Crime & Safety

Rockefeller Impostor to be Sentenced in Murder Case Thursday

Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter was previously found guilty of murdering his San Marino landlord's son at a Lorain Road home in the 1980s after the cold case was re-opened decades later.

From City News Service

A con man who once passed himself off as a member of the wealthy Rockefeller family is scheduled to be sentenced today for murdering a San Marino man 28 years ago and burying the remains in the victim's backyard. Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, 52, was convicted April 10 of the February 1985 slaying of John Sohus.

He faces 27 years to life in prison when he is sentenced by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli. Gerhartsreiter, who is acting as his own attorney, was expected to ask that he be granted a new trial. In a recent telephone interview from jail, he told The Pasadena Star-News he hoped to read a lengthy motion during the hearing.

"This is not a traditional motion,'' he told the paper. "I have reviewed all of the evidence and it irrefutably shows I had nothing to do with this." Along with first-degree murder, jurors found true allegations that Gerhartsreiter used blunt and sharp objects in the killing.

Gerhartsreiter -- who has claimed to be a Rockefeller, an English nobleman and a Hollywood producer and who was known as Christopher Chichester at the time of Sohus' death -- lived in a guest house on the Sohus property at 1920 Lorain Road.

Sohus' buried remains were uncovered there in May 1994 by an excavation crew preparing to build a swimming pool on the property for a new owner.

Gerhartsreiter was not charged in connection with the disappearance of Sohus' wife, Linda, who vanished at about the same time. Defense attorneys argued during the trial that Linda Sohus may have been responsible for her husband's death, but Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian claimed evidence points to the defendant as having killed her, as well.


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