The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor

by Mark Seal

Overview

“Forget fiction. Pop this jaw-dropper in your beach bag.” —USA Today

This shocking expose goes behind the headlines to uncover the true story of Clark Rockefeller, wealthy scion of a great American family, who kidnapped his own daughter and vanished. The police and FBI were baffled. Tips poured in, but every lead was a dead end … because “Clark Rockefeller” did not exist. In a gripping work of investigative journalism, Mark Seal reveals how German native Christian Gerhartsreiter came to the United States, where he stepped in and out of identities for decades, eventually posing as a Rockefeller for twelve years, married to a wealthy woman who had no idea who he really was. Fast-paced, hypnotic, and now updated with more stunning details, The Man in the Rockefeller Suit chillingly reveals the audacity and cunning of a shape-shifting con man.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780452298033
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/25/2012
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Mark Seal is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where his piece on Gerhartsreiter was a finalist for a 2010 National Magazine Award. He is also the author of Wildflower. He lives in Aspen, Colorado.

Read an Excerpt

When the fingerprints came back from the lab, one thing was finally clear: the kidnapper was definitely not a Rockefeller. He was Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, a forty-seven-year-old German immigrant who had come to America as a student in 1978. Shortly after his arrival, he disappeared into what the Boston district attorney would call “the longest con I've seen in my professional career.” The elaborate, labyrinthine nature of Gerhartsreiter's shapeshifting adventures, from the time he set foot in this country as a seventeen-year-old student right up to his disappearance, makes his story more bizarre than any gifted writer of fiction could possibly invent.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

Foreword xiii

Prologue 1

Part 1

Chapter 1 Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter: Bergen, Germany 15

Chapter 2 Strangers on a Train 30

Chapter 3 Becoming American 43

Chapter 4 Christopher Chichester: San Marino, California 52

Chapter 5 The Secret Mission 81

Chapter 6 Christopher Crowe: Greenwich, Connecticut 95

Chapter 7 Wall Street 111

Chapter 8 Missing Persons 122

Chapter 9 Clark Rockefeller: New York, New York 133

Chapter 10 Sandra 152

Part 2

Chapter 11 "San Marino Bones" 167

Chapter 12 The Last Will and Testament of Didi Sohus 178

Chapter 13 The Country Squire 202

Chapter 14 Snooks 211

Chapter 15 The God of War 221

Chapter 16 The Boston Brahmin 236

Chapter 17 Peach Melba Nights 250

Chapter 18 "Find Out Who He Is" 263

Chapter 19 Chip Smith: Baltimore, Maryland 277

Chapter 20 The Manhunt 296

Chapter 21 One Last Con? 309

Afterword 321

Acknowledgments 343

Editorial Reviews

Has all the pace and drive of a suspense novel.” — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

“No mystery writer would script this—it’s too unbelievable. — The Christian Science Monitor

“Impeccably reported.” — Los Angeles Times

“Fascinating.” — People (four stars)

From the Publisher

“Fascinating.”

People (four stars)

“Impeccably reported.”

Los Angeles Times

“No mystery writer would script this—it’s too unbelievable.

The Christian Science Monitor

Mr. Seal…fashions a brisk narrative that has all the pace and drive of a suspense novel.
—The New York Times

Michiko Kakutani

Hiding behind one of America’s wealthiest names, a German immigrant duped the world in a decades-long charade that Vanity Fair contributing editor Seal unravels in this fascinating account. Born Christian Gerhartsreiter in Germany in 1961 , he left home at age 17, landing with an acquaintance in Connecticut. Over the next 14 years, he carefully honed his impersonation skills. He shed his German accent and began acquiring aliases, first in wealthy San Marino, Calif., and then, in 1992, in Manhattan society, where he made a calculatedly low-key entrance as James Frederick Mills Clark Rockefeller. He soon married Sandra Boss, a financial executive, whose money Rockefeller spent with abandon. Only when she filed for divorce after 12 rocky years of marriage did his carefully constructed facade crumble, and he went on the run with their young daughter, sparking an FBI chase and a prison sentence for kidnapping and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Seal (Wildflower: An Extraordinary Life and Mysterious Death in Africa) brilliantly reconstructs and dissects Gerhartsreiter’s strange life, weaving in interviews with those who knew—or thought they knew—one of the men he pretended to be along the way. (Earlier this month, the L.A. Times reported that prosecutors have brought an indictment against Gerhartsreiter in a 1980s murder in San Marino.) (June)

Publishers Weekly

When the story of a parental kidnapping in Boston went out over the newswires in 2008, it seemed initially like a routine family tragedy. But it took strange twists as time passed. The father, wealthy businessman Clark Rockefeller, was not who he seemed to be. In fact, no one at all knew who he was. This episode ended the long career of professional imposter and con man Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, originally from the tiny German village of Bergen. His ambition to emigrate to America and become a filmmaker took him from Boston to California and back. Charm, arrogance, and a wickedly sharp mind helped him create his personae but also enabled him to maintain his lifestyle by stealing, swindling…and maybe worse. In 1985, John and Linda Sohus, Gerhartsreiter's roommates, disappeared, and Gerhartsreiter was charged with murdering John on March 15, 2011, 26 years after the crime. While the subject's aloofness and arrogance keep the reader from rooting for him, one almost has to admire the chutzpah. VERDICT The talented Mr. Rockefeller could have come right out of a Hitchcock film. For crime buffs and fans of flimflam.—Deirdre Root, Middletown P.L., OH

Library Journal

Vanity Fair contributing editor Seal (Wildflower: An Extraordinary Life and Untimely Death in Africa, 2009) unravels the complex case of "Clark Rockefeller," a fiendishly clever con man who, over the course of three decades, insinuated himself into the highest echelons of American society using only his wits and a borrowed name.

Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, a precocious teenager hailing from an obscure Bavarian village, felt he was destined for greatness, and such humble beginnings would not do. Consequently, he made his way to the United States, where he adopted a series of identities more in line with his self-image: patrician, wealthy, well-educated and possessed of impeccable social standing. In privileged enclaves nestled in exclusive pockets of California, Connecticut, New York and Boston, Gerhartsreiter spun wild stories of his family's prominence and wealth (and invented an ever-changing professional resume, at various points claiming to be a Hollywood producer, Defense Department contractor and international financial advisor), charming their blue-blooded denizens with his erudition, sponge-like appropriation of manners and appearance and, most crucially, the magic name Rockefeller.Seal delineates his endless schemes in an irresistibly lucid and propulsive manner, and his characterizations of his many victims are richly observed. Readers will marvel at Gerhartsreiter's ability to bamboozle his way into tony social clubs, jobs at eminent financial institutions (he had no qualifications or experience) and, most crucially, into the affections of wife Sandra Boss, a savvy financial wunderkind who nonetheless funded "Rockefeller's" lavish lifestyle in complete ignorance of his true identity. The narrative occasionally takes some dark turns. Seal makes a strong case naming Gerhartsreiter as the likely murderer of a young couple who fell under his sway early in his career, and the impostor's kidnapping of his own daughter once his façade began to crumble is uncomfortably gripping material.

Impossible to put down—Patricia Highsmith couldn't have written a more compelling thriller.

Kirkus Reviews