The ever-changing Clark Rockefeller

California Department of Corrections releases mugshot and new information about the fabulist and con man who nearly got away with murder

Two decades ago, Christian Gerhartsreiter, now 63, posed as a Boston socialite and scion of the Rockefeller family.

Mugshot of Christian Gerhartsreiter. Courtesy California State Department of Corrections.

Gerhartsreiter was a fabulous imposter.

An immigrant to the U.S. in the late 1970s, he lived with a Connecticut family and dreamed of being Thurston Howell III, the millionaire on “Gilligan’s Island”. He adopted an accent and mannerisms to match.

In the mid-1980s, Gerhartsreiter left Connecticut. After a brief stop in Wisconsin, where he married a woman and got a green card, he came to California.

Settling in San Marino, Gerhartsreiter became Christopher Chichester, the XIII baronet of Chichester. He told folks he was related to the Royal family and intimated his middle name was Mountbatten — just like Prince Philip.

Of course it was all a lie. He was just a young man making it by faking it. In reality, he lived in the detached garage of a widow’s place on Lorain Road. In early February 1985, John Sohus, the widow’s son, disappeared. Soon after Sohus’ wife Linda vanished too.

In April ‘85 Gerhartsreiter left town — driving John and Linda’s new truck. It was the last anyone would see of him for years.

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In 1994, a new family was living in the widow’s house. They wanted a swimming pool. The crew digging up the back yard found a body buried deep beneath the tangled weeds and earth. The body was John Sohus. He’d been bludgeoned to death and cut into three distinct pieces.

Linda, a semi-successful painter, was never found.

The cops began a search for Gerhartsreiter. But it would be another 14 years before he turned up. By then he’d shed his identity as Clark Rockefeller and had become Chip Smith. He’d also kidnapped his young daughter and was the subject of a nationwide manhunt in the summer of 2008.

As for the mugshot. There’s a bit of a story to tell.