The top story in Boston for the past week has been that of Clark Rockefeller, also known as Christopher Crowe and Christopher Chichester, but who was very likely born Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter. The story is a testament to people's willingness to believe another person - at least for a while - if the person tells a good story well and appears to come from money.
Gerhartsreiter was able to tell a good enough story so that he could travel across America for thirty years without having held a significant job for any length of time. Yet, despite any sort of record in the investment business, he was hired as a vice president by Nikko, a reasonably sized Japanese securities concern.
He was able to ingratiate himself with some local powers in California and here in Boston where he was on the board of directors of the Algonquin Club, a fairly posh, Yankee private club. He was smooth enough to convince two women to marry him; one of these women was fairly high up in the financial world and provided Gerhartsreiter homes in London and Boston.
His kidnapping of his child following his divorce unlocked a chain of events that seems to have solidly linked him to his beginnings in Germany. He was done in by fingerprints. First his fingerprints matched those of someone wanted in the disappearance of a couple from whom he rented living quarters in California and then they matched those of a German who immigrated to the U.S. in the late 1970s.
I don't think Mr. Rockefeller Crowe Chichester Gerhartsreiter will lack for money as I'm sure we'll be seeing a movie or tv show based on his life. Con man, kidnapper, possible murderer. Can't you see the possibilities?
1 comment:
I assumed somebody was rich since this made national news. Parental abduction is so common that it seldom gets publicity. Now all this really makes it interesting.
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