Christian Gerhartsreiter: The Man They Called 'Crockefeller'

but they're all actually one person. These are all aliases of a man named Christian Gerharts, writer, and we're going to have a quick aside here on names, because as he assumed identities, he had some of his own affectation

based pronunciations of some of these names. For example, what most people would call Chichester, which is how we are pronouncing it, he put on the Bostonian by way of england Ish as Chichester, which kind of cracks me up, because, as I told Maria before this, it sounds like I'm doing a comedy sketch if I try to pronounce it that way. It's true, I feel like I'm trying I'm talking about cheetos, so I can't do so, Also, we'll

get into his backstory. He was born in Germany, so really his first name would probably be pronounced more like Christian, but we're americanizing and making it Christian in part because most of the news coverage about him would refer to him that way, and also all of his story really takes place in the US, and he never really seemed to be using that name anyways, right, pronunciation of that one matters, right, So Christian is probably the most recent

impostor that we'll talk about this season. But you can't ignore him because for three decades he actually got away with pretending to be someone else, or actually he pretended to be a lot of someone else's. He he posed as a variety of things, including a British baronet, a cardiologist in Las Vegas, Hollywood producer, a bond broker in New York. I mean, there's a shortlist. So perhaps his most memorable ruse, though, was an astonishing two decade long period where he posed as a member of a very

famous and very wealthy family. And his timeline has a lot of ins and outs. It's actually very very hard to kind of track some of it. So what we're gonna do for simplicity sake, is take a look at four of his larger than life identities, many of whom go by the name Christopher. Some people knew Christian as Chris Gerhardt, who was a University of Wisconsin film student sort of. Others knew Christopher Chichester, who we mentioned a descendant he claimed of British Royalty. Others knew him as

Christopher Crowe, of film and TV producer. We'll get to why that's extra confusing in a moment, but most people knew him as Clark Rockefeller, who in that guy's He claimed to be heir to the Rockefeller dynasty, so he pretended to be from a rich and powerful family, but Christian actually was not. He was born on February one in nineteen sixty one, and he grew up in a

small German town, so Christian had been short. He was described as skinny and fantasy obsessed as a child, and a friend of his family had told journalist Jessica van Zack of the Boston Herald that, and we're going to quote this, he was like Batman, always going into different rules,

and he always had crazy ideas. It wasn't until he was seventeen years old that he arrived in the US, and that was on a tourist or possibly a student visa to Connecticut as an exchange student, and he had told his parents that he had been hired as a DJ at a New York radio station. That was a falsehood,

as pretty much everything he said. But what he really did was just jump from host family to host family, conning each of them with his good looks and charm, but also kind of irritating them with his arrogance and quirky behavior. And we actually have an example of that. So Christian was not necessarily the best house guest. He met a young man like himself who was hitchhiking, and he was offered a night at this guy's house in Connecticut,

you know, for a fellow traveler. And it didn't take him long to take them up on that offer, but he overstayed his welcome by months and not eight months. Each day he spent there, he expected his hosts to prepare his breakfast and maybe launder his clothing as well. That would be nice. Eventually, though, the family said they kicked him out. Can you imagine, Yeah, you can crash on my couch tonight and then like three months later, you're like, it's Q three. I'm I'm folding your socks.

I don't know how this happened. Once he started to become established in the United States, Christian claimed to be from Boston, Massachusetts. There is actually an apocryphal story that floats around out there that he was known to eat Boston cream pie every day in an effort to prove that he truly came from there. I have a lot of friends from Boston. I don't know any of them

that eat Boston cream pie every day or maybe even frequently. Unfortunately, we obviously cannot confirm that dessert story, but it is an indicator of maybe some of his his proclivity towards peccadillos. Uh So, after he hopped from couch to couch, he moved to Wisconsin to study film at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and it was also the first time that he transformed himself. He became a man named Chris Gerhard.

Some records suggest that Christian actually didn't attend officially as a student at the university, that he did go to some classes film classes, but a degree was not really his motive for attending school. Anyway, he was looking for a relationship that would make him eligible to get a green card, so that's known officially as a permanent resident card, and it would grant Christian permanent residency in the United States. And he did find a woman in Wisconsin who would

and did marry him, thus enabling this whole plan. That was a woman named Amy Dunk and they married in nineteen eight one. Chris got his green card as Chris Gerhardt, and the two of them eventually divorced. All but one of one account of their marriage reported that they didn't divorce until that seems like a long, quickie marriage of convenience. But you know, we all let stuff slide now and

again um. Following his divorce from eighty though, Christian transformed himself once again, Yes, and this time Christian became Christopher T. Chester with an R. The alleged nephew of Lord Mountbatten, who by the way, was actually a real person, and the second cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth. The second Christian now had made himself into royalty and also he was a self proclaimed computer expert and stockbroker. He wore Ivy League clothes and was practiced enough to have impeccable

manners and an aristocratic accent. He asked people to call him a baronet. One woman recalled him as Christopher chichesterte Baronet of England. He had business cards that read thirteenth Baronet of Chichester, which also featured his family crust of a huron with its wings spread and an eel in its beak to complete this ruse. He wore ascots, and he liked to talk about the Mount Batton family foundation

that incidentally didn't actually exist. He claimed he was good friends with author J. D. Salinger, and through his charm only, he was offered no fewer the three jobs in the securities field. You know, it's funny. When we were doing research, I saw that he claimed to have had a visit from Brutney Spears and I couldn't find another source but but mentioned that. But because it was Christian, I was like, I'm sure he said it. I'm sure he didn't have

a visit, but I'm sure he said. But okay. So according to his friends, there was actually a more down to earth ch Chester. He was interested in film noir and his favorite movie director was Alfred Hitchcock. He said his favorite TV show was Gilligan's Island, and he would actually mimic the accent of millionaire castaway Thurston Howell. The third which, um, I don't know if you remember this was a character who was known as the Wizard of

Wall Street. He believed that this was a religious show. Actually, and that will quote from a press interview. The characters represent the seven deadly sins. Gilligan is slow, the Skipper is anger, the Professor is pride, Mary Anne is envy, Ginger is lust, and the millionaires wife is gluttony, which leaves the millionaire as greed. I have heard that analysis before. I had never heard that before, to which I go, mate, Right, coconuts, how did they fit in? We talked about that later.

Like Chichester, mostly bragged about his wealth, including a cathedral that he claimed he had inherited, and that he was willing to have moved to the US there would be no mean feat also claimed to live only in the most affluent neighborhoods. Some people, though, were a little surprised that someone of such high ranking royalty would drive a tam Dotson with an interior that was covered with yellow post it notes. I can't handle that I drove a

Dotson when I was a knowledge. It's not a luxury vehicle. No it is not, but I have in my hand now I love it. Right. But if you're also sort of painting yourself as a little bit of an eccentric like you can get away with something like that. Other people that spent time with him noticed that, for example, when they all went out to eat, he never once

picked up a check. Chichester lived rent free in a guesthouse of a woman named Ruth d d. Sohu's Legally she wasn't allowed to rent the space out to anyone, but that worked out just fine for her new tenant. D D's son, John was in his twenties and he worked at a low level job in the computer department

of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. John's wife, Linda, was a clerk at the Dangerous Vision science fiction bookstore, and the couple lived with d D in the upscale community of San Marino, California, And that's just outside Los Angeles, and their plan was to save money for their own place, and everything it seemed was pretty good between the family and they're not quite really a tenant tenants. Mr Chichester room,

guesthouse roommate um. When John and Linda went missing in early February night five, it was more than two years after Chichester had moved. Indeed, was naturally growing concerned as the days passed. The couple had told friends and family they were going to New York for some sort of top secret work for John, but it was all very unclear um. Some stories also suggested that the couple went to Europe. There were a few postcards sent to d D and friends, but they stopped coming, and d D

called the police to report them as missing. Her tenant slash roommate confusion. There, Christopher Chichester was also missing, she reported. Despite John's mother's concern, investigators treated the couple's disappearance as a voluntary missing person's case, but John and Linda were never heard from again. So right now we're going to take a quick break for our sponsor, and when we're back, we're going to talk about how it was possible to

pretend to be a Rockefeller for twenty years. Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about when Christian made his first mistake. Christian moved away from San Marino the same year John Linda went missing and the police began asking questions. He went back to the East Coast and moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, where he transformed himself into Christopher Crowe, a Hollywood TV

and film producer. He claimed to be the producer and director of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which actually was a TV show for real, and it did have a director named Christopher Crowe, but this was not, of course, the Christopher Crowe that we are talking about. I always feel so bad for people who someone just decides to use their name and resume as their own. What a mess, you see. It occasionally happened just with confusion over names on social media.

So when it's something nefarious, it's got to be like a whole extra layer. And it was in Greenwich where Christopher Crow made that first real mistake. So Greenwich is on Connecticut's Gold Coast, which Greenwich was and is known for its mansions and its wealth, and it's many large financial service companies and hedge funds. So while he was living there, Crow met a lot of very wealthy people.

He also met Chris Bishop, who was a minister's son and also an aspiring filmmaker, which drew him to Crow. The two met at an Episcopal church in town, which was considered to be an elite church to attend. We're getting a little bit ahead of where we need to be. But at this point, no one would have guessed that twenty seven years after their meeting, Bishop would be called to the stand at a murder trial to describe the

man he knew almost three decades before. He did go on at that trial to testify that actually, no one had ever questioned Crow's stories back in Greenwich, and there was no reason to and why he had decided to trade his celebrity studied career to become a bonds trader um. But like I said, it's a little bit more information

than we need right now. It was in Greenwich where Christian began to work at financial institutions to prepare himself for his next role and his biggest fake yet, which was pretending to be a Rockefeller Under his Crow alias, he conned the brokerage firm S N. Phelps in Company

into hiring him to work with the firm's computers. Here's the rub a social security number to get a job, and Crow was not a real person and thus did not have one, so he was fired when the company discovered that the social Security number that he had provided when he was hired actually belonged to serial killer and self proclaimed son of Sam David Berkowitz. Yep, yeah, he really can't sometimes make this stuff up. I'm presuming his logic was like, this guy isn't outlooking for jobs, so

there won't be any problem with this. He's very dizzy, so without a social Security number, he surprisingly was employed by other companies. He was hired by Nico Securities Limited in the corporate bonds department until he was fired for not selling any bonds, like none, not at all. He also worked for Kidder, Peabody and Company, but quit his job abruptly when he heard the investigators were looking for him in connection with the disappearance of John and Linda.

Investigators did visit him at his workplace to question him, but he had vanished. One key reason they made that visit was because Crow had made a pretty big mistake. He had given a white Nissan pickup that was the same truck that had belonged to John and Linda, sohus to Chris Bishop, who we mentioned just a moment ago. The problem was that when Bishop tried to register it. It was discovered that the truck actually belonged to the

missing couple. Within days of discovering this whole missing truck situation, Detective Allen of the Greenwich Police Department also discovered that Christopher Crowe was also known as Christopher Chichester of California, and that he had already fled Greenwich. For the next three and a half years, Christian really did disappear. There's no record of where he was, or what he was doing, or who he was with. But when he resurfaced in the mid early to mid nineties, it was as Clark Rockefeller.

Influential and powerful people were taken in by this man. He claimed to have a master key to Rockefeller Center, and he was adamant that he was, in fact Clark Rockefeller. Can you imagine a master key to that? It's just one key. I keep it in my pocket. Well, it's also one of those things. Were kind of like, I'm from Boston and I'll prove it by eating a Boston cream pie every day. He might like two obvious connections. I'm a Rockefeller, I have a key to Rockefeller Center.

Like it's just so strange, clunky, and it works somehow because of eccentricities. I don't know, um, But what we do know is that as a Rockefeller Christian was a khakis and cost shirt wearing kind of guy who was well known and well liked in his Beacon Hill neighborhood in Boston. He had an estimated sixty million dollars worth of artwork from masters including Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock.

But while Rockefeller like to brag about his art collection, he couldn't actually pronounce all of the names of the artists and works that hung on his walls, and actually even wouldn't be until years later that everyone would learn that those paintings were actually forged. I mean, I will say, I bet there are plenty of people with a lot of money to throw around that don't know the names of all the artists whose work they may be in possession of. I don't think you're wrong. I'm just buying.

I'm not into art, I'm just into possession. Um. One for recalled that Rockefeller once implied he was from the Percy Rockefeller line of the family. That was significant because Percy's uncle was John D. Rockefeller. Of course, the family was still obscenely wealthy, right you wouldn't wanna. I think that one line wasn't necessarily as wealthy as the other. They were like um In Rockefeller under the name James

Frederick Mills Clark. Rockefeller married a woman named Sandra Boss, who was a Harvard Business School graduate and a senior partner at McKenzie and Company, which was is a global management consulting firm. Rockefeller said he lived off of his family's money. Sandra later testified that Rockefeller was quote charming, and that she believed all of the stories he had told her at the beginning of their relationship, because why

wouldn't she. She stated that she thought Rockefeller was quote the most intelligent man she had ever met, and the couple had a daughter together in two thousand one. In and they lived in Cornish, New Hampshire, where Rockefeller bragged his friends and neighbors that he was a wealthy Yale graduate who owned a business abroad. He went to great lengths to hide his actual identity from everyone, even his wife, Sandra, insisting, for example, that she filed her tax returns as a

single person. Although she earned all of the family income, she stated it was her husband who controlled the family's finances. When her father dug into who his daughter had married, he learned that Rockefeller wasn't really telling the truth in many ways and on several topics, including the claim that his mother had passed away, and after going down a few more rabbit holes her her family began to wonder if their daughter was being conned. He eventually growing suspicious herself.

Sandra hired a private investigator to investigate this whole thing, and that person discovered that her husband was definitely not who he claimed to be, but they still weren't actually sure who he was. After discovering that her husband had lied about his identity throughout their twelve year marriage, Sandra, who had truly believed he was a Rockefeller, divorced him and legally changed their daughter's last name to her own.

Sandra testified about the divorce and how her husband had agreed to give her full custody of their daughter following that divorce. He also had agreed to supervised visits three times a year with their daughter in return for an eight hundred thousand dollars settlement, two cars, her engagement ring, and address that he had given to her. He confided in friends that Sandra had emptied his accounts over the years, and that she was only interested in him for his money.

He told one of his art dealers that, and we quote this, she only married me because I'm a Rockefeller. It also turned out, unsurprisingly that this alleged Rockefeller didn't have any sort of identification. According to Sandra's testimony, he didn't have a Social Security number, he was, as we mentioned, on her tax returns, and their credit cards were all in her name. Even his cell phone was under a

friend's account. So to say that the divorce wasn't the agreement that Rockefeller had had in mind would be to put it really lightly. He was, above all, above everything known to dote on his seven year old daughter, who was named Ray He had nicknamed her Snooks. But after the bitter and humiliating divorce that he had just gone through, he not only lost his homes, his art, and now he also lost custody of his daughter, and he decided that the best thing to do would be to take her,

which is exactly what you're thinking. Uh. And on the day of the kidnapping, Rockefeller told his driver that he and his daughter had a lunch date that was scheduled with a senator's son in Newport, Rhode Island. It's about an hour and a half drive from Boston. But he also said that he was concerned that there was a quote clingy person with him who might try to get into the limo, and he did not want that to happen.

That allegedly clingey person was in fact a court appointed social worker, but of course he did not mention that to his driver. Not important information, I don't. Yeah, So he was assured that no one would enter the limo without permission, and Rockefeller himself actually shoved aside the social worker, grabbed his daughter and jumped into the car so quickly that she banged her head on the limo's door jam. The social worker, the story goes, was actually dragged several

yards while holding onto the back door handle. I have to give that social worker credit for like trying, no kidding, that would be terrifying. I'm sure that did not feel good. No. According to Rockefeller's later indictment, he claimed that he had

told the driver to pull over. He actually exited the limo and hailed a cab, explaining to the driver that while lunch in Newport was still on, he wanted to switch over to this cab to his daughter to Massachusetts General Hospital to have that bump on her head looked at and make sure it wasn't serious. That driver of the limo waited two hours for him to return, but

Rockefeller never did. Instead of hailing a taxi to go to the hospital, Rockefeller met a friend at the Boston Sailing Center who drove him and his daughter to New York. He told her that he and his daughter had to catch a train to Long Island and that train left

at eight pm. But as soon as traffic began to back up, he jumped out of the car with his daughter at they were real close to Grand Central station, and the story goes that his helpful friend saw an Amber alert concerning Rockefeller's daughter's disappearance just minutes after they got in the car, and she realized what was happening.

Because of the kidnapping and because he was at this point on the run, Rockefeller's face was ever present in the media, but not everyone agreed who they were looking at who was on the run exactly. I mean, people on the East Coast had known him at this point for sometimes Clark Rockefeller, but people who knew him in California were like Hey, that's Christopher Chichester, right, um, so

Christian As Rockefeller had smartly devised an escape plan. He told all of his friends where he was headed, but from sailing to Peru to traveling to Alaska, he actually told each friend a different destination, and because of that, it became impossible to track him down. I pity the investigators trying to follow up on probably one cockami me sounding lead after another. No I heard he was going to Grant No, he was headed to Anchorage. No, I think he's in Boston. And there's like one in a

big corkboard for each one. Uh. The man who was living under the name Rockefeller's downfall involved several things, but one of them is something as simple as a wine glass. The night before Rockefeller fled, he had shared some wine with a friend, and when investigators are I'd at that friend's house the next day to question him about Rockefeller's

disappearance and his whereabouts. They discovered that the glass that the alleged Clark Rockefeller had used had not yet been washed, and so they were finally able to get his fingerprints, and they sent those fingerprints for processing to the FBI lab in Quantico. Virginia. The Bureau, while waiting for results, released pictures of Clark Rockefeller to the media, and as

you can imagine, this was not good for Christian. While people couldn't agree on who the man in the photo was, some people, as Holly was saying, would recognize him as Christopher Chichester, some would recognize him as the student Chris Gerhart. Still others were sure that the released photos were of

Christopher Crowe. But the overwhelming number of people who came forward to identify this man identified him as Clark Rockefeller, an elite Bostonian who was friends with important artists, financiers, and members of prestigious private clubs such as the legendary Alghon. He knew everyone, though no one actually seemed to know

the real hymn. And it may strike you as odd that it took this long for someone to do this, But finally they questioned members of the actual Rockefeller family, and of course they denied any relation to anyone named Clark Rockefeller. One thing that was certain when fingerprint results came back from the lab was there was no way that Clark Rockefeller was actually a Rockefeller. This was forty

seven year old Christian Gerhardts writer. One Boston district attorney called christians thirty years of impersonations quote the longest con I've ever seen in my professional career. Eventually, investigators matched the so called Rockefeller's fingerprints to several men and so they did finally nail down this list of people that he had been posing as Clark Rockefeller, but also as Christopher Crowe, and had also been Christopher Chichester, and was

for Eel Christian Gearhart writer. So on that we're going to take another break for a word from our sponsor. But when we're back, we're going to talk about how Christian was apprehended in Baltimore, Maryland. Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about Christian's last identity, right, So, his story now unraveling, Christian hastily put together a new identity. A name that he made was Chip Smith, and his story

was that he was a sea captain from Chile. One account differs, though, and refers to his new identity as Chris Young. Maybe he had an identity that was Chris Young, but regardless, he certainly wasn't living under his given name. His daughter was going by the name Muffie at the time,

and the two relocated to Baltimore. Yeah, remember his daughter is very tiny at this point, like she's still a young right child, so undoubtedly he had fed her some story that made this all seem sort of normalized according to his ex wife Sandra, and pretty obvious to the rest of us. When he lost custody of his daughter, he had immediately begun plotting how he was going to

get her back, and clearly well planned out. Rockefeller had a large lineup of friends waiting to help him get from one place to another safely and silently, and they did that. They abetted him, and then he disappeared. Though the TV show Unsolved Mysteries, which averaged about nine million viewers per week at that time, had once posted a picture of Christopher Chichester as a person of interest, no one ever actually called in with a tip while he

was missing, though police circulated wanted posters. But unlike the lack of tips from Unsolved Mysteries, investigators were flooded with calls from around the country from keep who recognized that face. But it was a real estate agent in Baltimore who recognized him as a man who had very recently bought a house In addition to that house tip, investigators learned that Rockefeller we're still using that name just for ease, kept a yacht and that was actually a rundown twenty

six ft stiletto catamaran. It was knocked in a Baltimore marina just down the street from his new house. Expertly peering through the yachts windows, I feel like we got an air quote all of this. Um Yes, investigators saw a file that he was keeping on the boat that was labeled Chip Smith and they made the assumption that this was a new identity that Christian was planning, and so they decided to move on this. Twenty agents with assault rifles wrestled him to the ground in his front yard.

Others entered the house to retrieve his daughter. Christian A. K. Clark. Rockefeller was, as you could imagine in this moment, arrested. He was charged with custodial kidnapping, which is generally the name for when apparent kidnaps one of their children, but the story doesn't end with the abduction of his daughter. He was convicted a year later and was serving a five year sentence for that when he was moved from a Massachusetts prison to a California jail where he would

now face surprisingly, perhaps murder charges. So if you're thinking, wait, what this is a story about an impostor not a murderer, Well, surprise, it's actually both. So jump back for a minute to when we talked about how Christian as Christopher Chichester, had lived in the guesthouse of the Soho's family in San Marino in the mid nineteen eighties. You're probably figuring this one out, but that's that's the important part of his story.

Things took a new twist for Christian when back in nine so we've moved back a little bit, contractors broke ground in the backyard of the former so used home. Skeletal remains were found inside fiberglass container. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Detective Tim Miley explained, and I'm going to quote this. Inside the container, the arms, legs, and torsos were wrapped in saran wrapped hands were covered in bags, and the hands, feet,

and head were covered in plastic bags. The remains, though, were so decomposed that they couldn't actually officially be identified. But without the information that he didn't have enough information, the coroner wouldn't rule this as a homicide, but it didn't take long for investigators to connect the remains to the disappearance of John and Linda Soho's Christian, still using his alias Christopher Chichester, became a person of interest in

that disappearance and possible murder of the couple. But it wasn't until about twenty six years after the victim was killed that Christian, who had been posing as Christopher Chichester at the time when he was living with the Sohues, was charged with that murder. So that's a long time,

but it wasn't like authorities weren't working on it. There were actually multiple law enforcement agent sees that we're working that case, and together they built a scenario in which Chichester had murdered John and Linda thinking that he would take over DD's estate. Whether or not that was really his motivation, it was a pretty interesting theory to pursue. When he was asked by the media, quote if not

a con artist, what would you call yourself? Christian explained, and we quote again, Steve Bedrowski is an absolute literary genius. He came up with the word confabulator, confabulations, harmless inventions of fun that don't really hurt anyone. Christian insisted that he did not kill John or Linda, and that Linda was actually still alive. No, absolutely not, we quote him, is what he told the court. When asked if he had killed her, he continued, quote, she's around here, somewhere.

Christians version of the story went like this, It had been Linda who killed her husband, and that she remains alive and is hiding from the authorities, and that occasionally she sends postcards to friends and family in the US from places in Europe. John's younger sister, Ellen attended the trial and stated that there was actually no way Linda would have killed him. Linda and John we quote. If you could have seen them together, it would have been very hard for you to believe that she would have

done anything to hurt John. It was a packed courtroom the day that the verdict in the murder trial was announced, and the man who once called himself a Rockefeller appeared quite confident in court reports and throughout press coverage of the trial. We know that the prosecutor, however, did not

appear confident. Understandably, he seemed really nervous, and he once gave a statement saying, quote, he'd conned so many people for so many years, you always worry that, Okay, this might be his one last con and he's going to escape justice. He also, the prosecutor believed that the fake Rockefeller had also killed John's wife, Linda. His as though just continued to consider him to be eccentric, but his defense team argued that he was delusional and that he

actually believed he was a real Rockefeller. Christians eccentricities also came out in the courtroom and in the testimony, and we're going to quote from some of the testimony. He never carried money. He was paranoid about security and privacy to the point where he would carry a radio device that he said was connected to the Rockefeller offices. He would never eat in restaurants because he said, you can't trust the kitchen. He would only eat in private clubs,

of which indeed he was a member of several. He only ate white foods, white turkey on white pepperage farm bread, except in some cases when he would order oysters. Rockefeller naturally, his neighbor and some others did recall that he was odd, but they recalled a bit of a different diet that consisted mainly of cucumber and watercress tea sandwiches, but also only on Pepperage farm bread with the crusts removed. He

would eat Pepperidge Farm cookies, preferably the Nantucket variety. His favorite food, he said, was haggis, and his drink of choice was Harvey's Bristol cream sherry. At his sentencing, Christian pleaded to the judge and we quote, I would like to once again reassert my innocence that I would like to definitively state that I did not commit the crime

of which I stand convicted. The judge, though, pronounced Christian guilty of the murder of John Soheughes while using the identity of Christopher t. Chester that Jerry found him guilty of first degree murder. He didn't get the death penalty.

It was not a death penalty case, but the jury sentenced Christian to the maximum penalty possible, which was twenty five years to life in prison plus two additional years because of the manner in which he killed John so The autopsy was difficult because, as we mentioned, these remains were not in great shape. They really only had the victim's skull to work with. And it was in pieces and had to be reconstructed at a special lab in Hawaii.

Forensic pathologist Dr Frank Sheridan determined that John died from violent blunt force trauma to the head, and forensic testing revealed large blood stains on the floor of the guesthouse where Chichester had lived. In a not suspicious at all decision, he had apparently attempted to sell a bloodied rug shortly

after John and Lynda disappeared. It wasn't just the close proximity of their living spaces that had made Christian a suspect, though no DNA or fingerprints from Christian were found at the scene, it was actually the plastic bags that were used to wrap the hands and other body parts. They were all plastic bookstore bags that detectives had traced to colleges where Christian had attended or otherwise spent time at.

Christian did not react to his sentencing inside the courtroom after the trial, he stated to the media quote, I can't speak for the juror's decision. Half of them were probably too stupid to understand reasonable doubt. The other half were probably too lazy to even think about what's been presented and just wanted to get out of here. This will be overturned. Make no mistakes about this, So it's just a minor inconvenience until then, that's all it is.

He went ahead and fired his lawyers and filed a motion for a new trial that was denied. When Boston Globe reporters met him while he was incarcerated, he continued to show his eccentric self, wearing prison scrubs with tasseled loafers.

When asked what he looked for in the people he conned and manipulated, Christian replied first by almost laughing, and then said, and we quote this vanity, vanity, vanity, while he wasn't charged with murdering Linda, So who's neither she nor her body have been found since she went missing in the nineteen eighties. And as Holly mentioned earlier, Christian's new identity, well that was inmate number to eight zero

zero four eight. So I know one thing about this week's mocktail before I kick it off with Holly, I know that it is a beautiful, beautiful emerald green color. It is. This week's mocktail is called the Deceiver for obvious reasons, But there's a secondary reason to why I wanted to call with that. As I was, you know, thinking about this, I kept thinking about you know, just you and I. Even in prepping this episode. There are so many layers to his deception, layers and layers that

I kept just like uttering that word to myself. And so then I decided that it had to be a drink that you pour in layers, which is tricky. So you don't have to pour it in layers, but if you can, I'll give you my my tips. It's really pretty. If you do, it's very, very beautiful. So you're gonna

start with half an ounce of mint syrup. Anytime you're pouring a drinking layers, you want to start heaviest to lightest right, and so that half an ounce of mint syrup is going to sit in the bottom of the glass. I would say, do not use ice in your glass. It will mess up your layering. Pre Chill it in your your fridge or even your freezer if you have a short period of time, and then you are going to pour on top of that half ounce, and you will pour it carefully over a spoon three ounces of

watermelon juice. Watermelon never shows up no, I love it, And so if you've never layered a drink before, it takes practice and it can be tricky. What I find works great for me is I pour it into like a measuring cup that has a pouring lip on it, so that you can easily pour it onto the spoon, because when you use a jigger, when I use a jigger, I just splash it everywhere. I make a mess out

of It goes everywhere all over the spoon. So so people we use the back of like a table spoon, I actually like to use a bar spoon tipped the other way, and so you're kind of like letting it fill the bar spoon and then slowly leave the bar spoon as it overflows, and it kind of carefully floats on the next layer. So you started again with your half ounce of mint syrup, you float three ounces of watermelon juice on top of it, and then on top of that, and it's gonna mix with the watermelon juice,

there's no way around it. You're gonna add five to six ounces of the soda of your choice. So if you want to do something sweet, you can do a ginger ale, you can do a lemon lime soda. You can also just do a club soda if you want to get away from that heavy sweetness. I would still try to float it. Otherwise you're gonna mess with that bottom layer. But just know it's still going to combine with the watermelon. You're not gonna get that pink watermelon.

It's going to kind of change color on you. And then you have this beautiful layered thing that has a the darkest layer at the bottom, which I feel is kind of like as they're digging through once they have fingerprints, they get to the darkest layer of truth, which is it? This is just some dude who moved to the US and started lying constantly, right, been lying since he was seventeen or earlier. Right, we don't know what happened in Germany. But yeah, then you can. You can always toss some

ice in there, mix it up. It's going to turn the whole thing a brilliant emerald green, because even just a little bit of mint syrup will turn everything very deep green. And the other reason I call it the deceiver is because if you don't know what's in it, you don't anticipate what it's going to taste like at all. I handed it to my beloved without any explanation and just said, taste this. It has no booze in it, and he was like, okay, and he did, and he

was like, I don't know what this is. I can't place these flavors. Yeah, he was like, it's very crisp and it's refreshing, but I'm having hard time picking it apart. And so it kind of makes this new interesting from

I honestly loved this one. It's like, it's actually cold here today, freakishly cold for the time of year we're in, but it made me feel like it was summary out now for my drinkers in the out, if you want to do the alcoholic version of this in lieu of that mint syrup, your first layer is going to be more than a half ounce. It will be an ounce of krem de Minth and then you'll still do that three ounces of watermelon. You can then top that with soda.

But if you want a heavier drink with a higher alcohol content, I would then add one ounce of a very clean tasting vodka. Vodka by nature is usually distilled a lot more than other spirits, so it is kind of absent of much flavor, although there are a lot of different like artisanal vodkas, and different flavors have their own flavor profiles different brands, but you want one that has a very neutral, no specific flavor to it. And then you will add your club soda, your ginger al year, whatever,

which is also very yummy. And again you don't quite know what it is that you're tasting. When you tasted um, it's kind of fascinating because even knowing what's in it, as I'm drinking it, I'm like, it's still hard for me to like find the distinction between the mint note and the watermelon note. Right, even though mint and melons of all kinds go together fabulously, It's really hard to identify either of them somehow in this combination, which made

it very fun for me. So that is the Deceiver, which will become very popular at my home bar, I'm sure in the next week in the summertime. Yeah, it's a good summertime one. And it is so spectacularly pretty, it really is. Holly texted me a picture of it, and it is. I mean, it's like Emerald City green and so beautiful, unlike the horrible behavior. Okay, it is of Christian of Christian. Right, yeah, so I hope that that delights I. Honestly, I'm going to tell you something surprising.

I actually prefer the non alcoholic version of this. Well. I think it's time for us to go now right. I know that's a shocker, but it is. It is such a bright, yummy little I don't know, it's just it was very I found it very charming. I like watermelon everything. So even if I can't necessarily identify that that's what's going on, there's something about watermelon that is just very thirst quenching and very delighting to the taste buds.

And so it's like, yeah, all right, now that we're thinking about yummy ways to quench our thirsty hopefully things to do with watermelon not and to disguise alcohol rather than ourselves. We will leave you with that, and we thank you for spending this time with us once again, and we hope we will see you right here next week again for another impostor. Criminalia is a production of

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