Ex-girlfriend recounts Rockefeller impostor’s paranoia
When Christian Gerhartsreiter learned a detective was searching for him, he became paranoid and started living a more clandestine life, a former girlfriend testified Wednesday.
He dyed his dark hair and eyebrows blond. He disposed of his garbage in public trash bins. He had his live-in girlfriend, Mihoko Manabe, walk on the opposite side of the street and refused to exit buildings with her at the same time, Manabe said.
Gerhartsreiter’s odd behavior began in 1988 shortly after Greenwich, Conn., police Det. Daniel Allen left a phone message seeking to meet with him, Manabe said. Allen was assisting San Marino police with an investigation into a young couple’s disappearance three years earlier.
FULL COVERAGE: Rockefeller impostor on trial
Prosecutors contend that Gerhartsreiter avoided Allen because he killed his San Marino landlady’s son and buried his body in her backyard. John Sohus’ body was dug up in 1994, nearly a decade after he and his wife, Linda, vanished. Gerhartsreiter, now on trial for Sohus’ murder, was known as Christopher Chichester when he also disappeared from San Marino in 1985. He later resurfaced on the East Coast as Christopher Crowe and, later, Clark Rockefeller.
-- Jack Leonard and Hailey Branson-Potts, Los Angeles Times