Clark Rockefeller Trial Hears Even More Tales, Aliases
Kidnap suspect told people he was mute as a child, was an astronomist.
May 29, 2009— -- The man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller seemingly never ran out of aliases or whoppers.
During testimony in his trial today for allegedly kidnapping his daughter, witnesses recounted a string of stories they say Rockefeller told them, which ranged from having a secret second family to arriving from Chile on a boat and that his daughter's mother was a Swedish surrogate.
The defendant, who is actually a German immigrant named Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, has lived since 1993 as Clark Rockefeller. He was arrested last year after abducting his 7-year-old daughter, Reigh "Snooks" Boss, during a visit supervised by a social worker.
Psychologist Liza Brooks told the court today that she had been hired after Rockefeller's divorce from Sandra Boss to help him cope with not having custody of Reigh.
"He talked about having another family other than Sandra and Reigh," Brooks testified. "He said he had a family and said he was expecting twins."
Rockefeller also claimed that his parents were deceased and that he was raised by an "older gentleman," Brooks testified.
Aileen Ang, a friend of Rockefeller who was recruited to drive him and Reigh to New York after the kidnapping, also testified that Rockefeller told outlandish stories about growing up, particularly that he had been mute as a child. Ang went to police after discovering that Rockefeller was wanted by police.
Rockefeller has told other people that his parents died in a car crash when he was a teenager and that he attended a program for gifted children at Yale University when he was 14, according to police reports.
Ang also said today that Rockefeller claimed to be a Harvard doctoral student getting his Ph.D. in astronomy. In previous stories, Rockefeller has claimed to be a physicist, an art dealer and a mathematician. When he first met Boss, Rockefeller told her he restructured debt for developing nations but didn't have the heart to charge them, court papers have revealed.
Rockefeller told even more stories to Baltimore real estate broker Julie Gochar while on the lam with his daughter.
