'Rockefeller' Print Linked to Stockbroker Application

BOSTON, Aug. 6, 2008 — -- A fingerprint linked to an alias police suspect may have been used by mystery man Clark Rockefeller, who allegedly kidnapped his daughter, was recorded on a stockbroker's license application, sources told ABC News today.

According to the sources, the application was filed in the name of Chris Chichester, an alleged con man California police consider a suspect in the murders of a Los Angeles couple in 1985.

That fingerprint, which sources have told ABC News matches Rockefeller's fingerprints, was also traced to a German man named Christian Gerhart Streiter, law enforcement sources told ABC News.

The threads of information are helping investigators from Boston and Los Angeles and from federal agencies start to weave together a picture of the man accused of kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter in Boston on July 7.

Rockefeller has not helped investigators, law enforcement officials have said. The man has steadfastly refused to tell them anything about his background, a Suffolk County, Mass., prosecutor said Tuesday during Rockefeller's arraignment.

But Rockefeller's lawyer said today on ABC's "Good Morning America" that his client has no memory of his life before his 1995 marriage.

The lawyer also denied that Rockefeller is the man California authorities called a "person of interest" Tuesday in the disappearance of newlyweds Jonathan and Linda Sohus from the wealthy Los Angeles neighborhood of San Marino.

"He doesn't remember his past," attorney Stephen Hrones told "GMA" Pressed to be more specific, Hrones said Rockefeller remembered "back to the time that he got married, but before that time, he has real issues remembering his past."

Hrones also criticized police for trying to use the court of public opinion to convict his client, who was transported from Baltimore to Boston Tuesday to face arraignment on custodial kidnapping and assault charges.

"It's all speculation," Hrones said.

Police in the California case were suspicious of Chichester, an alleged con man who lived in the couple's guest house. Chichester took off before police questioned him. In 1995, after bones were dug up from beneath the newlyweds' swimming pool, the case and Chichester were featured in a segment of TV's "Unsolved Mysteries."

Two law enforcement sources told ABC News that Rockefeller's newly acquired fingerprints match a set of prints tied to a man who used the name Chichester as he tried to get a California stockbroker's license.

Before Chichester took off, he told friends the couple was traveling in Europe.

Like Rockefeller, Chichester appears to have had several aliases.

The physical resemblance between Rockefeller and Chichester, down to their distinctive bifocals, is strong.

The same man was also traced through a passport record for a Christian Gerhart Streiter in Bavaria, a mountainous area in the Alps in southern Germany, the sources said. Streiter was born in 1961, making him about 48 years old -- the age that authorities have tied to Rockefeller since he allegedly kidnapped his 7-year-old daughter, Reigh, in Boston July 7.

Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, confirmed the department's interest in talking to Rockefeller.

"We want to talk to this individual to see if we can glean any information, and then we're going to take it from there," Whitmore said.

The fingerprint match could put frustrated investigators one step closer to learning the real identity of Rockefeller, who was called a "ghost" by one Boston police investigator, an "enigma" by a FBI special agent and a "mystery man" by Suffolk County, Mass., prosecutors.

Rockefeller is being held without bail at the Suffolk County Jail on Nashua Street in Boston. He was arraigned on kidnapping and assault charges in Boston.

In court Tuesday prosecutors reiterated that Rockefeller had no driver's license, Social Security card, work or educational history or marriage certificate, and they said he has steadfastly refused to tell investigators anything about his upbringing.

Hrones described his client as a "delightful man" who made friends easily, and a doting father who would never harm his daughter. He also took a knock at Sandra Boss, Rockefeller's ex-wife and Reigh's mother, an Ivy league-educated business executive now stationed in London.

"She hardly even knew the child," Hrones said. "He was the stay-at-home dad. She was a busy career woman who worked all the time, traveled all the time."

Hrones said that he would challenge the legality of the custodial kidnapping charge. "They call this kidnapping?" he asked. "You can kidnap your own child?"

When the couple divorced, Boss was given "primary residential custody" of the child. Rockefeller was granted visitations with Reigh under the condition that a social worker supervised them.

It was during one of those visits in Boston that Rockefeller, with the help of two paid but unwitting drivers, executed the first step of an alleged kidnapping plan that has since drawn international attention.

Rockefeller was arrested Saturday in a Baltimore apartment he had recently purchased under the name Charles "Chip" Smith, apparently with the intention of starting a new life there with his daughter.