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Con man ‘Rockefeller’ told FBI he was a ‘pathetic nothing’

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January 17, 2012|By Maria Cramer

Gerhartsreiter faces Calif. case.

Clark Rockefeller slumped in a chair in the interview room of an FBI office in Baltimore, his left wrist chained to a metal bar, and stared glumly at his interrogators.

Why, they asked, had he lied about places he never visited, jobs he never held, and names that were not his?

He shrugged, defeated. “If you’re born short,’’ he said, “you want to be bigger.’’

The August 2008 interview, obtained by the Globe, offers new insights into the motivations of the German con artist who was born Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter but assumed many false identities over his lifetime as he charmed his way into society circles in Boston, New York, and California. It was during the five-hour interrogation, after his capture for kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter, that Gerhartsreiter dropped his pretense and admitted he was not a Rockefeller, but a “pathetic nothing.’’

This week, California prosecutors will attempt to reveal even more about his past as they lay out their case for first-degree murder against Gerhartsreiter, who is accused of killing his landlady’s son in 1985, then burying him in the backyard of the San Marino property where both men lived. Gerhartsreiter has said he is innocent.

More than 35 witnesses, including some of the well-heeled friends Gerhartsreiter made when he was living in San Marino as Christopher Chichester, are expected to testify for the prosecution and provide insights into a man who claimed he came from English aristocracy and was the heir to a European estate.

But during that 2008 interview in Baltimore, a different figure emerged: a sad, insecure man, who said he grew up with no advantages and had achieved nothing in his life with the exception of raising his daughter, Reigh.

“She is the only thing that matters in my life,’’ he said. “I’ve always been poor. I’ve never had anything.’’

His height, 5 foot 6 inches, was a constant theme throughout the interview and one of the explanations he gave for his crushing low self-esteem.

Gerhartsreiter had lived in San Marino in the early 1980s, staying in the guest house of Didi Sohus, an aging alcoholic who lived with her son John and his wife, Linda.

John Sohus was a shy 27-year-old computer programmer who adored science fiction. A 1976 San Marino High School graduate, he included an optimistic quote underneath a yearbook picture of him with shaggy hair and thick glasses.

“When you see others falling around you,’’ he wrote, “and you think the whole world is crazy, cheer up, life can’t be that bad.’’

John Sohus’s remains were found in 1994 by workers digging up the backyard for a pool.