Man who called himself a Rockefeller loses bid to trim Mass. kidnap sentence, plans new appeal

‘Rockefeller’ loses bid to trim kidnap sentence

BOSTON — A German man who called himself Clark Rockefeller and spun elaborate stories about his past lost his bid Tuesday for a reduced sentence in the kidnapping of his 7-year-old daughter.

Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter listened in court as his lawyer told an appellate panel that Gerhartsreiter should serve two years or less in prison, about half the four- to five-year sentence he received after being convicted last year.

A prosecutor, however, said the higher sentence was appropriate, given the suffering Gerhartsreiter caused the girl’s mother. It took authorities six days to find Gerhartsreiter and his daughter in Baltimore. The girl was unhurt.

Assistant District Attorney David Deakin called the kidnapping a “premeditated, well-planned crime,” noting that Gerhartsreiter bought a carriage house in Baltimore and told people he planned to live there with his daughter and home-school her.

“It’s clear … that he never intended to return this child to her mother,” Deakin said.

Defense attorney Timothy Bradl said advisory state sentencing guidelines call for a sentence of probation to 24 months in parental kidnapping cases. Bradl argued that Gerhartsreiter had been his daughter’s primary caregiver and was “forced into a position of having to give that all up” when he and the girl’s mother divorced.

“In essence, he snapped,” Bradl said, reiterating a defense claim during the trial that Gerhartsreiter was mentally ill when he kidnapped his daughter.

After hearing arguments, the three-judge panel took a brief recess, then dismissed Gerhartsreiter’s appeal without issuing a written decision.

Bradl said he will now focus on a separate appeal of Gerhartsreiter’s conviction, which is expected to be heard by the Massachusetts Appeals Court within the next six months.

Gerhartsreiter moved to the United States in the 1970s while he was a teenager. Prosecutors said he used multiple aliases to move in wealthy circles in Boston, New York and Los Angeles, and led his wife and others to believe he was a member of the storied Rockefeller clan.

His trial last year featured testimony from friends and acquaintances who said that he claimed at various times to be a physicist, an art collector, a ship captain and a financial adviser who renegotiated debt for small countries.

After his arrest in Baltimore, authorities said he was also a “person of interest” in the 1985 disappearance and presumed slayings of a San Marino, Calif., couple.

Bradl said he sent a letter last month to California prosecutors, asking if Gerhartsreiter was still “a target of any investigations” there. He said he has not received a response.

Linda and Jonathan Sohus disappeared while Gerhartsreiter was staying in a guesthouse on their property. Gerhartsreiter was then using the name Christopher Chichester.