Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Criminalia.
Speaker 1: This season, we were exploring the lives and motivations of
Speaker 1: some of the most notorious impostors throughout history. I'm Maria
Speaker 1: Trumarqui and I'm Holly Fry, and today we are talking
Speaker 1: about Chris Gerhart, Christopher Chichester, Christopher Crowe, Clark Rockefeller, and
Speaker 1: Chip Smith. We know that's a long list of people,
Speaker 1: but they're all actually one person. These are all aliases
Speaker 1: of a man named Christian Gerharts, writer, and we're going
Speaker 1: to have a quick aside here on names, because as
Speaker 1: he assumed identities, he had some of his own affectation
Speaker 1: based pronunciations of some of these names. For example, what
Speaker 1: most people would call Chichester, which is how we are
Speaker 1: pronouncing it, he put on the Bostonian by way of
Speaker 1: england Ish as Chichester, which kind of cracks me up, because,
Speaker 1: as I told Maria before this, it sounds like I'm
Speaker 1: doing a comedy sketch if I try to pronounce it
Speaker 1: that way. It's true, I feel like I'm trying I'm
Speaker 1: talking about cheetos, so I can't do so, Also, we'll
Speaker 1: get into his backstory. He was born in Germany, so
Speaker 1: really his first name would probably be pronounced more like Christian,
Speaker 1: but we're americanizing and making it Christian in part because
Speaker 1: most of the news coverage about him would refer to
Speaker 1: him that way, and also all of his story really
Speaker 1: takes place in the US, and he never really seemed
Speaker 1: to be using that name anyways, right, pronunciation of that
Speaker 1: one matters, right, So Christian is probably the most recent
Speaker 1: impostor that we'll talk about this season. But you can't
Speaker 1: ignore him because for three decades he actually got away
Speaker 1: with pretending to be someone else, or actually he pretended
Speaker 1: to be a lot of someone else's. He he posed
Speaker 1: as a variety of things, including a British baronet, a
Speaker 1: cardiologist in Las Vegas, Hollywood producer, a bond broker in
Speaker 1: New York. I mean, there's a shortlist. So perhaps his
Speaker 1: most memorable ruse, though, was an astonishing two decade long
Speaker 1: period where he posed as a member of a very
Speaker 1: famous and very wealthy family. And his timeline has a
Speaker 1: lot of ins and outs. It's actually very very hard
Speaker 1: to kind of track some of it. So what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do for simplicity sake, is take a look at
Speaker 1: four of his larger than life identities, many of whom
Speaker 1: go by the name Christopher. Some people knew Christian as
Speaker 1: Chris Gerhardt, who was a University of Wisconsin film student
Speaker 1: sort of. Others knew Christopher Chichester, who we mentioned a
Speaker 1: descendant he claimed of British Royalty. Others knew him as
Speaker 1: Christopher Crowe, of film and TV producer. We'll get to
Speaker 1: why that's extra confusing in a moment, but most people
Speaker 1: knew him as Clark Rockefeller, who in that guy's He
Speaker 1: claimed to be heir to the Rockefeller dynasty, so he
Speaker 1: pretended to be from a rich and powerful family, but
Speaker 1: Christian actually was not. He was born on February one
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one, and he grew up in a
Speaker 1: small German town, so Christian had been short. He was
Speaker 1: described as skinny and fantasy obsessed as a child, and
Speaker 1: a friend of his family had told journalist Jessica van
Speaker 1: Zack of the Boston Herald that, and we're going to
Speaker 1: quote this, he was like Batman, always going into different rules,
Speaker 1: and he always had crazy ideas. It wasn't until he
Speaker 1: was seventeen years old that he arrived in the US,
Speaker 1: and that was on a tourist or possibly a student
Speaker 1: visa to Connecticut as an exchange student, and he had
Speaker 1: told his parents that he had been hired as a
Speaker 1: DJ at a New York radio station. That was a falsehood,
Speaker 1: as pretty much everything he said. But what he really
Speaker 1: did was just jump from host family to host family,
Speaker 1: conning each of them with his good looks and charm,
Speaker 1: but also kind of irritating them with his arrogance and
Speaker 1: quirky behavior. And we actually have an example of that.
Speaker 1: So Christian was not necessarily the best house guest. He
Speaker 1: met a young man like himself who was hitchhiking, and
Speaker 1: he was offered a night at this guy's house in Connecticut,
Speaker 1: you know, for a fellow traveler. And it didn't take
Speaker 1: him long to take them up on that offer, but
Speaker 1: he overstayed his welcome by months and not eight months.
Speaker 1: Each day he spent there, he expected his hosts to
Speaker 1: prepare his breakfast and maybe launder his clothing as well.
Speaker 1: That would be nice. Eventually, though, the family said they
Speaker 1: kicked him out. Can you imagine, Yeah, you can crash
Speaker 1: on my couch tonight and then like three months later,
Speaker 1: you're like, it's Q three. I'm I'm folding your socks.
Speaker 1: I don't know how this happened. Once he started to
Speaker 1: become established in the United States, Christian claimed to be
Speaker 1: from Boston, Massachusetts. There is actually an apocryphal story that
Speaker 1: floats around out there that he was known to eat
Speaker 1: Boston cream pie every day in an effort to prove
Speaker 1: that he truly came from there. I have a lot
Speaker 1: of friends from Boston. I don't know any of them
Speaker 1: that eat Boston cream pie every day or maybe even frequently. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we obviously cannot confirm that dessert story, but it is
Speaker 1: an indicator of maybe some of his his proclivity towards peccadillos.
Speaker 1: Uh So, after he hopped from couch to couch, he
Speaker 1: moved to Wisconsin to study film at the University of
Speaker 1: Wisconsin Milwaukee, and it was also the first time that
Speaker 1: he transformed himself. He became a man named Chris Gerhard.
Speaker 1: Some records suggest that Christian actually didn't attend officially as
Speaker 1: a student at the university, that he did go to
Speaker 1: some classes film classes, but a degree was not really
Speaker 1: his motive for attending school. Anyway, he was looking for
Speaker 1: a relationship that would make him eligible to get a
Speaker 1: green card, so that's known officially as a permanent resident card,
Speaker 1: and it would grant Christian permanent residency in the United States.
Speaker 1: And he did find a woman in Wisconsin who would
Speaker 1: and did marry him, thus enabling this whole plan. That
Speaker 1: was a woman named Amy Dunk and they married in
Speaker 1: nineteen eight one. Chris got his green card as Chris Gerhardt,
Speaker 1: and the two of them eventually divorced. All but one
Speaker 1: of one account of their marriage reported that they didn't
Speaker 1: divorce until that seems like a long, quickie marriage of convenience.
Speaker 1: But you know, we all let stuff slide now and
Speaker 1: again um. Following his divorce from eighty though, Christian transformed
Speaker 1: himself once again, Yes, and this time Christian became Christopher T.
Speaker 1: Chester with an R. The alleged nephew of Lord Mountbatten,
Speaker 1: who by the way, was actually a real person, and
Speaker 1: the second cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth. The second
Speaker 1: Christian now had made himself into royalty and also he
Speaker 1: was a self proclaimed computer expert and stockbroker. He wore
Speaker 1: Ivy League clothes and was practiced enough to have impeccable
Speaker 1: manners and an aristocratic accent. He asked people to call
Speaker 1: him a baronet. One woman recalled him as Christopher chichesterte
Speaker 1: Baronet of England. He had business cards that read thirteenth
Speaker 1: Baronet of Chichester, which also featured his family crust of
Speaker 1: a huron with its wings spread and an eel in
Speaker 1: its beak to complete this ruse. He wore ascots, and
Speaker 1: he liked to talk about the Mount Batton family foundation
Speaker 1: that incidentally didn't actually exist. He claimed he was good
Speaker 1: friends with author J. D. Salinger, and through his charm only,
Speaker 1: he was offered no fewer the three jobs in the
Speaker 1: securities field. You know, it's funny. When we were doing research,
Speaker 1: I saw that he claimed to have had a visit
Speaker 1: from Brutney Spears and I couldn't find another source but
Speaker 1: but mentioned that. But because it was Christian, I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he said it. I'm sure he didn't have
Speaker 1: a visit, but I'm sure he said. But okay. So
Speaker 1: according to his friends, there was actually a more down
Speaker 1: to earth ch Chester. He was interested in film noir
Speaker 1: and his favorite movie director was Alfred Hitchcock. He said
Speaker 1: his favorite TV show was Gilligan's Island, and he would
Speaker 1: actually mimic the accent of millionaire castaway Thurston Howell. The
Speaker 1: third which, um, I don't know if you remember this
Speaker 1: was a character who was known as the Wizard of
Speaker 1: Wall Street. He believed that this was a religious show. Actually,
Speaker 1: and that will quote from a press interview. The characters
Speaker 1: represent the seven deadly sins. Gilligan is slow, the Skipper
Speaker 1: is anger, the Professor is pride, Mary Anne is envy,
Speaker 1: Ginger is lust, and the millionaires wife is gluttony, which
Speaker 1: leaves the millionaire as greed. I have heard that analysis before.
Speaker 1: I had never heard that before, to which I go, mate, Right, coconuts,
Speaker 1: how did they fit in? We talked about that later.
Speaker 1: Like Chichester, mostly bragged about his wealth, including a cathedral
Speaker 1: that he claimed he had inherited, and that he was
Speaker 1: willing to have moved to the US there would be
Speaker 1: no mean feat also claimed to live only in the
Speaker 1: most affluent neighborhoods. Some people, though, were a little surprised
Speaker 1: that someone of such high ranking royalty would drive a
Speaker 1: tam Dotson with an interior that was covered with yellow
Speaker 1: post it notes. I can't handle that I drove a
Speaker 1: Dotson when I was a knowledge. It's not a luxury vehicle.
Speaker 1: No it is not, but I have in my hand
Speaker 1: now I love it. Right. But if you're also sort
Speaker 1: of painting yourself as a little bit of an eccentric
Speaker 1: like you can get away with something like that. Other
Speaker 1: people that spent time with him noticed that, for example,
Speaker 1: when they all went out to eat, he never once
Speaker 1: picked up a check. Chichester lived rent free in a
Speaker 1: guesthouse of a woman named Ruth d d. Sohu's Legally
Speaker 1: she wasn't allowed to rent the space out to anyone,
Speaker 1: but that worked out just fine for her new tenant.
Speaker 1: D D's son, John was in his twenties and he
Speaker 1: worked at a low level job in the computer department
Speaker 1: of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. John's wife, Linda,
Speaker 1: was a clerk at the Dangerous Vision science fiction bookstore,
Speaker 1: and the couple lived with d D in the upscale
Speaker 1: community of San Marino, California, And that's just outside Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and their plan was to save money for their own place,
Speaker 1: and everything it seemed was pretty good between the family
Speaker 1: and they're not quite really a tenant tenants. Mr Chichester room,
Speaker 1: guesthouse roommate um. When John and Linda went missing in
Speaker 1: early February night five, it was more than two years
Speaker 1: after Chichester had moved. Indeed, was naturally growing concerned as
Speaker 1: the days passed. The couple had told friends and family
Speaker 1: they were going to New York for some sort of
Speaker 1: top secret work for John, but it was all very
Speaker 1: unclear um. Some stories also suggested that the couple went
Speaker 1: to Europe. There were a few postcards sent to d
Speaker 1: D and friends, but they stopped coming, and d D
Speaker 1: called the police to report them as missing. Her tenant
Speaker 1: slash roommate confusion. There, Christopher Chichester was also missing, she reported.
Speaker 1: Despite John's mother's concern, investigators treated the couple's disappearance as
Speaker 1: a voluntary missing person's case, but John and Linda were
Speaker 1: never heard from again. So right now we're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick break for our sponsor, and when we're back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how it was possible to
Speaker 1: pretend to be a Rockefeller for twenty years. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Criminalia. Let's talk about when Christian made his first mistake.
Speaker 1: Christian moved away from San Marino the same year John
Speaker 1: Linda went missing and the police began asking questions. He
Speaker 1: went back to the East Coast and moved to Greenwich, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: where he transformed himself into Christopher Crowe, a Hollywood TV
Speaker 1: and film producer. He claimed to be the producer and
Speaker 1: director of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which actually was a TV
Speaker 1: show for real, and it did have a director named
Speaker 1: Christopher Crowe, but this was not, of course, the Christopher
Speaker 1: Crowe that we are talking about. I always feel so
Speaker 1: bad for people who someone just decides to use their
Speaker 1: name and resume as their own. What a mess, you see.
Speaker 1: It occasionally happened just with confusion over names on social media.
Speaker 1: So when it's something nefarious, it's got to be like
Speaker 1: a whole extra layer. And it was in Greenwich where
Speaker 1: Christopher Crow made that first real mistake. So Greenwich is
Speaker 1: on Connecticut's Gold Coast, which Greenwich was and is known
Speaker 1: for its mansions and its wealth, and it's many large
Speaker 1: financial service companies and hedge funds. So while he was
Speaker 1: living there, Crow met a lot of very wealthy people.
Speaker 1: He also met Chris Bishop, who was a minister's son
Speaker 1: and also an aspiring filmmaker, which drew him to Crow.
Speaker 1: The two met at an Episcopal church in town, which
Speaker 1: was considered to be an elite church to attend. We're
Speaker 1: getting a little bit ahead of where we need to be.
Speaker 1: But at this point, no one would have guessed that
Speaker 1: twenty seven years after their meeting, Bishop would be called
Speaker 1: to the stand at a murder trial to describe the
Speaker 1: man he knew almost three decades before. He did go
Speaker 1: on at that trial to testify that actually, no one
Speaker 1: had ever questioned Crow's stories back in Greenwich, and there
Speaker 1: was no reason to and why he had decided to
Speaker 1: trade his celebrity studied career to become a bonds trader um.
Speaker 1: But like I said, it's a little bit more information
Speaker 1: than we need right now. It was in Greenwich where
Speaker 1: Christian began to work at financial institutions to prepare himself
Speaker 1: for his next role and his biggest fake yet, which
Speaker 1: was pretending to be a Rockefeller Under his Crow alias,
Speaker 1: he conned the brokerage firm S N. Phelps in Company
Speaker 1: into hiring him to work with the firm's computers. Here's
Speaker 1: the rub a social security number to get a job,
Speaker 1: and Crow was not a real person and thus did
Speaker 1: not have one, so he was fired when the company
Speaker 1: discovered that the social Security number that he had provided
Speaker 1: when he was hired actually belonged to serial killer and
Speaker 1: self proclaimed son of Sam David Berkowitz. Yep, yeah, he
Speaker 1: really can't sometimes make this stuff up. I'm presuming his
Speaker 1: logic was like, this guy isn't outlooking for jobs, so
Speaker 1: there won't be any problem with this. He's very dizzy,
Speaker 1: so without a social Security number, he surprisingly was employed
Speaker 1: by other companies. He was hired by Nico Securities Limited
Speaker 1: in the corporate bonds department until he was fired for
Speaker 1: not selling any bonds, like none, not at all. He
Speaker 1: also worked for Kidder, Peabody and Company, but quit his
Speaker 1: job abruptly when he heard the investigators were looking for
Speaker 1: him in connection with the disappearance of John and Linda.
Speaker 1: Investigators did visit him at his workplace to question him,
Speaker 1: but he had vanished. One key reason they made that
Speaker 1: visit was because Crow had made a pretty big mistake.
Speaker 1: He had given a white Nissan pickup that was the
Speaker 1: same truck that had belonged to John and Linda, sohus
Speaker 1: to Chris Bishop, who we mentioned just a moment ago.
Speaker 1: The problem was that when Bishop tried to register it.
Speaker 1: It was discovered that the truck actually belonged to the
Speaker 1: missing couple. Within days of discovering this whole missing truck situation,
Speaker 1: Detective Allen of the Greenwich Police Department also discovered that
Speaker 1: Christopher Crowe was also known as Christopher Chichester of California,
Speaker 1: and that he had already fled Greenwich. For the next
Speaker 1: three and a half years, Christian really did disappear. There's
Speaker 1: no record of where he was, or what he was doing,
Speaker 1: or who he was with. But when he resurfaced in
Speaker 1: the mid early to mid nineties, it was as Clark Rockefeller.
Speaker 1: Influential and powerful people were taken in by this man.
Speaker 1: He claimed to have a master key to Rockefeller Center,
Speaker 1: and he was adamant that he was, in fact Clark Rockefeller.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine a master key to that? It's just
Speaker 1: one key. I keep it in my pocket. Well, it's
Speaker 1: also one of those things. Were kind of like, I'm
Speaker 1: from Boston and I'll prove it by eating a Boston
Speaker 1: cream pie every day. He might like two obvious connections.
Speaker 1: I'm a Rockefeller, I have a key to Rockefeller Center.
Speaker 1: Like it's just so strange, clunky, and it works somehow
Speaker 1: because of eccentricities. I don't know, um, But what we
Speaker 1: do know is that as a Rockefeller Christian was a
Speaker 1: khakis and cost shirt wearing kind of guy who was
Speaker 1: well known and well liked in his Beacon Hill neighborhood
Speaker 1: in Boston. He had an estimated sixty million dollars worth
Speaker 1: of artwork from masters including Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock.
Speaker 1: But while Rockefeller like to brag about his art collection,
Speaker 1: he couldn't actually pronounce all of the names of the
Speaker 1: artists and works that hung on his walls, and actually
Speaker 1: even wouldn't be until years later that everyone would learn
Speaker 1: that those paintings were actually forged. I mean, I will say,
Speaker 1: I bet there are plenty of people with a lot
Speaker 1: of money to throw around that don't know the names
Speaker 1: of all the artists whose work they may be in
Speaker 1: possession of. I don't think you're wrong. I'm just buying.
Speaker 1: I'm not into art, I'm just into possession. Um. One
Speaker 1: for recalled that Rockefeller once implied he was from the
Speaker 1: Percy Rockefeller line of the family. That was significant because
Speaker 1: Percy's uncle was John D. Rockefeller. Of course, the family
Speaker 1: was still obscenely wealthy, right you wouldn't wanna. I think
Speaker 1: that one line wasn't necessarily as wealthy as the other.
Speaker 1: They were like um In Rockefeller under the name James
Speaker 1: Frederick Mills Clark. Rockefeller married a woman named Sandra Boss,
Speaker 1: who was a Harvard Business School graduate and a senior
Speaker 1: partner at McKenzie and Company, which was is a global
Speaker 1: management consulting firm. Rockefeller said he lived off of his
Speaker 1: family's money. Sandra later testified that Rockefeller was quote charming,
Speaker 1: and that she believed all of the stories he had
Speaker 1: told her at the beginning of their relationship, because why
Speaker 1: wouldn't she. She stated that she thought Rockefeller was quote
Speaker 1: the most intelligent man she had ever met, and the
Speaker 1: couple had a daughter together in two thousand one. In
Speaker 1: and they lived in Cornish, New Hampshire, where Rockefeller bragged
Speaker 1: his friends and neighbors that he was a wealthy Yale
Speaker 1: graduate who owned a business abroad. He went to great
Speaker 1: lengths to hide his actual identity from everyone, even his wife, Sandra, insisting,
Speaker 1: for example, that she filed her tax returns as a
Speaker 1: single person. Although she earned all of the family income,
Speaker 1: she stated it was her husband who controlled the family's finances.
Speaker 1: When her father dug into who his daughter had married,
Speaker 1: he learned that Rockefeller wasn't really telling the truth in
Speaker 1: many ways and on several topics, including the claim that
Speaker 1: his mother had passed away, and after going down a
Speaker 1: few more rabbit holes her her family began to wonder
Speaker 1: if their daughter was being conned. He eventually growing suspicious herself.
Speaker 1: Sandra hired a private investigator to investigate this whole thing,
Speaker 1: and that person discovered that her husband was definitely not
Speaker 1: who he claimed to be, but they still weren't actually
Speaker 1: sure who he was. After discovering that her husband had
Speaker 1: lied about his identity throughout their twelve year marriage, Sandra,
Speaker 1: who had truly believed he was a Rockefeller, divorced him
Speaker 1: and legally changed their daughter's last name to her own.
Speaker 1: Sandra testified about the divorce and how her husband had
Speaker 1: agreed to give her full custody of their daughter following
Speaker 1: that divorce. He also had agreed to supervised visits three
Speaker 1: times a year with their daughter in return for an
Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand dollars settlement, two cars, her engagement ring,
Speaker 1: and address that he had given to her. He confided
Speaker 1: in friends that Sandra had emptied his accounts over the years,
Speaker 1: and that she was only interested in him for his money.
Speaker 1: He told one of his art dealers that, and we
Speaker 1: quote this, she only married me because I'm a Rockefeller.
Speaker 1: It also turned out, unsurprisingly that this alleged Rockefeller didn't
Speaker 1: have any sort of identification. According to Sandra's testimony, he
Speaker 1: didn't have a Social Security number, he was, as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: on her tax returns, and their credit cards were all
Speaker 1: in her name. Even his cell phone was under a
Speaker 1: friend's account. So to say that the divorce wasn't the
Speaker 1: agreement that Rockefeller had had in mind would be to
Speaker 1: put it really lightly. He was, above all, above everything
Speaker 1: known to dote on his seven year old daughter, who
Speaker 1: was named Ray He had nicknamed her Snooks. But after
Speaker 1: the bitter and humiliating divorce that he had just gone through,
Speaker 1: he not only lost his homes, his art, and now
Speaker 1: he also lost custody of his daughter, and he decided
Speaker 1: that the best thing to do would be to take her,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what you're thinking. Uh. And on the
Speaker 1: day of the kidnapping, Rockefeller told his driver that he
Speaker 1: and his daughter had a lunch date that was scheduled
Speaker 1: with a senator's son in Newport, Rhode Island. It's about
Speaker 1: an hour and a half drive from Boston. But he
Speaker 1: also said that he was concerned that there was a
Speaker 1: quote clingy person with him who might try to get
Speaker 1: into the limo, and he did not want that to happen.
Speaker 1: That allegedly clingey person was in fact a court appointed
Speaker 1: social worker, but of course he did not mention that
Speaker 1: to his driver. Not important information, I don't. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: he was assured that no one would enter the limo
Speaker 1: without permission, and Rockefeller himself actually shoved aside the social worker,
Speaker 1: grabbed his daughter and jumped into the car so quickly
Speaker 1: that she banged her head on the limo's door jam.
Speaker 1: The social worker, the story goes, was actually dragged several
Speaker 1: yards while holding onto the back door handle. I have
Speaker 1: to give that social worker credit for like trying, no kidding,
Speaker 1: that would be terrifying. I'm sure that did not feel good. No.
Speaker 1: According to Rockefeller's later indictment, he claimed that he had
Speaker 1: told the driver to pull over. He actually exited the
Speaker 1: limo and hailed a cab, explaining to the driver that
Speaker 1: while lunch in Newport was still on, he wanted to
Speaker 1: switch over to this cab to his daughter to Massachusetts
Speaker 1: General Hospital to have that bump on her head looked
Speaker 1: at and make sure it wasn't serious. That driver of
Speaker 1: the limo waited two hours for him to return, but
Speaker 1: Rockefeller never did. Instead of hailing a taxi to go
Speaker 1: to the hospital, Rockefeller met a friend at the Boston
Speaker 1: Sailing Center who drove him and his daughter to New York.
Speaker 1: He told her that he and his daughter had to
Speaker 1: catch a train to Long Island and that train left
Speaker 1: at eight pm. But as soon as traffic began to
Speaker 1: back up, he jumped out of the car with his
Speaker 1: daughter at they were real close to Grand Central station,
Speaker 1: and the story goes that his helpful friend saw an
Speaker 1: Amber alert concerning Rockefeller's daughter's disappearance just minutes after they
Speaker 1: got in the car, and she realized what was happening.
Speaker 1: Because of the kidnapping and because he was at this
Speaker 1: point on the run, Rockefeller's face was ever present in
Speaker 1: the media, but not everyone agreed who they were looking
Speaker 1: at who was on the run exactly. I mean, people
Speaker 1: on the East Coast had known him at this point
Speaker 1: for sometimes Clark Rockefeller, but people who knew him in
Speaker 1: California were like Hey, that's Christopher Chichester, right, um, so
Speaker 1: Christian As Rockefeller had smartly devised an escape plan. He
Speaker 1: told all of his friends where he was headed, but
Speaker 1: from sailing to Peru to traveling to Alaska, he actually
Speaker 1: told each friend a different destination, and because of that,
Speaker 1: it became impossible to track him down. I pity the
Speaker 1: investigators trying to follow up on probably one cockami me
Speaker 1: sounding lead after another. No I heard he was going
Speaker 1: to Grant No, he was headed to Anchorage. No, I
Speaker 1: think he's in Boston. And there's like one in a
Speaker 1: big corkboard for each one. Uh. The man who was
Speaker 1: living under the name Rockefeller's downfall involved several things, but
Speaker 1: one of them is something as simple as a wine glass.
Speaker 1: The night before Rockefeller fled, he had shared some wine
Speaker 1: with a friend, and when investigators are I'd at that
Speaker 1: friend's house the next day to question him about Rockefeller's
Speaker 1: disappearance and his whereabouts. They discovered that the glass that
Speaker 1: the alleged Clark Rockefeller had used had not yet been washed,
Speaker 1: and so they were finally able to get his fingerprints,
Speaker 1: and they sent those fingerprints for processing to the FBI
Speaker 1: lab in Quantico. Virginia. The Bureau, while waiting for results,
Speaker 1: released pictures of Clark Rockefeller to the media, and as
Speaker 1: you can imagine, this was not good for Christian. While
Speaker 1: people couldn't agree on who the man in the photo was,
Speaker 1: some people, as Holly was saying, would recognize him as
Speaker 1: Christopher Chichester, some would recognize him as the student Chris Gerhart.
Speaker 1: Still others were sure that the released photos were of
Speaker 1: Christopher Crowe. But the overwhelming number of people who came
Speaker 1: forward to identify this man identified him as Clark Rockefeller,
Speaker 1: an elite Bostonian who was friends with important artists, financiers,
Speaker 1: and members of prestigious private clubs such as the legendary Alghon.
Speaker 1: He knew everyone, though no one actually seemed to know
Speaker 1: the real hymn. And it may strike you as odd
Speaker 1: that it took this long for someone to do this,
Speaker 1: But finally they questioned members of the actual Rockefeller family,
Speaker 1: and of course they denied any relation to anyone named
Speaker 1: Clark Rockefeller. One thing that was certain when fingerprint results
Speaker 1: came back from the lab was there was no way
Speaker 1: that Clark Rockefeller was actually a Rockefeller. This was forty
Speaker 1: seven year old Christian Gerhardts writer. One Boston district attorney
Speaker 1: called christians thirty years of impersonations quote the longest con
Speaker 1: I've ever seen in my professional career. Eventually, investigators matched
Speaker 1: the so called Rockefeller's fingerprints to several men and so
Speaker 1: they did finally nail down this list of people that
Speaker 1: he had been posing as Clark Rockefeller, but also as
Speaker 1: Christopher Crowe, and had also been Christopher Chichester, and was
Speaker 1: for Eel Christian Gearhart writer. So on that we're going
Speaker 1: to take another break for a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: But when we're back, we're going to talk about how
Speaker 1: Christian was apprehended in Baltimore, Maryland. Welcome back to Criminalia.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Christian's last identity, right, So, his story
Speaker 1: now unraveling, Christian hastily put together a new identity. A
Speaker 1: name that he made was Chip Smith, and his story
Speaker 1: was that he was a sea captain from Chile. One
Speaker 1: account differs, though, and refers to his new identity as
Speaker 1: Chris Young. Maybe he had an identity that was Chris Young,
Speaker 1: but regardless, he certainly wasn't living under his given name.
Speaker 1: His daughter was going by the name Muffie at the time,
Speaker 1: and the two relocated to Baltimore. Yeah, remember his daughter
Speaker 1: is very tiny at this point, like she's still a
Speaker 1: young right child, so undoubtedly he had fed her some
Speaker 1: story that made this all seem sort of normalized according
Speaker 1: to his ex wife Sandra, and pretty obvious to the
Speaker 1: rest of us. When he lost custody of his daughter,
Speaker 1: he had immediately begun plotting how he was going to
Speaker 1: get her back, and clearly well planned out. Rockefeller had
Speaker 1: a large lineup of friends waiting to help him get
Speaker 1: from one place to another safely and silently, and they
Speaker 1: did that. They abetted him, and then he disappeared. Though
Speaker 1: the TV show Unsolved Mysteries, which averaged about nine million
Speaker 1: viewers per week at that time, had once posted a
Speaker 1: picture of Christopher Chichester as a person of interest, no
Speaker 1: one ever actually called in with a tip while he
Speaker 1: was missing, though police circulated wanted posters. But unlike the
Speaker 1: lack of tips from Unsolved Mysteries, investigators were flooded with
Speaker 1: calls from around the country from keep who recognized that face.
Speaker 1: But it was a real estate agent in Baltimore who
Speaker 1: recognized him as a man who had very recently bought
Speaker 1: a house In addition to that house tip, investigators learned
Speaker 1: that Rockefeller we're still using that name just for ease,
Speaker 1: kept a yacht and that was actually a rundown twenty
Speaker 1: six ft stiletto catamaran. It was knocked in a Baltimore
Speaker 1: marina just down the street from his new house. Expertly
Speaker 1: peering through the yachts windows, I feel like we got
Speaker 1: an air quote all of this. Um Yes, investigators saw
Speaker 1: a file that he was keeping on the boat that
Speaker 1: was labeled Chip Smith and they made the assumption that
Speaker 1: this was a new identity that Christian was planning, and
Speaker 1: so they decided to move on this. Twenty agents with
Speaker 1: assault rifles wrestled him to the ground in his front yard.
Speaker 1: Others entered the house to retrieve his daughter. Christian A. K. Clark.
Speaker 1: Rockefeller was, as you could imagine in this moment, arrested.
Speaker 1: He was charged with custodial kidnapping, which is generally the
Speaker 1: name for when apparent kidnaps one of their children, but
Speaker 1: the story doesn't end with the abduction of his daughter.
Speaker 1: He was convicted a year later and was serving a
Speaker 1: five year sentence for that when he was moved from
Speaker 1: a Massachusetts prison to a California jail where he would
Speaker 1: now face surprisingly, perhaps murder charges. So if you're thinking, wait,
Speaker 1: what this is a story about an impostor not a murderer, Well, surprise,
Speaker 1: it's actually both. So jump back for a minute to
Speaker 1: when we talked about how Christian as Christopher Chichester, had
Speaker 1: lived in the guesthouse of the Soho's family in San
Speaker 1: Marino in the mid nineteen eighties. You're probably figuring this
Speaker 1: one out, but that's that's the important part of his story.
Speaker 1: Things took a new twist for Christian when back in
Speaker 1: nine so we've moved back a little bit, contractors broke
Speaker 1: ground in the backyard of the former so used home.
Speaker 1: Skeletal remains were found inside fiberglass container. Los Angeles County
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Detective Tim Miley explained, and I'm going to quote this.
Speaker 1: Inside the container, the arms, legs, and torsos were wrapped
Speaker 1: in saran wrapped hands were covered in bags, and the hands, feet,
Speaker 1: and head were covered in plastic bags. The remains, though,
Speaker 1: were so decomposed that they couldn't actually officially be identified.
Speaker 1: But without the information that he didn't have enough information,
Speaker 1: the coroner wouldn't rule this as a homicide, but it
Speaker 1: didn't take long for investigators to connect the remains to
Speaker 1: the disappearance of John and Linda Soho's Christian, still using
Speaker 1: his alias Christopher Chichester, became a person of interest in
Speaker 1: that disappearance and possible murder of the couple. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't until about twenty six years after the victim was
Speaker 1: killed that Christian, who had been posing as Christopher Chichester
Speaker 1: at the time when he was living with the Sohues,
Speaker 1: was charged with that murder. So that's a long time,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't like authorities weren't working on it. There
Speaker 1: were actually multiple law enforcement agent sees that we're working
Speaker 1: that case, and together they built a scenario in which
Speaker 1: Chichester had murdered John and Linda thinking that he would
Speaker 1: take over DD's estate. Whether or not that was really
Speaker 1: his motivation, it was a pretty interesting theory to pursue.
Speaker 1: When he was asked by the media, quote if not
Speaker 1: a con artist, what would you call yourself? Christian explained,
Speaker 1: and we quote again, Steve Bedrowski is an absolute literary genius.
Speaker 1: He came up with the word confabulator, confabulations, harmless inventions
Speaker 1: of fun that don't really hurt anyone. Christian insisted that
Speaker 1: he did not kill John or Linda, and that Linda
Speaker 1: was actually still alive. No, absolutely not, we quote him,
Speaker 1: is what he told the court. When asked if he
Speaker 1: had killed her, he continued, quote, she's around here, somewhere.
Speaker 1: Christians version of the story went like this, It had
Speaker 1: been Linda who killed her husband, and that she remains
Speaker 1: alive and is hiding from the authorities, and that occasionally
Speaker 1: she sends postcards to friends and family in the US
Speaker 1: from places in Europe. John's younger sister, Ellen attended the
Speaker 1: trial and stated that there was actually no way Linda
Speaker 1: would have killed him. Linda and John we quote. If
Speaker 1: you could have seen them together, it would have been
Speaker 1: very hard for you to believe that she would have
Speaker 1: done anything to hurt John. It was a packed courtroom
Speaker 1: the day that the verdict in the murder trial was announced,
Speaker 1: and the man who once called himself a Rockefeller appeared
Speaker 1: quite confident in court reports and throughout press coverage of
Speaker 1: the trial. We know that the prosecutor, however, did not
Speaker 1: appear confident. Understandably, he seemed really nervous, and he once
Speaker 1: gave a statement saying, quote, he'd conned so many people
Speaker 1: for so many years, you always worry that, Okay, this
Speaker 1: might be his one last con and he's going to
Speaker 1: escape justice. He also, the prosecutor believed that the fake
Speaker 1: Rockefeller had also killed John's wife, Linda. His as though
Speaker 1: just continued to consider him to be eccentric, but his
Speaker 1: defense team argued that he was delusional and that he
Speaker 1: actually believed he was a real Rockefeller. Christians eccentricities also
Speaker 1: came out in the courtroom and in the testimony, and
Speaker 1: we're going to quote from some of the testimony. He
Speaker 1: never carried money. He was paranoid about security and privacy
Speaker 1: to the point where he would carry a radio device
Speaker 1: that he said was connected to the Rockefeller offices. He
Speaker 1: would never eat in restaurants because he said, you can't
Speaker 1: trust the kitchen. He would only eat in private clubs,
Speaker 1: of which indeed he was a member of several. He
Speaker 1: only ate white foods, white turkey on white pepperage farm bread,
Speaker 1: except in some cases when he would order oysters. Rockefeller naturally,
Speaker 1: his neighbor and some others did recall that he was odd,
Speaker 1: but they recalled a bit of a different diet that
Speaker 1: consisted mainly of cucumber and watercress tea sandwiches, but also
Speaker 1: only on Pepperage farm bread with the crusts removed. He
Speaker 1: would eat Pepperidge Farm cookies, preferably the Nantucket variety. His
Speaker 1: favorite food, he said, was haggis, and his drink of
Speaker 1: choice was Harvey's Bristol cream sherry. At his sentencing, Christian
Speaker 1: pleaded to the judge and we quote, I would like
Speaker 1: to once again reassert my innocence that I would like
Speaker 1: to definitively state that I did not commit the crime
Speaker 1: of which I stand convicted. The judge, though, pronounced Christian
Speaker 1: guilty of the murder of John Soheughes while using the
Speaker 1: identity of Christopher t. Chester that Jerry found him guilty
Speaker 1: of first degree murder. He didn't get the death penalty.
Speaker 1: It was not a death penalty case, but the jury
Speaker 1: sentenced Christian to the maximum penalty possible, which was twenty
Speaker 1: five years to life in prison plus two additional years
Speaker 1: because of the manner in which he killed John so
Speaker 1: The autopsy was difficult because, as we mentioned, these remains
Speaker 1: were not in great shape. They really only had the
Speaker 1: victim's skull to work with. And it was in pieces
Speaker 1: and had to be reconstructed at a special lab in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: Forensic pathologist Dr Frank Sheridan determined that John died from
Speaker 1: violent blunt force trauma to the head, and forensic testing
Speaker 1: revealed large blood stains on the floor of the guesthouse
Speaker 1: where Chichester had lived. In a not suspicious at all decision,
Speaker 1: he had apparently attempted to sell a bloodied rug shortly
Speaker 1: after John and Lynda disappeared. It wasn't just the close
Speaker 1: proximity of their living spaces that had made Christian a suspect,
Speaker 1: though no DNA or fingerprints from Christian were found at
Speaker 1: the scene, it was actually the plastic bags that were
Speaker 1: used to wrap the hands and other body parts. They
Speaker 1: were all plastic bookstore bags that detectives had traced to
Speaker 1: colleges where Christian had attended or otherwise spent time at.
Speaker 1: Christian did not react to his sentencing inside the courtroom
Speaker 1: after the trial, he stated to the media quote, I
Speaker 1: can't speak for the juror's decision. Half of them were
Speaker 1: probably too stupid to understand reasonable doubt. The other half
Speaker 1: were probably too lazy to even think about what's been
Speaker 1: presented and just wanted to get out of here. This
Speaker 1: will be overturned. Make no mistakes about this, So it's
Speaker 1: just a minor inconvenience until then, that's all it is.
Speaker 1: He went ahead and fired his lawyers and filed a
Speaker 1: motion for a new trial that was denied. When Boston
Speaker 1: Globe reporters met him while he was incarcerated, he continued
Speaker 1: to show his eccentric self, wearing prison scrubs with tasseled loafers.
Speaker 1: When asked what he looked for in the people he
Speaker 1: conned and manipulated, Christian replied first by almost laughing, and
Speaker 1: then said, and we quote this vanity, vanity, vanity, while
Speaker 1: he wasn't charged with murdering Linda, So who's neither she
Speaker 1: nor her body have been found since she went missing
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties. And as Holly mentioned earlier, Christian's
Speaker 1: new identity, well that was inmate number to eight zero
Speaker 1: zero four eight. So I know one thing about this
Speaker 1: week's mocktail before I kick it off with Holly, I
Speaker 1: know that it is a beautiful, beautiful emerald green color.
Speaker 1: It is. This week's mocktail is called the Deceiver for
Speaker 1: obvious reasons, But there's a secondary reason to why I
Speaker 1: wanted to call with that. As I was, you know,
Speaker 1: thinking about this, I kept thinking about you know, just
Speaker 1: you and I. Even in prepping this episode. There are
Speaker 1: so many layers to his deception, layers and layers that
Speaker 1: I kept just like uttering that word to myself. And
Speaker 1: so then I decided that it had to be a
Speaker 1: drink that you pour in layers, which is tricky. So
Speaker 1: you don't have to pour it in layers, but if
Speaker 1: you can, I'll give you my my tips. It's really pretty.
Speaker 1: If you do, it's very, very beautiful. So you're gonna
Speaker 1: start with half an ounce of mint syrup. Anytime you're
Speaker 1: pouring a drinking layers, you want to start heaviest to
Speaker 1: lightest right, and so that half an ounce of mint
Speaker 1: syrup is going to sit in the bottom of the glass.
Speaker 1: I would say, do not use ice in your glass.
Speaker 1: It will mess up your layering. Pre Chill it in
Speaker 1: your your fridge or even your freezer if you have
Speaker 1: a short period of time, and then you are going
Speaker 1: to pour on top of that half ounce, and you
Speaker 1: will pour it carefully over a spoon three ounces of
Speaker 1: watermelon juice. Watermelon never shows up no, I love it,
Speaker 1: And so if you've never layered a drink before, it
Speaker 1: takes practice and it can be tricky. What I find
Speaker 1: works great for me is I pour it into like
Speaker 1: a measuring cup that has a pouring lip on it,
Speaker 1: so that you can easily pour it onto the spoon,
Speaker 1: because when you use a jigger, when I use a jigger,
Speaker 1: I just splash it everywhere. I make a mess out
Speaker 1: of It goes everywhere all over the spoon. So so
Speaker 1: people we use the back of like a table spoon,
Speaker 1: I actually like to use a bar spoon tipped the
Speaker 1: other way, and so you're kind of like letting it
Speaker 1: fill the bar spoon and then slowly leave the bar
Speaker 1: spoon as it overflows, and it kind of carefully floats
Speaker 1: on the next layer. So you started again with your
Speaker 1: half ounce of mint syrup, you float three ounces of
Speaker 1: watermelon juice on top of it, and then on top
Speaker 1: of that, and it's gonna mix with the watermelon juice,
Speaker 1: there's no way around it. You're gonna add five to
Speaker 1: six ounces of the soda of your choice. So if
Speaker 1: you want to do something sweet, you can do a
Speaker 1: ginger ale, you can do a lemon lime soda. You
Speaker 1: can also just do a club soda if you want
Speaker 1: to get away from that heavy sweetness. I would still
Speaker 1: try to float it. Otherwise you're gonna mess with that
Speaker 1: bottom layer. But just know it's still going to combine
Speaker 1: with the watermelon. You're not gonna get that pink watermelon.
Speaker 1: It's going to kind of change color on you. And
Speaker 1: then you have this beautiful layered thing that has a
Speaker 1: the darkest layer at the bottom, which I feel is
Speaker 1: kind of like as they're digging through once they have fingerprints,
Speaker 1: they get to the darkest layer of truth, which is it?
Speaker 1: This is just some dude who moved to the US
Speaker 1: and started lying constantly, right, been lying since he was
Speaker 1: seventeen or earlier. Right, we don't know what happened in Germany.
Speaker 1: But yeah, then you can. You can always toss some
Speaker 1: ice in there, mix it up. It's going to turn
Speaker 1: the whole thing a brilliant emerald green, because even just
Speaker 1: a little bit of mint syrup will turn everything very
Speaker 1: deep green. And the other reason I call it the
Speaker 1: deceiver is because if you don't know what's in it,
Speaker 1: you don't anticipate what it's going to taste like at all.
Speaker 1: I handed it to my beloved without any explanation and
Speaker 1: just said, taste this. It has no booze in it,
Speaker 1: and he was like, okay, and he did, and he
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know what this is. I can't
Speaker 1: place these flavors. Yeah, he was like, it's very crisp
Speaker 1: and it's refreshing, but I'm having hard time picking it apart.
Speaker 1: And so it kind of makes this new interesting from
Speaker 1: I honestly loved this one. It's like, it's actually cold
Speaker 1: here today, freakishly cold for the time of year we're in,
Speaker 1: but it made me feel like it was summary out
Speaker 1: now for my drinkers in the out, if you want
Speaker 1: to do the alcoholic version of this in lieu of
Speaker 1: that mint syrup, your first layer is going to be
Speaker 1: more than a half ounce. It will be an ounce
Speaker 1: of krem de Minth and then you'll still do that
Speaker 1: three ounces of watermelon. You can then top that with soda.
Speaker 1: But if you want a heavier drink with a higher
Speaker 1: alcohol content, I would then add one ounce of a
Speaker 1: very clean tasting vodka. Vodka by nature is usually distilled
Speaker 1: a lot more than other spirits, so it is kind
Speaker 1: of absent of much flavor, although there are a lot
Speaker 1: of different like artisanal vodkas, and different flavors have their
Speaker 1: own flavor profiles different brands, but you want one that
Speaker 1: has a very neutral, no specific flavor to it. And
Speaker 1: then you will add your club soda, your ginger al year, whatever,
Speaker 1: which is also very yummy. And again you don't quite
Speaker 1: know what it is that you're tasting. When you tasted um,
Speaker 1: it's kind of fascinating because even knowing what's in it,
Speaker 1: as I'm drinking it, I'm like, it's still hard for
Speaker 1: me to like find the distinction between the mint note
Speaker 1: and the watermelon note. Right, even though mint and melons
Speaker 1: of all kinds go together fabulously, It's really hard to
Speaker 1: identify either of them somehow in this combination, which made
Speaker 1: it very fun for me. So that is the Deceiver,
Speaker 1: which will become very popular at my home bar, I'm
Speaker 1: sure in the next week in the summertime. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a good summertime one. And it is so spectacularly pretty,
Speaker 1: it really is. Holly texted me a picture of it,
Speaker 1: and it is. I mean, it's like Emerald City green
Speaker 1: and so beautiful, unlike the horrible behavior. Okay, it is
Speaker 1: of Christian of Christian. Right, yeah, so I hope that
Speaker 1: that delights I. Honestly, I'm going to tell you something surprising.
Speaker 1: I actually prefer the non alcoholic version of this. Well.
Speaker 1: I think it's time for us to go now right.
Speaker 1: I know that's a shocker, but it is. It is
Speaker 1: such a bright, yummy little I don't know, it's just
Speaker 1: it was very I found it very charming. I like
Speaker 1: watermelon everything. So even if I can't necessarily identify that
Speaker 1: that's what's going on, there's something about watermelon that is
Speaker 1: just very thirst quenching and very delighting to the taste buds.
Speaker 1: And so it's like, yeah, all right, now that we're
Speaker 1: thinking about yummy ways to quench our thirsty hopefully things
Speaker 1: to do with watermelon not and to disguise alcohol rather
Speaker 1: than ourselves. We will leave you with that, and we
Speaker 1: thank you for spending this time with us once again,
Speaker 1: and we hope we will see you right here next
Speaker 1: week again for another impostor. Criminalia is a production of
Speaker 1: Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For
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