Rockefeller trial: ships, coins, and more
Today in the trial of Clark Rockefeller, the court heard from six prosecution witnesses who shared some pretty interesting and sometimes strange facts. It was the first full day of testimony.
The first witness was Dr. Liza Brooks, a psychologist who provided therapy to Reigh Boss, the daughter of Rockefeller and his ex-wife Sandra Boss, during their divorce from August to November 2007. She interviewed both parents, and Rockefeller told her that he was raised by an “uncle-type person” and “had taken courses at various universities. It was a fairly sketchy history-taking, actually.” When he lost custody of his daughter to his ex-wife, he was “upset, and concerned that he might not see his daughter,” but he canceled a planned visit with Reigh in the spring of 2008 because he was busy with construction in New Hampshire, travel to New York and Florida, and his new family, saying that he was expecting twins. When Brooks suggested that Rockefeller visit Reigh in her new home in London and communicate with her via phone, mail, and email, he said that he did not have a passport and ended up not contacting her until their July 2008 visit during which he allegedly abducted her. Finally she testified that he was quiet intelligent and demonstrated no memory impairments, hallucinations, or delusions.
On cross examination by defense lawyer Tim Bradl, Brooks admitted that she thought Rockefeller was “weird.” When asked why, she said, “based on his appearance and his no socks, he was just quirky.” She also wrote in emails, “that Clark is weird is a given. I don’t yet have a handle on what the weird is.” Bradl drew attention to Rockefeller’s abrupt change from being an “interested, loving, caring, doting father” to giving up custody of his daughter in exchange for $800,000 from Boss and never contacting her. Brooks agreed that “it was a change from contact, involvement to nothing” and that there could be a mental illness behind it.
Next, Julie Gochar, the real estate agent who sold Rockefeller the Baltimore home where he took his daughter after the abduction, took the stand. He contacted her through the email address svshenandoah@gmail.com and said that he was a ship’s captain in Chile, that he homeschooled his daughter Muffy on the ship, that she was born to a surrogate from Sweden, and that he was looking for a home in Baltimore because he was set to start a job constructing catamarans in the spring of 2008. He said his name was Charles Smith but he went by Chip because ”he loathed the name Charles.” When she finally met him, he had “red hair, very red…like dyed hair,” and he did not have a tan because, as he told her, it was raining the whole time he was sailing. He did research so often on computers in her real estate office that she gave him the key. Most of the research was about homes, but there was also “a lot of boat information,” “values of gold and stock and stuff like that,” and also “there were times when we’d look at pictures of animals, pets that he liked.” Once, when a bid he made on a home was rejected, he threw a “temper tantrum” as if “he was used to getting what he wanted.” At one point he said he was going home to Wisconsin to visit his sisters, who had been divorced several times and made him do chores whenever he came home, so he didn’t like them very much. Before finalizing the agreement on the house that he eventually bought, he traveled through Europe and had an “allergic reaction to sundried tomatoes.” After the abduction, she got a call from a co-worker who recognized Rockefeller on TV, and she had her husband call the FBI. Prosecutor David Deakin also asked her about Rockefeller’s intelligence and whether he had any identity problems, delusions, hallucinations, or nonsense speech, to all of which she replied no.
On cross examination, Bradl focused on all of the grandiose stories that Rockefeller told, suggesting that they were symptoms of delusional disorder and narcissistic personality disorder, the two conditions that the defense says make Rockefeller legally insane.
Aileen Ang, Rockefeller’s friend who unknowingly drove him and his daughter to New York City after the kidnapping, testified next. She met Rockefeller at the Boston Sailing Center in August 2007 and went to boat shows and lunch together. He said that he was an astronomy professor at Harvard and an entrepreneur who was losing a few million dollars a year and that Reigh’s mother worked for Vogue, left when Reigh was three months old, and would “come around when she needed money.” He also asked her if she wanted to go sailing around the world with him and Reigh and teach her piano. On July 27, 2008, he gave her $500 to drive him and Reigh to New York City. Ang testified that Rockefeller told her to fill up the gas tank ahead of time, laid down in the back seat until they were out of Boston, said it made him nervous when she tried to call a friend on her cell phone, and tried to persuade her not to stop to use the bathroom and refill the gas tank. Finally, she dropped the father and daughter off at Grand Central Station, where he slammed the door shut without saying goodbye. Just like with the previous two witnesses, Deakin asked her whether Rockefeller had memory loss, identity confusion, nonsense speech, hallucinations, or delusions, and she said no.
Bradl again emphasized Rockefeller’s far-fetched stories and plans on cross examination. He asked Ang whether the idea of circumnavigating the globe was “pretty much a fantasy,” and she said that it was. She also said that once when Reigh found a key in the park, Rockefeller said, “oh, it looks like our key to Rockefeller Center.” Rockefeller also told Ang that he wanted another child and was planning to use a surrogate mother at a farm in California where women were fed special diets so that the babies would come out perfect. Another time, he said that he was mute until the age of 7 or 9, and he also said that many women wanted to date him for his money, including one who tried to trap him in her house.
The next witness was Anthony Viaolanti, an officer with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service. A copy of the defendant’s administrative file, under his birth name Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, was entered into evidence. Among other things, it contained a visa petition signed by both him and his first wife, his birth certificate in both German and English, a marriage certificate, a picture of him, and a letter dated 1981 stating that his address had changed to one in California. That was the last time anything had been added to the file.
Then Frank Rudewicz, a private investigator hired by Sandra Boss to conduct an asset search and background check on Rockefeller, testified that he found an Amazon book review that seemed to be written by him, but there were no records of his existence before 1993. He had never seen such a thing in his 20 years of doing background checks. He agreed with Bradl on cross examination that “the persona of Clark Rockefeller is really just a fantasy.”
The last witness of the day was Kenneth Murphy, a precious metals broker with an office in Arlington, Mass. The defendant called him in June 2008, using the name Clark Rock, and said he was looking to purchase $2 million in gold coins. They met in a Starbucks in Harvard Square, where he ordered 527 krugerrands (South African gold coins). Later that month, he decided to exchange the coins for American gold eagles, which Murphy said were easier to use because they do not require any report to be filed. On subsequent visits to the office, Rockefeller picked up his orders of gold eagles. On cross examination, Bradl called attention to the fact that Rockefeller had only purchased under $800,000 of coins, not the $2 million he had indicated, and that he had taken the T back home with a briefcase filled with gold coins each time he visited Murphy’s office.
Sandra Boss is expected to testify Monday, along with Rockefeller’s getaway driver. Other probably prosecution witnesses include members of the FBI and the Boston Police, and Rockefeller’s first wife, whom he married in Wisconsin to obtain a green card.