'Clark Rockefeller' Found Guilty in High Profile Kidnapping Case

BOSTON June 12, 2009— -- Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, the conman who posed as a member of the famed Rockefeller family for decades has been sentenced to a maximum of five years in a Massachusetts state prison after being found guilty of kidnapping his daughter and assaulting a social worker with a dangerous weapon.

He could of been sentenced for up to a total of 15 years on both charges if served consecutively.

Gerhartsreiter's ex-wife Sandra Boss and social worker Howard Yaffe, who was assaulted during the kidnapping, requested in their victim statements that Gerhartsreiter be given the fullest sentence under the law.

"While Reigh was gone, I faced a mother's worst nightmare, the possibility of losing a child without a trace," Boss said in her victim statement.

But Suffolk Superior Court Judge Frank Gazianon said that he was taking into account Gerhartsreiter's first-time offender status and his seemingly genuine love for his daughter Reigh.

It was during a post-divorce, supervised visitation with his daughter that Gerhartsreiter grabbed Reigh and ordered the driver of an SUV to speed off, sending Yaffe, who was trying to rescue Leigh, out of the vehicle, and tumbling to the street.

Gerhartsreiter and Reigh were found six days later in a Baltimore town home that he had purchased a few months earlier.

Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley said the verdict was "fair andjust" and said hoped it gives Gerhartsreiter's ex-wife Sandra Bossand her daughter "some sense of justice...this was a difficult ordeal for this family," he said.

Boss who was not in the courtroom for the verdict, issued a statement after the sentencing, saying she was relieved. ?While this has been a trying and difficult time, I am pleased to now be able to move on, focusing on the future and continuing to provide my daughter with a normal, healthy, and happy childhood.?

Defense attorney Jeffrey Denner expressed disappointment that the jury did not buy the insanity defense, but conceded that "it was an uphill battle," especially since there was no record Gerhartsreiter ever sought help for any mental health disorders.

Denner said his client had a "flat" reaction to the verdict and did not say much.

In addition to the four to five years for the kidnapping conviction, Gerhartsreiter was also sentenced to a two- to three-year term for the assault, to run concurrently with the kidnapping sentence. He will serve his terms at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Concord, Mass.

Denner had asked for a sentence of zero to 24 months in prison, citing his client's "diminished" mental capacity. Gerhartsreiter, Denner said, never intended to hurt his daughter.

"You have a guy who loved his daughter too much and made huge mistakes" in showing that love, Denner said.

Lawyers for Gerhartsreiter, who went by the name Clark Rockefeller, among other aliases, had maintained during the trial that the German immigrant was insane and suffering from delusions when he took off with daughter Reigh "Snooks" Boss last July. Denner even told the jury during closing arguments that "this is not a man playing with a whole deck."

Despite the two convictions, the jury found Gerhartsreiter not guilty of giving law enforcement a false name and not guilty of a second assault charge that included battery.

Though he entered the courtroom with a smirk on his face, he showed little emotion during the reading of the verdict and once mouthed "Oh s***" after the second guilty verdict.

Yafee was seen smiling as the verdict was read.

Because Gerhartsreiter is still an illegal immigrant, having come to the U.S. from Bavaria on a student visa, he will face federal deportation proceedings after he serves out his sentence, Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley told ABC News.

As this case winds down, another may be heating up. Conley told ABC News that a federal grand jury is convening in California in the 1985 disappearance of a newlywed couple. Gerhartsreiter, who was using yet another name at the time, was living in the couple's guest house, has been eyed by authorities in the case, but not charged.

Conley praised the work of Boston Police Detectives Sgt. Ray Mosher and Det. Joseph Lehman on the kidnapping trial.

"They lived and they worked it from day one," he said.

The prosecution had dismissed the insanity theory throughout the trial and referred to Gerhartsreiter by his real name. During his closing arguments, Assistant District Attorney David Deakin implored the jury not to buy into it.

"Don't let him get away with that," Deakin said, "Don't let this insanity defense be the culminating manipulation in a lifetime of lies designed to try and get what he wanted."

Bizarre details of Gerhartsreiter's three decades of deception came fast and furious during the trial, with witnesses recounting a litany of fantastic tales that were alternately flamboyant or strange, or both.

Gerhartsreiter, who had claimed that his daughter Reigh communicated with him telepathically the day she was kidnapped, had a history of passing himself off ot only as a Rockefeller, but as a rocket scientist and a cardiovascular surgeon, among other professions.

Gerhartsreiter's ex-wife, Sandra Boss, testified last week that he never held a job but meanly withheld money and food from her, and in winter would only heat the part of the house where he slept.

When pressed to get a job himself, she claimed that he replied it would be "beneath a Rockefeller."

Boss, a graduate of Harvard School of Business, told the court today that she earned about $40,000 a week, but her finances were completely controlled by her husband.

She also testified that he convinced his wife he was a member of the Tri-Lateral Commission, a private organization of prominent citizens who advise governments on international cooperation.

"He called it 'The Group,'" Boss said. He even flew to Texas for bogus meetings, she testified.

At one point, she said, Gerhartsreiter, who claimed to advise poor nations on debt renegotiations, complained that his "clients" blamed him for the collapse of the Asian market.

Deakin said he was going to call Boss and let her know about the verdict.

"We expect Sandra will be very pleased with the result," he told ABC News.

'Clark Rockefeller's' Many Tall Tales

Boss claimed that her husband spent all their money, but balked at selling a painting from a collection he claimed was worth $1 billion.

Denner questioned Boss on how a "dynamic" and "vibrant" woman who advised politicians and corporations about their business affairs could not manage to obtain a divorce lawyer.

"I was frightened," Boss testified, adding that her husband began to display a volatile temper shortly after they were married. "My professional life was not scary. My personal life was."

During her testimony on Boss said her then- husband had described a youth growing up on Manhattan's exclusive Sutton Place, being home schooled, entering Yale at the age of 14, and how his parents died in a car crash.

She also said that he had claimed that an accident when he was 2 or 3 caused him to be mute. Boss elaborated on that today, recounting that Gerhartsreiter told her that he was mute for eight years until he saw a dog and yelped, "Woofness," and began to speak again.

A different portrait emerged, however, from Rockefeller's friend Don Fox. Fox's daughter was a classmate of Reigh's, and the fathers became friends.

Fox described Boss as a cold and distant mother while Rockefeller was with his daughter constantly.

Parents at the school "never saw Sandy," Fox said.

"She was never around. Even on the weekends she would go shopping in New York," Fox said. "She was always absent. She made Clark do everything for her. It was always Clark and Reigh. She is not a very caring or giving person. She is very cold and aloof."

During testimony on Monday, the man who was recruited to drive the getaway car when Gerhartsreiter allegedly kidnapped his daughter said he practiced the kidnapping by hurling duffle bags into the back of a livery vehicle the day before he snatched her off a Boston street.

The Day Reigh Disappeared

Darryl Hopkins, the wheelman on that July day when Reigh was thrown into a waiting black suburban by her father, said Gerhartsreiter paid him $3,000 to "get rid of" the "cling-on" following the dad-daughter visit.

The person Gerhartsreiter claimed was a "cling-on," or unwanted friend, was a social worker appointed by the court to supervise Gerhartsreiter's visits with his 7-year-old daughter.

Hopkins said Gerhartsreiter tossed his daughter into the car, banging her head on the door, and shoved the social worker to the ground.

"Snooks was crying. She was saying, 'I really whacked my head, Daddy.' Clark was saying: Go! Go! Go!'" Hopkins testified.

Hopkins peeled away from Marlboro Street and testified that social worker Harold Jaffe desperately clung to a door handle.

"I could feel him pulling on the door," Hopkins said. "Clark was holding the door shut."

Hopkins said that Gerhartsreiter had asked him for a ride to Newport, R.I., to "hobnob" with Sen. Lincoln Chafee, a former Republican senator from Rhode Island.

"They were going sailing with the senator's family," Hopkins said, although there is no evidence that he had an appointment with the former senator.

The driver ridiculed Rockefeller for talking like "Thurston Howell the third," the aristocratic character on the old TV show "Gilligan's Island."

On an previous trip, Hopkins complained that Rockefeller had stopped at a Manhattan bar to eat a rich meal and didn't buy his driver anything.

"He had steak tartare," Hopkins told the court, mimicking a Thurston Howell III voice. "I was his driver. He should have bought me a sandwich"

(The Associated Press contributed to this report)