Clark Rockefeller Speaks From Jail in Boston

Aug. 25, 2008 — -- For the first time since allegedly kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter, Reigh, on July 27 during supervised visitation, the mystery man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller spoke with Boston Globe reporters from a Boston jail.

Though the interview, which the Globe published Sunday, shed some light on bits of Rockefeller's enigmatic past and his relationship with his daughter, Rockefeller claimed to not remember much of his life before his 1994 marriage to Sandra L. Boss.

"I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to remember," he said. "I don't lose much thought over it."

Click here to listen to The Boston Globe's interview.

The man, who has been identified by police as German immigrant Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, was also unapologetic about the alleged kidnapping, which sparked a six-day international manhunt.

"We had such a wonderful time," he said. "It was my six days of being, well, it was like a trance. It was so wonderful. It was so great to be with my daughter again."

When pushed for details about the incident, he stopped.

"Well, there's nothing I have to say about that," he said. "I love my daughter very much. But, you know, I lost, and I lost big time in Boston."

Rockefeller, called an "enigma" by the FBI, is thought to have used up to a dozen aliases in search of fame and fortune throughout his life in what Suffolk County District Attorney spokesman Dan Conley called "the largest con I have ever seen in my professional career." Rockefeller claims to speak "five or six or seven" languages.

Authorities believe the man known as Rockefeller came to the United States from Germany in an exchange program in 1978 at age 17, under the name Christian Gerhartstreiter. In the mid-1980s, as Christopher Chichester, he moved to San Marino, Calif.

In 1985, Rockefeller's landlords, John and Linda Sohus, disappeared and now Los Angeles County detectives want to question Rockefeller about their presumed slaying.

When reporters asked about his possible connection, Rockefeller's lawyer, Stephen B. Hrones, who sat in on the Globe's interview, simply told the reporters to "move on to something else."