Clark Rockefeller Will Face Trial in LA

Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, a.k.a. Clark Rockefeller, will face trial in California on charges of murdering LASFS member John Sohus in 1985. He is also a suspect in the disappearance of Sohus’ wife Linda, whose body has never been found.

Already serving 5 years in Massachusetts for kidnapping his daughter, Gerhartsreiter reportedly will not fight extradition to California to face murder charges.

He will not arrive in California as soon as authorities expected, however:

“We don’t have an exact date,” said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. “There’s a delay, but we’re making progress. It will be a month to a month-an-a-half.”

A recently published book, The Man in the Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal, attempts to unravel the tissue of lies wrapped around the imposter’s life. Says the LA Times review:

Seal, who first tumbled down the Gerhartsreiter rabbit hole when profiling him for Vanity Fair, shows how the imposter used his computer skills, personal magnetism, pedigree dog and even his cherubic daughter to worm his way into elite circles. Like many con men, Gerhartsreiter had a preternatural ability to suss out individuals susceptible to his fabrications, who would then vouch for him and open doors.

But as Seal points out, even in pre-Google times, basic library research would have revealed that Gerhartsreiter wasn’t the 13th Baronet of Chichester, grandson of Lord Mountbatten, owner of England’s Chichester Cathedral, producer of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents Presents,” a Yale/Harvard grad or owner of the Mondrians, Rothkos and Motherwells on his walls.

3 thoughts on “Clark Rockefeller Will Face Trial in LA

  1. That’s a jackass statement. It was in no way the club’s fault that a murderous sociopath managed to work his way in.

    I just want justice to be done for Linda Mayfield, as decent a soul as ever entered Freehafer Hall.

  2. @David: Chichester, the name he went by when he knew the Sohuses, was never a LASFS member. I never heard that he visited the club. Should I take your comment to mean that you have heard that?

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