Cops Call Dad Suspected of Kidnap a 'Ghost'

Police struggle to build profile of man accused of abducting his daughter.

ByABC News
July 30, 2008, 1:33 PM

July 30, 2008 — -- No valid Social Security number. No wedding certificate. No work or school history.

Clark Rockefeller may have hobnobbed in high society with a name that fit the part, but authorities investigating the alleged abduction of his 7-year-old daughter have been unable to build an accurate profile of the kidnapping suspect.

"Nobody knows who this guy is," a high-ranking Boston police official assigned to the task force in charge of investigating Rockefeller's background told ABC News in an exclusive interview. "He is a ghost."

Some of the mystery of who Rockefeller really is may be answered Thursday, when ex-wife Sandra Boss is expected to make a public statement, two investigative sources told ABC News.

The police official said that investigators have not located a valid Social Security number for Clark Rockefeller. They have also found no wedding certificate documenting his marriage to Boss, the mother of the missing child who won custody of their daughter, Reigh, after their 2007 divorce, the official said.

The task force has not found any work history for Rockefeller, who told one former neighbor in New Hampshire that he was a "physicist" and fashioned himself as a "philanthropist" who sat on the boards of various nonprofits.

Investigators also are unclear about Rockefeller's education history, the official said, despite reports that he commonly told acquaintances he attended Yale and Harvard. Some people have told authorities that Rockefeller said that his parents died in a car crash when he was young; others were told he was homeschooled as a kid.

Rockefeller, 48, is the sole suspect in the alleged kidnapping of his daughter on Sunday in Boston. Authorities have traced a plan that began when a black SUV pulled up and Rockefeller allegedly lifted the child into the car, eluding a social worker who was overseeing the visitation with his daughter and tried to stop the vehicle. The child lost her doll and backpack in the commotion.

If you have any information about this case, click here to contact the Boston Police Department.

From there, police say, Rockefeller and the child, who goes by the nickname "Snooks," were dropped by an unwitting livery driver -- who since has cooperated with police -- at a Boston hospital where 30-year-old Aileen Ang, an acquaintance of Rockefeller's he met at a Boston sailing club, picked the father and daughter up and drove them to New York City.