreiter.
The
prosecutor also emphasized what was found in the backyard grave along
with bones - plastic shopping bags from the University of Southern
California and University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, two colleges the
defendant attended.
'The case is easy', said Balian. 'The evidence is right in front of your eyes.'
The only thing missing, he acknowledged was a motive. Why would the defendant kill John Sohus?
'The
prosecution need not prove why', he said. 'It's not part of our burden
of proof. Nor do we need to prove the type of weapon used or where he
was killed.'
Superior Court Judge George Lomeli instructed jurors
that if they cannot agree on the charge of first-degree murder, they
have the option of considering second-degree murder, which does not
require premeditation.
He told jurors to return Tuesday for Balian's rebuttal before the start of their deliberations.
Accused: Christian Gerhartsreiter is accused of the 1985 murder of John Sohus
Man of mystery: Gerhartsreiter did not tell the women in his lift that he was actually a German immigrant
Connection: The bones believed to belong to Mr Sohus were found buried
at a home Garhartsreiter was living at while going by the name
Chichester
Violent death: The remains believed to be of
John Sohus, seen with his then-wife Linda, who is also missing, were
found to have died of multiple fractures of the skull inflicted by a
blunt object, possibly a baseball bat