her claims for false arrests, the county defendants settled the remaining claims for $2 million. >> it is literally got gas. she couldn't have imagined this having happened to her. so, in terms of how this affected her life, i mean, you couldn't invent a worse nightmare for her. >> sometimes, the word victim implies someone week. how do you wrestle with the term a victim? how do you see yourself? >> i don't want to play the victim role. i'm stronger than that. i am better than that. so, you just have to let it go, and i say, what's done is done, and just leave it alone. >> that's all for this edition of dateline. i'm andrea canning. thanks for joining us. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ hello, i'm andrea canning, and this is "dateline." >> hello. i'm andrea canning. and this is dateline. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> i was just like, oh my god --

this is really an answer. it may not be definitive, but this guy knows something. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> a young couple vanishes. then, nearly a decade later, a discovery in their own backyard turns the mystery into a murder. >> they find a back, and inside the back is a human skull. >> detectives had a suspect. and then, he disappeared, too. >> his trailhead just stopped. >> until this -- >> please, please, bring him back. >> he kidnapped his own daughter right from this boston straight, after claiming to be a rockefeller -- clark rockefeller. >> i hired a private investigator, trying to find out who i was married to. and they couldn't find out. >> now, a second chance for investigators to prove that this mysterious con man was also a killer. but was this case as clear cut as it seemed? >> there was no motive. there was no reason he would have done this. >> we will hear from detectives

who helped crack this puzzling case. and from his ex-wife. >> i thought he was very intelligent, funny, very charming. >> for decades, he got away with a web of lies. but he also got away with murder. >> i can barely certainly say that i've never hurt anyone. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> hello and welcome to dateline. he was a high society hustler with a flair for spinning lies. but was this charming con man capable of murder. just solve the mystery, cold case detectives began to retrace his steps along a decades old trail of deceit. here is mike tyab with a phony rockefeller. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> it was a brutal crime, buried over the years by dirt and lies, but there he was finally in los angeles county courtroom, standing trial

through it all. >> he came here with nothing, and then he ended up as a fake rockefeller. >> the world face came to know him as a phony rockefeller, who made headliners for bright, gullible woman. >> he couldn't tell me who i was married to -- >> as followers of his story came to know, he used his audacious talent for lying to live the good life. but was a more than just a clever con man? was he something darker, something evil? >> it adds up, circumstantially, to a picture of a guy who's probably committed, pretty brutal homicides. >> those inside the investigation reveal how they assemble the case for murder from jars of evidence gathered over 28 years and thousands of miles. >> there really isn't a smoking gun. it's a lot of pieces to the puzzle. >> with the pieces coming together to form the portrait of a color killer. if you are looking for a setting for a mystery, san

marino in the early 19 80s wasn't the place. and the house on the lane road since we built hardly the ideal state. that's where quite john solace lived. >> he was probably reasonably shy and reserved. >> patrick raymond was john's childhood friend. he remembers john as a bit of a mama's boy, and as he was, a bit of a nerd. >> john and i both shared a love of star trek. we would compete with each other, trying to out-trivia the other individual, compare theories about travel, world. >> you guys are talking about -- >> well, without advanced mathematics. but, yes -- >> eventually, john's enthusiasm for science fiction morphed into a passion for another galaxy that was somehow accessible in the 80s, computers. and then, he discovered love. >> did you sense a connection between the two of them? >> i certainly had the sense that they were soulmates. >> her name was linda.

like john, she loved science fiction and fantasy. linda's -- seem to complement each other as opposites often do. he was shy. she was outgoing. he was short, she was at six feet, towered over him. >> like, this was the august coupling i have ever seen in my life. >> a quirky couple, laughing to choosing halloween as their wedding day in 1983. with money type, they started their life together living in the house on the rain road. she remembers linda complaining about child's mom, or liked her cocktails early and often on many days. >> his mom is a drunk, a smoker, and i really don't like to be around her and the smoke. she's a poor old lady. but she's, i just try to avoid are like crazy. >> but linda and john could not avoid her because the guest house on the property where they might have set up house had a tenant. with a winter and no hurry to leave, and a newlywed stuck in the main house, john and linda

focused on their careers. they proudly made their first major purchase, a new truck -- >> they were sake when they showed up at my house. i don't remember if they called, or they just actually drove up one day, and said, look, we are in a car -- >> with a new ride and a bit of money, they planned the first road trip with sue, to a big sci-fi convention in phoenix. but in early 1985, weeks before the event, linda called sue with a puzzling announcement. >> first thing was, you know, we are going to new york. and i'm going, what are you going to new york for? well, john looks like he has an interview with a government job or something. >> she says, we're gonna be back in two weeks. >> yeah, we're gonna be back in a couple of weeks, in time for us to get our stuff together, and get this trip on way. >> except, they didn't make it back in time. the weeks roldan with no word from her friend, sue naturally began to worry. she told john's mother -- >> i don't know -- they are in paris. and i am thinking paris, california. and she is like, no, paris, france.

she was just three or four seats to the win. and i'm just kind of like, right. >> and something else made no sense at all. linda had abandoned her beloved cats at a packed hotel. >> her cats were absolute love of her life. she would not have left her cats of her own free will. >> linda's family was alarmed too and filed a missing persons report. but one san marino police followed up by visiting john's mother, she told them the same strange story. >> she said that they were not missing, they were on a job interview that was secret. >> tim miley and dolores scott are detectives with the los angeles county sheriff's department. >> it's weird on its own that his mother said, my son and his wife are on the secret job interview. >> that means she truly believed that he was off on a secret mission job, and that's what she's been told. >> it was so odd, with a young couple missing or not, an officer knocked on the door of the guesthouse, where deedee's tennant lived.

so, he went back there to get some more information as to what he might have known about linda and john. in fact, he came to the door naked -- >> butt naked? >> but naked. >> the tenant in his birthday suit said his name was christopher, but that nothing to say about john and linda. there was no way to go with a missing persons case, not then -- but something was about to change around the question that wasn't going away. where exactly were john and linda? >> which was really behind the missing couple secret mission? and who was that mysterious tenant living like a present with a royal pedigree? >> coming up -- >> he said he was here by himself, and he was a descendant of some royalty in england. >> -- when dateline continues. e continues. ♪ breeze driftin' on... ♪ [coughing] ♪ ...by, you know how i feel. ♪ if you're tired of staring down your copd,... ♪ it's a new dawn, ♪ ♪ it's a new day... ♪

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>> no one seemed more worried about the whereabouts of the missing john and linda sohus and their good friend sue kaufman. >> something is not right. something is afoot here. >> john's mom didi had told so it was a story about the couple that it was some kind of a top secret job that had taken them away to france. hard to believe, until postcards from the couple started arriving from paris, sue got relieved. >> when i saw john and linda at the bottom, i went, answers! >> maybe should been wrong to worry. maybe john's mother has been right all along. maybe john and linda were often

some secret mission. >> so, i just thought, she's off somewhere weird for whatever reason. i kind of played with the idea of witness protection. >> the post got suggested that john and linda were gone voluntarily, no foul play. but then, john's mother suddenly changed her tune. >> in july of 1985, didi calls the police. and now, she's distraught. >> this truck because her guesthouse tenant had moved out without a word. and as she now explained, he was the one telling her secrets behind closed doors. it turned out it was christopher chichester, for the very same man who greeted police in the news, and has nothing to say but training her information all along with the couples overseas mission. >> that tenant who disappeared might have been involved and whatever happened to her son? >> she doesn't know. she is just concerned that the only person she was contacting them through with missing now too. she was concerned because she had no way to contact her son. >> biggest houston a source

about a secret government mission, chichester friends in san marino back that might have thought it was just another of his fantastical stories. >> this was a good one -- >> lisa and dana knew chichester as an eccentric and using character. >> he was funny, and he was charming. >> he was very interesting to talk to on many subjects. he was very bright. he knew about a lot of things. he was witty. you know, that was a lot of fun to hang out with him. >> but the film student at usc, he told dana, often walking around campus with a script or two under his arm. >> we'd go to films together, we talk about film. >> the movies we start together, double indemnity -- >> this is the best movie, dana. we have to go see double indemnity. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> there was a minor british oil, a baronet, said the business card he handed out around scenario. >> what do you think the baronet thing was? >> that was the funny part. i had no idea. >> but she did not question, and neither did corey woods.

>> he said he was here by himself. did not really have a family. he was from england and was descendant of some royalty in england. >> cory and her family were thoroughly impressed by the young aristocrat, who after services at the church they attended together, were dazzled with his stories. >> he bought a castle in england. and he wanted to ship it over here brick by brick. so, we could have, you know, an authentic english, you know, chapel. >> the charming young wit had also became the town's resident rock on tour, sometimes hosting parties at the road. they noticed that he seemed to have the run of the entire property. >> i just said to him, why keep going in your landlords house, chris, it just seemed so off? and he said, i remember this so clearly, oh, they are away. they will not mind. >> and of course they, john and linda, were away, with only

drunken didi isolated in the main house. and as the chichester tenant left, she was an old woman rocked by loneliness and lost hope, fading fast. >> you want to talk about taking sales -- and leaving her in the doldrums. it certainly did. >> she died a few years later, by many, a broken woman. >> and san marino, meanwhile, life went on. the property found buyers, and in may 1994, almost a decade after john and linda disappeared, then you owners decided to install a pool, to clear the old backyard, they started digging. until the work suddenly stopped and police were summoned to the scene. >> and they said they discovered a body. well, initially, of course, we thought, no, that doesn't happen in san marino. >> patricia was a san marino detective when human skeleton was found. >> they said, there is a missing person and that address. so, there was a live a lot of information coming together on that first day.

>> it was a man skeleton. and that old missing persons report suggested to that man was. >> i didn't need the dna, i didn't need the dental records. i knew that was done. >> john's friend sue kaufman heard details of where the body had been dressed, and truth she dreaded at home. >> i said, that's exactly what john war, almost exactly all the time. that was the way he liked to dress. the remains told more of the story close to the head, six stab moves to the back, not just murder, but a brutal murder. a missing persons case that had gone permanently cold, transformed in that moment through the very act of super heated homicide investigation. there were two other people who lived at the road again, and were unaccounted for. john's wife linda, still missing. and the tenant in the guesthouse. exactly where were they, and was a possible one of them was killer? >> coming up -- detectives get to work on that

guesthouse to see if it had any clues to give up. it did. >> it fell for a pretty large spot -- >> -- when dateline continues. ntinues. unlimited data, and unlimited hotspot data. so, no matter what, i'm running this kitchen. (vo) make the switch. it's your business. it's your verizon. i'm your overly competitive brother. check. psych! and i'm about to steal this game from you just like i stole kelly carter in high school. you got no game dude, that's a foul! and now you're ready to settle the score. game over. and if you don't have the right home insurance coverage, well, you could end up paying for all this yourself. so get allstate, and be better protected from mayhem, yeah, like me. thanks, bro. take a lap, rookie. real mature.

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>> buried human skeleton, not what you would expect to find in a suburban backyard, especially in a place like sleepy san marino, california.

>> it was a big story, huge story. >> frank gerardo is the editor of the pasadena star news. >> it's may 1994. the cable news networks are taking off as a 24-hour news cycle. and a body buried in the backyard is newsworthy. >> there was no question it was murder. and if john had been killed and buried in his own backyard, where linda's remains in a shallow grave of their own, the police looked but found no signs in the yard. >> found nothing. and >> i think is that after all that, they had one body, and nothing else. >> two key questions remain unanswered. where was linda? and where was the other person who lived on the lorain road property then? the guesthouse tenant christopher chichester -- >> early on, the police decided that they needed to find linda, and they needed to find chris. it was only a couple of options for how john's body got back there, and how it got buried. and those two options were not accounted for. chris and linda. >> either one of them either

might have done it, or certainly would know something about who did it. >> well, it's imperative that they find them. >> in any homicide investigation, the spouse is the natural suspect, often the first suspect consider. and linda was at large when chichester conceivably overpowered her husband. but as police started interviewing anyone around town who knew any of the occupants of the lorain road property, christopher chichester tips about christopher chichester piled up quickly. tips are suggesting he was the one police should be looking at. even those ones friendly with him now we call him unsavory, manipulator, dana said, always out for the next free lunch. >> he would come into my apartment -- that smells good, you know? and i think after a while, i just kind of kicked him out. i was like, bye. >> more weird stories of a 20 something chichester sometimes hit on younger girls -- she said he asked her out when she was only 12.

>> and my mom sent a very definitive no. and then after that, you know, it got a little weird. and he started asking other inappropriate girls -- >> not age-appropriate? >> not age-appropriate. >> some dusty old stories remains buried nearly a decade, not a great start for a murder investigation. but that guesthouse was still standing, and guest detectives got work to see if they had any clues, about the man who once lived there. >> there was luminol in the guesthouse. and they found four pretty large blood spots. >> they could not tell if it was human or animal blood, but detectives thought the spots could be evidence of violence from years earlier. and they also thought something else was important. >> detective in san marino had made a connection that the tenant and the guesthouse had the victim's truck. >> the truck had been john and linda's private price position, and before they went missing in

1985, they plan that first big roach up in it. but he was later, after they vanished, it was traced to connecticut. >> i mean, why would he take the missing persons couple truck and the truck would end up in connecticut. >> and what's more, records show he changed his name from the baronet christopher chichester to christopher crowe working on wall street. and a deeper check found he'd had along pick a name habit. he was no royal, not even a brit, but a german national, now racing through new identities, like someone bent on covering his tracks. >> and that's when he disappears? >> just in the wind again. >> right. >> and with that, the murder investigation stalled. years went by, and in san marino, they might have forgotten all about for that john sohus and his missing wife, and about the tenant from the lorain road guesthouse, had not been for this -- >> authorities search overland and see for a man and his seven

year old daughter. >> a family drama playing out on a levy boston street in the summer of 2008. a custody battle that became a national story because of the name and it center. >> the man who insists his name is clark rockefeller. >> one of america's famous names, of course, but it was the face that got everyone's attention back in california. trisha gauff retired as a detective biden -- >> when i saw the news, i knew it was him. >> could it be, the fugitive with the famous name at the center of a conman tale on the east coast be the same man wanted on the west coast for any or forgotten crime. a long dorman case of the murder on the rain lorain road. >> coming up -- a rockefeller accused of murder. >> oh, my god! >> this is really an answer. it may not be definitive. but this guy knows something. >> -- when dateline continues. ateline continues.

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here is what is happening. today marks one year since the buffalo new york mass shooting. family members of the ten people killed at the grocery store have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against six socially to companies. and online speech was used to promote violence. why maximizing their ad of a new. in texas, authorities say one person who the u.s. mexico border has died following a report of a tornado saturday. it follows an outbreak of dozens of tornadoes friday. now, back to dateline. k to dateline. >> welcome back to dateline. i'm andrea canning. i am andrea canning. the arrest of the man claiming to be a rockefeller made national news. and while he was not talking to police, our team managed to get the scoop, when we sat down with clark rockefeller for his first televised interview, he was eager to tell us his side

of the story. back now to mike tell you the with the phony rockefeller. >> the news out of boston was crazy, a head-scratcher which screamed front page. >> a bitter divorce, a bizarre kidnapping, a theme's last name. >> it all seems worlds away from that decades old cold case in california. the unsolved murder of a client computer geek knew john solace, who went missing with his wife linda. but to some, the unfolding story in boston was dealing at last, to the brutal, nearly forgotten murder. >> no one from the party recognized him, so that all of his neighbors and friendly. >> frank girardeau was all over the story. >> with the fbi's wanted poster, what it was set off the sparks of recognition, that people knew that clark was chris. >> clark rockefeller, yes, he said one of those rockefellers, appeared to be the latest and boldest reinvention yet, from gerhartsreiter, who slipped on the radar years ago.

it was an audacious lie, now unraveling nightly on the 6:00 news. >> the storyline was that this clark rockefeller had been divorced after nearly 12 years of marriage, two big money business consulting in sandra boss, and in a bitter custody battle after is climbed left, and dissolve, he kidnapped their little daughter, nicknamed snooks and got on the lam, for the love of his daughter, the narrative went, he would risk everything. >> sympathetic further pleaded on national television for her daughter's return. >> i ask you now, please, please bring snooks back. >> she was not much help to the fbi, because likely public, she said, she had no idea who her husband really was. the con man had been passing himself off as a rockefeller in high society circles for well over one decade. >> and then i said, clark rockefeller, i put his picture up there and, i almost fell off the elliptical machine. >> socialite roxanne actually remembers meeting clark rockefeller at a posh manhattan art gallery.

>> he somehow managed, and very polite, and a gentleman. >> rockefeller, new gentlemen friend, like to send weird and provocative text messages. once he claimed, while he was giving a private tour of the metropolitan museum of art. then, this one. in a submarine, crowded, strange, thought of you just a minute ago. >> the texts were so wild, and so farfetched, i would giggle and go, where does he come up with this stuff? >> there was something odd about him. was it his name? >> one of my friends could have sworn he was definitely a rockefeller because of his bone structure. >> it was a convincing cover that have lasted years. but by the time he was caught, six days into his flight with snooks, the fraud was exposed, and his real name, christian karl gerhartsreiter, in every front page top of the newscast story. in california, investigators immediately reopened the john solace homicide case, and the leads started pouring in.

>> we got a lot of phone calls, a lot of people did not come up and forward in 94, came forward in 2008. so there were some new pieces of information that we got as a result of the publicity. >> for suit kaufman, best friend of the still missing linda, it was reason to hope after all of these years. >> oh my goodness, this is really an answer, it may not be definitive, but this guy knows something. >> if he did, he certainly was not telling the police. but he did have plenty to say to natalie morales in a televised interview. >> are you a mystery man? >> i would like to be known as a good man, if anything. i would like to be known as a quiet man, living a quiet life. >> he admitted using a string of fake names. christian karl gerhartsreiter one of them. >> you assume different identities? >> for purposes, much like a writer would take a pen name. >> what about the murder of john sohus? did he have anything to say

about that? >> did you kill john and linda sohus? >> my entire life, i have always been a pacifist. i am a quaker. i believe in nonviolence. and i can fairly, certainly say i have never heard anyone. >> when i saw that i thought, that was the closest thing to a confession i had ever seen or heard. what did you say, did you kill john and linda sohus? >> i think i said no. >> but you don't say i am a quaker. >> even as clark rockefellers kidnapping case played out in boston, the california investigators were quietly at work building a case for murder. >> basically, we had to do cpr on this case and get it done, and get it running. >> to resuscitate the case, they went back to find those folks who had only suspect one he was calling himself the 13th barrett, christopher chichester. the episcopal truth, where he worked after sunday services.

one man remembered chichester, asking to borrow a chainsaw. and now, dana four are told detectives something seem the key evidence. during one of chichester's backyard trivial pursuit parties, she noticed a part of the lawn looked like it had been freshly dug up. >> i said to him, you know, what is with your yard? what happened to your yard? and he just said, well, i am having plumbing problems. >> detectives were astounded at the implications. >> at that point, he is taking ownership of the grave, because that is where john's body was found. >> they detectives, pouring over the evidence from the boston kidnapping case found this. reason to believe the prime suspect had totally rebooted his identity, after san marino. >> in boston, we found some documents, some computer hard drives. his life begins roughly in 1988. >> what did that tell you? >> i would say that it is some evidence of a consciousness, trying to erase a part of one's

life. >> but detectives could not erase the nagging questions but linda, the victims wife. was she still alive? and remember those postcards from paris? she had apparently sent all of them after the couple had disappeared. >> also, we could not eliminate the wife, who was also missing, and whose remains and body has not themselves been found? >> yes, obviously that is something we had to look at. however, the more we dug into linda sohus, we just could not find anything sinister, or any part plausible reason why she would do this, where she had the means to disappear and start a new life. >> was the case trial ready? the answer was at hand. christian karl gerhartsreiter, extradited from boston to california, now officially a defendant in the case of murder. >> coming up. the woman he wooed and fooled as clark rockefeller takes the stand. how even tricked a harvard and be. >> i loved him, i thought he was very intelligent, funny.

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years old. >> we were concerned. it was going to take a smart jury to put those together, so we -- >> gerhartsreiter pleaded not guilty, and hired a pair of prominent boston attorneys to defend, by bailey, and jeff figure. >> there was no motive, no reason why he would've done. this >> we are with people versus gerhartsreiter. >> stu when the trial opened, the prosecutor confidently offered a series of friends and neighbors with tales from around the time that john and linda sohus disappeared. jurors, about the bloodstains found years later inside the guesthouse. and then, testimony from a neighbor, suggesting the tenant has been trying to destroy possible evidence. >> i called him and said chris, what are you burning in the fireplace? >> what was his response? >> i am burning carpet. >> when a church friend said the defendant tried to sell him a rug with a strange spot. >> i felt it looked a little like blood. >> whose chainsaw was? it >> it was mine. >> they heard the story about

the borrowed chainsaw, now, what did that mean? >> for approximately how long, to the best of your estimation was it that he had these chainsaw? >> several months. >> and enough for our took the stand to describe the backyard party the defendant hosted, just yards from a patch of freshly turned soil. >> it looked like somebody dug up part of the lawn, and there was dirt kind of, crumbled dirt on top, like somebody had just been digging. i said, what is going on with your yard, chris? it is all dug up. >> what did he say? >> he said he had been having plumbing problems. >> there is no plumbing to the left of that red line. >> she has a party, hosts a party, a few feet away from where he buried a victim? >> yes. i cannot explain it, it is pretty good. [laughter] >> perhaps the strongest piece of circumstantial evidence, tying the defendant to the murder was this. john sohus's skull had been found into plastic university

book bags, one from u.s. see, the other from the university of wisconsin and milwaukee. >> i have been doing the background on gerhartsreiter, he had attended both of those universities. >> a physical connection, finally, became the con man's real life, and those bones in the ground. more evidence, after his send marino days, murder witnesses said the comment was no longer the expansive track hunter eager to work the room, but was instead a living like a fugitive. >> he told me that he was from pasadena, california. that his father was an anesthesiologist, and his mother was a child actress. >> in the late 80s, she lived with the defendant, then calling himself christopher crowe, an unusual guy, she testified. he became paranoid, obsessed with privacy after a detective called to ask about the truck traced to his latest phony aim.

the truck of john and linda sohus. >> after the call, he was markedly different. >> how is he markedly different? >> the further in us, the cutting off of all social ties. >> the defendant told my nabi it was not a detective called, but someone out to get him and his family. >> you said he suggested a merry, and go into hiding. >> he grew a beard, and a mustache. >> what else? >> and he started to wear contacts. i helped color his hair. >> and while he was still living with her, he picked a new phony name out of thin air. and it was a beauty. at first, it was just east at a table in a packed restaurant. >> and i said, who can make the reservation for? and he says clark rockefeller. >> she dumped him, but he never dumped the rockefeller name. it would help women's biggest catch ever, his gold plated wife, sandra vos, and keep us secret safe for years. >> who did he introduce himself

as to you? >> clark rockefeller. >> did you ever doubt what he told? you >> in hindsight, i wish i had, but no, i assumed that what he was telling he was the truth. >> sandra boss had 70 years since your public kidnapping case, shining the limelight, doing everything she could to get as far from her ex husband as possible. she even moved overseas to london with their daughter. but now, as a witness for the prosecution, she would have to devolved details of their life together. details the prosecution would show how she had been used as a cover, unwittingly helped a killer hide in plain sight. >> i liked him. i thought he was very intelligent, funny, quirky. very charming. >> the stanford graduate told her back when she was getting her mba harvard, they clicked while play acting as a clue themed party. >> we were supposed to come as a character. and i was miss scarlet. >> who is the defending character? >> he was professor plum.

>> what did he tell you about himself? >> he said he was raised in new york, that he grew up in a town house on the east side, sutton place. he went beginning at 14, at yale, to matt. >> the claim he had an association with the rockefeller name? >> yes. >> how? >> constantly. this rockefeller does not like me because, you know, i got angry at him when he was a child at a party. >> they married in 1995 -- or did they? according to boss, she later learned that rockefeller figured out how to tie the knot without leaving a paper trail. >> we went through a wedding ceremony in the quaker meeting house in nantucket. he claimed at the time that he had filed all of the paperwork, so that it was recognized as a legal marriage, except he had not done so, so it was not. i had never been married before, i did not know how these things

work. idiotically, i didn't think about it. >> the prosecution suggested that with his marriage to boss, the con man had hit a double jackpot. he earned north of 1 million a year, giving her house husband and stay at home dad control of the lavish family budget. >> signature? >> yes. he said it was more convenient for him to pay the bills if he had checks that were signed. >> and with no bank accounts of his own, he lived the life of a rockefeller, in boston's insular beacon hill, where few were likely to ask awkward or incriminating questions. >> he was very clear right from the start that he had a high need for privacy, because of his family. >> boss recalled he stopped traveling by plane once ideal is required. most telling for the prosecution, he testified that her husband vowed to never go to places. california, where john sohus was murdered, and connecticut,

where police had once looked for him in connection with the sohus truck. >> i do not enter the state of connecticut, i will not touch my feet on its soil, he was very specific about connecticut. >> what about california? >> california, he also said that he hated and would not visit. >> but deep into their marriage, his life of carefully crafted invisibility began coming apart, melting away with lie after lie, said frank girardeau, who wrote a book about the case. >> he had told her that's mother was really a child actress by the name of and clark. wait a moment -- where we first met, you don't meet your mom's name was mary. now, you are telling me your mom's name is and carter? >> did you just put your finger on his fatal flaw, that in the end, he just could not not lie, he couldn't help himself? >> this man, clark rockefeller could not keep his lies straight. >> by then, sandra boss told the court, her marriage was in serious trouble, headed towards divorce. the private investigators she hired were stymied over a basic

question. >> they could not tell me who i was married to. >> eventually, she and the world found out who clark rockefeller really was. and prosecutors believe they had made the case that he was more than just a con man, he was a murder. >> christian karl gerhartsreiter, he is guilty of murder. >> but the defense was ready to attack each item of downing but circumstantial evidence. and appoint the jury to the figure hovering over the case, the more likely suspect, the defense would argue, the victims missing wife, linda. >> coming up. remember those postcards, signed by linda, and sent from paris? >> it's a theory that linda was alive after the death of john sohus. >> and if she was alive, was she the killer? when dateline continues. dateline continues. greater risk of stroke, heart attack, or death. even at your a1c goal, you're still at risk ...which if ignored could bring you here...

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was all that stood between christian karl gerhartsreiter, aka, clark rockefeller and freedom. he was nearing the end of his prison sentence for kidnapping's daughter in boston. now, reasonable doubt, what the defense called an old, cold and still untold murder case seemed within reach. >> that is not spin, that is not smoke. >> his defense team conceded right off, the client was a fraud and an oddball. >> this man used different names since coming to the

united states in 1978. >> but attorney brad bailey said none of that made a murderer. >> this had nothing to do with covering up a 28-year-old homicide, and everything to do with perpetuating this recreation. >> in court, he attacked the forensic evidence as weak, and mostly nonexistent, i got the prosecution's own experts to admit that. not a single fingerprint respective dna to tie the defendants to the victim, the bloodstains or even those university book bags. >> that is correct, i did not detect a dna profile. >> the defense also challenged the neighbor who testified that she saw blood on it carpet the defendant had tried to sell her. had she really? >> and you do not know that that was blood, do you? >> not absolutely. >> i love the challenge, this one from detective tim miley. what about that chainsaw the defendant supposedly borrowed once upon a time? >> is there any allegation in

this case that the chains are was used in connection with the murder, or disposal of the body of john sohus? >> no. >> so your answer is no, there's no proof of that? >> there is no proof of that. >> in the absence of proof, the defense offered an alternative theory of the crime. another suspect, their steppingstone towards reasonable doubt. the still missing linda. >> we are going to ask you, whether john sohus missing wife might have had just as much a pass to sneak up behind her husband and strike those blows. >> the defense pointed out that she was bigger, stronger than both of her husband and the man in the defendants chair. once more, the theory went, she, the wife might well have had a motive. even the prosecution declined to suggest any reason why the defendant wanted john sohus that. >> it made a lot more sense in terms of motive, in terms of reason to kill, that linda, had done. it >> wasn't their trouble in

paradise, the couple's friend, sue kaufman, linda, desperate to move out of her mother in law's house? >> you knew that linda was frustrated about the living situation, those are words that you have used, correct? >> yes, she was frustrated. >> she shared that frustration with you, didn't she? >> yes, she did. >> kaufman seethed, side, appalled i what was being suggested. >> i was like dude, you are so far off base, i can't even answer your questions with anger. so i will just answer your questions. >> but it was not just a motive, the defense said. wasn't it also clear linda had survived whatever had happened to john, since she was the one, handwriting experts have said, sent postcards to friends weeks later from paris? >> linda sohus is the writer of the two postcards that you examined? >> yes. >> that supports the theory that linda was alive after the death of john sohus. >> as for the testimony of sandra boss, hails that seemed

to suggest their client was the most clever car man alive. well, why would so nimble a scheme, commit such a crude murder, varying his victims remains in plastic book bags, from universities he attended? >> that person would also be one of the stupidest murderers in the history of california. he is a's master con, master manipulator, mastermind that they make him out to be. he is going to kill somebody, very ten feet from where he lives, essentially leaving a plaque saying hey, guys, it is me that killed him. >> enough doubt, the defense thought. if not for a quibble, then at least to hang the case. but prosecutors were ready, they examined and eliminated the linda did it very. just before trial, they thought they solved the mystery of the postcards supposedly sent from paris. the common, it would show, had someone in europe mail them for him. he had done it before, a college girlfriend, producing a postcard he supposedly sent to her from london. >> england is great!

>> we know that he was attending an english class at the university of southern california. >> he was not in london? >> he was not in london. that explains away the postcards. >> the evidence was in. although much of it was damning, it was almost all circumstantial. the defendant, his lawyers say, was confident on verdict day. >> if you went to the courtroom, he went and feeling upbeat, hopeful and optimistic. >> it was a miscalculation to say the least. the jurors only took a few hours to decide. >> we, the jury find the defendant christian karl gerhartsreiter guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree. >> a guilty verdict reached quickly, jurors said, and with little debate. for soup of men, it meant most if not all of the answers about what happened to her last friend, john and linda. >> in my heart, i know he is responsible for whatever happened to make those two gone. >> are you convinced that linda's death as well? >> yes.

>> to the end, he insisted his lawyers privately call him clark, has in clark rockefeller. and they did. but the man who invented that name, and so many others, spent his adult life confessing others to believe his live, and to like him and reward him for those lives, failed on all counts with a jury of his peers. >> unfortunately, there was an interaction here of somebody that they instinctively hated, did not understand. >> they did not like him at all? >> they hated him. they were laughing at him openly. >> not a fitting and for a rockefeller, perhaps. but for a liar who is also a killer, maybe just right. >> that is all for this edition of dateline. i am andrea canning, thank you for watching. for watching >> as we begin a new hour, it is a race to the bottom in the