Clark Rockefeller CAUGHT, case goes global!
(PASTED A BUNCH OF TIDBITS)
Rockefeller's only tangible tie to the area was a dilapidated 26-foot catamaran he had moored in slip F-2 at Baltimore's Anchorage Marina for nine years, registering under the name Chip Smith. The vessel was not far from the Ploy Street home he purchased last month but was a wreck that had never sailed free from the slip, said the manager of the marina, Jim Roscoe, 43.
Roscoe became part of the investigation around 3:30 a.m. Saturday morning when he received a call from the FBI saying that they had obtained a warrant to search a boat. Roscoe was surprised to learn it was the small "chain-saw food" catamaran owned by the elusive man who fretted about his little boat.
On Saturday afternoon, with FBI agents present, Roscoe called Rockefeller on his cell phone and told him that the boat was taking on water. To bolster the ruse, he even placed water pumps near the boat, he told ABC News. But as soon as Rockefeller emerged from the house he was arrested without incident, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said during a press conference at police headquarters Saturday afternoon. The girl, Reigh "Snooks" Boss, was found inside the house unharmed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- The investigation into the identity of a mysterious man accused of kidnapping his daughter in Boston and wanted for questioning in the 1985 disappearance of a California couple has gone international.Authorities in Germany say they are checking into whether the man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller has ties to Germany, after a Connecticut man said he is convinced that Rockefeller was a German student who lived with his family decades ago.
Immigration officials confirmed Thursday they have joined the investigation into the background of Rockefeller, who is in jail in Boston on charges he snatched his 7-year-old daughter, Reigh, last month in an elaborately planned kidnapping.
Steve Savio, 39, of Berlin, Connecticut, said Thursday he is "100 percent certain" that Rockefeller is the same person who boarded with his family in 1980 under the name Christian Gerhart Reiter at age 17. His mother and brother agree.
"The first pictures I saw of him when he didn't have any glasses on, didn't look anything like him," Savio said. "But the pictures after he was apprehended, with the glasses, those look just like him."
Savio said Greenwich police interviewed his family in 1988 about a possible connection between Reiter and the disappearance of Jonathan and Linda Sohus of San Marino, California. The FBI and German authorities interviewed them this week about Reiter and Rockefeller, he said.
"We have been informed about the case by the U.S. authorities and we are checking possible connections to Germany at the moment," said a German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in Berlin, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with department policy. She declined to elaborate.
The Federal Criminal Police Office in Germany said it had no information on the man.
Police have said Rockefeller, 48, snatched his daughter from a Boston street on July 27 in an elaborately planned kidnapping in which he hired two people to drive them to New York. Video Watch they mystery man appear in court »
He was caught Saturday in Baltimore, where he had bought a home and boat. Prosecutors said 300 one-ounce gold coins (aprox. $257k) and $12,000 in cash also were found in Rockefeller's apartment following his arrest. Reigh, known to family and friends as "Snooks," was found in good condition in Baltimore and has been reunited with her mother, Sandra Boss.
Authorities have said they have no record of Rockefeller before 1993, and he claims he has no memory of his life before then. He had refused to talk to investigators or reporters.
FBI spokesman Damon Katz in Boston said "there is a pending investigation to determine who this guy is," but refused to give any details. Paula Grenier, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Boston, also said agents are helping law enforcement trying to determine his identity.
Savio said his family met Reiter after answering an advertisement in a local newspaper from a visiting German teen looking for a place to live.
Savio said when Reiter first moved in, he was sweet. After several months, however, "his true colors started showing," Savio said.
"I recall him thinking he's better than the rest of us," Savio said. "I recall him telling stories about having servants growing up and like that."
Savio's mother, Gwen, described Reiter to reporters on Thursday as an elitist who complained about her Italian cooking.
"He just thought he was better than anybody else and he could do anything, and there was no way to stop him," she said.
Gwen Savio's eldest son, Edward, said Reiter attended Berlin High School with him during his senior year through the end of 1981, but that they suspected Reiter might be older than a typical high school senior.
"He claimed to be a German student, and I think he had already finished," Edward Savio, 45, said in a telephone interview from California. "We just figured out everything was not what it was."
It could not be determined Thursday whether Reiter had been registered as a student at Berlin High School. School officials declined to comment.
"He's not in the yearbook. There's no record of him, there's no footprint of him, but he was there," Edward Savio said.
Authorities say Rockefeller is a schemer who wanted people to believe he was an heir to the oil tycoon, though the Rockefeller family says he is not.
Savio said he last saw Reiter in 1981, but said the man kept in contact with his mother, telling her he was using the name Christopher Crowe to open a production company.
Savio said the FBI interviewed his mother in 1988 after a man identifying himself as Christopher Crowe tried to sell a pickup truck in Connecticut belonging to the missing Californians, Jonathan and Linda Sohus. He apparently fled before authorities could track him down. Los Angeles detectives say a man named Christopher Chichester lived on the Sohuses' property, and he also disappeared. Police now say Rockefeller's fingerprints matched those on an old license application submitted by Chichester. They also believe Chichester was one of the aliases used by Christian Gerhart Streiter.
Records show a Social Security number associated with the name Christian Gerhart Streiter -- not Reiter -- was issued in Connecticut about the same time Savio said Reiter lived with them.
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SAN MARINO, Calif - The poseur Brit known here as Christopher Chichester preyed on “mature wealthy ladies” and even had his own cable TV show in sun-kissed Southern California, former neighbors and friends told the Herald yesterday.
Chichester - whom authorities believe is accused kidnapper Clark Rockefeller - schmoozed with the wealthy at the Church of Our Saviour in nearby San Gabriel, where he charmed middle-aged women and stalked younger females, said Daniel Banks, a former neighbor of John and Linda Sohus.
Los Angeles homicide detectives call Chichester - who lived in the Sohuses’ guesthouse - a “person of interest” in the San Marino couple’s 1985 disappearance.
Banks, 75, said he quickly grew weary of Chichester, whom he noticed was attracted to younger members of his Episcopal church’s congregation, including his own daughter.
“My daughter knew him through the church. He showed inappropriate interest in younger girls. My daughter was 17 and he was about 24 at the time. I just cut him off from my daughter. I didn’t like him,” he said. “He brought her flowers and wanted to talk to her every Sunday. He would hang around outside our home and she would have to sneak out of the house to avoid him. She would tell me ‘that creepy guy’ was hanging around after her.”
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When the California couple disappeared in 1985 some friends believed they had gone to Europe.
Lydia Marano, who ran a science fiction bookstore where Linda Sohus worked, received a postcard (at left) from the couple who were supposedly in Paris but investigators are considering whether it was part of a scheme to cover up a crime.
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Comments
Nice collection of info. I haven't had a chance to follow-up yet. I probably want to link to this when I do!