Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter: Where is Clark Rockefeller now? Conman's whereabouts explored ahead o

May 2024 ยท 5 minute read

Clark Rockefeller was one of the many aliases conman Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter used after moving to the US to commit a number of crimes, including the kidnapping and assault of his own daughter, until he was eventually convicted in 2009 and sentenced to four to five years.

In 2013, Rockefeller was convicted in the murder of a missing San Marino man, Jonathan Sohus, who disappeared in 1985 along with his wife Linda while the fraudster was staying at their family's guest house. Skeletal remains believed to be the missing man's were unearthed from their backyard in 1994 and only confirmed to be his in 2010. The conman was given 27 years to life for the murder charge.

According to the California Department of Corrections, Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, aka Clark Rockefeller, is currently serving his sentence at San Quentin State Prison.

Dateline: Secrets Uncovered on Oxygen is scheduled to revisit the decades-long con of the fraudster in an episode titled The Phony Rockefeller. The synopsis states:

"A high-society hustler with a flair for spinning lies, the con man known as Clark Rockefeller is accused of murder; to solve the mystery, cold-case detectives begin to retrace his steps along a decades-old trail of deceit."

The upcoming episode airs on the channel this Wednesday, May 17, at 8 pm ET.

Conman Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, aka Clark Rockefeller, found guilty of murder charge stemming from a 1985 disappearance

German-born conman Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, who took on the name of Clark Rockefeller, pretending to be a member of the renowned Rockefeller family in the 1990s, was sentenced to 27 years to life in August 2013 for the murder of Jonathan Sohus, the son of his San Marino landlady's son, who disappeared in 1985. He is currently serving time at the San Quentin State Prison in California.

Notoriously known by his alias Rockefeller, he stayed in the Sohus family's guest house until Jonathan and his wife Linda disappeared without a trace. At the time, he was using a different alias, Christopher Mountbatten Chichester. Soon after their disappearance, the fraudster himself vanished and only reappeared three months later in Greenwich, Connecticut, under the name Christopher Crowe.

Rockefeller was found guilty of first-degree murder in April 2013. Jonathan Sohus' dismembered remains were reportedly found in 1994 in the backyard of the San Marino house his mother Didi once owned. Reports state that the accused used a sharp instrument and a blunt object to kill the victim. Jonathan's wife, Linda, who went missing at the same time, remains missing to date.

In 2009, Rockefeller was found guilty of kidnapping his seven-year-old daughter from his ex-wife the year before. At the time of his murder trial, he was serving a four- to five-year prison sentence in Massachusetts and had been transferred to California. The 52-year-old had used multiple aliases over the decades before assuming the identity of Clark Rockefeller.

Born Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, he came to the United States from Germany in 1978 as a teenager on a tourist visa. He initially spent a few years in Connecticut before moving to Wisconsin, where he married a woman for a green card and left her immediately after. He then relocated to California and settled in the affluent San Marino community as Christopher Chichester from 1983 to 1985.

At one point, he even posed as a film student and boasted that he was of English royalty. Later, he went by the alias Christopher Crowe and claimed to be a producer and director of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a television series that did have a director of the same name, before moving to New York City as Clark Rockefeller.

Learn more about the case against Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, aka Clark Rockefeller, on Dateline: Secrets Uncovered this Wednesday.

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