California: Rockefeller impostor charged with murder

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A new chapter in the strange saga of a man who claimed to be a member of the storied Rockefeller family has opened with the filing of a murder charge in the disappearance of a Southern California man more than 25 years ago. Los Angeles prosecutors filed the charge Tuesday against Christian Gerhartsreiter, a 49-year-old German national who came to the United States as a teenager and then assumed many identities. One of them had been as Clark Rockefeller, a supposed heir to the Rockefeller oil fortune. He became notorious after his arrest several years ago in Baltimore on a charge of kidnapping his daughter. By then, he had spun different and elaborate tales about his past, telling friends and acquaintances that he was a physicist, an art collector, a ship captain and a financial adviser who renegotiated debt for small countries. Police had long considered him a person of interest in the killing of 27-year-old John Sohus in 1985 when Gerhartsreiter was living at the home of Sohus' mother in San Marino, the Los Angeles district attorney's office said. Sohus' body was unearthed from the backyard of the house in 1994. An investigation determined he was killed by blunt force trauma to the head. Sohus' wife, Linda, remained missing. Gerharsreiter's attorney in Boston, Jeffrey Denner, said he was surprised by the murder charge. Gerhartsreiter used several aliases, including Christopher Chichester, during his time in San Marino. He vanished shortly after Sohus disappeared, prosecutors said. He was arrested, tried and convicted in 2009 for the kidnapping of his 7-year-old daughter and is serving five years in a Massachusetts prison. No charges had been filed in the Sohus case until Tuesday. Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles district attorney, said it could take as long as two months to arrange his extradition. Published: Thu, Mar 17, 2011