Greenwich Roundup: 08/08/08 Is Frank Girardot Is Wondering Why The Lazy Greenwich Time Reporters Have Not Called Him Asking About The Fake Rockeffeler?

Friday, August 8, 2008

08/08/08 Is Frank Girardot Is Wondering Why The Lazy Greenwich Time Reporters Have Not Called Him Asking About The Fake Rockeffeler?

Greenwich Time Crime Reporter Martin Cassidy should take a look at the Crime Scene blog.

Reporter and blogger Frank Girardot is a real crime reporter who puts you behind the yellow tape with takes on true crime, cold cases and more.

Frank Girardot: Man's arrest opens bi-coastal mystery

It's Wednesday afternoon and I've been on the phone all morning.

Seems that reporters on the East Coast can't get enough of the Clark Rockefeller story and his possible connection to a couple reported missing in San Marino way back in 1985.

Rockefeller is accused of violently abducting his 7-year-old daughter from a home in Boston on July 27. The two vanished only to resurface in Baltimore last week. Rockefeller had already assumed a new identity there as "Chip" Smith, a local Realtor.

There's a strong suspicion that Rockefeller was once known as Christopher Chichester, who lived with the missing San Marino couple and disappeared when they did.

There's also a strong suspicion among law enforcement that he was known as "Christopher Crowe," "Christopher Mountbatten," and "Christian Gerhard Streider." But there's also a resignation of sorts that no one knows who Chichester really is - or was - or may be now.

Through the ensuing 23 years, rumors have persisted about the missing couple, John and Linda Sohus. John's mother, Didi, told investigators her son and daughter-in-law were on a secret mission.

In 1989, Chichester briefly resurfaced in another tony enclave - Greenwich, Conn. He was in possession of John Sohus' truck.

Then he vanished - just as neatly. Almost forgotten really, until the bones were discovered.

In 1994, nine years after John and Linda Sohus disappeared, a pool contractor unearthed a bag of bones in the backyard of the Lorain Road home where John and Linda Sohus and Chichester once lived.

Although they were ravaged by the passage of time and cracked by the powerful blade of a backhoe, detectives believed the bones might belong to John Sohus. They named Chichester as a person of interest and searched the world over for the slightly built man of mystery.

More stories surfaced. There were rumors of a love triangle that estranged the "good looking, big-hipped" Linda and her "computer nerd" husband, John, even though the couple shared an interest in science fiction and fantasy stories.

Since then a portion of the remains have been stored in a basement office at the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner. They've been studied and analyzed by Steve Dowell, the nation's top forensic tool mark specialist.

He believes the skull of the dead man was crushed with a blunt object like a two-by-four.

Then again, "he could have done a lot of coke and fallen off a bar stool and suffered an injury like that," Dowell said. "But that's a shot in the dark. Because there was an effort to bury and conceal the body, this death is classified as a homicide."

That said, the remains have never been formally identified as John's. Even though the O.J. Simpson prosecution relied heavily on DNA evidence, in 1994 the science was still in its infancy, Dowell said. There was no way back then to extract DNA from skeletal remains.

No effort was made either to compare dental records.

There is no easy answer as to what happened to Linda Sohus.

Neither John nor Linda nor Chichester resurfaced. The case turned cold.

Frank Girardot is metro editor of the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group.