Sheriff's officials connect suspect in Boston to San Marino missing persons case
L.A. County officials say a Boston kidnapping suspect is the same man they consider a person of interest in the disappearance of a San Marino couple 23 years ago.
Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said today that a Boston kidnapping suspect is the same man they have identified as a "person of interest" in the disappearance of a San Marino couple 23 years ago.
"We are now positively identifying the man arrested in Boston as Clark Rockefeller as the man known as Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter," said Steve Whitmore, a Sheriff's Department spokesman.
Gerhartsreiter is wanted for questioning in the disappearance of Jonathan and Linda Sohus, he said. He used the name Christopher Chichester in 1985 when he lived in the guest house of the couple, Whitmore said.
Investigators were able to identify Gerhartsreiter through numerous interviews with people who contacted the authorities, Whitmore said.
Police on both coasts had been investigating the suspect, who is accused of absconding from Boston with his young daughter and was captured Aug. 2 by the FBI in Baltimore.
Soon after he left San Marino in 1985, the Sohuses vanished as well. Nine years later, bags of human skeletal remains were unearthed there. Authorities have never been able to figure out whose bones were buried on the property or what happened to the Sohuses or to their tenant.
richard.winton@latimes.com
