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Crime & Safety

Former Fiancee of Alleged Rockefeller Impostor Testifies in His Murder Trial

Prosecution witness Mihoko Manabe told the court she was asked to go into hiding with Christian Gerhartsreiter, who allegedly murdered a San Marino resident in 1985.

The former fiancee of a man accused of murdering a San Marino resident and burying the victim's remains in his own back yard in 1985 testified on Wednesday that he changed his appearance and told her he had to go into hiding after a police detective called to try to reach him in 1988.

Prosecution witness Mihoko Manabe testified that Christian Gerhartsreiter -- who she knew then as Christopher Crowe, and who later went by Clark Rockefeller among several other names -- told her the man who had phoned identifying himself as a police detective "wasn't really from the police -- that I should disregard what he said."

The prosecution witness told the Los Angeles Superior Court jury hearing the case against the 52-year-old defendant that he described his parents as being in "great danger" and himself as being in danger, as well.

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Gerhartsreiter is charged with murder in the February 1985 slaying of John Sohus. The 27-year-old man's remains were found in May 1994 when a hole was being dug for a swimming pool at the back of the property at 1920 Lorain Road, where Gerhartsreiter had lived in a guesthouse for a time.

Manabe said Gerhartsreiter encouraged her to go into hiding with him, proposed to her and changed his appearance by growing a mustache and beard and starting to wear contact lenses instead of glasses after a Greenwich, Conn., police detective tried to reach him some time in 1988 at her home in New York City.

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Manabe said she helped Gerhartsreiter -- who had previously lived in Greenwich -- color his hair and eyebrows blond, and that the two of them "always walked on different sides of the street" and got their mail from post office boxes. She also said Gerhartsreiter shredded any mail with addresses on it.

"Well, the situation was very strange," she told the jury, noting later in her testimony that there was a "marked difference" in Gerhartsreiter's behavior after hearing about the phone call from the detective, who called her home twice.

Gerhartsreiter's former fiancee testified that she met him in 1987 while he was working as the head of the bond trading department at an investment bank where she was a translator.

The woman said Gerhartsreiter told her that he later lost his job because the company's human resources department discovered that the name he was using wasn't his real name, but never told her that his real name was Gerhartsreiter. She said that he later left another job "because of his family and his own safety," and that she supported him while he took care of the household matters.

Manabe told the jury that Gerhartsreiter "liked the name" Rockefeller when he used it to get reservations at a restaurant in Maine during the summer of 1989 and "stuck with it" after that point.

"He liked the attention that he got when he made the reservation, and the table," she testified.

The defendant's former fiancee said Gerhartsreiter forbade her from getting into a closet he used as his office.

"He had a temper ... just did not want me to go in there and go into his personal files," she said.

Manabe testified that she continued her relationship with Gerhartsreiter until 1994, when she met the man who is now her husband.

"I didn't want to stay with him any more," she said of Gerhartsreiter. "It was not a happy situation for me. It was not a good relationship."

The prosecution has 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.

Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian told the jurors in his opening statement that John Sohus and his wife, Linda, are dead and accused Gerhartsreiter of faking their disappearance to cover his tracks.

Gerhartsreiter is not charged in connection with Linda's disappearance, but Balian alleged 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.

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

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."

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."

-- Terri Vermeulen Keith, City News Service

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