Expert Testifies No Victim DNA Recovered in Rockefeller Murder Case

A DNA expert testified Monday that she was unable to find DNA evidence on the plastic used to wrap the bones of a San Marino man murdered and buried in his own backyard, allegedly by his tenant -- a con man who later posed as a member of the Rockefeller family.

Christian Gerhartsreiter, aka Clark Rockefeller, is charged with murder in the February 1985 slaying of John Sohus, whose remains were found in May 1994 when a hole was being dug for a swimming pool in the back of 1920 Lorain Road. Gerhartsreiter lived in a guesthouse on the property at the time and went by the name Christopher Chichester.

Tiffany Shew, a senior criminologist for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Scientific Services Bureau, said she wasn't surprised that she did not find blood DNA on the plastic wrapping the victim's arms, legs and hands, because microorganisms in the dirt eat away at the DNA over time.

Witnesses testified earlier in the day that Sohus and his wife Linda had disappeared without warning.

Her body has never been found, but Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian told jurors during his opening statement that both Linda and John Sohus are dead and accused Gerhartsreiter of faking their disappearance to cover his tracks.

Gerhartsreiter, 52, is not charged in connection with Linda's disappearance, but Balian alleged that the German national arranged for postcards to be sent from Paris to the couple's family and friends to give the appearance that they were traveling abroad.

Defense attorney Brad Bailey has suggested that the postcards prove Linda was alive and that she, rather than his client, might be her husband's killer.

Shew testified that she did find DNA evidence on the stamps on two of those postcards. Based on her experience, she said she had "no doubt" that whoever licked the stamps was a man -- but was not Gerhartsreiter.

It is possible that Linda Sohus handled the postcards, but the extra DNA markers found on the stamps could also have come from between 25 to 33 percent of the general population, Shew said.

But Bailey made much of the fact that his client could "definitively" be excluded as the source of the postcard DNA, while "you cannot rule out Linda Sohus." Even if she hadn't licked the stamp, perhaps a postal employee did or the stamp was self-adhering, Bailey said.

During his opening statement, Bailey told jurors, "It's just as reasonable, if not more so, that John Sohus could have been killed by someone else" and "not just an unnamed stranger, not the proverbial one-armed man ... (but) John Sohus's still-missing wife Linda."

Prosecutors have pointed to a string of lies by Gerhartsreiter, telling jurors that he posed at times as a member of the wealthy Rockefeller family, a Hollywood producer, British royalty and a USC film professor, lying even to his wife of 12 years.

Bailey acknowledged that his client had "undisputably, undeniably" used different names, but said he was hardly "the first person in this city to try and reinvent himself."

Prosecutors are expected to call eight witnesses next, including San Marino residents, one of whom is expected to testify that Gerhartsreiter told her he was burning carpet in the guesthouse. Balian has suggested that blaze was intended to destroy evidence of blood stains from Sohus's murder.

--Elizabeth Marcellino, City News Service