Fake Rockefeller heir jailed for cold case killing
Christian Gerhartsreiter, 52, asserted that he did not commit the mid-1980s murder of John Sohus in the city of San Marino and asked to read a voluminous motion he had submitted to the court. When Judge George Lomeli refused, he withdrew the motion.
Gerhartsreiter, who fooled friends, lovers and a wife during an extraordinary three-decade charade, entered the courtroom balancing in his arms a mountain of transcripts from his trial. He submitted a brief sentencing memorandum asking that he be given time served and probation. The judge rejected that.
Asked if he had any last words for the court, Gerhartsreiter said: “I can only say again I want to assert my innocence. I did not commit the crime for which I was convicted.”
Gerhartsreiter took over his own representation after a jury convicted him of first-degree murder in the death of Mr Sohus, whose bones were found buried at the suburban San Marino home where the defendant had lived under the name Chris Chichester.
Mr Sohus, a 27-year-old computer programmer who was the son of the defendant’s landlady, vanished with his wife, Linda, in 1985. No trace of her has been found. Gerhartsreiter hinted at a recent hearing that he might have information about her whereabouts but never expanded on that.
At trial, witnesses testified about the stranger who came into their elegant town, befriending church members who invited him into their homes. Their testimony exhumed the ghosts of the young newlyweds, who vanished shortly before the man then known as Chichester also disappeared.
In subsequent years he was variously known as Chris Crowe, Chip Smith and as a Rockefeller while worming his way into high society, moving from New York to Boston. He married a wealthy woman and controlled her funds. But his identity unravelled when he kidnapped their daughter during a custody dispute.
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