Ersatz ‘Rockefeller,’ captured in Baltimore, faces California murder charge

Posted: 8:13 pm Wed, January 18, 2012
By Associated Press

ALHAMBRA, Calif. — A man who once masqueraded as American aristocracy came to court Wednesday in a baggy prison jumpsuit to face a murder charge and was told he could not be referred to as Clark Rockefeller.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Jared Moses appeared taken aback when lawyers for Christian Gerhartsreiter asked if he could be referred to in court as Clark Rockefeller because that is the name many witnesses would know him by.

Moses said he realized the defendant had many aliases, but he said Gerhartsreiter would be called by his true name in court.

The German immigrant is charged with the murder of a San Marino man who disappeared in 1985 and whose bones were unearthed in the wealthy Los Angeles suburb in 1994. Gerhartsreiter was brought to California after being convicted of kidnapping in Boston, where he had masqueraded as an heir to the Rockefeller oil fortune.

Moses allowed TV and still cameras in court but barred audio recording of the preliminary hearing, which will determine if there is enough evidence to put Gerhartsreiter on trial for murder.

“There will likely be a trial, and I’m not comfortable with previewing the testimony of witnesses to a jury pool,” the judge said.

In 1985, Clark Rockefeller did not exist. The pseudonym, one of many fake identities assumed by Gerhartsreiter, would surface years later when he began cutting a swath across high society claiming to be an heir to the Rockefeller fortune.

As a world-class impostor, he conned people into believing he was a physicist, an art collector, a ship captain and a financial adviser who renegotiated debt for small countries. Even his wealthy wife was unaware of his true identity.

Gerhartsreiter eluded authorities for years, moving to New York and then Boston where he hobnobbed in high society. He claimed to be an heir to the fabled Rockefeller fortune, marrying a woman with whom he had a daughter. She divorced him when she found out he had duped her.

Last year he was convicted of kidnapping his daughter in Boston during a bitter custody dispute and taking her to Baltimore, where he was found and arrested. Gerhartsreiter is serving a four- to five-year prison sentence on that charge.

He would be eligible for parole this year if he was not facing the California charge, which could bring him 26 years to life in prison if convicted.

At the kidnapping trial, Denner claimed his client was suffering from a delusional disorder and was legally insane when he snatched his daughter during a supervised visit. Prosecutors portrayed him as a master manipulator who used multiple aliases and told elaborate lies about his past since moving to the United States in the 1970s. For the murder charge, prosecutors have 30 to 40 witnesses ready for the two-week preliminary hearing, many of whom are forensic experts. They are seeking to convince a judge there is probable cause to believe that Gerhartsreiter is a killer and should be held for trial.

One of Gerhartsreiter’s Boston attorneys, Jeffrey Denner, said it was unlikely that the defense will put on a case at this stage of the proceedings. He said that Gerhartsreiter is “appropriately somber” as he faces the court hearing.

The complaint against him lists five different aliases: Christopher Chichester, Clark Rockefeller, Christopher Crowe, C. Crowe Mountbatten and Charles “Chip” Smith.

Denner has said Gerhartsreiter is not a violent man, and prosecutors have not yet offered a motive that might have led him to murder. The motive and other details of the case could be disclosed at the preliminary hearing.