The jury began deliberations in the Christian Gerhartsreiter murder trial after listening to the prosecutor rebut the defense’s closing arguments.

The murder victim, John Sohus, was a member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society who helped out in the club library when he disappeared in 1985. His body was found during a pool excavation in 1994.

Prosecutor Herbert Balian rejected the defense’s argument that Gerhartsreiter would have been too smart to bury Sohus’ body in two bags that could be tied directly to him — one bag coming from the bookstore at USC, where Gerhartsreiter attended classes, and the other from the bookstore at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where Gerhartsreiter was enrolled from spring 1980 to spring 1981.

“He never thought these bags would be found,” Balian said. “It’s not like he laid them on the ground for everyone to see. He buried them.”

Gerhartsreiter probably would not have been tied to the case, Balian said, if the new owners of the Lorain Road property had not wanted a pool and dug up the backyard.

Balian also answered defense attorney Jeffrey Denner’s argument that there is a possibility Linda Sohus killed her husband. First he disputed the claim, then argued it didn’t matter.

If Linda had any role in killing her husband, he argued, she would have needed help.

“Don’t be confused, don’t be mistaken. If two or three of you believe Linda is alive and the killer there is no reasonable scenario where she did it without his involvement,” Balian said. “But that is not the case. He killed. He’s guilty of murder. “

Local reports:

LA Times: Jury begins deliberation in Rockefeller impostor murder case

Pasadena Star-News: Fake Rockefeller murder trial: Prosecutor makes closing arguments

The prosecutor’s closing statement called on jurors to convict Christian Gerhartsreiter, renowned as con man Clark Rockefeller, of the 1985 killing of LASFS member John Sohus, his landlady’s adult son. John Sohus, his landlady’s adult son.

John’s remains were found buried behind the guest house, out of sight from the property’s main home and from next-door neighbors.

Around the victim’s skull were two plastic bags used during the early 1980s. One was from the bookstore at USC, where Gerhartsreiter attended classes. The other was from the bookstore at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, where Gerhartsreiter was enrolled from spring 1980 to spring 1981.

“The defendant made some mistakes in this case,” [L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Habib Balian] told jurors. “The biggest mistake he made was picking the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee to go to school.”

Balian told jurors, “You should look at each piece… Each one alone might not tell you the answer … but you put it together … and there’s going to be one singular reasonable truth – that this man Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter killed John Sohus.”

Balian emphasized the fact the defendant was in possession of the dead man’s truck when he attempted to sell it in 1988 in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Balian also noted Gerhartsreiter’s odd behavior – both as evidence of the defendant’s brilliance and to bolster a circumstantial case against him. Balian said a San Marino police officer lost an opportunity to interrogate the defendant in 1985 because the detective didn’t know how to respond to the defendant when he came to the door naked and claimed to be a nudist.

Defense attorney Jeffrey Denner argued Gerhartsreiter was a con man, but not a murderer:

 “He had quite a portfolio of illegal behavior that was following him around, so it was not surprising that he would try to stay under the radar,” Denner said in his closing arguments.

Denner stressed that there were no witnesses to the killing or burying of John Sohus, nor was there DNA or other strong forensic evidence linking Gerhartsreiter to the killing.

And he asserted John Sohus’ wife was not in the clear.

“If in fact you don’t find he actually did the murder, then an alternative theory is that Linda Sohus did it. And if Linda Sohus did it and he didn’t do it, then I’d suggest to you that the net result of this is that on some level the prosecution believes that Linda Sohus is the killer,” Denner said. “If she is the killer, she had to be alive when John was murdered. And, if she is the killer, you obviously don’t know what happened here. I suggest to you that is the stuff reasonable doubt is made of. “

However, Balian argued that Gerhartsreiter not only bludgeoned and stabbed John Sohus, he likely killed Linda too.

“What struck me as being particularly sad is that not only did the defendant kill John Sohus and not only does all the evidence indicate that he killed Linda Sohus too… not only did he end these two people’s lives, he’s going to have the gall to come in here and blame the very people that he killed. “

Local reports:

LA Times: Prosecutor urgers jurors to convict fake Rockefeller of murder

Pasadena Star-News: Prosecutor’s bombshell: Phony Rockefeller killed San Marino man AND his missing wife

LA Times: Defense: Rockefeller impostor was a con man but not a killer

The prosecution in the Gerhartsreiter murder trial spent the week leading jurors through Christian Gerhartsreiter’s transition from his “Chichester” to “Clark Rockefeller” identity.

Gerhartsreiter is charged with the 1985 bludgeoning death of LASFS member John Sohus, whose body was found in 1994 buried in the backyard of the property where John, his wife Linda, his mother Didi, and tenant “Christopher Chichester” (Gerhartsreiter) then lived. Linda has not been seen since that time. 

Gerhartsreiter, who also disappeared in 1985, soon resurfaced on the East Coast under the name Christopher Crowe. As Crowe, Gerhartsreiter gave a Connecticut acquaintance a white pickup truck registered to the Sohuses, prosecutors said. When authorities traced the vehicle to Connecticut they tried to contact Gerhartsreiter and question him about the couple’s disappearance.

Witness Mihoko Manabe met Gerhartsreiter in 1987 at Nikko Securities, a Japanese brokerage firm with a New York City office. Manabe worked there as a translator, and Gerhartsreiter, whom she knew as Crowe, was the head of a bond trading department. Eventually they began dating, and then lived together in her Manhattan apartment.

When a Greenwich, Connecticut detective tried to contact Gerhartsreiter about the Sohus case he changed his name, dyed his hair, and shredded his trash.

“He was always paranoid that someone would be rifling through our trash,” Manabe said. “He always shredded all of the addresses, shredded the garbage and we (always) threw (it) out in a public place. “

Manabe recalled when he began using the Rockefeller name.

In 1989, Manabe and Gerhartsreiter took a trip to Camden, Maine, to look for wedding venues. Gerhartsreiter made a reservation at a restaurant using the name Clark Rockefeller. It was the first time he used the name, she said.

He continued to use it, she said, because “he liked the attention that he got.”

Manabe, who spoke quietly on the witness stand, said she was embarrassed to answer questions about the couple’s relationship, which lasted until 1994, when she broke up with him.

“It’s not part of my life I like to talk about or remember,” she said.

“Chichester” was fired from Nikko Securities after its HR department found out that his name wasn’t real. He told Mahabe his real name was “Christopher Chichester Mountbatten.” He got a new job at Kidder, Peabody and Co., another New York securities firm. But he walked away from that job shortly after the Greenwich police detective began trying to meet him at the office.

Ralph Boynton, who was his boss at Kidder, Peabody, testified that he tried on several occasions to arrange a meeting between the detective and Gerhartsreiter at his firm’s New York offices.

Boynton said he did not tell Gerhartsreiter that the detective was looking for him. However, each time the detective was waiting, Gerhartsreiter failed to show up, Boynton said. Finally, Boynton said that in a telephone conversation, Gerhartsreiter asked for an extended leave of absence from the firm, saying “his parents were in harm’s way and possibly being kidnapped by foreign elites.”

By 2000, Gerhartsreiter was living part-time in Cornish, New Hampshire under the name Clark Rockefeller. There he met Christopher Kuzma, who testified that the two remained friends until 2008. Rockefeller made a lot of claims to his friend, among them:

• He raised bees and was a “microagronomist”;
• He had a private jet, but the family thought he was using it too much and it was too expensive
• He and other members of his family had personal chefs on Nantucket Island
• He owned property in Montana and was neighbors with Kevin Costner in Wyoming
• He was going to audition for a new version of “Star Wars” and once went on a trip with the movie’s theme composer, John Williams;
• He was a member of a committee in New York charged with making sure the governor’s mansion there was kept “up to snuff “
• He consulted with the Conservative Party in Great Britain, which he referred to as “Her Majesty’s opposition “
• He was a member of the World Bank
• He helped developed a theory of particle physics known as “The Casimir Effect” and was testing it onboard the International Space Station, before he sold his company to Boeing.

Kuzma said he never questioned Rockefeller’s truthfulness, even though others did.

Links to local reports:

Pasadena Star-News: Murder suspect changed name, hair color and stopped driving when cops sought him for questioning

LA Times: Ex-girlfriend recounts Rockefeller impostor’s paranoia

Pasadena Star-News: Fake Rockefeller trial: Murder suspect told friend outrageous lies

L A Times: Rockefeller impostor avoided East Coast detective, witness says

Pasadena Star-News: Murder suspect claimed to be Quaker, pacifist in TV interview