The many faces of Clark Rockefeller

Mike Taibbi Correspondent • Profile • E-mail

He's a con man, a kidnapper, and maybe more. The news broke on a slow Sunday. Boston Herald reporter Jessica Van Sack was heading home when she got an urgent call from her editor

Jessica Van Sack: They said there's been a kidnapping and we think it's a big story. This man may be a Rockefeller. A Rockefeller may have kidnapped his daughter.

Rockefeller: A name to inspire images of money and privilege, not squad cars and Amber Alerts.  But there it was, the name Clark Rockefeller - plastered across an FBI Most Wanted Poster.

Hard to think of the diminutive Rockefeller - five feet and change - as a kidnapper but his life had taken an ugly turn. He'd lost custody of his seven year old daughter, Snooks to his ex-wife. And after they moved away to London could only see his little girl on court-ordered visits back in Boston a few times a year. It was during one of those that he'd snatched the girl in broad daylight.

Daryll Hopkins: When he first told me he was a Rockefeller, I called my daughter and I said (whispers) "I picked up a  Rockefeller.."

Boston livery driver, Daryll Hopkins, was a little bit in awe of his spiffy new client, Clark Rockefeller. He paid good money too.

July 27, 2008, Hopkins was looking forward to a $3,000 payday. Rockefeller said he and his daughter Snooks needed a ride to Newport, Rhode Island. They had a date with a senator's son. But there was a catch. A friend would be with them and he might try and get in the car too. Rockefeller wanted help getting rid of him.

Daryll Hopkins: And I said "Well he won't be getting in my car, Clark, I'll take care of that one way or another.”

Just past noon, Hopkins parked on this leafy block of old Boston, engine running.

Soon, he spied Rockefeller in his mirror carrying his daughter on his shoulders... and as expected that “clingy friend” was right next to them.

Daryll Hopkins: All of a sudden the door's opened and she's in the car and he's in the car, and closes the door and “Go! Go! Go!”

In his mirror, Hopkins watched the man run alongside the car, holding onto the door until he lost his grip and fell to his knees with the car speeding away.

It was only later that Hopkins learned the man wasn't a friend or acquaintance of his client, but a social worker and that he'd just been tricked into helping Clark Rockefeller abduct his own daughter in broad daylight.

That social worker immediately called 911.

His next call was to the little girl's mother and Rockefeller's ex-wife, Sandra Boss.

She raced to the scene and told police her recent divorce was more troubling than a simple domestic dispute. Incredibly, she said the man she had been married to for 12 years, the father of her child, was no Rockefeller.  Their whole life together -- his part of it anyway -- had been a lie.

Frank Rudewicz, private investigator: This was the equivalent of a 48-year-old man being born in 1993, because there was no record prior to that.

Sandra Boss's private investigator had been digging through databases trying to find out who exactly the phony Rockefeller was but there was nothing. And that had him worried.

Frank Rudewicz: From my gut if you will there's something else there. There's some issue that he doesn't even want his closest people knowing about…

How do you track down a ghost? Could this mystery man, this cypher now take 7-year-old Snooks and erase all trace of her too?

Four days passed, and police were no closer to finding either of them.  And Boston Police Superintendent Thomas Lee became even more alarmed by Sandra Boss' description of her ex-husband's state of mind.

Sgt. Thomas Lee Lee: We were looking at this now as a person who may be a homicide/suicide situation. We didn't know what could transpire.

Sandra videotaped a message to her husband.

Sandra Boss: I ask you. Please, please bring Snooks back. There has to be a better way for us to solve our differences. And Reigh, honey, I love you and miss you so much and remember you're always a princess.

But there was no response. Sandra's heartfelt pleas were met with silence. What was her daughter's name now?

FBI Agent Noreen Gleason: It was like every time we had a lead, we would get to a dead end.

On day five of the investigation police got the break they were looking for. Baltimore realtor, Julie Gochar saw Rockefeller's photo on the Internet. Only his name wasn't Clark Rockefeller she told the cops.

Julie Gochar, realtor: He said, "My name is Charles Smith, but I loathe the name ‘Charles’ so I go by Chip." 

Chip had contacted the realtor by email almost a year before the abduction. He said he was a sea captain looking to settle down in Baltimore with his daughter, Muffy.

Julie Gochar: He told me the mother of his child was a surrogate that he hired from Sweden. 

It wasn't until April, a few months before the kidnapping, that Julie Gochar finally met her unusual client in person. He didn't look anything like a professional sailor.

Julie Gochar: He came in, his hat pulled completely down with his black glasses, his black plastic frame glasses, bright red dyed hair and extremely pale.

Video   How Christian Gerhartsreiter became Clark Rockefeller Get a look into Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter's early years and his transformation into the personality he invented. Dateline NBC

Gochar showed FBI investigators the carriage house Chip had paid for in full with a $450,000 cashiers check.

Agents staked it out overnight, their patience paying off with a sighting of Clark the next afternoon. But where was his daughter, little Reigh?

Noreen Gleason: We wanted to make sure that we arrested Clark separate from Reigh.  We wanted to get them apart.  We definitely didn't want a barricade situation.

Gochar told the FBI that Chip kept a boat moored at the local marina.

Jim Ruscoe, the manager at the marina, offered to help the FBI lure the man he knew as Chip Smith out of his home.  He called him and said his boat was sinking.

Jim Ruscoe, marina manager: I told him specifically that he had to get down here immediately.  Because there was no time to find somebody else to deal with it.  And if he was local, that he had to come down and take care of the boat.

Sure enough, a worried Clark Rockefeller hurried outside, but he was instantly surrounded.Agents raced inside the carriage house looking for Snooks.

Noreen Gleason: I think she was upstairs, playing.  And when the agents went in, they called her name. And she came bounding down the stairs. I think she was upstairs, playing.

Despite the indignity of his arrest, the man calling himself Clark Rockefeller met police questions with courtesy.

Clark Rockefeller: My sincere apologies for the trouble I've caused you.

He was booked and locked up in a Baltimore jail but he never wavered...he was Clark Rockefeller, he told everyone who asked.  That was his name.

And though he was arraigned as Clark Rockefeller in a Boston courtroom on charges of parental abduction and two counts of assault and battery, the prosecutor called him an unknown. 

Prosecutor: He is, in fact, your honor, and I know this sounds dramatic but I believe it's simply true, he's a "mystery man". He's a cipher. We simply do not know who this man is before you…

But within days, finally, a clue -- fitting, perhaps, that it came from a wineglass.  It was found at a friend's apartment and when FBI analysts dusted it for prints. They got a match.

FBI spokesperson: The individual's true name is Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter. He was born in 1961 in what was then West Germany.

MORE FROM CRIME STORIES

Crime stories Section Front

Mystery at Lost Dog Road Slideshow: Photos in the Bob Duke case When The Smoke Clears Slideshow: The Christie Fleming murder Through The Pouring Rain In Plain Sight: Jaycee Dugard Bad Chemistry Bad Chemistry: Photos in the case The Mystery in the Master Bedroom Slideshow: Photos in the bathtub murder case Crime stories Section Front   Add Crime stories headlines to your news reader: