Rockefeller imposter's web of lies

BOSTON, Massachusetts–Sandra Boss, ex-wife of imposter Christian Gerhartsreiter, is expected to testify Monday as more details emerge in the trial of the man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller. He’s charged with kidnapping his own daughter last July during a court-ordered supervised visit; before the visit Gerhartsreiter hadn’t seen the seven year old in seven months.

Clark Rockefeller aka Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter sits alone at defense table in Boston court

The first two days’ witnesses have focused on both the kidnapping and events in the months leading up to it. A Baltimore realtor testified she sold a house to Gerhartsreiter about two weeks before the kidnapping, but Julie Gochar said she knew Gerhartsreiter as Chip Smith. He told her that he was a single parent, that the child’s mother was a surrogate from Sweden and that he had destroyed all the papers about her.

Gerhartsreiter also told Gochar that he was a ship’s captain who was relocating to the United States from Chile, and that he was home-schooling his daughter on the ship as they traveled from South America.

A special metals broker testified that Gerhartsreiter was exchanging money into gold in the weeks before the abduction. He purchased the Baltimore house on July 18, 2008 for $450,000 using cashier’s checks.

Another tale jurors heard came from Aileen Ang, Gerhartsreiter’s friend who drove him and his daughter to New York City shortly after the abduction. Ang testified that Gerhartsreiter, whom she knew as Clark Rockefeller, told her the child’s mother worked for Vogue magazine and left them when the child was only three months old. They were married in Nantucket, he told Ang, but the wife never filed the papers. “She only comes around when she needs money,” according to what Gerhartsreiter told Ang. Ang never knew his wife’s name, and said that she didn’t know she facilitated a kidnapping on July 27, 2008.

A few months before the abduction, Gerhartsreiter invited Ang to join him and his daughter that summer to sail around the world in his apparently fictitious 72-foot catamaran. The plan was for Ang to tutor the child and give her piano lessons. She ultimately declined.

The psychologist who arranged the supervised visits between Ferharsreiter and his daughter following the December 2007 divorce testified that the man she knew as Rockefeller told her in early 2008 that he now had another family and was expecting twins.

A private investigator hired in 2007 by Gerhartsreiter’s ex-wife, Sandra Boss, to conduct an assets trace check during the pending divorce, said he expanded his inquiry to a background check on Gerhartsreiter but he came up short. The only references to a Clark Rockefeller began in 1993 and were solely related to Sandra Boss. His conclusion? “There was no such person as Clark Rockefeller,” said the witness on cross-examination.

That explains why Sandra Boss reportedly asked the FBI upon Gerhartsreiter’s arrest: “Who IS  he?” Her testimony comes on the third day of the trial.

–Beth Karas, In Session correspondent