Bizarre case
May 27, 2009
The 48-year-old, referred to in Germany as Christian Karl G. from Bergen in the southern German state of Bavaria, faces charges of kidnapping, assault and providing a false name to police.
He is accused of snatching his seven-year-old daughter during a supervised visit in Boston last July after a bitter custody battle with the girl's mother.
After a six-day national manhunt accompanied by lurid speculation in the media about the "Rockefeller connection," he and the girl were found in a Baltimore apartment.
The girl was returned unharmed to her mother, who lives in London.
Parental kidnapping is punishable by up to five years in a Massachusetts prison.
Christian G. is also charged with assault and battery for allegedly shoving a social worker who was supervising the visit with his daughter in Boston.
German used multiple aliases
In addition, the German is charged with providing police with a false identity - a crime punishable by up to a year in prison.
US authorities say G. has used multiple aliases since moving to the US in the 1970s as a student.
Prosecutors say he is a fraud who claims to be a member of the famous American Rockefeller dynasty to insinuate himself into highbrow circles in Boston, New York and Los Angeles, where he supposedly conned several people.
He is alleged to have posed as a German student in Connecticut, as an aspiring actor named Christopher Chichester in California, and as a one-day "green card" husband in Wisconsin.
On Wednesday, prosecutors agreed not to tell the jury that G. was also a "person of interest" in the 1985 disappearance of a California couple. Jonathan and Linda Sohus, a newlywed couple from San Marino, with whom G. lived, are presumed to have been murdered.
Lawyers claim defendant is mentally ill
Christian G.'s lawyers argue that their client suffers from mental illness and was not criminally responsible for his actions.
"The defense will be focused on a lack of criminal responsibility which is the insanity defense," according to court documents.
His attorneys tried unsuccessfully in May to get the judge to move the trial from Boston to the more remote location of Springfield in western Massachusetts, because they said that intense media coverage had made a fair jury trial in the state capital impossible.
Earlier this week, judge Frank Gaziano ruled that G. can use the name "Clark Rockefeller" in his trial but prosecutors may call him by his real name.
Gaziano said he would use his full name to introduce the case, then refer to him as "the defendant" during the trial.
His lawyers had argued it would be unfair for jurors to hear him called by his German name, because he has not been convicted of providing the false name.
sp/AP/AFP/dpa
Editor: Susan Houlton