BOSTON, Massachusetts–When Court TV (now In Session) televised Phil Spector’s first trial in 2007, I reported from outside the downtown Los Angeles County courthouse for five months. The trial ended in a mistrial on September 26, when the jury deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of conviction. In the retrial that ended two months ago, a new jury convicted Spector of the second-degree murder of actress Lana Clarkson. He is now serving a life sentence in state prison, eligible for parole after 19 years.

Phil Spector photographed after arriving last week at the North Kern State Prison Reception Center in Delano, CA

The recent release by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation of Spector’s photo sans hair piece reminds me of an incident during that first trial.

Week 11 (and day 29) of the trial started on Monday, July 9, 2007. There had been no court the previous week to give everyone a break during the Fourth of July holiday after nearly three months of trial.

Everyone was rested and ready to resume but the buzz started as soon as Spector arrived with his new hairstyle. Until that day, he sported a blond page-boy cut. But on July 9th, he showed up with a darker, longer, shaggy hairdo. It was a striking change, reminiscent of Marcia Clark changing her hair during O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. It was also well-known that, for years, Spector had worn hairpieces and that he was quite sensitive about his baldness.

Throughout that week, anchors at Court TV asked me about Spector’s new look and I would comment that it appeared to be a new hairpiece. By Thursday, July 12, Spector’s wife, Rachelle, was fed up with the commentary. That afternoon, during a court break, she pulled me aside in the hall and scolded me for misreporting that her husband wore a hairpiece. I asked: “If it’s not a hairpiece, then what is it?” She replied: “It’s HIS hair, it’s his HAIR.” I was stupefied. Was I wrong?

I always correct myself if someone points out an error. So, I decided to dig further. I asked the DAs on the case if they knew whether he wore a hairpiece. They told me detectives described a large closet full of styrofoam heads donning hairpieces they discovered during a search of Spector’s mansion. Also, I recalled at least one of his former female friends testifying about the bandana he would wear to bed after removing his hair.

The next day, I did report my conversation with Rachelle but, like most trial observers, I always believed he wore hairpieces. With the newly-released photo of Spector in prison, I know I was right all along.

–Beth Karas, In Session correspondent

BOSTON, Massachusetts–Jurors will resume deliberating the fate of the man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller Tuesday. Rockefeller, whose true name is Christian Gerhartsreiter, is accused of kidnapping his daughter during a post-divorce visitation and assaulting a social worker who was supervising the visit. He denies the assault and says he was criminally insane at the time of the kidnapping.

Christian Gerhartsreiter standing in court next to photographic exhibit showing daughter Reigh

Jurors spent about 3 and a half hours deliberating before calling it a day. Earlier, they heard 90 minutes of summations from both sides before the judge instructed them on the law and they retired to decide the case.

Defense attorneys Jeffrey Denner and Timothy Bradl split their closing argument. Bradl focused on three of the four charges that he said were not proved: assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (social worker hanging onto the car as it drove away), assault and battery (pushing the social worker in the back), and giving a false name to a police officer at the time of arrest. Denner conceded that the fourth charge, kidnapping, was factually proven but that Gerhartsreiter is not criminally responsible because of his severe psychological disorders.

Denner defended the testimony of forensic psychologist Catherine Howe and forensic psychiatrist Keith Ablow, who both agreed that Gerhartsreiter’s delusions and narcissism prevented him from comprehending the wrongfulness of kidnapping his daughter. Denner concluded: “You see him descending into madness. You see completely irrational action that other people are buying because of the name Rockefeller and the appearance, the veneer, of respectability with a powerful wife.”

Assistant District Attorney David Deakin told jurors this is a “case about manipulation, not about madness.” He suggested that insanity has nothing to do with the case. Rather “it’s a case about the loss of control, the defendant’s anger and frustration over the loss of control over his family and the plan he set about to regain at least as much of that control as he could.”

Deakin went through a list of Gerhartsreiter’s actions in preparing and carrying out the abduction, to illustrate that Gerhartsreiter knew what he was doing was wrong. For example, shortly after the divorce was finalized, Gerhartsreiter resumed his life-long pattern when he planned a new life and a new identity, this time in Baltimore, as Charles “Chip” Smith.

On the day of the kidnapping his meticulous plan unfolded once he had two getaway drivers in place. He wouldn’t allow one of those drivers, Aileen Ang, to answer her cell phone while driving him and his daughter to New York City because he knew she would learn about the Amber Alert for his daughter.

The judge selected one of the four men on the jury as the foreperson. He teaches special education law at Harvard. Another man is a firefighter. Of the eight women, one of them used to counsel sex offenders and another has applied to medical school.

After nearly three hours of deliberations on Monday, jurors asked the court detailed questions related to the most minor charge, the misdemeanor of giving a false name to the police.

Stay tuned to In Session for all the latest as deliberations continue.

Beth Karas, In Session correspondent

BOSTON, Massachusetts–The evidence is in, in the kidnapping trial of the man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller. Jurors will return to hear closing arguments next week before retiring to decide his fate.

Clark Rockefeller enters Boston courtroom

The last witness called by the prosecution to rebut defense experts said Christian Gerhartsreiter is not criminally responsible for the crimes charged, because he suffers from delusional disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.

Psychiatrist James Chu disagreed with the defense experts’ diagnosis of two disorders. Chu opined that Gerhartsreiter suffers from mixed personality disorder with narcissistic and anti-social traits. He saw no evidence of delusional disorder; rather, he thought the psychological test results pointed more to untruthful and exaggerated responses.

This is the first trial in which Chu testified as a forensic expert. As a result, he struggled on cross-examination when his lack of training in forensics (the intersection of science in the courtroom) was emphasized by defense attorney Jeffrey Denner.

Before Chu took the stand, the final witness for the defense completed his testimony begun on Wednesday. In addition to a clinical practice, forensic psychiatrist Keith Ablow is a cable network contributor and writes a blog for them which he characterized as “journalism/entertainment.”

Within days of Gerhartsreiter’s August 2, 2008 arrest, and six months before he was hired by the defense, Ablow wrote a blog assessing what was known at that time about Gerhartsreiter. He noted narcissistic characteristics in Gerhartsreiter and wrote that he would like to know if it is rooted in painful childhood experiences.

During his testimony, Ablow explained that Gerhartsreiter was shunned and demeaned as an adolescent by his father in Germany. The source of this information comes solely from Gerhartsreiter, who is not known for truth-telling. Assistant District Attorney David Deakin suggested that Ablow had “interviewer bias” once he became a defense expert; that is, that he looked for a painful childhood experience and credited Gerhartsreiter’s words with no further confirmation. Ablow denied that he was biased.

Ablow appeared to blame ex-wife Sandra Boss for Gerhartsreiter’s worsening mental illness. “I wish he was married to someone who said, Look this Rockefeller stuff…we need to get you help…you’re a father now.” Earlier in his testimony, Ablow also said that the more people around Gerhartsreiter believed his lies, the more severe his disorders became.

Closing arguments are scheduled for Monday morning.

–Beth Karas, In Session correspondent

BOSTON, Massachusetts–A defense expert returns to the stand today to continue his testimony about the mental state of the man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller. On Wednesday, Keith Ablow, M.D. and another expert opined that Christian Gerhartsreiter is so mentally ill that he’s not criminally responsible for kidnapping his daughter last July.

Author, television personality and forensic psychiatrist Keith Ablow testified for the defense

Forensic psychologist Catherine Howe administered a series of tests to Gerhartsreiter designed to determine, in part, if he was malingering (or faking) mental illness. She concluded he was not. She also concluded that he suffers from two psychological disorders. The more severe is delusional disorder, grandiose type; the other is narcissistic personality disorder.

Those conclusions, however, are not consistent with a few of the test results. One test result indicated there was no evidence of mental illness. Another test showed there was no “major mental illness,” that is, delusional disorder. She opined that Gerhartsreiter tried to make himself seem less ill when taking the tests.

Howe explained that as Gerhartsreiter’s grandiose beliefs were reinforced, his disorder became more severe. That is, as people around him, especially his ex-wife Sandra Boss, continued to believe he was a Rockefeller who entered Yale at 14, who owned a multi-million dollar art collection, and who used to help Third World countries in debt refinancing, he spiraled deeper into his delusional disorder.

Christian Gerhartsreiter

The defense also called forensic psychiatrist Keith Ablow, who concurred with Howe’s findings. Ablow explained that people become narcissistic because they don’t feel good about themselves, so they reinvent themselves.

Ablow said Gerhartsreiter had an emotional reaction to losing custody of his daughter. His ex-wife and daughter relocated to London within days of the December 2007 divorce decree. Gerhartsreiter would wander the streets of Boston and believed he saw signs that meant he’d find his daughter around the next corner. He believed he communicated telepathically with his daughter and that she wanted him to take her away.

Suggesting that Gerhartsreiter is a liar, not delusional, Assistant District Attorney David Deakin read from an affidavit Gerhartsreiter filed in the divorce proceeding from Boss. In the passage read by Deakin, Gerhartsreiter stated that Boss created his fictitious educational background and told him to tell people that he entered Yale at the age of 14. Gerhartsreiter also claimed in the divorce that Boss was the sole wage earner, that he had no access to her accounts, and that she paid all the bills. But for Boss being the sole wage earner, these claims are a direct contradiction to the testimony of Boss.

Yet another identity Gerhartsreiter allegedly used in the past decades was revealed in court on Tuesday. According to Deakin, in 1984 and 1985, Gerhartsreiter posed as Dr. Reiter, a cardiovascular surgeon at a clinic in Las Vegas.

The prosecution is expected to call a psychiatrist in rebuttal. Closing arguments in this case are expected next week.

–Beth Karas, In Session correspondent

BOSTON, Massachusetts–The defense will get a chance on Tuesday to question the ex-wife of the man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller, now on trial for kidnapping the couple’s daughter last year.

Sandra Boss swears in before taking the witness stand

Sandra Boss testified on the third day of the custodial kidnapping trial of Christian Gerhartsreiter, and jurors now have a complete picture of the events of July 27, 2008, when Gerhartsreiter succeeded in snatching his daughter in front of a social worker who was supervising the visit and a private investigator hired to tail father and daughter.

On Monday, Boss, who was married to Gerhartsreiter for 12 years and is the mother of their now eight-year-old daughter, Reigh, rarely looked at her ex-husband as she sat in the witness box, though he appeared to be watching her closely. And she never spoke his name; rather Boss referred to him a few times as her ex-husband but mainly as the “defendant.” For details about Boss’s testimony, see our story on CNN.com.

The most colorful witness of the day was Darryl Hopkins. Hopkins is the driver who hoped the man he knew as Clark Rockefeller would become a more regular customer. “Rockefeller” needed help in ridding himself of a “clingy relative.”

A financially-strapped Hopkins was enticed into participating in what he thought was a harmless scheme by the $3,000 offer that “Rockefeller” made for his assistance. That clingy relative was actually Howard Yaffe, the social worker who supervised the custodial visit on July 27, 2008.

The day before the kidnapping, Hopkins suggested ways to separate father and daughter from Yaffe by exiting a restaurant through a back door to the waiting Hopkins and his SUV. The final plan, carried out in the early afternoon of July 27, 2008, was for the father and daughter to jump into his SUV on a low-traffic street where the chances of being seen were slim. Hopkins believed he was driving the two to Rhode Island to dine with Senator Chaffee’s son but that “plan” was thwarted when Gerhartsreiter ordered him to stop and let them out while still in Boston. Hopkins did receive full payment of $3,000.

Hopkins peppered his testimony with a bit of unintentional humor. He demonstrated Gerhartsreiter’s clenched-jaw manner of speech which he likened to Thurston Howell III, the aristocratic character from Gilligan’s Island. Hopkins told jurors that two days before the abduction, he drove Gerhartsreiter to Manhattan for what he believed was a board meeting. The two stopped for a quick lunch on their way out of the city. Hopkins ordered a turkey club; Gerhartsreiter ordered “steak tartare,” said Hopkins waving limp wrists in the air.

Mason Peltz, a brief afternoon witness, met Gerhartsreiter only once at a Christmas dinner in 2007. He described the man, introduced as Clark Rockefeller, as distraught over recently losing custody of his daughter. Gerhartsreiter told Peltz that he had a child out of wedlock in England and was raising his daughter as a single parent. The mother of the child decided she wanted their daughter, obtained custody, and took her back to England. Gerhartsreiter felt he was unjustly treated by the court and that if he couldn’t resolve the matter, he’s “go back to England and bring the child back.” Peltz took Gerhartsreiter’s words to mean that he would kidnap her.

Stay tuned to In Session for complete coverage of this case.

–Beth Karas, In Session correspondent

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

BOSTON, Massachusetts–In the trial of a man who posed as a member of the Rockefeller family, jurors heard from three witnesses Thursday who detailed Christian Gerhartsreiter’s first supervised visit with his daughter following his 2007 divorce. That visit took place over the weekend of July 26-27, 2008. On the second day, Gerhartsreiter, known at the time as Clark Rockefeller, kidnapped his daughter and allegedly assaulted a social worker who was with them.  He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the charges in this case.

Clark Rockefeller sits behind defense table in Boston court

Before the testimony began, the attorneys delivered opening statements to the 16 jurors and a courtroom packed with spectators. Assistant District Attorney David Deakin put a photo of Reigh Boss, Gerhartsreiter’s daughter, on a large monitor at the start of his half hour opening. The photo remained on display until testimony began. Gerhartsreiter, wearing a blue blazer and khaki slacks, sat stiffly and rarely took his eyes off his daughter’s photo. Reigh Boss will not testify, announced Deakin, but her mother will.

As Deakin laid out for the jury what the evidence will show in the next few weeks, he harkened back to 1978 when Gerhartsreiter came to the U.S. on a tourist visa. Gerhartsreiter succeeded in obtaining a student visa, then a green card, when he married in 1981. That former wife, who met him only twice before marrying him on a promise of financial compensation, will also testify.

Deakin then jumped forward to 1993 and the advent of Clark Rockefeller, an art dealer who claimed he worked in debt restructuring for Third World countries, who married Sandra Boss in 1995, started a family in 2001, and divorced her in December 2007.

Gerhartsreiter’s attorney, Jeffrey Denner, focused on his client’s mental illness which he said is to blame for the complicated web of lies that Gerhartsreiter spun and the crimes he is accused of committing. He is not criminally responsible for the acts charged, stressed Denner. His narcissistic personality disorder and delusional disorder of grandiose type prevented him from appreciating the wrongfulness of his conduct. Denner told the jurors in very general terms about other identities his client assumed in between 1981 and 1993 in Los Angeles and Connecticut.

Howard Yaffe, the social worker who supervised Gerhartsreiter’s July 2008 visit with his daughter, described the hours he spent with father and daughter culminating in an alleged assault on him when Gerhartsreiter abducted his daughter in a fairly elaborately-laid plan. Robert Warren, a private investigator hired to surreptitiously monitor the custodial visit, told the jurors that he lost sight of the trio just as the alleged assault and abduction occurred. He came upon the scene seconds after Gerhartsreiter sped away in an SUV with his daughter.

On Friday, jurors are expected to hear from Aileen Ang who drove Gerhartsreiter and his daughter to New York City, not knowing she was participating in a kidnapping. Police witnesses are expected to follow.

Stay tuned to In Session for all the latest coverage of this case.

–Beth Karas, In Session correspondent

BOSTON, Massachusetts–Jury selection wrapped up Wednesday in a custodial kidnapping case that gripped the nation last summer. A man who posed as Clark Rockefeller was on the lam for a week with his then seven-year-old daughter before authorities captured him in Baltimore, Maryland on August 2, 2008. What those authorities learned during that week constitutes the most fascinating back story of any trial I’ve covered.

Mug shot of Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter aka Clark Rockefeller

He is no Rockefeller. He’s Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, a German native, who came to the United States in 1978. He’s lived from California to New York under at least three long-term identities.

From at least 1982 until 1985, he was Christopher Chichester, an aspiring filmmaker who claimed to be of British royalty (included in his fictitious ancestry was Lord Mountbatten), and who boarded at a home in San Marino, CA. In the late 1980s, he was Christopher Crowe of Greenwich, CT and New York City, who worked at a brokerage firm, as a corporate bondsman and briefly at a securities firm. From 1993 until shortly before his arrest in 2008, he lived as Clark Rockefeller, an art collector who also helped Third World countries manage their debt.

As Rockefeller, he married Sandra Boss in 1995, a successful businesswoman and the household’s sole breadwinner. In 2001, their daughter, Reigh, was born and in 2007 their marriage ended in divorce. Boss was onto her husband, especially after a private investigator questioned whether he was, indeed, a Rockefeller. Following the divorce, Gerhartsreiter was given only three supervised visits a year with his daughter: spring, summer, and Thanksgiving. He cancelled the first visit scheduled for March of 2008. The summer visit was his first one, and it was on that visit that he kidnapped his daughter and, at the same time, allegedly assaulted the social worker who was supervising the visit.

According to authorities, a plan was in place by July 2008. Gerhartsreiter had already purchased a carriage house in Baltimore, MD under the name of Chip Smith. He told the realtor that he was a single parent and that his daughter Muffy would join him. On July 27, he duped two drivers into participating in the kidnapping. One driver took him partway across Boston. Another drove him to Manhattan. Six days later, living as Chip Smith, he was lured from the Baltimore carriage house, arrested and charged with kidnapping, assault and battery, and giving a false name. He now says he is not criminally responsible by reason of mental disease or defect; in other words, he was criminally insane at the time.

This intriguing story will continue to unfold in the next few weeks in a Boston courtroom. But the trial judge is not permitting jurors to hear everything about Gerhartsreiter’s past. One key fact they cannot know is that a grand jury in Los Angeles County is currently hearing evidence presumably linking Gerhartsreiter to a 1985 double homicide when he lived there as Christopher Chichester.

Opening statements are scheduled for Thursday morning. Among the first witnesses will be the alleged assault victim, social worker Howard Yaffe, a private investigator who was tailing the supervised visit on the day of the kidnapping and Aileen Ang, who drove Gerhartsreiter and his daughter to New York City that day while an Amber Alert went out across the country.

–Beth Karas, In Session correspondent

NEW YORK–Last month, on the one-year anniversary of her release from a San Diego County jail, Cindy Sommer reflected on the events in her life that led to that day. She had spent two and half years in jail on charges that she murdered her husband Todd in 2002, an active-duty Marine.

Cynthia Sommer

Sommer wasn’t arrested for almost four years, and only after the Navy decided to test some of Todd Sommer’s tissues preserved from autopsy. The tissues had fatally high levels of arsenic, leading authorities to reclassify his death a homicide.

By this time, Sommer had started a new life in Florida with her four children. She always denied poisoning her husband, but a jury disagreed, and convicted Sommer of first-degree murder in January 2007.
Sommer faced life in prison without the possibility of parole but, after much litigation, the trial judge didn’t sentence her. Instead, in late November 2007, he set aside the conviction and granted Sommer a new trial, in part because of the ineffectiveness of her attorney at trial.

Sommer had to sit in jail awaiting the new trial. In the meantime, convinced that earlier tests finding arsenic were flawed, her new attorney demanded that the prosecution look for more preserved tissues taken at autopsy. Luckily for Sommer, the state found some tissues that were frozen in another government lab. These samples were tested for arsenic in early 2008 and yielded a totally unexpected result: negative for arsenic. The San Diego District Attorney immediately moved for Sommer’s release. The charges were dismissed, for the time being, and Sommer walked out of jail on April 17, 2008.

Sommer now wants the dismissal of the murder charges to be “with prejudice,” which means they can never be reinstated. At the moment, the dismissal is “without prejudice.” And that’s where the matter stands right now. Sommer’s court date earlier this month has been rescheduled to August 28, at the prosecution’s request. She is hopeful that the DA will concede, on that date, that the matter should go away forever.

Meanwhile, Sommer is trying to get her life back and appears to be doing well. She is focused and driven. Sommer is enrolled full-time at a university where she is studying business, and also works about 30 hours a week. She has custody of her two older children, Jenna, 17, and Graham, 14. She is trying to get full custody of the younger children, Bailey, 13, and Christian, 9, who is Todd’s son. He was not even two years old when his father died. At the moment, Sommer shares custody of Bailey and Christian with her brother, who raised them during the years she was incarcerated.

I spoke with Sommer recently. She described her daily struggle to transition back to life on the outside. At one point, Sommer compared herself to a fire victim, whose possessions are all lost. But a fire victim, she said, doesn’t lose her bank account and credit history. Nor does a fire victim have to explain to potential employers what she does: a big hole in her resume—what she was doing between November 2005 and April 2008.

Recently, Sommer reached out to organizations like the Innocence Project where, no doubt, she could be a great asset. While Sommer resents the hurdles that come with explaining her arrest, trial, conviction, and dismissal, she has a lot to be thankful for. She came very close to being sentenced to state prison. Once there, an appeal based on the very same issues the trial judge heard, post-conviction, would have taken years and could have resulted in an affirmance of the conviction, especially if, after several more years, those frozen, arsenic-free tissues could no longer be located.

–Beth Karas, In Session correspondent

NEW YORK – A week after the 9/11 attacks, I was reporting from ground zero for Court TV, now In Session, when I received a call from my father that my older brother, Joseph, had taken a turn for the worse.

In Session correspondent Beth Karas

Joe had had many brushes with death but this would be his final one. The next day, I was at his hospital bedside in Massachusetts when he passed away.

I spent another hour with him after he died, saying goodbye, and contemplating his life and that of my younger brother, Jonathan, who passed away eight years earlier. While they are in my thoughts daily, today is special for it’s International MPS Awareness Day. For full story click link to CNN.com Health page.

-Beth Karas, In Session correspondent