After moving to the United States in his late teens, Gerhartsreiter lived under a succession of aliases while variously claiming to be an actor, a director, an art collector, a physicist, a ship's captain, a negotiator of international debt agreements and an English aristocrat.
He later used their names to obtain permission to enter the United States, falsely declaring that the Kellns had invited him to stay with them in California.
The family allowed Gerhartsreiter to live with them, and in 1979 he was accepted as a foreign exchange student at Berlin High School.
Deciding that he wanted to become a U.S. citizen,[6] he married 22-year-old Amy Jersild Duhnke in 1981 in Madison, Wisconsin, in order to obtain a green card.
[5] To persuade Duhnke to marry him, Gerhartsreiter falsely claimed that if he had gone back to West Germany, he would have to go into the military and be sent to fight in the Cold War on the Russian front line.
[7] Using the alias "Christopher Chichester," Gerhartsreiter lived in the guesthouse of Ruth "Didi" Sohus (1917–1988) in the upscale community of San Marino, California.
[8] Initially identified as a person of interest by police in the 1985 disappearance and death of Didi's son and daughter-in-law, Jonathan and Linda Sohus, Gerhartsreiter reportedly told people that the couple had traveled to Europe.
[citation needed] In late 1988, Gerhartsreiter was pulled over in Greenwich, Connecticut, while driving a pickup truck that had belonged to Jonathan Sohus, but he left the area before police could interview him.
[citation needed] In May 1994, bones believed to belong to Jonathan Sohus were found buried in the backyard of the couple's former property.
[10] After settling in Greenwich, Connecticut, Gerhartsreiter assumed the identity of "Christopher C. Crowe" and claimed to be a television producer from Los Angeles who worked on the 1980s revival of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Phelps and Company to work with the firm's computers but was fired when it was discovered that the social security number he had given them belonged to serial killer David Berkowitz.
Gerhartsreiter briefly worked for Kidder, Peabody & Co., but quit his job and abandoned the Christopher Crowe persona when he discovered that police were looking for him in connection with the Sohus disappearances.
[5] In 1995, using the name "James Frederick Mills Clark Rockefeller," Gerhartsreiter married Sandra Boss, a high-earning McKinsey senior executive.
Although Boss earned all of the household income, she testified that Gerhartsreiter held complete control of the family's finances and other aspects of her day-to-day life.
[5] Using the Clark Rockefeller persona, he had gained membership to Boston's Algonquin Club, where he spent a great deal of time.
[18] Boss would later testify at Gerhartsreiter's trial that he had agreed to give her custody of their daughter following the divorce and to supervised visits three times a year in return for an $800,000 settlement, two cars, her engagement ring, and a dress that he had given her.
[19] On 2 August 2008, after a week-long search, Gerhartsreiter was found in Baltimore, Maryland, where he had recently purchased an apartment for about $450,000 under the name Charles "Chip" Smith.
With the help of the owner of a local marina, where Gerhartsreiter had apparently kept a catamaran, FBI agents were able to lure him out of the apartment with a telephone call telling him the boat was taking on water.
They matched a latent print lifted from a wine glass in Boston collected at the time of the search for Gerhartsreiter and his daughter earlier in the month.
Hrones had requested the hearing in order to seek a reduction from the $50 million cash bail under which the defendant had previously been held.
[26] During the trial, conducted in Boston in mid-2009, Gerhartsreiter's defense team told jurors that he believed his daughter had communicated with him telepathically from London, where she and her mother moved after the divorce, begging him to rescue her.
Judge Frank Gaziano, who presided over Gerhartsreiter's parental kidnapping trial, had barred prosecutors from presenting evidence about the Sohus case to avoid prejudicing jurors against the defendant.