The elusive man with a big name

Los Angeles County authorities have offered few details about what led to the killing of John Sohus, a 27-year-old computer programmer. But a new book by veteran reporter and Vanity Fair contributing editor Mark Seal provides an intriguing, frightening theory of what may have happened to Sohus and his wife, Linda, who both went missing in 1985.

Backed by details the public has not heard, Seal argues in “The Man in the Rockefeller Suit’’ that Gerhartsreiter wanted the couple out of the way so he could have a clear path to the assets and property Sohus stood to inherit from his alcoholic mother.

Seal offers an absorbing tale that begins in a Boston courtroom, where Gerhartsreiter was tried and convicted for kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter, Reigh. Seal retraces Gerhartsreiter’s life, starting in the rural German town where he was raised by adoring parents but dismissed by many of the townspeople as a spoiled, arrogant troublemaker. The reader follows Gerhartsreiter as he uses a student visa to enter the United States and proceeds to lie his way into high-society circles in Greenwich, Conn., San Marino, New York, Cornish, N.H., and finally, Boston.

Seal spent two years talking to nearly 200 people who met, worked with, and, in some cases, loved Gerhartsreiter.

Seal tossed back beers in a Bavarian pub trying to get the suspicious people of Gerhartsreiter’s hometown of Bergen to open up. He sipped tea with the upper-crust elderly ladies of San Marino, who welcomed Gerhartsreiter into their homes and in some cases gave him money. And he pored over police reports, including secret grand jury minutes he received from an unnamed source, news clippings, school records, and immigration documents in an effort to understand his subject.

Seal’s meticulous research makes him a convincing narrator. He diligently explores every known facet of Gerhartsreiter’s life and travels, but the most interesting and freshest material is found in San Marino.