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Speaker 5: Look host, you are now listening to True Murder, The
Speaker 5: most Shocking Killers in true crime history and the authors
Speaker 5: that have written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK.
Speaker 5: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 5: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 5: your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 6: Good Evening, This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 6: program True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime
Speaker 6: history and the authors that have written about them. John Sohus,
Speaker 6: a twenty somethingter resident year resident of San Marino, California,
Speaker 6: was allegedly murdered in nineteen eighty five by conman Christian
Speaker 6: Karl gerhartswriter, who had become infamous under his most known alias,
Speaker 6: Clark Rockefeller. Rockefeller the prime suspect and So's murder may
Speaker 6: have been the last person to see him alive. Nine
Speaker 6: years after his death, SOAS's bones were dug up in
Speaker 6: the backyard of the home he once shared with his wife, Linda,
Speaker 6: whose whereabouts remained unknown. Rockefeller's two thousand and eight arrest
Speaker 6: for abducting his own daughter put him squarely in the
Speaker 6: crosshairs of the decades only decades old sous homicide case.
Speaker 6: Upon Rockefeller's arrest, girardou began placing together the convoluted tale
Speaker 6: in a series of articles for the Pasadena Star News.
Speaker 6: His research resulted in Name Dropper, which reveals inside information
Speaker 6: about the case. Girardo says is the most fantastic he's
Speaker 6: scene in his twenty five years as an investigative reporter.
Speaker 6: The book that we are featuring this evening is Name Dropper,
Speaker 6: Investigating the Clark Rockefeller Mystery with my special guest, journalist
Speaker 6: and author Frank C. Girardo. Welcome to the program, and
Speaker 6: thank you for agreeing to this interview. Frank Girardo, Thanks
Speaker 6: a lot, Dan, I really appreciate it's thanks to be
Speaker 6: able to come on and talk about this story because
Speaker 6: it is pretty compelling.
Speaker 4: It it stretches over many decades and across the United
Speaker 4: States and involves some pretty quirky characters.
Speaker 6: Now, I think it's important to the story and lots
Speaker 6: of times I often ask why somebody felt it, why
Speaker 6: they were compelled to write this story, and I guess
Speaker 6: in answering this question, you will answer that question. But
Speaker 6: let's give our audience your background because I think obviously
Speaker 6: your background is very important to how you came to
Speaker 6: this story and how influence unt you you were in
Speaker 6: basically being part of the story, we'll say, and we'll
Speaker 6: explain that, and you'll be able to explain that to
Speaker 6: our alredience a little bit later. So tell us about
Speaker 6: your background as a journalist, where you were, and just
Speaker 6: tell us about your background before we get into this
Speaker 6: incredible story.
Speaker 4: Yes, I'd be happy to I'm a longtime newspaper reporter.
Speaker 4: All in Los Angeles. I worked at the Los Angeles
Speaker 4: Herald Examiner, which folded in eighty nine. I moved around
Speaker 4: a little bit and I ended up at the Pasadena
Speaker 4: Star News. I've most of my career, I've been a
Speaker 4: police reporter, which means working at night and making a
Speaker 4: lot of cop calls. In nineteen ninety four, police in
Speaker 4: the small town of San Marino dug up a body
Speaker 4: and I just happened to be on scene at the time,
Speaker 4: talking to neighbors and people that lived there, and a
Speaker 4: guy said to me, I know who that is. That's
Speaker 4: John Sellis, And I bet the guy that used to
Speaker 4: live here, and that stuck with me. That was in
Speaker 4: May ninety four. Later that year, I was in the
Speaker 4: coroner's office doing a story on the O. J. Simpson case,
Speaker 4: and I happened to have the opportunity to see the
Speaker 4: remains of John Solis and actually hold the parts of
Speaker 4: his skull in my hand. It was very unique experience, obviously,
Speaker 4: and it happened to me again after in two thousand
Speaker 4: and three when I was writing a book on a
Speaker 4: completely different topic. And so when Clark Rockefeller was in
Speaker 4: the news for kidnapping his daughter in Boston, they all
Speaker 4: came flooding back, and it gave me a I had
Speaker 4: a unique perspective because I had been covering this case
Speaker 4: since ninety four, this homicide case, and b once my
Speaker 4: old sources said, hey, you know this guy, Clark Rockefeller
Speaker 4: that they're looking for, he looks a lot like the
Speaker 4: guy they want for that murder in San Marino way
Speaker 4: back when I put all the pieces together and started
Speaker 4: writing stories about it, and I think some of those
Speaker 4: stories had an influence on how the police ultimately approached
Speaker 4: the case and how it was prosecuted. There's a lot
Speaker 4: of twists and turns, and you know a lot of
Speaker 4: them are in the book Name Dropper, which is on
Speaker 4: you can only get on the internet at Rockefeller Mystery
Speaker 4: dot Com. And I detailed them all there.
Speaker 6: Right now, you had the opportunity you said this was
Speaker 6: you know, this really struck you at the time. And
Speaker 6: then in retrospect, once you had seen that Rockefeller had
Speaker 6: been charged in Boston for abducting his daughter, again you
Speaker 6: made some connections. But what you said, you had a
Speaker 6: skull in your hand. For our audience, how was at
Speaker 6: least according to the coroner, how was John SaaS killed?
Speaker 4: Well, so the coroner believed, even back in nineteen ninety
Speaker 4: for that this person, John Sois, had been bludgeoned to death.
Speaker 4: His skull had been broken into several pieces, and in
Speaker 4: ninety four almost there were seven pieces that they had
Speaker 4: were in a paper bag. By two thousand and three
Speaker 4: they had taken the seven pieces and sort of reconstructed them,
Speaker 4: and you could actually look at the skull and with
Speaker 4: a you know, an expert describing what happened, see how
Speaker 4: where the blows were delivered and how they affected this
Speaker 4: skull initially in cracking it and then splitting it open
Speaker 4: and causing you know, great injury to John Sois that
Speaker 4: ultimately proved fatal.
Speaker 6: Speculate did the coroner speculate it all to the weapon used?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, there's you know, they said it was
Speaker 4: a blunt object there. You know, at one time it
Speaker 4: was described as a rounded blunt object like a baseball bat.
Speaker 4: At other times it's been described as a two by four. Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: there was something else played into determining how exactly John
Speaker 4: died by looking at the skull, and that is when
Speaker 4: the body was dug up. It was during a swimming
Speaker 4: pool excavation. That was nine years after it was buried.
Speaker 4: And you know when they did. When they dig a
Speaker 4: swimming pool, they use these bobcats and they're like a
Speaker 4: big tractor, you know, and so the the tractor broke
Speaker 4: the skull into more little pieces, which so putting it together,
Speaker 4: they needed an expert that could say, okay, look, these
Speaker 4: injuries occurred when this person was alive, and these injuries
Speaker 4: to the skull occurred from the bobcat. So one of
Speaker 4: the things that this case has is some really interesting
Speaker 4: forensic science. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, yeah, So I wanted to get to that because
Speaker 6: that's again, it's all very big part of the huge
Speaker 6: puzzle here. So you gotta again, this is really is
Speaker 6: a mystery. Now tell us about go back to of course,
Speaker 6: the main character in this story that Clark Rockefeller. He's
Speaker 6: gone through various aliases and then he wound up with
Speaker 6: Clark Rockefeller. We can talk about that as well, but
Speaker 6: tell us about the German immigrant exchange student Christian Carl
Speaker 6: Gerhardt writer Gerharts writer.
Speaker 4: Christian Karl Gerharts Rider Christian Karl Gerhartz Rider is a
Speaker 4: German national. He grew up in a tiny town in Bavaria, which,
Speaker 4: if you know Germany, it's the southern part of Germany.
Speaker 4: And his little town was on a road that connected
Speaker 4: Munich in Germany and Salzburg and Austria. He met an
Speaker 4: American couple in the late seventies and came to the
Speaker 4: United States using their name, and he posed as an
Speaker 4: exchange student. He wound up in Berlin, Connecticut, which you
Speaker 4: know sounds very German, doesn't. They attended high school there
Speaker 4: as Christian Gerhart's writer or Chris, and moved across the country,
Speaker 4: first stopping in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he attended the University
Speaker 4: of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and this will play a role later
Speaker 4: in the story. And he left, he got married, got
Speaker 4: a green card, left Wisconsin and came to California and
Speaker 4: reinvented himself. No longer as Christopher Chris Gerhart's writer. He
Speaker 4: was now Christopher Chichester, the thirteenth Baronet of Chichester, whatever
Speaker 4: that means. If bamboozled a lot of people though, because
Speaker 4: he was now posing as you know, the scion of
Speaker 4: British Royalty. And sam Marino is a rather upper crust
Speaker 4: community in eastern Los Angeles County. Not a place where
Speaker 4: there's high crime. It's a place where, you know, the
Speaker 4: titans of industry live, be it the publishing industry, the
Speaker 4: movie industry. You think Beverly Hills, but a lot of
Speaker 4: them live in San Marino too, and there's a lot
Speaker 4: of money there. So and here comes this guy posing
Speaker 4: as royalty. Well, it doesn't matter what your background is
Speaker 4: or what your business is. He's learned quickly that people
Speaker 4: liked royalty and liked to glom Onto Royalty because they've
Speaker 4: they felt that it gave some sort of a legitimacy
Speaker 4: to whatever their pursuits were. So he made a lot
Speaker 4: of friends. But really he was living in the guest house,
Speaker 4: more like the garage or the shed behind a you know,
Speaker 4: a dumpy house in the poorer section of town, but
Speaker 4: pretending to be something else. And the house that he
Speaker 4: lived in was occupied by an older woman who d
Speaker 4: d sois. He was a heavy drinker, a heavy smoker.
Speaker 4: She'd been a party girl all of her life, and
Speaker 4: in her final days she was living in this house,
Speaker 4: running out the back house to Chris. She had a
Speaker 4: son about Chris's age. She was twenty eight. His name
Speaker 4: was John. John got married and him and his wife, Linda,
Speaker 4: moved into the house with Dedie. So now we have
Speaker 4: four people living on this property, Chris, John, and Dedie
Speaker 4: and Linda. And what happened is Linda and John, we're
Speaker 4: kind of unhappy living with Dedi being that she was
Speaker 4: a drinker and a smoker and a heavy alcoholic and
Speaker 4: all these sort of bad things. And Linda wanted to
Speaker 4: move out. And I think that they had some intention
Speaker 4: possibly to move into this guest house, but of course
Speaker 4: there's a renter there. He's paying rent, and it wasn't
Speaker 4: gonna be that easy. In nineteen eighty five, Linda disappeared.
Speaker 4: Just prior to their disappearance, Linda told several of their
Speaker 4: friends that John had gotten the job in Connecticut working
Speaker 4: for the government in some sort of top secret, hush
Speaker 4: hush job, and that Linda would said that she was
Speaker 4: going to be going there also because they needed her
Speaker 4: to do some artwork. She was an artist. The couple disappeared,
Speaker 4: and after several weeks, her family became concerned. Linda's family
Speaker 4: became very concerned, and they called the police, and the
Speaker 4: police came over and they visited with Dedi, and Dedi said,
Speaker 4: don't worry about my son and his wife. They're on
Speaker 4: a secret mission and I have a source who's in
Speaker 4: contact with them. He's talking to them every day and
Speaker 4: relaying messages to me. And she didn't say who her
Speaker 4: secret source was, but she implied that the secret source
Speaker 4: was Chris living in the guest house.
Speaker 6: Well how did she sorry, how did she imply that?
Speaker 4: Well, you know how like you say I have a
Speaker 4: secret source, and then your eyes kind of like turn
Speaker 4: your head turned nods to the back house. It was that,
Speaker 4: it was It was yeah, it wasn't really subtle, because
Speaker 4: police did pick up on that, and in fact, on
Speaker 4: a subsequent visit when they came out to talk about
Speaker 4: the missing couple, an officer actually went to the back
Speaker 4: house and he knocked on the door and the door
Speaker 4: opens and Chris comes out wearing exactly nothing. He's completely naked,
Speaker 4: you know. The officer being you know, a macho sort
Speaker 4: of you know police officer back in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 4: said hey, what's wrong with you? Chris is well, sir,
Speaker 4: I'm the nudist, and the officer, you know, averted his
Speaker 4: eye and said, put your damn clothes on and left
Speaker 4: without ever checking the house, the grounds or anything. He
Speaker 4: was put off by this naked, quick thinking mercer suspect
Speaker 4: and left. Yeah. So several more weeks go by, and
Speaker 4: then Chris disappears, and when he leaves, he's driving the
Speaker 4: missing couple's pickup truck. DD calls the police again. She
Speaker 4: says that she now wants to add on to the
Speaker 4: missing person's report, which she does, and nineteen eighty five
Speaker 4: comes and goes. DD sells the house, moves out, Chris
Speaker 4: is gone, and she never hears from her son or
Speaker 4: daughter in law again. However, friends of Linda's, just prior
Speaker 4: to Chris's disappearance received some postcards. All of them came
Speaker 4: from Paris, France. All of them had a really cryptic
Speaker 4: message on it said something like, sorry miss New York,
Speaker 4: but this can be lived with. And each of these
Speaker 4: post guards will have a picture of the Iceland Power
Speaker 4: or Versailles or you know the Palais Justice, which are
Speaker 4: famous uh Parisian landmarks. And s her friends bought it.
Speaker 4: Huh okay, I guess she's in Paris. You know, no
Speaker 4: big deal, they bought it. Yeahs. So you know there's
Speaker 4: a lot of there was a sort of a lot
Speaker 4: of these red herrings that were tossed out by this
Speaker 4: murder suspect. But he was brazen too. Before leaving, he
Speaker 4: had a trivial pursuit game in the backyard with several
Speaker 4: young ladies who asked him, Hey, why is the backyard
Speaker 4: all dug up Chris, to which he replied, well, they're
Speaker 4: doing plumbing. Plumbing goes nowhere near where this dig was,
Speaker 4: and it turns out later, of course, that's where John's
Speaker 4: body was actually buried. So he's a pretty brazen guy.
Speaker 4: He leaves Sam Marino. He's driving a missing couple's pickup
Speaker 4: Trump and he he ends up in back Connecticut, only
Speaker 4: this time it's in Greenwich. He's kind of grown accustomed
Speaker 4: to the high life mere. He moves into the back
Speaker 4: house of a rather stately Greenwich mansion.
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Speaker 4: And now he's passing himself off as Christopher Crowe, movie producer,
Speaker 4: Christopher Crowe who's had involvement in the return of the
Speaker 4: Alfred Hitchcock series to television, Christopher Crowe, who attended UFC
Speaker 4: Film School and is an expert in film noir. And
Speaker 4: people again buy into this. Remember now, it's nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 4: so there's not a lot of ways to check people's stories.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that Chris has picked up
Speaker 4: along the way is that props really help him tell
Speaker 4: the tale. So he's got some posters from Alfred Hitchcock
Speaker 4: and a couple of movie posters and they have Chris
Speaker 4: Crow on it. Well, there's no reason to believe he's
Speaker 4: not Chris Crow, and people believe it. Well, so that's assuming.
Speaker 6: So sorry, is he assuming someone's real identity?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, Well Chris Crowe was an actual h movie
Speaker 4: producer who worked on uh, you know, Alfred Hitchcock and
Speaker 4: uh was the brother of Cameron Crowe. And yeah, he
Speaker 4: assumed a real guy's identity, but nobody knew who he
Speaker 4: was or who Christopher Chichester was or any of that,
Speaker 4: and he still played up the royal heritage in Grantwich.
Speaker 4: He said he was a mout batton. Uh that would
Speaker 4: be Prince Philip's uh relatives, and he frequently intimated to
Speaker 4: people that he had an aunt, Elizabeth, who lived in Windsor.
Speaker 4: I think we all know who that is. Let me
Speaker 4: buy into this anyway, He's living there for a few
Speaker 4: years and he gets he starts getting jobs. He gets worked.
Speaker 4: He's working uh as a bond trader, first for SNOPS,
Speaker 4: famous junk bond king of the mid to late eighties.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: Well, he he's exposed as a fraud at s n
Speaker 4: Thhops and he moves on to Neco's Securities, which is,
Speaker 4: you know, midtown Manhattan Japanese security firm. And as you
Speaker 4: remember in the mid eighties, the Japanese were buying up
Speaker 4: securities in real estates like Nobody's business. So this is
Speaker 4: a pretty big, pretty powerful company. And he leaves there
Speaker 4: and gets a job at Kidder Peabody and was you know,
Speaker 4: going to be on the Kidder Peabody eurobond desk selling
Speaker 4: eurobonds and making three hundred thousand dollars a year in commission.
Speaker 4: There's just one. Right before he moves to New York City,
Speaker 4: he decides to get rid of the truck and he
Speaker 4: sells it to young man who's the son of the
Speaker 4: episcopal Bishop of Greenwich. When the young man goes to
Speaker 4: register the car, it tips off authorities in California that
Speaker 4: it's missing. Couple's truck has turned up and Nissan has
Speaker 4: a lean on it because they didn't been paid for
Speaker 4: three years. So they come out and talk to the
Speaker 4: bishop's son and he says, I bought it from a guy,
Speaker 4: Christopher Crowe. Well, British police track Christopher Crowe first to
Speaker 4: Eco Securities, then to a Kidd Peabody, but he's a
Speaker 4: step ahead and he vanishes. Nobody ever follows up on
Speaker 4: and kind of goes away. But he's hooked up with girl.
Speaker 4: He's engaging in counter surveillance. He's actively doing things that
Speaker 4: people in nineteen eighty eight didn't do. His routine, that'd
Speaker 4: be shredding trash, being very careful of, you know, identity,
Speaker 4: sort of questions. He maintained post office boxes in Pennsylvania
Speaker 4: and Connecticut. He was really wildly and crafty guy, and
Speaker 4: in nineteen eighty nine. Him and this girlfriend are after
Speaker 4: dinner and he calls down to a restaurant trying to
Speaker 4: get a reservation. The restaurant brushes him off, and he's
Speaker 4: disturbed by that, so he calls again and he says,
Speaker 4: my name is Clark Rockefeller. I would like dinner tonight
Speaker 4: at your establishment and there will be two of us. Wow,
Speaker 4: mister Rockefeller, we would love to have you come and
Speaker 4: eat here. And of course, instantly he realized the power
Speaker 4: of a name change, especially one that was American royalty
Speaker 4: would have and as a you know, wanted in connection
Speaker 4: with a missing person's case, he becomes Clark Rockefeller.
Speaker 6: And.
Speaker 4: You know, woo's Now he's wooing the upper echelon of Manhattan,
Speaker 4: Boston and East Coast society.
Speaker 6: Now he's a I mean, obviously he's an effective con
Speaker 6: man because if you're in Los Angeles area talking to
Speaker 6: everybody's in film, every waitress is in film, everyone's in film,
Speaker 6: and he's and he's talking to people about film, and
Speaker 6: and then he's an impostor as well. So he's a
Speaker 6: brilliant con man. He says, he trades bonds. This guy
Speaker 6: is an amazing guy, But how does he really pull
Speaker 6: off Rockefeller. If there's anything that can illustrate how much
Speaker 6: how he can do this, How could he pass himself
Speaker 6: off as one of the wealthiest, most powerful families in
Speaker 6: the world.
Speaker 4: Well, anybody that has run into his family will tell
Speaker 4: you that he kind of looks like a Rockefeller. That's
Speaker 4: the first thing. So that kind of helps. But that's
Speaker 4: not really it's so simple it'll blow your mind. He
Speaker 4: had the girlfriend get an additional credit card and put
Speaker 4: the name Clark Rockefeller on it. That was all it took.
Speaker 4: He's got a credit card with the name of Clark Rockefeller. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he didn't have any other idea, didn't have a driver's license,
Speaker 4: didn't have anything, probably have a library card. But people
Speaker 4: believed it. And you know, his personality was such that
Speaker 4: with quick and people thought, well, you know it's the
Speaker 4: that's the way these wealthy people are, and they're quirky
Speaker 4: like that. So it actually added to his weirdness, added
Speaker 4: to the perception that people had that, well he might
Speaker 4: just be a Rockefeller. And of course he does have
Speaker 4: a credit card that says that. Now there's one other
Speaker 4: thing you have to consider here. Yeah, here we are,
Speaker 4: we're talking on the internet. Really basically, and this is
Speaker 4: gonna be shared on the Internet. But in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 4: when he becomes Clark Rockefeller eighty eight eighty nine, there
Speaker 4: was no Internet. There was no way to check on people.
Speaker 4: There was no way to you know, there was no Wikipedia,
Speaker 4: no Google, no hardly even really an Internet to speak
Speaker 4: of that would verify facts like this in a lot
Speaker 4: of ways. Because of that, he's really America's last great imposter,
Speaker 4: you know people just as you know, it wasn't common
Speaker 4: practice back then to google or wikipedia people when you
Speaker 4: met him, So he was able to you know, pull
Speaker 4: it off. I think because of that, because of the
Speaker 4: fact he had this credit card and he bore some
Speaker 4: you know, passing resemblance to you know, a member of
Speaker 4: the Rockefeller family. And of course some people would query
Speaker 4: him on it. He would say, well, you know, it's
Speaker 4: from a different branch of the family, and a poorer branch.
Speaker 4: He was really good at a couple of things. This is,
Speaker 4: you know, his friends say, his friends say, he was
Speaker 4: really good at, you know, bringing him into the Cohn
Speaker 4: providing some props that made it seem plausible, and you know,
Speaker 4: and then stringing them along with what turned out to
Speaker 4: be lies, And most of these lies were big lies,
Speaker 4: and their vibes that are so big and so enormous
Speaker 4: that they're so big they can't be a lie. They
Speaker 4: have to be the truth. You know how that works,
Speaker 4: you know, the big lie, the sort of Hilarian idea
Speaker 4: that you know, if you tell a masterfully big lie,
Speaker 4: nobody's gonna call you on it. And he became a
Speaker 4: master at doing that.
Speaker 6: Now, how does this this really depends on his you know,
Speaker 6: his ally for years, his wife, who's he's really fond.
Speaker 6: But how does that all sort of unravel with her?
Speaker 6: What about his personality or what about the relationship? How
Speaker 6: does it get to a point where they're thinking about divorce?
Speaker 4: Well, it's it turns out that you know, he told
Speaker 4: one lie too many. So I told you about the
Speaker 4: girlfriend that got him the credit card. Well, in ninety
Speaker 4: four he dumped her and he met his wife, Sandy Boss,
Speaker 4: very well educated Stanford grad, Harvard Business School grad, with
Speaker 4: a bright future ahead of her in management consultancy. She
Speaker 4: wants to work for the McKinsey company, making a million
Speaker 4: two a year, and so okay, so the question here is, okay,
Speaker 4: how do you fool somebody like that. Well, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean so many, so many people were buying into
Speaker 4: the story. Why not. I mean she was a young girl.
Speaker 4: She had no re again, no reason not to believe him,
Speaker 4: and he, you know, promised her the world showed her
Speaker 4: all the fine things of life. They you know what,
Speaker 4: they had a pretty good life for a long time.
Speaker 4: He told her, uh that he his father was a
Speaker 4: man named George Rockefeller and his mother was ah a
Speaker 4: woman named Mary and act the two were killed in
Speaker 4: a car accident when he was uh a teenager, and
Speaker 4: that uh he after their death as a stool. As
Speaker 4: a teenager, he attended Yale uh and he was the
Speaker 4: old Yale's only commuter. S So fast forward several years.
Speaker 4: That was in the m you know, mid to late
Speaker 4: nineties that he's telling her this in the early two thousands. Uh,
Speaker 4: they've moved from New York to Cornish, New Hampshire. And
Speaker 4: he says to his wife, Uh, well, you know, my
Speaker 4: mother was child actress Anne Carter, and Sandy says, well,
Speaker 4: wait a minute, you told me your mother was named
Speaker 4: Mary and that she died in a car accident. Well, well, uh,
Speaker 4: uh you know she my mother's name was Ann Carter. Clearly,
Speaker 4: you're mo wrong, You're mistaken. I told you my mother's
Speaker 4: name was Ann Carter, and I told you that my
Speaker 4: mother and Carter died in a an accident. Well, you know,
Speaker 4: Sandy had heard more than one lie from him, and
Speaker 4: this was one lie too many. She decided to do
Speaker 4: a little bit of research and decided that maybe this
Speaker 4: man wasn't really what he said he was. She arranged
Speaker 4: to get so, she arranged to get them out of
Speaker 4: Cornish and into Boston. Cause at this point they had
Speaker 4: a daughter, and for all intents and purposes, Clark was
Speaker 4: controlling this little girl. So Sandy arranged to get them,
Speaker 4: get them out of Colorination into Boston, get the little
Speaker 4: girl into a school to where teachers could see, you know,
Speaker 4: that maybe she was in an unhealthy relationship with her dad.
Speaker 4: They saw that. Sandy arranged for a divorce and presented Clark,
Speaker 4: you know, with the divorce documents. And initially he had
Speaker 4: custody of the little girl, and she said to him,
Speaker 4: isn't it She said to him, though, I'll tell you what, Clark,
Speaker 4: tell me who you are, and you can keep custody
Speaker 4: of a little ray and we'll settle it. That way,
Speaker 4: and he said, no, certainly, I've told you everything there
Speaker 4: is to know about me. If that's what you're going
Speaker 4: to ask, I can't accept those terms. I will, however,
Speaker 4: accept eight hundred thousand dollars in cash. So their divorce
Speaker 4: settlement is eight hundred thousand dollars in gold, and Sandy
Speaker 4: took a full custody of their little girl Ray and
Speaker 4: arranged for Clark to have supervised visitation. So this brings
Speaker 4: us Now we've gone through this Manton history. From coming
Speaker 4: here in the United States in late seventy eight, we
Speaker 4: are now all the way up to two thousand and six.
Speaker 4: And in the middle of this, they've dug up that
Speaker 4: body in San Marino, and the police are actively looking
Speaker 4: for Christian Gerhardt's writer at least in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 4: but by two thousand and seven, when they get divorced
Speaker 4: in two thousand and eight, when he has his first
Speaker 4: visitation with Ray, you know, nobody's thinking about John Soas
Speaker 4: or missing Linda Soas, or anything that happened in San
Speaker 4: Marino all those years ago. And then national news story
Speaker 4: a man named Clark Rockefeller has kidnapped his little girl Ray,
Speaker 4: and they've disappeared from the radar screen and nobody knows
Speaker 4: who the hell this guy is. Well, that brings the
Speaker 4: FBI in and there's a massive man hunt on the
Speaker 4: East coast for a Rockefeller and they, you know, they
Speaker 4: stumble on to him and hanging out in a pad
Speaker 4: and Baltimore and they arrest him. They get Ray back,
Speaker 4: they do some fingerprint analysis that you know, links him
Speaker 4: back to Christian Gerhart's rider, the Exchange student, And of
Speaker 4: course everybody knows that Christian Gerhart's rider was one of
Speaker 4: Christopher Chichester, and Christopher Chichester is a murder suspect in
Speaker 4: San Marino, So La County is now actively calling Clark
Speaker 4: Rockefeller a person of interest in their decades as homicide.
Speaker 6: Now, at what point you say, you so, that's when
Speaker 6: you had that big moment yourself of enlightenment and then
Speaker 6: tell us about that moment and was it shortly after
Speaker 6: this well.
Speaker 4: Episode that you know, thank you? So, you know, they
Speaker 4: flashed his picture on the screen several times and a
Speaker 4: man cloud me who knew Clark when he was Chris,
Speaker 4: and he said, do you remember came out in front
Speaker 4: of the Sola's house back in the nineties and I
Speaker 4: told you about this guy Chris Well, I think Clark
Speaker 4: Rockefellers him. Okay, so I kind of, you know, I
Speaker 4: kind of tapped that in my head and then got
Speaker 4: a phone clop from Baltimore, uh, saying, uh, I can't
Speaker 4: even remember who it was. It may have been a cop,
Speaker 4: it may have been another reporter, uh calling and saying, hey,
Speaker 4: this guy give arrested in Baltimore is wanted in connection
Speaker 4: with H a cold case from San Marino. Well, that
Speaker 4: was all I needed to tell me. I knew exactly
Speaker 4: what the cold case was. It wasn't one a cold
Speaker 4: case in San Marina. And uh, you know, and I
Speaker 4: went with it. And you know, Brooke some pretty nice
Speaker 4: stories early on in H the whole coverage of the
Speaker 4: of the you know, aftermath of that kidnapping.
Speaker 6: So you were you were very established at Pasadena Star News.
Speaker 6: So you went to your editor and said listen or
Speaker 6: you probably had did you have free reign? Will tell
Speaker 6: us about sort of about that exchange. How you did
Speaker 6: you make a pitch to them? What did you say
Speaker 6: I did?
Speaker 4: I didn't think I said hey the I I I
Speaker 4: basically I said, hey, this this guy that they this
Speaker 4: Rockefeller du that they caught back in Baltimore. Yuh, he's
Speaker 4: he's wanted in connection with this, uh this old Sam
Speaker 4: Mario case. We got to go with it, and I
Speaker 4: mean that was it. We just went with it. At
Speaker 4: you know, I didn't at that point, I was pretty
Speaker 4: well established and and they have even been an assistant
Speaker 4: city editor. Uh right, you know I I uh at
Speaker 4: that I don't remember. But anyway, you know, whatever, it
Speaker 4: had enough of a good reputation in the newsroom that
Speaker 4: if I thought something was solid, uh you know, the
Speaker 4: bosses would say done with it. And they did and
Speaker 4: we did. What was we've done with it?
Speaker 6: And what and at what point did you sort of
Speaker 6: uh start uh introducing or at least printing stuff that
Speaker 6: was sort of inference and inference and equals this whether
Speaker 6: you're making some assumptions.
Speaker 4: Or right right right away? Yeah, well, I mean so
Speaker 4: in journalism, uh you know, even newspaper journalism today is
Speaker 4: largely dependent on getting stuff out on the Internet and
Speaker 4: Twitter and Facebook, and at that time, uh, we were
Speaker 4: heavily into the blogs. So you know, if there was
Speaker 4: not there were no seconds to waste. I mean I knew,
Speaker 4: I knew first of all, I knew there was only
Speaker 4: one cold case pharmacide in San Marino. Second of all,
Speaker 4: I already had the tip off from the guy that
Speaker 4: knew Chris, who said Clark Rockefeller was Chris.
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 4: It it it was. It wasn't a stretch to just
Speaker 4: go with the story. And we did. I think we
Speaker 4: had it up on the y. I had it up
Speaker 4: on the internet within twenty minutes of you know, putting
Speaker 4: all the pieces together. And that would have been uh,
Speaker 4: the Monday after his arrest. So within twenty four hours
Speaker 4: of his arrest.
Speaker 6: Now what did police find?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 6: In terms of as the story evolved, what would what
Speaker 6: did he say to police? What was his statement of
Speaker 6: police about his guilt or innocence? How was how was
Speaker 6: he respond what was his demeanor Clark Rockefeller? You know?
Speaker 6: Did he get a lawyer immediately?
Speaker 4: He didn't. He did not l you know, a lawyer
Speaker 4: up immediately. The FBI quizzed him at length for about
Speaker 4: three hours. They knew who he was, and fourteen minutes
Speaker 4: into their interrogation, he you know, decide they give him
Speaker 4: They read him his miranda rights and uh, he asked
Speaker 4: for an attorney and they but they continue the interrogation anyway,
Speaker 4: and he never ever admitted to having anything to do
Speaker 4: with uh the disappearance of John and linusau So the
Speaker 4: death of John Soas. And you know, after several hours
Speaker 4: they cut it off. Uh La County detectives flew flew
Speaker 4: out there in hopes of talking to him, you know,
Speaker 4: see if they could interrogate him. And by that time
Speaker 4: he was lawyered up. And what I'm talking his lawyer,
Speaker 4: Stephen Rose, a fairly well known Boston criminal attorney, hooked
Speaker 4: him up with the Today Show and the Boston Globe,
Speaker 4: and that's when things got weird because you know, he
Speaker 4: set some ground rules for those interviews. You know, don't
Speaker 4: ask him about California, don't ask him about the murder case,
Speaker 4: don't ask him, you know, all these questions that could
Speaker 4: implicate him in something else. And in his interview would yeah,
Speaker 4: love course, I mean, any good reporters gonna ask him.
Speaker 4: Natalie Morales first of all asked him what about Germany,
Speaker 4: and he, you know, denied knowing anything about Germany. He
Speaker 4: said he grew up in the United States picking strawberries.
Speaker 4: And then she said, well, what about this dead couple?
Speaker 4: And he says, I'm a Quaker. I would never potentionionally
Speaker 4: harm anybody. I don't know that I've ever heard anybody.
Speaker 4: He didn't say no, I didn't kill him. He threw
Speaker 4: it off on I can't remember harming anybody. The wife
Speaker 4: was played for the jury, and it played a large
Speaker 4: role in convicting him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's what's fantastic about the narcissistic psychopathic killer. They
Speaker 6: get to talk too much.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, he likes you know, he likes to talk.
Speaker 4: He doesn't really I don't think he. I mean, I
Speaker 4: believe through sources that he's never admitted to having any
Speaker 4: involvement in this, and but he loves to talk about stuff.
Speaker 4: And before he was you know, when he was Clark Rockefeller,
Speaker 4: before anybody knew that he was Gerhart's ryder, he would
Speaker 4: talk and talk and talk and talk. And two of
Speaker 4: the things that he told his wife are sort of instructive.
Speaker 4: One was that he would never go to Connecticut. Of
Speaker 4: course that's where they were looking for him in connection.
Speaker 4: Remember he had the missing couple's cars. And two he
Speaker 4: would never go to California. And you know those are
Speaker 4: things that uh, you know again played uh a large
Speaker 4: role later on in convicting him. Because what happened was
Speaker 4: as we went through this whole story, even in writing
Speaker 4: it for the book name Dropper, you can see that
Speaker 4: there is just scads and scads of circumstantial evidence, and
Speaker 4: all that circumstantial evidence, you know, really only points in
Speaker 4: one direction and points to you know, unfortunately, Chris Gerhart's
Speaker 4: writer as being the killer of the of the you know,
Speaker 4: this really gentle and nice young man, John Sellis who
Speaker 4: never harmed anybody, probably never even had never even got
Speaker 4: angry in his life. This is a kid that loved
Speaker 4: science fiction and the Star Trek and you know, was
Speaker 4: into hobbits and dungeons and dragons, and you know really
Speaker 4: was kind of a you know, just a sciencey, geeky kid.
Speaker 4: And his wife wasn't really much different. You know, she
Speaker 4: she was an artist. She painted unicorns and rainbows, and
Speaker 4: you know, I mean, these are people that are these
Speaker 4: are the kind of people that when you see in
Speaker 4: there feel you take it faced owe. You know, they
Speaker 4: are who they are, right And unfortunately for both of them,
Speaker 4: you know, they ran into the buzz style that is
Speaker 4: Christian Gerard's rider, and you know, one didn't come out
Speaker 4: alive and the other one, you know, will never probably
Speaker 4: know what happened to her.
Speaker 6: Now, given his character and some people you know, displaying
Speaker 6: devil's advocate a little bit given to his character and
Speaker 6: his pensant for you know, maybe being a fraud basically
Speaker 6: and maybe sponging or weaseling or chiseling or cheating or
Speaker 6: but you know, what's the what when the prosecutor said
Speaker 6: this is the mo for this case, because again, even
Speaker 6: in this circumstances, would be nice to have some kind
Speaker 6: of credible or valid or you know, reasonable motive, what
Speaker 6: was the What did the prosecution say the motive was
Speaker 6: for this murder?
Speaker 4: Then, well, there was never a motive offer to the jury.
Speaker 4: I can tell you what the motive is. It's a
Speaker 4: detail in my book. In fact, it's the only place
Speaker 4: where you'll really get down to the motive is in
Speaker 4: the book name Dropper and what it is. It all
Speaker 4: comes down to the old lady's will. And the old
Speaker 4: lady had about three hundred dollars, had an estate that
Speaker 4: was worth about three hundred thousand dollars. And the old
Speaker 4: lady's estate was left to her son and Chris, a grifter,
Speaker 4: hooked up with a couple of other grifters, and he
Speaker 4: basically set them up as sort of theminders of deity
Speaker 4: after John died, and they were able to convince Dede
Speaker 4: to write John out of her will, even though she
Speaker 4: didn't know where he was, write them into the will.
Speaker 4: And the intent was that this couple, these grifters would
Speaker 4: split the remains of d D's estate with Chris, and
Speaker 4: they gave him forty thousand dollars up front. He actually
Speaker 4: came back to collect the balance after d D died
Speaker 4: and they told him to take a hike. But it's
Speaker 4: but essentially the murder was d D's estate, that was his.
Speaker 4: That's what drove him.
Speaker 6: Well, he was a killer. Why wouldn't he kill these
Speaker 6: people and take the money?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I I I think it was it
Speaker 4: was a little bit easier to get there. His idea
Speaker 4: was he'd get this forty thousand dollars up front, which
Speaker 4: he did get right as a finder's fee with them,
Speaker 4: so he, you know, he got what he was gonna
Speaker 4: get out of it. Yeah, and and it probably you know,
Speaker 4: imagine his intent was the guilt them into giving him
Speaker 4: his half after she died. The thing is though, is
Speaker 4: that you know, you know, they're saying, you can't con
Speaker 4: a con. I mean, these people, these people were mooching
Speaker 4: off of her. They had a cellar house, they had
Speaker 4: her moving, They owned a trailer park. They had her
Speaker 4: move into, you know, a dingy, run down single ride
Speaker 4: in a crappy trailer park in one of the worst
Speaker 4: towns in all of Los Angeles County. And you know,
Speaker 4: charged her with an exorbitant amontiframe charged her to take
Speaker 4: care of her you know asthma emphasima her booze her cigarettes.
Speaker 4: And you know, they cadged her out of everything that
Speaker 4: she had. And so of course when he comes back,
Speaker 4: they've conned him out of you know, four and fifty grand.
Speaker 4: But at least he got you know, I mean in
Speaker 4: his mind, he's probably thinking, well, at least I got
Speaker 4: forty grand out of it. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, pretty sad. And yet you really depicted in the
Speaker 6: book too. It's it is a a land of grifters
Speaker 6: and mooches and and uh you know, burned out memories
Speaker 6: and uh yeah, it's a it's it's a different place
Speaker 6: than people might think, you know, among the affluent is
Speaker 6: still again some other element.
Speaker 4: That right, very right, yeah, and you know, and not
Speaker 4: and see the thing is is I think that we
Speaker 4: often ascribe superpowers to the to the people who are
Speaker 4: wealthier than us, and in some ways that's how a
Speaker 4: guy works the name Rockefeller, right. I mean, I know
Speaker 4: some really smart, Ivy league educated people who you know,
Speaker 4: looked at a Rockefeller and oh, you know, maybe some
Speaker 4: of that glow is going to shine on me. Well,
Speaker 4: you know, you can think of that too in terms
Speaker 4: of you know, a town like San Marino, which has
Speaker 4: a lot of wealthy people there, none of them have superpowers,
Speaker 4: and a lot of them are susceptible, especially the elderly,
Speaker 4: as this woman was at. You know, at the end
Speaker 4: of her life. She's elderly, and you know they're subject
Speaker 4: to predators. And these grifters, the weather Bees, they're about
Speaker 4: dead now, that own this trailer park. You know, they
Speaker 4: were predators. I often imagine there's a society of these
Speaker 4: grifters and predators somewhere and that's where Clark, Chris whatever
Speaker 4: you want to call him, met the weather Bees, and
Speaker 4: you know, they were able to tell their true stories
Speaker 4: to one another so that they could make their cons
Speaker 4: you know, mesh into one and everybody would be you know,
Speaker 4: get some fallout from it. I don't know if that's
Speaker 4: the case or not, but so I guess I envision
Speaker 4: it the society of Grits.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's amazing. The defense at trial, I don't know.
Speaker 6: Obviously not so effectively. But what was their idea?
Speaker 5: What was there?
Speaker 6: What did they put forth as a possible suspect?
Speaker 4: Well, they you know, I mean, all right, Linda's missing,
Speaker 4: she's not declared dead. She wrote postcards. Why isn't it
Speaker 4: possible that she killed her husband and buried him in
Speaker 4: the backyard. She was a six foot tall, two hundred
Speaker 4: pound amazon. John was a little guy. The dead man
Speaker 4: was a little guy, and Chris was a little guy too,
Speaker 4: So you know, I mean she worked at a bookstore
Speaker 4: called Dangerous Visions. She was into dungeons and dragons. Those
Speaker 4: are you know, dark topics, right.
Speaker 6: And.
Speaker 4: You can imagine that taking that storyline, you could work
Speaker 4: it into something that might be a little more sinister
Speaker 4: than you know, the rainbows and unicorns that Linda was
Speaker 4: actually painting. So there's that element of that was part
Speaker 4: of their story. And it's actually, you know, it's an
Speaker 4: effective defense if you think about it, right, we look
Speaker 4: at the circumstances of the case, who lived there, you know,
Speaker 4: who had a motive an opportunity. There's other there's other
Speaker 4: parts of this storyline. Again, they're in the book the
Speaker 4: name Dropper, and they didn't come out and trial where
Speaker 4: you know, Linda talks to a friend and says, I'm
Speaker 4: headed to New York. John's already departed. There's another part
Speaker 4: in the story where you know, she's crying in the
Speaker 4: front seat of a pickup truck, all alone with Chris,
Speaker 4: and you know, the implication is that John's dead, and
Speaker 4: you know she's running off in the pickup truck with Chris.
Speaker 4: So there's there is this And in fact, the same
Speaker 4: Marino homicide detective who you know had the case in
Speaker 4: ninety four postulated on dateline that you know, it was
Speaker 4: quite possible that Linda kills her husband. So some of
Speaker 4: this played into the defense. They didn't call this homicide
Speaker 4: detective as a witness, they didn't call the man who
Speaker 4: saw her sitting in a truck crying, but they considered it.
Speaker 4: And when when they gave their summation, Jeff Dinner the
Speaker 4: lead attorney in the case, and he gave his summation,
Speaker 4: he said, look, this is a case that it has
Speaker 4: a lot of reasonable doubt in it, and you could
Speaker 4: you could aptly surmise that Linda killed him and doubt
Speaker 4: that Chris ever did it. Jury didn't buy it. It
Speaker 4: took him five hours to convict.
Speaker 6: And what do you think was the who do you
Speaker 6: think was the most compelling witness at the trial that
Speaker 6: maybe turned this case or was the most important witness
Speaker 6: in terms of credibility with the jury.
Speaker 4: Well, actually the most important witness was the evidence, and
Speaker 4: the most important piece of evidence was if you remember,
Speaker 4: Chris attended the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and when
Speaker 4: they dug up the body, it was cut into three
Speaker 4: parts and John's head was in a book bag from
Speaker 4: the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. That's a powerful piece
Speaker 4: of evidence. It's something that you know that you can't
Speaker 4: It's not like it's not it's the only testimony is
Speaker 4: given from a mute, inanimate plastic bag that has a
Speaker 4: logo of the University of Wisconson at Milwaukee that was
Speaker 4: only used during the years that Chris Gerhardt's rider was
Speaker 4: a student at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. That's first,
Speaker 4: that's huge. I mean, the only thing that you can
Speaker 4: have if you're remotely closely compelling Platt is that he's
Speaker 4: driving around in the in the missing couple's car three
Speaker 4: years after they disappeared. And that's another powerful piece of
Speaker 4: the circumstantial case. There's lots of other little pieces that
Speaker 4: are the glue that holds it together. The name changes,
Speaker 4: the avoidance of the police, the you know, the evidence
Speaker 4: of a consciousness of guilt by not visible Connecticut or
Speaker 4: not going to California. But the fact of the matter
Speaker 4: is that when you look down in that hole and
Speaker 4: you see that head in a book bag from a
Speaker 4: school that your suspect attended, you've got a pretty good
Speaker 4: shot at making a condition. And that's what happened. And
Speaker 4: that's what the jury, you know, in their deliberation, and
Speaker 4: after it was all done, said this book back, look back,
Speaker 4: how'd that book back there? Yeah?
Speaker 6: And then and they know, you know, you say, putting
Speaker 6: all the circumstantial levidence, They really put all everything forward.
Speaker 6: And he really, you know, put his foot in his
Speaker 6: mouth because basically the numerous lies, the blatant lies, really
Speaker 6: did not help put the whole overall picture that anything
Speaker 6: that he had said, anything he had done was was
Speaker 6: possible because he was these incredible, huge frauds impersonation and
Speaker 6: then lies right back, like you say, using stuff that
Speaker 6: he had said about not being from Germany. I mean,
Speaker 6: it's it the jury, I think, to make a that's
Speaker 6: a pretty quick decision.
Speaker 4: Five hours, Really, five hours is an amazingly quick decision,
Speaker 4: especially in a case that's so old and so cold. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and you know, it was so much of the story
Speaker 4: that was left untold. That's that's a rhyme from one
Speaker 4: of the defense attorneys. But it's apt because you know,
Speaker 4: it's a very very old case, and you know these
Speaker 4: old cases that one, you know, twenty eight years in
Speaker 4: the making. Yeah, you run into a lot of elderly
Speaker 4: witnesses whose memories are not that great and yeah, and
Speaker 4: you and you also run into a lot of unreliable witnesses.
Speaker 4: You know, the guy that the episcopal minister's son who
Speaker 4: bought the truck, for example, was an incredibly unreliable witness.
Speaker 4: I mean, there was so much wrong with what he
Speaker 4: was saying that you know, it could have gone really
Speaker 4: bad for the DA except for the fact that they
Speaker 4: just had, you know, these mute stacks of evidence that
Speaker 4: only pointed in one direction.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well for audience, what what was wrong with I
Speaker 6: mean it was his name was bishop and he or
Speaker 6: or parton me the yeah.
Speaker 4: The bishop Chris. Well, I'm sorry, go ahead, I apologize.
Speaker 6: No, no, but but the thing is that he had
Speaker 6: for he had done some things too that made police
Speaker 6: like he had he had done some things on behalf
Speaker 6: of his friend as well that didn't help his own
Speaker 6: effort as well. Maybe you can tell us a little
Speaker 6: bit about that it was.
Speaker 4: That's I mean, I think to me that was It's
Speaker 4: pretty telling that, you know, he buys this truck, he gets,
Speaker 4: you know, he gets contacted by the police and rather
Speaker 4: than say you know, rather rather than just say yeah,
Speaker 4: I got it from this guy to know any of
Speaker 4: this stuff, he gets involved in this elaborate deception. First
Speaker 4: of all, he takes the plates off the nice Nissan
Speaker 4: truck and puts him on a crappy niece on truck
Speaker 4: that he gives to his brother. Then, when he realizes that,
Speaker 4: you know, he's never gonna get the title straightened out
Speaker 4: on this Nissan truck that he got from Chris, he
Speaker 4: takes it down to a train station somewhere between Greenwich
Speaker 4: and New York and just leaves it there. It disappears,
Speaker 4: and he never sells anything to the police about he,
Speaker 4: you know, what happened to the truck or why, or
Speaker 4: what he did with it for many, many, many years.
Speaker 4: And in ninety four when they dug up John's body
Speaker 4: and they linked Chris to this homicide as a person
Speaker 4: of interest, and the guy never came forward. He never
Speaker 4: talked to anybody, He never came forward, He never talked
Speaker 4: to the police, never discussed his role in hiding that
Speaker 4: truck until well after two thousand and eight, when Chris
Speaker 4: was finally in custody. And you know, I think that
Speaker 4: you know that the totality of that, you know, I'm
Speaker 4: sure now he's coming to court and tell him the truth,
Speaker 4: but I think the totality of some of his testimony, uh,
Speaker 4: it would have been hard to overcome if there wasn't
Speaker 4: all this other you know, if there wasn't all this
Speaker 4: this other circumstantial evidence in the case.
Speaker 6: Well, he also but he also called he also called
Speaker 6: his friend well yeah, yeah, yeah, and said and said listen,
Speaker 6: then warned him, you know, hey, these guys are the
Speaker 6: cops that have been asking some questions. So it didn't
Speaker 6: surprise me that much that he was almost a monkey
Speaker 6: wrench in in in at trial, like still helping his friend.
Speaker 4: He was a monkey wrench. Yeah, I mean he you know,
Speaker 4: he did call him and you know, very explicitly asked him,
Speaker 4: who are you? You know, in very explicitly you know,
Speaker 4: said the police are looking for you, which really, you know,
Speaker 4: tipped off kind of the whole Yeah, uh, the whole game,
Speaker 4: and kept Croc at that time still cross one step
Speaker 4: ahead of law enforcement. And you know, and it's these
Speaker 4: little breaks another thing that going on in the book,
Speaker 4: as you know, these little breaks that he gets. Some
Speaker 4: of them are like that where you have a friend
Speaker 4: calling others are just completely random. You know, in eighty five,
Speaker 4: when this couple went missing, and it wasn't too long
Speaker 4: after they went missing that the knightstalkers started killing people
Speaker 4: in those same neighborhoods. So police, you know, weren't gonna
Speaker 4: weren't focusing on a missing couple maybe in the way
Speaker 4: they would have had they not been trying to figure out,
Speaker 4: you know, why this crazed predator was out raping women
Speaker 4: and killing their husbands. And it it degenerated in ninety
Speaker 4: four when they dug up John. And it was only
Speaker 4: two weeks later that Oh Jay was suspected of killing
Speaker 4: his wife and her friend, and the attention of the media,
Speaker 4: which had been looking at these bones and talking about
Speaker 4: this case and focused on this missing guy, shifted to OJ.
Speaker 4: And it was all O Jay all the time for
Speaker 4: eighteen months and Son California sure and and and the
Speaker 4: police in ninety four, the homicide detectives that were working
Speaker 4: the case didn't didn't follow through on all the groundwork
Speaker 4: that they have back in eighty eight, Like they didn't
Speaker 4: go back and talk to people in Greenwich. They didn't,
Speaker 4: you know, they didn't talk to uh, Chris Bishop, the
Speaker 4: the minister's son, They didn't talk to Dan l and
Speaker 4: the Greenwich police lieutenant. They didn't. They didn't do any
Speaker 4: of that. What they did was they w they went
Speaker 4: to Unsolved Mysteries, the TV show and gave him essentially
Speaker 4: the blue book, the case book, and said, here, put
Speaker 4: put on a show, uh and see if we don't
Speaker 4: catch this guy. Well, you know, ninety four people were
Speaker 4: watching OJ and focused on OJ, and nobody gave a
Speaker 4: crack up about you know, a poor dead king in
Speaker 4: the backyard of a house in San Marino, and not
Speaker 4: even the police apparently, because they never did complete reports,
Speaker 4: they never actually worked the case as well as they
Speaker 4: could have back in ninety four. And it's you know,
Speaker 4: and it's a shame too because you can think about
Speaker 4: all the lives that have been affected by h Chris Clark,
Speaker 4: Chris Clark, the flashing.
Speaker 6: There, yeah, yeah, and a pause over those.
Speaker 4: Years, and uh, you know, it's just it's a shame.
Speaker 4: A homicide investigations have changed mightily since the night, you know,
Speaker 4: the mid nineties, but uh, you know, it's a it's
Speaker 4: certainly an untold part.
Speaker 6: Of the story for those maybe keeping track, and and uh,
Speaker 6: I think we skipped over this sort of explanation as well.
Speaker 6: Why would Linda john SAWA's wife, and since he certainly
Speaker 6: wasn't any kind of secret, secret mission or assignment that
Speaker 6: he was under, why would they tell d D or anyone?
Speaker 6: Why would they tell anyone they were doing some sort
Speaker 6: of secret job? Why would.
Speaker 4: I think the implication is that Chris convinced first John
Speaker 4: and then Linda that there was a secret government job
Speaker 4: waiting for them in Connecticut, uh, and it would be
Speaker 4: doing top secret work, and that he was a secret
Speaker 4: agent Chris was a secret agent, and I think he
Speaker 4: convinced us that that's what he was. He throughout his life,
Speaker 4: especially after leaving San Marino. Government work top secret agents
Speaker 4: played into a lot of his stories, and it's almost
Speaker 4: a thread in his you know, his con like the
Speaker 4: like the high level con game. When he was a Rockefeller,
Speaker 4: he told people in New Hampshire that he owned this
Speaker 4: top secret government plant that specialized in manufacturing jet propulsion engines,
Speaker 4: and that he was such top secret work that he
Speaker 4: was a potential target of Chinese secret agents who were
Speaker 4: going to kidnap. When he was fleeing the Greenwich Police
Speaker 4: in eighty eight, he told his girlfriend that his parents
Speaker 4: were involved with secret agents in Pakistan and that these
Speaker 4: people were out to kill them, and that because they
Speaker 4: were involved in this secret government work and they had
Speaker 4: to flee. So he he did it convincingly. He did
Speaker 4: it more than once, so there's no reason to believe
Speaker 4: that he didn't do it with you know, John and Linda,
Speaker 4: and then you know, more brutally with this poor alcoholic
Speaker 4: uh deity, Uh say, yeah, government government works, the top
Speaker 4: secret government work. He you know, I guess he's quirky
Speaker 4: and we'd a lot. So if that's the and you know,
Speaker 4: you remember back of forty five minutes ago, I mentioned
Speaker 4: the big lie. There's one of the big lies, and
Speaker 4: people just buy it because it's too unbelievable.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Well, he had a lot of practice, so he
Speaker 6: got better and better. But he just he was almost
Speaker 6: flawless and until I guess a fatal mistake. Don't mess
Speaker 6: with your wife.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know that's the thing, right, except he what
Speaker 4: but you know what the thing is, that's true. That
Speaker 4: that why that changed everything for him with his wife.
Speaker 4: But but he wasn't that perfect. He wasn't that flawless.
Speaker 4: You know, the bag, the bag, the truck, the you know,
Speaker 4: the fact that he left the trail of bruck Frumbs
Speaker 4: in Connecticut that led to the old girlfriend, who, by
Speaker 4: the way, knew that he was married to, say Andy Boss.
Speaker 4: And if somebody in ninety four had just gone and
Speaker 4: talked to people in Greenwich who were just gone and
Speaker 4: talked to people in New York just done the basic amount,
Speaker 4: you know, dumb shoe detective room, they would have put
Speaker 4: the case down back then.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so he was more like, yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 6: of missed opportunities by uh by police early on.
Speaker 4: Right, and and you know, and the thing about the
Speaker 4: story is, I'm sure your listeners are like going, what
Speaker 4: the heck, there's so much stuff going on. The thing
Speaker 4: about name dropper, which by the way, is only available
Speaker 4: at Rockefellowmistry dot com, UH, is that you know, I
Speaker 4: traced the story from through Chriss to Clark, and he's
Speaker 4: he's the central character. And I know we're going through
Speaker 4: all these massinations and all these different locales and people,
Speaker 4: but at the end of the day, it's this one guy,
Speaker 4: a German who came here and killed a kid, a
Speaker 4: twenty eight year old kid. But he killed a kid,
Speaker 4: an innocent kid, and got away with it for a
Speaker 4: hell a long time until he was convicted. That's the story.
Speaker 6: Do you think he's likely to have killed Linda as well?
Speaker 4: Well, I know the police believe that. And there's no
Speaker 4: reason not to believe that. She hasn't been heard from
Speaker 4: since nineteen eighty five. She's never applied for a job,
Speaker 4: she's never applied for credit, she's never phoned home. Uh,
Speaker 4: other than these postcards that you know appeared in her
Speaker 4: friend's mailboxes shortly after her disappearance, She's had no contact
Speaker 4: with anyone, so you know, that leads one to believe
Speaker 4: that she's dead. In databases, the the kind of databases
Speaker 4: that UH are kept on people as far as identity goes,
Speaker 4: are so thorough and so up to date, and it
Speaker 4: contained so many records and billions of hers. The fact
Speaker 4: that they're not one of those databases has ever encountered
Speaker 4: on Linda Sellis or anyone remotely using her identity since then,
Speaker 4: leads one to believe that she's done.
Speaker 6: Yeah, just it's a mystery where the body might be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, Well, you know, there's a lot of theories
Speaker 4: about that. We have a big forest here in Los
Speaker 4: Angeles just behind the city, the north of the city.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of bodies buried up there. And if
Speaker 4: you go pretty if you go fifty miles east out
Speaker 4: of La you hit the desert and there's a lot
Speaker 4: of bodies dumped out there. So there's two theories right there.
Speaker 4: The third theory is, and the one that I think
Speaker 4: is probably the most plausible, by the way, is that
Speaker 4: she's buried in that backyard and that they'll never find her.
Speaker 6: They they didn't see that as a possibility and further
Speaker 6: excavate that or have any way of you know, they
Speaker 6: have the corpse smelling.
Speaker 4: I know, they believe, they believe there was a possibility
Speaker 4: they used you know, corpse smelling detective canines. But that
Speaker 4: yard has so significantly changed since John was dug up
Speaker 4: in ninety They didn't use corpse dogs in ninety four,
Speaker 4: and the yard has changed so significantly since then, that
Speaker 4: with this swimming pool and cement and you know, massive
Speaker 4: amounts of landscaping that I don't even think sonar could
Speaker 4: could find her remains. And I mean, I just think
Speaker 4: it's another example of him just getting lucky.
Speaker 6: So you think it just wasn't as thorough because it
Speaker 6: really was by accident that they found his body. And then,
Speaker 6: like you say, that was in the excavation of building
Speaker 6: a swim or the making of a swimming pool, and
Speaker 6: you just.
Speaker 4: Fact, what they did was they drew some they so
Speaker 4: they dug up his body, and they drew some conclusions,
Speaker 4: you know, and the first conclusion was, Okay, he's here,
Speaker 4: she must be close by. So they looked close by, right,
Speaker 4: but they didn't look at you know, he didn't I
Speaker 4: don't believe that they looked at the other end of
Speaker 4: the pool, the shallow end of the pool, for example,
Speaker 4: or you know, as it gets to that deep end.
Speaker 4: I don't believe they looked at any of that. I
Speaker 4: don't think they dug any of that up, because don't forget,
Speaker 4: this is a homeowner. He's getting a pool built in,
Speaker 4: and if the cops come in and start tearing the
Speaker 4: hell out of his house, you know, he's not gonna
Speaker 4: be too happy because guess what, he's gonna have to
Speaker 4: pay to put it back together. And there's some element
Speaker 4: of that in this. In ninety four, after they found
Speaker 4: the body, they went into that guest house where Chris lived,
Speaker 4: and they loomin all the hell out of the place,
Speaker 4: and they found lots of blood. In ninety four, you
Speaker 4: couldn't get DNA out of, you know, non visible blood
Speaker 4: that was spotted with love and all. In two thousand
Speaker 4: and eight, they were capable of doing that, but they
Speaker 4: weren't gonna rip up the guy's floor and go through
Speaker 4: all this stuff to get it. The fact of the
Speaker 4: matter is is that, you know, as sometimes prosecution is
Speaker 4: like playing cards. You know you're gonna the hand you
Speaker 4: got a dead John, sois is a winning hand and yeah,
Speaker 4: and you know, for them, and it's just sad that again,
Speaker 4: you know, these poor people, these are good, good people, really,
Speaker 4: John and Linda, and it's just really sad. What you
Speaker 4: know that they ran into this guy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, Well at least someone caught up with them,
Speaker 6: and we have this fine story about that entire event.
Speaker 6: So I want to thank you very much Frank Girardo
Speaker 6: for coming on the program and talking about Name Dropper
Speaker 6: investigating the Clark Rockefeller Mystery. It's a very very very
Speaker 6: engaging story and I want to thank you very much
Speaker 6: for this interview.
Speaker 4: Well, thanks a lot for having me on and I
Speaker 4: really appreciate you you doing this this it's it's great
Speaker 4: to be able to talk to your listeners about this
Speaker 4: really fascinating case.
Speaker 6: Yes it is. And for people that want to get
Speaker 6: a hold of you that have been moved by the program,
Speaker 6: you can be contacted through Facebook. You're always looking for
Speaker 6: friends on Facebook and you have again, could you repeat
Speaker 6: that website for us?
Speaker 4: Sure, it's actually Rockefeller Mystery dot com. And if that's
Speaker 4: hard to remember, you can think of the old TV
Speaker 4: show Rockford Files rockdfellerfiles dot com and there you can
Speaker 4: buy the book Name dropper great.
Speaker 6: I want to wish you all the best, and I
Speaker 6: hope to hear from you again soon because I know
Speaker 6: that there may be something else going on with this,
Speaker 6: but hopefully we can hear from you again, and because
Speaker 6: they had a great time here speaking with you tonight.
Speaker 6: So thank you very much and thanks for having me Dan,
Speaker 6: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: I enjoyed the show.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Good night, thank good night.