Fake Rockefeller heir jailed for cold case killing

A small, bespectacled German immigrant who invented a glamorous life for himself in the US by posing as an heir to the fabled Rockefeller fortune was sentenced yesterday to 27 years to life in prison for a California cold-case murder.

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.