- In the criminal justice system,
detectives and prosecutors face daunting challenges
when money is the motive for murder.
[dramatic sting]
- A call come in as the possibly missing couple.
He said that they had gone to New York on a secret mission.
They just vanished.
- Years after a young couple goes missing,
new evidence reignites a bizarre and twisted case.
- They found the remains of a human.
- Could the discovery of a body
be the key to unlocking both a cold-case murder
and a con man's true identity?
- He kept changing his name,
so we were one step behind him the whole way.
- And it becomes national news because of the last name--
Clark Rockefeller.
Suddenly, it's everywhere.
- This was a master manipulator.
This is someone who had to run.
- These men and women dedicate their lives to law and order.
- There's a lot of unanswered questions yet.
- These are their true stories.
* *
- Of all the cases that I've worked on,
the Sohus case really stands out because of the mystery.
There's this Agatha Christie-esque tale.
There's a great con artist involved.
There's wealthy people.
There's a community that's seeing something
it's never seen before...
A community that enabled it.
[dramatic sting]
[soft music]
* *
- April '85, I was a patrol officer in San Marino.
And I was inside the police department,
and a call come in as a possibly missing person
or missing couple-- John and Linda Sohus,
down on Lorain Road.
They'd been missing for a couple of months.
They just vanished.
I did some more digging, and I did
personal interviews with some of the people
that knew John and Linda Sohus.
- In July of 1982, Linda met John Sohus.
Linda was a smart individual.
She was really interested
in the art world and science fantasy.
John was a Dungeons & Dragons freak.
They started going to games together,
and she may not have played,
but she was there hanging out with him.
And then out of the blue, they were engaged.
- It was an odd match.
But in my opinion, there is a lid for every pot.
I believe she was happy,
but Linda and I did not have the kind of relationship
where we would call each other and say, how you doing?
We did not have that.
- This book is the chronology of everything
about John and Linda that I've kept through the years.
On Halloween 1983, they got married.
There they are on their wedding day.
- As the newlyweds got on their feet,
they moved in with John's adoptive mother, Didi.
- John's mom, his adopted mom, Didi Sohus,
was a socialite in the '40s and '50s.
Really high on the echelon there.
It was an awesome house.
- Some of the homes that these people live in
are some of the largest mansions on the West Coast,
if not even in the United States.
When they moved in with Didi,
they're living in basically a guest bedroom in the house.
But this house has a granny flat,
but they can't move in there
because there's a renter there named Christopher Chichester,
who's kind of persuaded their mom
that he's going to pay the rent
and help her keep her home together.
Linda wanted to be with her husband alone.
The income wasn't there
for them to be able to make that move.
Then this dream job sort of falls out of the sky.
- The last time I saw John and Linda was when they came over
to my house in Orange County in their new car...
a white Nissan truck.
And she says, I have to go to New York.
John had an opportunity to interview
for a high-level, high-security government job,
and she was going with him.
* *
Okay, it's a little odd,
but you guys have always had an odd life.
Why not?
- It seemed like it was going to be a good thing.
They would be back in a week or so.
Okay, great.
[dramatic music]
- March 1985, I call Linda and John
at home in San Marino.
His mom, Didi, informs me that they have gone away,
and she doesn't know if they will ever come back.
- Sue and I had a conversation on the phone.
You know, we shared what we each knew.
We thought if we put our heads together,
we could figure it out.
It's hard to imagine, you know, two adults just going missing.
- I wanted to chat with Didi, John Sohus's mother.
* *
She said they were gone on a secret mission.
I thought that was kind of unusual,
so I went ahead and wrote that in my notes.
- I spoke with Didi several times.
The conversations were unreasonable,
because she was a drinker.
I said, can you give me contact information?
She said, I cannot contact them.
This third party is the only one
who contacts me.
It seems as though the third party
was Christopher Chichester,
who was living in the guesthouse.
- He was half-British, half-American royalty,
somewhere between a baron
and an earl.
He was the 13th Baronet of Chichester.
- Chichester,
because of his social status in the community,
had grown to be a trusted confidant of John and Linda.
Officer Yankovich made his way to the guesthouse
to follow up on this lead.
- I knocked on the door,
and this little short guy
answered the door,
and he was nude.
And I said, can I come in? And he said, yeah.
And I asked him to put some clothes on.
He said, no. He says, I'm a nudist.
I prefer to stay nude.
I've been on calls before
where you encounter both male and female, nude.
Some of them would put a robe on or grab a towel.
Some of them would just stay nude.
It's something you have to put up with in police work.
He was pale, kind of skinny-looking.
He was sweaty. He was dirty.
His hair was messed up.
Looked like he'd been out gardening.
I asked him where John and Linda Sohus were.
He said that they had gone to New York on a secret mission.
I said, what type of secret mission?
He goes, it's something involving satellites.
But that was, like, two months ago
that they were supposed to be back.
And I asked him if he had any ID,
and he showed me his driver's license.
It said Christopher Chichester on it,
and Christopher Gerhartsreiter.
He was going by a different name.
And I didn't notice any accent.
Things just didn't make sense.
I was with him for probably a good 15, 20 minutes,
then we walked outside.
On the way back out the driveway,
I saw a Nissan truck.
We ran the license plate.
It come back to John and Linda Sohus.
So I came back to the office
to run Christopher Chichester's driver's license number.
- While Christopher was, at the very least,
an eccentric character, a check on both names--
Christopher Chichester and Christopher Gerhartsreiter--
showed no criminal history.
- My mom did receive a postcard.
"Looks like we made a wrong turn.
Linda."
Not "Love, Linda."
Not "See you soon, Linda."
And the handwriting looked like her handwriting.
My mom's reaction to the postcard was confused.
She didn't understand what was happening
and how come Linda wasn't calling on the phone.
* *
I do think it was odd,
and I have a suspicion that...
she was forced to do that.
I don't know what he was telling John and Linda,
but whatever it was, apparently they were falling for it.
* *
- Didi calls the police
and files a missing persons report of her own,
because now Chris, who lived in back, is gone,
and so is John's truck.
She's now sufficiently concerned.
Chris was the connection that she had to her son,
or at least to news about her son.
Now everybody's gone.
- Now we have a missing couple,
a missing tenant,
and a missing pickup truck
that were not to be found anywhere.
- Three grueling years pass by
with no sign of Linda, John, or Christopher Chichester.
Refusing to let the case go cold,
Officer Yankovich combs through reports
and uncovers that John and Linda's truck
was recently sold in Greenwich, Connecticut.
- That's when I contacted detectives
from Greenwich, Connecticut.
- Detective Yankovich, he had given a couple of addresses--
John and Joann Bishop,
who supposedly had purchased the truck in July of 1988.
So I responded there.
- The Bishops didn't know
a Chichester or a Gerhartsreiter
but said they had bought the truck
from a hedge-fund manager at their church
named Chris Crowe.
- Now that I have a name, Chris Crowe,
I am trying to run him down.
* *
Found out he had a mailbox address
in Berlin, Connecticut.
So I reached out to the Berlin Police Department,
and that's when I found out that Christopher Chichester,
Christian Gerhartsreiter,
and Chris Crowe were all one person.
* *
- Never had a case like this.
Where is this guy? Where's John and Linda Sohus?
We knew this case wasn't over.
- It was just this constant-- where is she?
Where are they? What happened to them?
- Forensic investigators spent the morning
pulling out every possible piece of evidence
they could find.
- The head had been covered with two plastic bags
and then buried.
- And I'm like, I can't believe this.
We need to find out where this guy is.
- Three years after the disappearance
of John and Linda Sohus,
detectives in Connecticut had uncovered
that the truck owned by the couple was sold by Chichester
under the alias of Chris Crowe.
Police quickly traced Crowe's mailing address
to his residence.
[dramatic sting]
- A local homeowner had a garage apartment
on his property,
and he rented it to Mr. Crowe.
His landlord did mention that he appeared there
with a white pickup truck.
After speaking with his landlord,
I learned that Mr. Crowe had worked for a hedge fund
in downtown Greenwich.
[dramatic music]
So I drive into the city
to meet up with him in the office.
I'm going to surprise him with a surprise visit.
I'm there at 7:00.
Security take me upstairs to his desk,
and I'm sitting there waiting and waiting.
Never shows up.
His boss tells me that he got a call from Chris
saying that his mother and father had been kidnapped...
in Pakistan
and that he was going to have to take two months off
to go look for them.
Just a little common sense would say,
there's something wrong here.
His boss indicated
that because Mr. Crowe was going to become a broker,
the U.S. Securities and Exchange
required fingerprints.
And I said, so did you take his fingerprints?
He said, yes, I did.
His boss also gave me a few telephone numbers,
because sometimes he stayed with these individuals.
I reached out to a New York number.
Mihoko Manabe picked up the phone that I had called.
She indicated that Chris Crowe was not there,
and she would give him the message
that I was looking to speak with him.
He never returned the phone call.
The fingerprint card I got
was placed in the national database.
So, if Christopher ever got arrested anywhere,
it would automatically show up
that he was wanted in connection
with the missing persons.
With no other additional information
to locate him or reach out to him,
I ended up having to close our case.
- Where is she? Where are they?
What happened to them?
I would have dreams almost every night
where she would walk into a room, and I'd go,
where the hell have you been?
And she goes, I just had a trip.
I'll tell you about it in a minute.
- I need to wait for the detectives
to get more information.
I had nothing else to offer.
I tucked Linda away.
- In February of 1988,
three years after John and Linda's disappearance,
Didi passed away,
never having learned what happened to her son.
Without answers, Linda's disappearance left her family
in a state of ambiguous loss.
- Over the course of time,
my mother didn't talk about it.
And it only came up again
when the house Didi was living in was sold
and the new owners were putting in a pool.
[dramatic sting]
* *
- In May of '94,
the owner of Didi Sohus's home on Lorain Road in San Marino
decided to build a swimming pool in the backyard.
- As they're digging,
they found the remains of a human.
* *
The head had been covered with two plastic bags
and wrapped around his neck with a telephone wire.
The arms and legs, torso,
were wrapped in, like, a Saran Wrap material
and then buried.
- My friend Mary was watching the news,
and she calls me up, and she goes,
you won't freaking believe this!
I'm like, what?
She goes, they found bones in the backyard
where John and Linda lived!
And I went, what?
- Forensic investigators spent the morning
pulling out every possible piece of evidence
they could find.
- My whole body was just like, oh, my God,
that's what has happened.
Someone was killed.
- Investigators believed
that they might have finally recovered
the bodies of John and Linda Sohus.
Looking for signs of foul play,
sheriff's deputies processed the entire property,
including the guesthouse
that the elusive Christopher Chichester
had once lived in.
- During the luminol process,
they found four spots on the floor that were blood...
and wiping details in the blood.
[camera beeps, shutter clicks]
* *
This confirms a crime scene.
No blood was taken, because at the time,
DNA was not as sophisticated as it is now.
* *
- When the human remains are found in the backyard,
I knew they had to be one or both of them.
So I have to have that mindset.
They are dead and gone, and I will not see my friends,
personally, ever again.
* *
- There was strong evidence in this case
that these were the bones of a male
and that this individual died
from blunt-force head trauma.
So one here in the frontal area,
and the others were here on the right side of the skull,
but extending into the temporal bone.
But there was an issue as to whether or not
he might also have been stabbed.
The clothing showed some slits.
One of these shows what appears to be
a well-defined, small slit in the fabric.
There was another such slit
consistent with stab wounds.
[dramatic sting]
* *
- You know, it's a reasonable assumption
that those remains would be John's.
Sadly, they were not identified,
because he's adopted.
Biological mother is deceased.
There's no biological dad that we know of.
- Without any biological evidence or dental records
to work from,
investigators took another dive
into Christopher Chichester's background
to figure out what might have caused this con man
to turn into a killer.
- Gerhartsreiter came to Connecticut in '79
as a German exchange student.
He was 16 years of age.
And he stayed with residents there
who are accustomed to taking in exchange students.
They hadn't heard from him in years.
- In Berlin, Connecticut, we found that
Christopher Gerhartsreiter
left for the University of Milwaukee, Stevens Point,
and he had shortened his name while he was in school
to Christian Gerhart.
And then he showed up at the USC film school as Chichester.
* *
- At some point, USC film student Christopher Chichester
became a baronet
and then later became Chris Crowe,
a former movie producer turned finance manager.
- Every time he wanted to reinvent himself as somebody--
as somebody of importance, somebody of wealth.
- We clearly know it's a murder,
and we have a person of interest.
But he kept changing his name,
so we were one step behind him the whole way.
And so the case went cold.
* *
Fast-forward to 2008.
- Clark Rockefeller allegedly grabbed his daughter Reigh
during a supervised visit in Boston.
- July 27, 2008,
a man going by the name Clark Rockefeller
is going through a bad divorce with his wife, Sandra Boss,
and he kidnaps his daughter.
- And then fled in this SUV to New York,
where they were last seen at Grand Central Station.
- And it becomes national news
because of the last name, Rockefeller.
Suddenly, it's everywhere.
- 23 years after the unsolved disappearance
of John and Linda Sohus,
authorities would finally catch a break
when a seemingly unrelated case broke national headlines.
[dramatic sting]
- She's believed to be in danger
and may be traveling with Clark Rockefeller.
- Days after Clark Rockefeller kidnapped his daughter,
we get a call from a real-estate agent.
She watched the "Today" show with Clark Rockefeller,
and she said, I immediately recognized him.
That's Chip Smith.
I just sold him a house.
So she calls the FBI.
[dramatic music]
- The FBI are able to get him
out of this apartment
on a ruse.
And as he walks out onto the street,
thinking he's Chip Smith,
an FBI agent hollers out, hey, Clark!
And he turns around.
* *
- Chip Smith, aka Rockefeller,
is immediately grabbed by the FBI,
and so he is arrested for parental kidnapping.
When he is fingerprinted back in Boston,
bells and whistles go off because the fingerprint card
collected by Detective Allen had been put in the system
as Gerhartsreiter.
- This man, who had eluded investigators for decades
by changing his identity from Christian Gerhartsreiter
to Chris Gerhart to Christopher Chichester
to Chris Crowe to Clark Rockefeller
was finally in custody.
- The fact that this new Rockefeller--
I call him Crockefeller--
is all of a sudden linked to this creepy guy
that Linda mentioned in an offhand comment back in 1983,
and it all rolls back to him, I'm just flabbergasted.
- So you go through all sorts of different emotions.
Anger, frustration, sadness.
- I've seen him on photos,
but here he is.
He's living flesh.
- The man of many names was sentenced
to five years in prison for parental kidnapping.
As he sat behind bars, authorities in Los Angeles
were finally able to start building a murder case.
* *
- I was given the file and said,
you're going to Major Crimes.
And by the way, we got a good case for you.
You're prosecuting a Rockefeller.
I'm like, a Rockefeller?
They're like, well, it's not a real Rockefeller.
- George said that when he interviewed him,
he was going by the name of Chris Chichester.
- It's easy to get confused when there's so many names
for one person. - I understand.
- They let me know, this is going to be a long road.
This is a complicated case.
And I told them,
I'm absolutely in on this case.
And the next time... both: He surfaces...
- He's Rockefeller. - He's this guy right here.
- Mr. Rockefeller. - Right.
- As the team built their case,
a clear motive came into focus--money.
- When John and Linda Sohus went on this "trip"
for a secret government job interview in New York,
they left Didi behind.
And Didi was older.
She was of ill health, and she was alone.
- Didi was convinced John had abandoned her
for this new wife.
She wrote him out of her will.
The San Marino house was valuable.
I believe $310,000 in 1985.
- With John and Linda Sohus out of the way,
Christopher Gerhartsreiter,
aka Chris Chichester,
would have been home alone with Didi Sohus--
a vulnerable old woman sitting on a large property
in a wealthy San Marino neighborhood.
- Though Didi had never gone through with it,
prosecutors theorized
that she had been compelled to leave her estate
to the only person who had stood by her side--
Chichester.
To help ensure a conviction,
prosecutor Balian had investigators review
all the evidence associated
with John and Linda Sohus's disappearance.
* *
- Sue, Linda's mother,
all got postcards from Paris, France.
They're all dated the same day.
"Kinda missed New York--
oops--but this can be lived with."
Some of the language in it
doesn't sound like English as a first language,
like "this can be lived with."
Those postcards could have been written under duress.
We thought he was the guy who mailed them.
- You know, maybe somebody says to them,
hey, we're going on a secret mission,
but we need to make sure that nobody knows where you are.
So, if you don't mind,
can you write out a couple of postcards for me?
Well, who wouldn't do that?
You're already buying into the secret mission.
Why not a little bit of James Bond cover?
[dramatic sting]
* *
- I was still working the case,
trying to run down leads.
We went into the city to interview Mihoko
at the FBI office.
She goes, before we say anything, I have to, uh--
I have to apologize to Detective Allen.
And I said, why would you have to apologize to me?
And she says, well, the day you called
and I told you he wasn't there,
he was standing next to me.
She continued to say that he had told her
that I was not a detective,
that I was a hired hit man out to kill him.
- There's this bad man. He's not the police.
They kidnapped my parents.
We're probably going to have to go on the run,
so you need to go on the run with me.
- While Clark Rockefeller was sitting behind bars
for the kidnapping of his daughter,
investigators continued to track the backstory
of the shapeshifting suspected murderer
of John and Linda Sohus.
[dramatic sting]
Investigators learned that Rockefeller, as Chris Crowe,
had tricked Mihoko Manabe into going on the run with him.
- So he dyes his hair, grows a beard.
They threw their trash, you know, in dumpsters.
They would walk on opposite sides of the street
in case they were being followed.
- After eight years of life on the run,
the two finally split up.
[dramatic music]
Mihoko married another man, but gave Clark
her Upper East Side New York apartment in 1992.
- I met Clark Rockefeller for the first time
when he moved into my building.
He was kind of paranoid.
He was kind of an odd duck but a very nice person.
I just took it in stride, of this is--
the eccentricity of Clark Rockefeller.
Soon after I'd met him, Clark rings me up on the phone.
[line trilling]
Says, you know, Martha, I need your advice.
He says, you know, I've inherited some paintings.
I said, okay, Clark. So tell me, what do you have?
And he says, well, I have this artist, you know.
I don't know if you've ever heard of him.
His name is Jackson Pollock.
And I've got, you know, somebody named Rothko,
oh, and then there's this artist named Mondrian.
Have you ever heard of these artists?
So I'm like--
I had already been sitting down,
because if I hadn't been, I would have been on the floor.
And he said, can you come over right now and take a look?
So, you know, like, in ten seconds, I'm next door.
And there they were.
They were, you know, hanging on the walls.
And I said, how did you get these?
And he said, well, you know, my great-aunt Blanchette,
you know, died recently, and maybe you've heard of her.
You know, she started that little old museum
on 53rd Street-- the Museum of Modern Art.
I said, oh, yeah, yeah.
So of course she would own paintings like this.
And she had died within this timeframe.
[dramatic sting]
I invited Clark to an opening
of a contemporary artist that I was showing.
This was the first time Clark came out
as an art collector.
- These are purportedly famous paintings.
Turned out, they were all fraudulent.
- I've never doubted they were real,
and I'm not the only person to say that.
The director of Knoedler Gallery,
one of the heads of Sotheby's--
they agree that the art that they saw in his home was real.
So he was able to open up
all kinds of new social circles for himself.
- Detectives learn that these affluent social circles
is how Clark Rockefeller met Sandra Boss.
* *
- Clark Rockefeller met Sandra Boss
at a party he threw,
and they formed a relationship and fell in love.
- Ultimately, they get married.
Sandra Boss is a smart and beautiful woman.
She went to Stanford and then Harvard Business School.
She worked for a large engineering company.
She made a couple million dollars a year.
And then Sandra got pregnant.
* *
When the daughter came around,
he became the caretaker of the daughter.
So he was Mr. Mom while she went to work.
- Clark Rockefeller, financially, didn't contribute
anything to their household.
- He told her the family was tied up in litigation
over a submarine contract
and can't access his money for a while,
but any day now, the millions would come rolling in.
And the whole time they were married,
he had full control of her money.
- Investigators learn that after years
of funding her husband's extravagant lifestyle,
Sandra eventually filed for divorce.
[dramatic sting]
- During the divorce process, Sandra Boss found out
that Clark Rockefeller didn't exist.
* *
She's hired a private detective
who cannot find a trace of Clark Rockefeller.
So they're in a custody battle in the city of Boston,
and she's very insistent with the judge
that he not have visitation,
'cause he will disappear with his daughter
and she will never be able to find him.
So he gives up the battle for custody,
and he is bought off for $800,000
by Sandra Boss in the divorce.
The judge orders monitored visitation.
- During one of those monitored visits,
he kidnapped his daughter
right in front of the monitor and drove away
and took on a new identity-- Chip Smith.
- And then he is arrested for parental kidnapping.
* *
- As investigators piece together
decades' worth of aliases and cons,
identifying John Sohus's body still remained an obstacle.
- John Sohus was adopted.
We had to unseal the adoption records.
But then his biological mother--
she had since passed and was cremated.
The father on the birth certificate--
track him down...
take his DNA.
However, it was not a match.
So then found a half-sibling
with the same biological mother.
She agreed to provide DNA samples.
The DNA from the half-sibling matched the skull.
Finally, we had a positive identification
on John Sohus.
- More than two decades after he disappeared,
the remains found in Didi Sohus's backyard
had finally been identified as her son, John.
[dramatic sting]
[dramatic music]
* *
- It was pretty apparent that Christian Gerhartsreiter,
also known as Clark Rockefeller,
killed this couple to protect his lifestyle.
They were a young couple, recently married,
living in Mom's home,
when there's a guesthouse just a few feet away
that they could be living in.
And he occupied that guesthouse,
and I'm sure he felt challenged that he might lose
that residence in San Marino.
He loved his position in San Marino.
He loved being the 13th Baronet of England.
And John and Linda Sohus,
who likely wanted to live in that guesthouse,
challenged his status in that community.
And that likely played into this confrontation
which led to death.
[camera shutter clicking]
There was no DNA, no fingerprints,
no hair fibers, no forensic evidence whatsoever
connecting this man to the crime.
That's not surprising.
Too much time had passed.
What we did find is that whoever
wrapped this body in plastic
used two bags to cover the body's head.
One of the bags was from
the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee bookstore,
and the other was from the USC bookstore.
Only one person lived at 1920 Lorain Road,
attended the University of Wisconsin
and attended USC.
* *
I believe the clear motive in this killing
was to protect his status and his identity
in the San Marino neighborhood.
I believe Christian Gerhartsreiter
killed John and Linda Sohus in cold blood.
He then fled, and he entered a new life of deceit,
manipulation, and greed.
- The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
charged Christian Gerhartsreiter
for the murder of John Sohus.
* *
- I knew that Linda had disappeared with John
and was never seen again,
but I didn't have her body.
We made a tactical decision not to charge the defendant
with the murder of Linda Sohus.
* *
This is just a small fraction of what our large poster wall
would have looked like when we were unraveling
these identities.
So this man went
from German immigrant Christian Gerhartsreiter
to Christopher Chichester,
the 13th Baronet of England,
to Chris Crowe, the bond trader
who worked at Kidder, Peabody,
to Clark Rockefeller, the wealthy scion
of the great Rockefeller family.
* *
The common thread behind all of these alter egos
that he took on
is that they were all based
on wealth and power.
This was not a situation
of someone who just wanted to start a new life.
This is someone who had to run,
who had to change his identity
because he was escaping murder.
* *
[dramatic sting]
- The murder trial of a con man--
he's a German-born scam artist whose best known alias
is Clark Rockefeller,
and now he's on trial in California
for a lurid cold-case killing.
- The main trial happened in March of 2013.
So I attended the trial.
There was no way I was going to look over at Gerhartsreiter,
because I didn't want to ever,
like, mistakenly get eye contact.
But he hardly ever looked up.
* *
- I knew when this case began that I was going to explain
to this jury that this was a con man
who thought he was smarter than them,
a fabulist who told wild stories
to convince people of whatever he wanted to,
a master manipulator who always had a lie in his back pocket
to pull out when he needed to.
But we didn't want to let the defendant's lies
and who he was overshadow what had happened.
This was a brutal, cold-blooded murder.
It's about John Sohus,
who was brutally bludgeoned repeatedly in the head.
We knew that from the very beginning.
The defense had one choice, and that's to tell this jury
that Linda Sohus was the master killer.
She killed her husband, she buried him in her backyard,
and she fled to Paris, France,
where she mailed these postcards.
So I started with Linda, not the defendant's lies,
and I told the jury who she was.
This is not a killer, ladies and gentlemen.
This is a fun, silly, nonviolent person
with a great sense of humor.
She was all about having fun
with those she loved best,
with John.
This was a happy couple, ladies and gentlemen.
This was a happy couple.
And I told that story to the jury from the very beginning,
before I even mentioned Christian Gerhartsreiter,
because I wanted the jury to understand
who these people were and how nonsensical it would be
that Linda Sohus,
when her relationship with John was blooming,
would just kill him for no reason
and disappear and abandon her friends,
abandon her family, which she loved dearly.
To me, this case was clear--
the vast amount of circumstantial evidence,
coupled with his manipulation, lies, and deceit.
Was it Linda Sohus, the loving wife of the victim,
or was it this masterful manipulator
who lies incessantly?
Which one of those two killed John Sohus?
I think the choice was clear.
- LA County DA Balian presented a powerful case
that showed a career con man covering up
a murder motivated by greed.
To prove it, he highlighted previous testimony
from Clark Rockefeller's high-powered ex-wife,
Sandra Boss.
- He made a big effort of borrowing
some expensive jewelry from his family.
He was very intelligent.
He was one of the most intelligent people
that I'd ever known.
He told me that his parents
were George Rockefeller
and Mary Roberts.
- Sandra Boss testified
that sometimes people are vulnerable,
and they can be really smart in one part of their life
and not as smart in other parts of their life.
This was a very brilliant woman,
well-educated, with an extremely high-powered job,
and she was duped.
- But Sandra Boss was not alone.
There were many others who had fallen victim
to Gerhartsreiter's slippery avarice.
It was only a matter of time
before he would trip over his own lies.
- Is there a real name that we should be calling you?
- Clark Rockefeller.
- Clark Rockefeller, you say, is still your real name?
- I believe so.
- So you believe you grew up in the United States?
- I believe I grew up in New York.
I'm quite sure I grew up in New York City.
- Clark Rockefeller is still your real name?
No, it's not.
You're Christian Carl Gerhartsreiter.
You were born in Bergen, Germany,
to two Catholic parents.
One was a sign painter. One stayed at home.
[dramatic music]
That's where you were raised.
* *
Lies. Lies.
And this is really the only time the jury
could see him convincingly tell his bald-faced lies.
- Did you kill John and Linda Sohus?
- My entire life, I've always been a pacifist.
I am a Quaker...
and I believe in nonviolence.
And I can fairly certainly say
that I have never hurt anyone.
- In our estimation,
he confessed during that tape.
What did you never hear in response to that question--
did you kill John and Linda Sohus?
He couldn't even say no.
And what reason does he give?
Uh-oh.
"I didn't kill them because I'm a Quaker."
You're not even a Quaker.
You turned Quaker to get married
so you didn't have to have an officiant at your wedding.
He never said no, because he killed them.
- Gerhartsreiter killed them
to preserve the life he claimed to have at the time
as the 13th Baronet,
and the potential inheritance of Didi's six-figure estate.
- Ladies and gentlemen, the evidence is clear.
He's gotten away with it long enough.
I'm asking you--
I'm going to stand here right now,
on behalf of the people of the state of California,
and I'm going to ask you, for once and for all, tell him,
you are accountable for your actions.
- Even though we all know all of these things,
they're going to say,
yeah, but it doesn't absolutely make him the murderer.
I got a sense of, I hope he's proven guilty.
But this is really old stuff,
and it's all circumstantial,
which doesn't necessarily lead to guilty.
* *
[dramatic sting]
- We the jury, in the above entitled action,
find the defendant...
Christian Gerhartsreiter...
guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree
of John Sohus.
- Christian Gerhartsreiter was sentenced
to 27 years to life in state prison--
25 years for the premeditated murder
and one year for each of the weapons--
the blunt object and the knife.
- I want him to be convicted on the murder of Linda,
but I don't think that's going to happen.
But he's going to jail.
You know, he's not a young man, and hopefully he'll die there.
I'm sorry to be so blunt,
but...
okay.
- Every time I've made an entry
and I thought it was done, I was proven wrong.
So this is an open book.
This continues until my death.
* *
I still have that little, itty-bitty spark that says,
you don't see her dead body, and until you do,
there's always a chance that she is alive somewhere.
* *