"That is 100% the guy that was in my house," he said.
And in Bergen, Germany, Alexander Gerhartsreiter told the Boston Globe that he recognized the photo of Rockefeller as his brother, Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter -- who left home at age 17 in 1978 to be an exchange student in Connecticut.
Gerhartsreiter told the Globe that his brother never returned home but that he did tell the family he had taken the name Christopher Chichester because his given name was too difficult for Americans.
Federal law enforcement officials are heading to Germany to interview members of the Gerhardsreiter family.
When Chichester arrived in San Marino in the early 1980s, he made the rounds of Rotary Club meetings and charity luncheons and ingratiated himself with San Marino matrons.
"He came across as a very debonair guy," recalled former San Marino community leader Berkeley Johnston. "He had a bit of a Brit accent like some New Englanders."
"I thought he was cute," said Lisa Gallegos, 44, who met him in 1983 at a USC screening of the movie "Yentl."
She said they went on one date and he boasted of having a master's degree in film.
The last time she saw him was that night she and Farrar played Trivial Pursuit at the guest house where Chichester was staying, she said.
Both Farrar, a former Los Angeles Times editor, and Gallegos said that that night they noticed much of the backyard of the Sohus' home was dug up. At the time, neither thought much of it.
"He said there were plumbing problems," Farrar said.
But after the bones were discovered in 1994, she was contacted and interviewed by L.A. County Sheriff's Department detectives.
In 1989 or 1990, a man named Christopher Crowe surfaced in Connecticut trying to sell a truck that had belonged to Jonathan Sohus, law enforcement sources said.
After arriving in New England, the man known as Clark Rockefeller married a successful business consultant named Sandra Boss.
He became, according to news accounts, the primary caretaker of their daughter, Reigh, who was born in 2001.
Alma Gilbert-Smith, founder of the Cornish Colony Museum, said she met Rockefeller in the late 1990s when they both bid on the historic Doveridge property that had belonged to a succession of distinguished New Englanders including painters Thomas and Maria Dewing.
"The Realtor called and said, 'You were just topped by a member of the Rockefeller family,' " recalled Gilbert-Smith.
Cornish prides itself on being a place of history and seclusion where residents respect both.
The famously reclusive J.D. Salinger lives there.
Gilbert-Smith said Rockefeller had private patrol cars parked at the entrance driveways to his rambling home.
And when she asked him if the gardens of his home could be photographed for a book she was cowriting about the artists and gardens of the area, he refused.
According to Gilbert-Smith, "he said, 'Absolutely not. I'm a very private person; I don't want people knowing where I live.' "
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richard.winton@latimes.com
carla.hall@latimes.com
molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com
