True Crime All The Time - Christan Karl Gerhartsreiter

Episode Date: July 2, 2018

Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter was born in Germany but made his way to the United States as a teenager. In the U.S., he embarked on a life as a con man, taking many different names, and murdering along the way. Christian was no ordinary con man, he was able to weave his way into the elite of society by claiming to be Clark Rockefeller, a member of the rich and famous Rockefeller clan.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss Gerhartsreiter, the ultimate con man. He would build a pretty posh life for himself but his past would ultimately catch up to him, a past that included murder.You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.comHelp support ours Sponsor:Check out Quip at getquip.com/tcatt to get your first refill pack free with the purchase of a Quip electric toothbrushSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

everyone and welcome to episode 85 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And with me as always is my partner in True Crime, Mike Gibson, Gibby, how are you? I'm good, man. How about you? I'm doing great. Yeah. I really am in a good mood. That's good. Today was my last day at work. I have eight days off in a row. Man, that must be nice. So that's a great feeling. That is a good feeling. Doesn't happen very often. But with the way that the 4th of July fell. Yeah. And the way that I structured my vacation, I get an extra day.

You're a winner. I am a winner. Charlie Sheen. I'm winning. You're winning. You don't hear that much anymore. Nah, it went to the side. That was a fad. Yeah, just a trend. But can you believe episode 85? 85, man. It's a big number. See, I graduated. Is it? Yeah. Wow.

Did you ever think when we started messing around with a true crime podcast that we would do 85 episodes. No, never. We weren't sure we'd do two episodes. I thought I'd be in and out and, dang, hope you. Sleeping. Yeah.

I'm in, I'm out. I'm sleeping. I'm out. All right. Gives, we have some new Patreon supporters. All right. We had Natalie Webb. Natalie.

Lily Stelly. Hey, Lily Stelly. Or Stell. Well, no, be changing. I'm going to say it both ways. It's Lily Stelly. I'm a hedge my bets. Okay, you hedge.

Kenneth M. Hey, Kenneth. Alexandra Dolazol. Dolazol. We had Helena Gustafson came back at our highest level. Helena's been with us before.

Glad to see you back. David Paulson. Hey, David. Meredith Meads jumped out to our highest level. Mead? Meads. With an S.

There was clearly an S on the end of it. Well, sometimes you use the S like in Illinois. I don't do that. That's what you do. I'm just saying. You add letters, you change, letters around. You got your dictionary, I got mine. You put hard ours in there where there are none.

It's fun. We had Caitlin Philippi. Hey, Caitlin. Christy Gabriel. Thank you. Katie Combs. Combs. Rob Rubinate. The Rubinator. Rubinator. How'd it be Bach. Christine Jacobson. Hey, thanks, Christine Jacobson. Terry Coombs. William Sue. Hey, thanks, William. Katie Hayes Rhynd. The old Hayes-Riner. The old. I was waiting to see when you would say... I don't know I'd do it. No, you don't.

It just comes out. It just literally comes out. And then Vicky. So just Vicky. Just Vicki. Well, thank you, Just Vicki. We appreciate that. And then if we go back into the Vault Gibbs...

Let's go back. This week we selected Christine Black. Oh, Christine. Our good friend from multiple crime cons. Yes. Got to hang out. out with her and her husband. And we had a blast both years.

We did. They were a lot of fun. They were a lot of fun. Good, good couple. A good couple and a good true crime couple. You know, we met a lot of people where the wife was into true crime. The husband was just along for the ride. He didn't know what was going on.

Yeah. That's not the case with Christine and her husband. No, I remember. They both listen. When they came from, from where, I don't want to say where they live, but where they where they drove down to CrimeCon last time. I'm pretty sure they, like,

kind of made some stops at some true crime related. Scenes. You know, like spots. Famous areas. Were they following you down to CrimeCon? Nobody knows where I, I'm good.

You're not that obvious. You'll never know. You can't track me. But we appreciate that. We appreciate the longtime support from Christine. I throw our husband in there too. Yeah. And we appreciate the new,

the new Patreon support and the people that continue to support us month after month. We had some PayPal support as well. Okay. We had Ted Perry. Hey, Ted. Ted's big on Facebook. Yeah, yeah. Ted's a retired nurse out of Denver.

So appreciate that, buddy. Yeah, very active on Facebook. Yeah. Our great friend Samantha S. Samantha S. We love Samantha. We do. And I miss you.

Yep. Been emailing with her back and forth a little bit. Yeah. seeing how she's doing. Yeah. Jane Daffter. Hey, Jane. And Amanda McMullen.

Amanda. How you doing? Amanda. Just Amanda. How you doing? How you doing? At the same time this episode is out. Don't forget, check out true crime all the time unsolved.

We're doing an episode on the Pike County murders. Okay. So we're back in our home state of Ohio. Yeah, we are. And this is a family of. of eight that is murdered. Right. Bigger family than that,

but eight of them were murdered. Eight of them were murdered. Execution style. Execution style. And, uh, you know, the investigation goes on from there. And, you know, like we do, we'll talk about the details of the crime, but get into some theories and suspects and, and all that good stuff. Yeah, we will.

All right. Are you ready to get into this episode of true crime all time? Yes. This is a story that I've been. fascinated with for years. Yeah, me too. I saw it on Netflix many years ago. They made a documentary about it.

I like documentaries. I know you like documentaries. And the reason I like it is because there's multiple facets of true crime. So we're talking about murder, but we're also talking about a con man. And to me, that's where it gets very fascinating. So we're going to be talking about Christian, Carl, Gerhardt's writer, but he's going to have a lot of names, and we're going to have to try to keep them all straight. Yeah. But let's start off talking about Gerhardt's writer. He was born in Germany.

So we're going to Germany, Gibbs. We've never technically been to Germany. Nine. No, we have not. Nine. Okay. Did you want to try to do some kind of fancy accent? Nine. Okay. Means no, right? I'm pretty sure, yeah. Yeah. Nine. I don't sprecind Doidge, but. But yeah, I'm pretty sure. I don't know nothing's either. So Gerhardt's writer's father was a house painter. Okay. His mother was a seamstress.

But this guy is such a mystery. And it's really going to become evident as we get through this case. They're not even sure what his exact birth date is. Because his parents, Simmerl and Ermengarde, they say that he was born on February 21st, 1961. Okay. Christian contends that he was born on a different date in February a year earlier in 1960. You don't think the mom would know?

Yeah. I mean, if I'm having to pick sides based on the fact that we know this guy's a prodigious con artist, I would go with his mom and dad. Yeah. Definitely skip the prodigious person. You just want to use the word prodigious. Because at this guy's core, I'm not even sure if he knows what the truth is. He's going to tell so many lies over the course of his life.

I think at a certain point, you start believing some of your lies. Well, I think to be a good con artist, you've got to believe yourself. You've got to believe it to sell it. And not trip yourself up on a regular basis. Yeah, so you've definitely got to buy into it and actually live what you're selling. Now, why it matters what year you were born in, that part, I'm not sure. I don't know either. You know, why that matters.

It's a mute point, really, isn't it? Yeah, it's also a moot point, but... That's what I said. I think you said mute. It said moot. Mute. It's mute and moot. Yeah.

He had a brother named Alexander. And later on, after all of these things come out, Alexander would tell a German newspaper, quote, to me, he was a stranger. So he didn't even feel like he knew his brother. Yeah, that's weird. Christian's mother would say that for me, he died a long time ago. Wow. These are brutal things to say.

That's a tough gig, man. About your brother and your son. Yeah. Wow. And, but as we go along, I think you're going to find out why his family. probably wanted to distance themselves. So there's some justification behind it. Yeah.

Oh, there's no doubt. Who's the real guy under all this? You were rock. Oh, all sets of things. I can't even remember. I couldn't even remember. I couldn't even more. I was just black.

If you had to put a number on how many different names you used in your lifetime, how name would you say? Oh, no, rock fellow is always the big. It was always the general. You get the most bang for your box. No, I know, it was always sort of my general name. You know, whatever came around.

Why did you go by, you said your name is James Clark Rockefeller? Well, that's the name, you know, it doesn't exist. So there's no such person, really. So what's your real name? Well, that is it. That's the name that I'm using, so. And, you know, I mean, that is my real name. You're born James Clark Rockefeller?

Probably not. Do you remember what your father and mother's life anymore? Did something happen to? I don't know. I've been asked that many, many times. I know, and I'm just asking you with a sincerity. They had to be something that happened that made the track switch that you forgot to be Jimmy Smith and became Clack Rockefeller. Couldn't tell you.

The psychologist who did the original interview, during the custody case asking them a million times. Do you remember what your mom and father looked like as a child? You know, we never seen him. Do you think you were orphaned? Couldn't tell you. Couldn't tell you. I've always, just as I said earlier,

I always made a point of forgetting the past. I mean, what's the difference? Who cares who your grandfather was? But that's not the issue. No, no, no, no, no, but it is in a way. I look back to things that may not have been pleasant immediately for all I know. But you know why not just before? Did you have an unpleasant childhood?

I couldn't tell you, I just couldn't tell you. I really seriously don't know. It's a total, utter blank. Blank, blank, blank. So, you know, I remember certain things here and there. there sometimes some strange things come back to me God knows why I um for instance well at one point I saw a Sussex Spaniel if you know what that is no I do oh yeah I watched art shows you're not getting into those I'm totally certain that I grew up with a

Sussex Spaniel I just know I did but sorry I don't know any evidence of thought I'm I don't know. I don't have any pictures. I don't any baby pictures. I don't have much of anything. So Gibbs, that was an interview that he did with the FBI. You hear him talk about the name Rockefeller. That's going to be one of his, probably the biggest alias that he's going to use during his life of being a con artist.

Yeah. But the reason I wanted to play the clip was him talking about his childhood, basically saying he doesn't remember. any of it. He's kind of blacked it out. Yeah. I don't know if that's true. Guy like this, it's really hard to believe anything he says. I think it could be, though, you know? I mean, I think he, uh, when you're selling it the way he had to sell it, I mean, you buy into this new, and if you live it long enough, I think you could forget a lot of your past. And he did. He lived it a long time. Now, neighbors in Germany later on would say that there was something strange about Christian as a child. He was always alone. He was always doing his own thing.

Some neighbors talked about possible bad relationship with his father, possible signs of mental health issues. And there was one neighbor in particular that talked about how as Christian Gerhardt's writer started to get older, you know, 17. He's nearing his 18th birthday. He's started to fear that he would be drafted into the German army. But Christian would have a fateful encounter because he meets this family while he's living in Germany. The family is visiting Germany from the United States. And in a very short amount of time, he gets to be friends with this visiting family. So much so that they told him, hey, you know what?

If you ever make it to the United States. States look us up. Now, you know what that is, Gibbs, right? That's not a real invitation to come over and stay with us. That's kind of a nice thing that you say. Yeah, just something you'd say in passing. Because, you know, what are the odds that this family believes this young kid from Germany is going to make it to the U.S. and knock on their door. But this is exactly what he does. he had wanted to leave Germany for a long time. You know, for many years as a kid, he dreamed of going to the United States. He was enamored with the U.S. culture, the movies, everything.

So in 1978, he shows up on these people's doorstep, unannounced, doesn't call ahead of time. Just here I am. Here I am. You remember me from Germany when we met over there? Right. And we had a nice day or, you know, however long it was. Imagine the shock on these people's faces when they realize, you know, hey, this thing we said in passing, this kid took it seriously. Yeah.

And he's here. He's here with suitcases. So this family lived in Connecticut. So he made his way from Germany to Connecticut and actually ended up staying with this family for a short while. Then he conned his way into another family's home in Connecticut by the name of the Savios. Now, this time he said he was a foreign exchange student who was finishing out his high school studies in the U.S. But he didn't have a place to stay. So this was a nice family.

They bought his line. They let him sleep on their couch. Wow. But when he showed up at the Savios, he was. no longer Christian Gerhardt's writer. He had changed his name after leaving this other family in Connecticut because they knew him as Christian Gerhardt's writer, but he changed his name to Chris Gerhardt. Okay. Much easier to say. Much easier. Members of the Savios family would come out and say he was pretty odd. You know, one thing in particular they said he was fascinated by Gilligan's Island.

Yeah. Now, who wasn't? I loved me some Gilligan's Island. Who was your favorite? Are we doing the Ginger Marianne? We're just doing it. Mrs. Howe for you, probably. I thought you were doing the timeless question of, who do you like better, Ginger or Marianne?

Oh, Marianne. I'm always been a Marianne. Yeah. But he liked Thurston Howe, the third. Okay. And it was said that he studied. him. He studied his speech patterns and tried to emulate them. Love it. Love it. Yeah, something like that. Love it.

You got more than one word, or is that the only word? That's it. That's all I got. That's the only word you can do in Thurston and Thurston and How? Yeah. Baby Steps, man. That was a good flick, though, man. It wasn't a flick. It was a TV show, but, you know what I mean. I get you. It was a good TV show. But what you have is a con man. Yeah. trying to learn English, trying to better his English, and picking this, what you'd have to say is an over-the-top character, right, in the form of Thurston Howe. He was very over-the-top on that show. Now, the Savios would end up kicking Chris out of the house because as they would come out and say later, he was just lazy. Yeah. All he did was lay on the couch, watch Gilligan's

island. He wouldn't do any chores. He wouldn't, you know, take out the trash, nothing. Maybe he had a condition, like CFS. What's that? Chronic fatigue syndrome. Oh, maybe. Probably not. I think he had laziness, this is what he had. Called laziness or laziness. That's the French version. Is it? Yeah. I don't want to, you know, don't let me stop you. All right. You're just trying to show me up. I, I, yes. But he was lazy. There's no doubt about it. these folks did interviews, you know, after all this came out about who, who they had staying with them in their house. Right. And they said, it was almost as if Chris expected them to wait on him. Wow. He was already like thinking he was like first class service. Well, and this is going to be

something that, you know, he thinks throughout his life, that he is better than everyone else, that people should be waiting on him that he deserves the best things in life. So he's using the name Chris Gerhardt. He heads to the University of Wisconsin and starts to study film. So like I said, he was very fascinated with American films while he was living in Germany. He had this idea in his head that he was going to be a movie star or a big director or something in Hollywood. But the most important thing that he did at the University of Wisconsin was he got married. He married a woman in 1981 that he had only known for a very short period of time. And there was

really just one motivation for this marriage. It wasn't love at all. All he wanted to do was get his green card. And this is the thing that you have to always keep in the back of your mind about Darehart's writer, and I'm going to say all kinds of different names when I talk about him, he didn't do anything without having an end result in mind. And that end result was usually only to benefit one person. Yeah. Well, him. And that was him. The pair divorced very quickly after the marriage, but he had his green card and he moved to Los Angeles. And there he would take another name. So he would go by Christopher Cheechester. And this was a name that he had taken from, I think, a science teacher.

Okay. That he had had somewhere along his studies. And he picks the town of San Marino. And San Marino is this very affluent, well-to-do town. Now, keep in mind, this kid has nothing, right? He's not wealthy, but he's going to con his way. to making people think that he was. So he would tell the people in San Marino that he was of royal English descent.

He started telling people that he was like the some number baronet from somewhere. He was coming off like he was English royalty. I'm the baroness. Baroness or the baronet. He's a, I'm the baronet. No. Is that your aristocrat? English accent.

I'm the Belnet. That sounds like you're a DJ on a 3 a.m. Really? Getting ready to play the next song. That's what it sounds like. Or Jasmine's coming up next out on the center stage. Yeah, that's exactly what it sounds like. So either way it goes, I'm...

You're set. So you're saying I got a... There's a possibility I could be a DJ? So you're saying I got a chance. I got a chance. All right, Gibbs. Let's take a quick minute to talk about our sponsor quip. Now the truth is, most of us are not brushing our teeth correctly.

We're not brushing for long enough and we don't change our brush as often as we should. And this is where Quip comes in. It's an electric toothbrush that's a fraction of the cost of bulkier brushes, but it packs in just the right amount of vibrations to help clean your teeth. Has a built-in timer that helps you clean for the dentist recommended two minutes. And it also pulses to remind you when to switch sides. Quip delivers new brushheads on a dentist recommended schedule that's every three months for just $5, including free shipping worldwide. And I love quip because of the bristles and how clean it makes

my teeth feel. It even comes with a mount that suction right to your mirror and can be used for a travel cup. You know, Quip has been named to Oprah's O list, Times Best Invention, and it's the first subscription electric toothbrush accepted by the ADA. Quip starts at just a judge. Quip starts at just $25. And our listeners can go to get quipp.com slash teacat right now and you'll get your first refill pack free with the purchase of a quip electric toothbrush. That's your first refill pack free at getquip.com slash teacat. G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash T-Cat.

Hey, T-Cat fans, we know you can't get enough true crime. So Gibby and I want to tell you about a new podcast that we love. When you think of a criminal, what automatically comes to your mind? Is it a woman? Probably not. And that's why we're hooked on this new podcast. It's called female criminals. Every week, the host of female criminals take a psychological approach to analyzing the stories

and motivations of the women behind some of the world's most dangerous crimes. They get into the minds of these women criminals to better understand their motives. The hosts dive deep into the lives of infamous female. criminals providing the listeners with each woman's backstory and details of her crimes. You can check out episodes on the cocaine godmother now. And with a new episode coming out every Wednesday, you can expect episodes on Eileen Warnos, Matahari, and many others. So visit Apple Podcasts, tune in, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and search for female criminals. Again, that's female criminals F-E-M-A-L-E, C-R-I-M-I-N-A-L-S, or visit PARCast.com

slash criminals to start listening now. That's PARCast.com slash criminals to listen now. He started to dress the part. And you have to, you have to figure, this is where his Thirst and Howe accent came in very handy. He's trying to talk to all these rich people. He's trying to dress the part. fit in with all these wealthy people. One thing that he did was he started attending church because he had it in his head

that this was a great place to meet upstanding members of the community. And if he could get in with them, then he would meet someone else. Right. And it would just be a continuation of this person would introduce him to somebody else. And before long, people would start to know. him. And this is exactly what happened. He joined social clubs in town. He did everything he could to weave himself into this community. Yeah, smart guy. And the people there bought it. If you believe it, you can achieve it. That sounds like one of those strange, uh, what is it, those things you post on the

group page all the time. Hey, do you believe it? You can achieve it. When in doubt, Knock it out. But what people didn't know about Chris Cheechester was he was living in San Marino, but he was living in the most modest section that they had. And he was actually living in a guest house of a woman named Ruth Sohus, who everybody knew in town by the name D.D. She was also known around town as an alcoholic. Okay.

Who rarely left her house. and Cheechester warmed his way into her life, got her to let him stay in this guest house out behind her main house rent free in exchange for helping her out. So because she didn't leave the house, he would go get things for her. He would help her with the yard, things like that. But it's in early 1985 that Ruth's son, John, and his wife. wife Linda, who had been married for just a year or two, they moved into the main home with Ruth. And a close friend of Linda's would come out later and say, you know, she had gone to the house

to visit Linda. And she asked them why they were living in the main house and not in the guest house out back. And Linda told her friend, quote, there's a renter who lives in the guest house. And we don't talk to him because he's kind of creepy. So there's the theme developing here, Gibbs. People that meet this guy think he's odd, think he's creepy. But yet at the same time, he's able to con his way into the upper crust. Yeah, the upper crust. That was a good sandwich shot.

That was a good sandwich shot. I knew that's what you were thinking about. Yeah, down there on Main Street. Nobody listening to this podcast is going to know what to talk about. The upper crust was in Dayton was the killer back in the day. But by February of that year, the. the couple John and Linda would leave the house and would never be seen again. Linda's parents tried to contact her.

They couldn't get a hold of her. They eventually had to file a missing person's report. But the police initially didn't take it very seriously. And there's a couple reasons for that. You know, number one, D.D. told police that she knew exactly where they were. She said they had gone to New York and they were safe. Okay.

The other thing was that Linda's close friend also told police that Linda called her, told her that they were going to New York for a few weeks because John had gotten the job with the government. But Linda said the job was top secret and she couldn't say much about it. I had a job like that once. I'm sure you did. I did. And you could tell me, but I'm sure you'd have to harm me in some way. No, I just can't talk about it. Oh, okay.

that's it but this thing is getting very strange and it wouldn't be until april of 85 that police would actually make an official missing person's report okay on john and linda because they like i said they didn't take it very seriously at first because they were getting all this information that made it seem like they weren't missing at all people knew who they were they were but that same month around that same time, friends and family of John and Linda, they started to get postcards from France. And these postcards appeared to be from John and Linda saying that they were in Paris. Now, the authenticity of these postcards would never be proven.

But what is pretty strange is that Christopher Cheechester left San Marino around the exact same time that John and Linda disappeared. Okay. What no one knew at the time was that he left town in their pickup truck. So it's not looking good. No, not at all. And he heads to Greenwich, Connecticut. So, you know, pretty much the complete opposite end of the country, right, from California to Connecticut.

Right. And he changes his name again. Christopher Cheechester is now Christopher Crowe. Okay. And he tries to sell John. and Linda's truck to a man in Greenwich and the man became suspicious and he called the police and they were able to connect the two Christopher Crow and Christopher Cheechester. They knew this guy wasn't Christopher Christopher Crow. They thought he was Christopher Chichester, but they didn't know who they had. They didn't

know if he had done anything wrong. Right. So Christopher Crow is able to con his way around Greenwich for a a number of years. You know, he pretended to be a television and film producer. He landed a series of high-paying jobs, despite the fact Gibbs that he didn't have a college degree, he didn't have any talent, didn't have any experience, he didn't even have a social security number. No. How do you get along without that today? And how do you get a very high-paying job? Hell, it's hard for, you know, it's hard to find a job when you have all that as I do. I know. I want a high-paying job.

Exactly. Help me out there, people. Hey, if anybody out there has a nice high-paying job. It needs me? And needs Fergie or Gibby. Just let us not. Or just Gibby. I want the opulent lifestyle.

I like that word. That's the word of the day. Opulent. Opulent. Now, he was fired from one of these high-paying jobs when someone in the HR department did some checking on his social security number. Because remember, he doesn't have one, but he had to give them one. And it came back as none other than David Berkowitz, the son of Sam. So not only are you falsifying your social security number on an application, you can't just

pick Joe Smith from Cedar Falls, Iowa. you pick David Berkowitz the son of Sam killer yeah how strange is that very strange man but it's a conversation starter after the fact yeah I got fired from a job because I put down the my social security number is that of David Berkowitz yeah now you got something to talk about the dinner table but he would go on to get you know just another high paying job and then he would get fired They'd figure out that his Social Security wasn't correct. He'd just go to another high-paying job. So he was just trying to do the old fake it till you make it.

Yeah. Yeah. And it was working. Now, he would get fired. That's right. He'd roll onto the next one. But he would roll right into the next one. Fake it till you make it.

Because he wouldn't be fired right away. I mean, he would work for these places for a while. And he was being paid, you know, very handsomely in these positions. Yeah. Some of these were like Wall Street type jobs. Yeah, they were. I'd be good on Wall Street. Oh, you would.

Just call me Gecko. You'd be sell. Bye. Just call me Gecko. I'll stick my hair back like that. But then all of a sudden, FBI agents showed up at his current job. But they had missed Crow by one day. And they wanted to question him about the truck that he had been driving.

Right. That they knew belonged. to John and Linda Sohus. Yeah, they wanted to get him. So they're on his trail. They wanted him to eat crow. That's pretty good. It's not great, but it's pretty good.

I think it's really good. So four years earlier, we're four years on, right? So four years earlier, John and Linda vanished. Right. For four years. He eludes them? He is eluding them, but he's not hold up. He's got these high profile jobs.

Are you impressed by my vocabulary tonight, by the way? I am. It's actually very good. Okay. Have you been taking your OMAX cognitive boost? Yeah, I'm there, man. Do your taxes later. Let's not get crazy. I don't need to get audited and taken straight to jail. Yeah. So they miss him because by the time they arrived, he had skipped town and he would be on to New York. And this is where he would take on the name Clark Rockefeller. And this is probably the name that most people are going to recognize Gerhardt's writer as, because he's, because he would take on the name. And this is probably the name that most people are going to recognize Gerhardt's writer as, because he's, because he would take on the name. And this is, because he was, because he was, this is the name that he's going to use for, you know, most of his adult life, Clark Rockefeller. And it wasn't just any old name, right? It's the last name Rockefeller. He's claiming to be part of

this famous, you know, United States Mount Rushmore type family. I mean, everybody knows. You hear the name Rockefeller. What do you think? You think money. Think money. And police would later theorize that he was able to save up enough money from, you know, working three or four years in these very high-paying jobs to start his new life as Clark Rockefeller in New York. And he did everything he could in New York to make people think he was rich so that they would buy into this Rockefeller mythology or, you know, whatever you want to call it. He learned about art. He told everybody that he had this massive art collection. He dressed the part. He even selected, you know, the type of dog, the breed of dog very carefully, right? Studying people, studying the wealthy.

What kind of breeds of dogs do they buy? But again, everything he did was extremely calculating. And it was designed to portray an heir of wealth. Now, Rockefeller invited a woman named Sandra a boss that he had met to a clue-themed costume party when he's living in New York. Who would you go, as Gibbs? Gecko. That's not somebody in the game of clue. Colonel mustard. Gecko.

You do know the game of clue. Yeah. I thought for sure you'd say Professor Plum. Sergeant Pepper? Sergeant Pepper is not in clue either. But Colonel Mustard. Colonel Mustard. Yeah.

Yeah. So they have this clue-themed party. Now, we have to talk about Sandra Boss a little bit. You know, she had graduated from Stanford. She was finishing up an MBA at the Harvard Business School. This was an extremely intelligent woman. And the pair hit it off right away and they began dating. And it's about a year into them dating in 1994 that a man working for a swimming pool

business unearthed the remains of John Sohus back in California. So, you know, we're in the back of Dede's house. Somebody's wanting to put in a swimming pool. And as they're excavating, they find John Sohuss. They find human bones wrapped in plastic, buried about three feet deep behind the guest house of his mother's house. And this guest house, that's where Christopher had stayed. And Christopher was a suspect back then in 1985, right? They knew he lived there. The police had even circulated some photographs of him.

But like we said, he vanished right after John and Linda disappeared. So law enforcement was never able to catch up with him in California. And it's going to be many years, even after the 1994 discovery, that he's going to to be made to answer for what happened to John Sohas. But in the meantime, Clark and Sandra, they get married in 1995 in Nantucket, Massachusetts. And I mentioned how intelligent Sandra Boss was. But there are going to be signs along the way in this marriage that she would not pick up on. Now, Clark's not going to make these signs super easy to see, but they were there.

she couldn't have known this, but even their marriage was fake because Clark Rockefeller was not who he said he was. So obviously he can't get legally married to Sandra as Clark Rockefeller. So he's got to come up with something. So what does a con man do? So they had been attending church, but they attended Episcopal services. And Clark Rockefeller suggests. to Sandra that he wants to have a Quaker ceremony because he told her that he liked the simplicity of it. In reality, he picked it because it didn't require a formal efficient. So he had

Sandra sign all the paperwork ahead of time, all the marriage stuff. He said that he would fill out his part and then he would file everything. Right. That's what a con man would do. Right. But of course, it's never going to happen. He never files any of this paperwork. So in reality, their marriage was never valid. The other thing that Clark did is he took over all of the couple's finances. In an effort to keep Sandra in the dark, he would make sure that she filed a separate tax return so that his identity would not come up as a red flag. He made sure that all their property, their bank, counts any type of official records were not in his name whatsoever everything was in Sandra's name but she's not going to find this out until much later because you know at this time

they're newlyweds she's happy yeah she doesn't know any better with her husband she actually told friends that he was the smartest man she'd ever met and this was a woman that was ultra competitive she landed job after job and each job she got was more than impressive than the last. And each one came with, you know, large increases in salary to the point where a certain time in their marriage, she's making close to $2 million a year. Wow. In the 90s. That's like $7 million today. Seems high, but okay, well, I'll go with you. Well, you know, that could be off just slightly. Yeah. People like it either way. But $2 million is a ton of money today. Two million dollars 20 some years ago is even more. We know that. It's a lot of money.

Now, what is Clark Rockefeller doing? He can't work, but he tells Sandra that he is running a nonprofit consulting group that is helping impoverished nations lift their way of life. He didn't bring home any money for this job because he told Sandra he just couldn't bear to charge these people anything for his services because they just they had so little Gibbs so how could he take money from them get to love the way that a con man's mind works yeah it's fascinating because the other thing you have to think about what's the one thing that a con man does not want to do he doesn't want to file a tax return right this is why he made sandra file separately she probably thought he was filing separately as well. He just wasn't filing at all. So he's not bringing home

any income. And in making sure that she files separately, it helped him maintain his cover, his disguise. But eventually, Sandra Boss does start to see some strange things about Clark Rockefeller. The marriage becomes stressed. She actually leaves him in 2000. But he's able to sweet talk her back. And if a con man is good at nothing else, they're good at talking, right? People into doing things they want them to do. That's what they're best at, really. That is what they are best at. If you can't do that, you can't be a con man.

So she does take him back. She actually becomes pregnant. And she would later say that that was a big part of the reason that she went back with him and stayed with him as long as she did. You know, she would say that she did it for the sake of the baby, but I don't know. I think the con was strong. Yeah. I think the sweet talk was strong.

But that was probably a part of it as well. The baby. You said the dingo, you know, my baby? The dingo, I ate the baby. People are like, what? Just out of nowhere, man. What? That gibby.

Now, before the baby's born, Clark tells Sandra that he wants to move to New Hampshire. He is sick of New York City. He's sick of how nasty everyone is in the city. So they do. They pick up. They move to a very affluent town, Cornish, New Hampshire. And he becomes like the king of this small town. He has everyone in town believing that he's a Rockefeller.

He's walking the streets. Everybody's looking at him thinking, you know, here goes this extremely wealthy guy. and he reveled in the attention and probably reveled in the fact that he was getting over on everyone. But this part does seem strange to me, Giz, because you would think a con man like this wouldn't want to draw all of this attention to himself.

You'd think he'd probably want to just hole up in the house. Yeah, keep low key. But that's not what he does. Now, their daughter, Ray, was born in 2001. And the one thing that was true about Clark Rockefeller, because there wasn't much that was true about him, right? We know that. But he did love his daughter. But the fact that he loved her was also a problem for him that he'd never had to deal with before.

He had never been in a situation where he cared about somebody this much that he couldn't just pick up and leave if the heat got too much for him. In 2006, the family picked up again. They moved to Boston so that Ray could attend a very prestigious private school. And they bought a townhouse in Boston that was said to have cost about $2.7 million. And every morning, Clark would walk Ray, who he called Snooks. That was his nickname. Okay. For her.

But he would walk her to the bus stop every day. Like I said, he actually was a pretty good dad. he loved this girl. That was his real role. Yeah. Yeah. Faking everything else, but this was his real role. Exactly.

Everything else around him was fake, but this part wasn't fake. Now, when he got into Boston, he did the same thing that he did everywhere else. He warmed his way into some of the most elite societies in town. He made friends with, you know, high rollers. He even became the director of this very exclusive private club. But all of this was done on the back of the Rockefeller name and Sandra Boss's money. And the gift that he had for, you know, talking his way in and out of anything he wanted. Right.

Smooth, taka. But it sounds like he's living the perfect life. But it's all going to crumble around him. House of Cards? It's a House of Cards. It really is. I've been waiting to use that. Have you?

Yeah. And now you've finally found the perfect moment. Slit it in, man, right there. So Clark and Sandra, they start to have some problems in their marriage. And Sandra would later say that Clark became emotionally abusive. And it became too much for her. She served Clark with divorce papers. And he was cut off financially from the only source of income he had.

Remember, he doesn't make any money. No. He lives off of this huge salary that his wife made. That was his opulent life, man. It was. Yeah. I like the fact that you found a way to use opulent again. I try to slide it back in when I can.

It was an opulent house of cards. Exactly. It's basically what it was. Yeah, it was, really. But not only is he cut off financially, things are going to get even worse because members of Sandra's family start to question whether he is even who he says he really is. Is he really Clark Rockefeller? Now, early in their relationship, he had told Sandra that his mother was a famous child star named Ann Carter who had died in a car wreck.

That seems very specific. A lot of times, Gibbs, I thought when you're, you know, when you're going to tell a lie, you don't make it so specific where somebody can tie it back. Right. But now there's this thing called the internet. And Sandra's dad just has to log on the internet, start searching Ann Carter. Now, she was a famous child star. The problem was she was alive. Not the problem for her.

The problem for Clark Rockefeller, she was still alive. She was not killed in a car crash. So he urged Sandra to hire a private investigator to dig into the background of Clark Rockefeller. The problem is he comes back and he can't tell her who Clark Rockefeller is because he doesn't exist. So they're in the middle of this divorce. They're in the middle of a custody battle. And the last thing that Clark Rockefeller needed was someone digging into his past.

He couldn't have that because he knew he would be exposed. So he gave in and he signed over his parental rights of Ray to Sandra in. in exchange for $800,000. Sandra moved to London, taking Ray with her. I'm assuming Gibbs to get as far as she could from the man that she knew as Clark Rockefeller. Yeah, I think so. Now, when he was young, this wouldn't have been a big deal for Clark Christian, whatever you want to call this guy. He would have just moved on to his next scam.

But like we talked about, he loved his daughter Ray. It really was the only person that he ever truly cared about. You heard the way his family talked about him. I don't think he cared about them at all. He just up and left them. I don't think he cared about Sandra. I think he used her for her money, but he cared about Ray. Now, he was granted three visits with Ray a year.

And the stipulation was that each visit was to be eight hours long. and each had to be closely supervised by a social worker. And it was on July 27th, 2008, that Rockefeller was on one of these supervised visits with Ray. But Clark had been planning for this visit for quite a while. He had paid a man named Daryl Hopkins $3,000 to drive him around for the day in a black suburban. Okay. He gave Hopkins very precise.

instructions on where to wait for him. That's more than you made when you Ubered. It was. Yeah. So Clark Rockefeller is walking down the street in Boston with Ray. The social worker is pretty close behind them, keeping an eye on him. As Clark and Ray get up to this black suburban limo, I think it was like a limo, Clark pushed the social worker down.

he opens the door, jumps in, and drags Ray into the car with him. As he did this, he banged her head against the door and she started crying. The social worker gets up, sees what's going on, rushes to the door, is trying to pull it open and Rockefeller is holding it shut. And he tells the driver to floor it and they speed off. The problem is the social worker is still holding on to the door. And it will come out later that the social worker was dragged for, you know, quite a ways, trying to get into this door to get this child back, right?

He's in charge of this child. So warrant was issued for the arrest of Clark Rockefeller, and he is now on the run. Clark, although things have changed, you will always be. Ray's father and I will always be Ray's mother. We both love her dearly and have only her best interests and well-being at heart. I ask you now please, please bring Snooks back. There has to be a better way for us to solve our differences than this way. I also want to thank everyone for your help. And Ray, honey, I love you. I miss you so much.

And remember, you're always a princess. So that was Sandra Boss. You know, sending out an appeal to Clark to bring Ray home safely. But he's not going to. You know, he is on the run with Ray. But police catch up with him about a week later in Baltimore, Maryland. He'd already changed his name again from Clark Rockefeller to Charles Chip Smith. And like everything he did, he had.

all of this planned out well in advance because he had purchased a home in Baltimore for about $400,000 months in advance of this. He knew what he was going to do. He also bought a 26-foot catamaran that he kept at a marina that was a couple of miles away. Okay. Maybe a getaway vehicle. Yeah. Now, the real estate agent that sold him the house, recognized his face on a wanted poster and called the police. This is how they caught up with him so quickly. But the police were very concerned about Ray. They had to get Ray out of the house so that they could take down Rockefeller,

make sure that nothing happened to her. So what they did was they set up a call, a fake call to Clark from the marina saying that his boat was sinking. and he runs out of the house and agents are there, they arrest him. Ray is safely in the house. They get her back to her mother. But as they're doing their investigation of this kidnapping, they stumble on a clue to his real identity.

And it would be from some fingerprints lifted from a wine glass. Those prints were sent to the FBI lab at Quantico. And the results came back that. that Clark Rockefeller was really Christian Carl Gerhardt's writer. So it took us a while, but now we're coming back full circle. Right. Today, the FBI will confirm the true identity of the individual who has used the aliases, Clark Rockefeller, Chris C. Crow,

Chris Chichester, Charles Smith, and Chip Smith, among others. The individual's true name is Christian Carl Gerhard Scheider. He was born in 1961 and what was then West Germany. Yesterday, Gerhard Schreider was conclusively identified by means of forensic examination conducted by the FBI Laboratory in Cornico, Virginia. When Gerhardt Strider, using the name Clark Rockefeller, was arrested, his fingerprint impressions were taken by FBI agents in Baltimore, Maryland, and later by Boston Police when he was returned to the Commonwealth.

They matched the latent print lifted from a wine glass and, Boston collected at the time of the search for Rockefeller and his daughter earlier this month. Those fingerprints also matched a latent print developed from a document in Gerhard Schreter's immigration file from the early 1980s. The investigative efforts that continue to be expended in this investigation are significant. The FBI will continue to work with the Boston Police Department and Suffolk County District Attorney in their investigation and prosecution of Gerhard Schreter. So just a little snippet of them coming out and announcing that they've made this connection. In 2009, he goes on trial for the kidnapping of his daughter and for the assault that took place against a social worker.

His attorneys argued that he was insane. He was suffering from delusions at the time he took his daughter. His own attorney Gibbs was quoted as saying, this man is not playing with a whole deck. But in the end, he's convicted on the kidnapping charge, got a maximum of five years in a Massachusetts state prison for that, and then he received a two to three year sentence for the assault on the social worker, Howard Yaffy.

Yaffy made a victim impact statement. His wife, Sandra, made a victim impact statement. And Sandra would say in hers, Quote, while Ray was gone, I faced a mother's worst nightmare, the possibility of losing a child without a trace. That's true, Gibbs. I don't know, I can't think of a worst nightmare of never seeing your, your son or daughter again and never knowing where they were or what happened to them.

Yeah. That would be a nightmare. It would be. Now, at the same time that this trial is going on, the prosecutors in California, they're watching it very closely. You know, by this point, they had connected him to the man known as Christopher Cheechester and had connected him to the murder of John Sohus. But they hadn't charged him yet.

They were waiting. They were still putting together their evidence. The problem was if he had been found not guilty of the kidnapping charges, he would have been deported back to Germany. So this is why they were watching the case so closely. They would have had to have jumped in very quickly and charged him to keep him from being deported. But as it turned out, he was found guilty. So that wasn't a problem.

They could take their time building their case. Christian Gerhardt's writer would eventually go on trial for the murder of John Sohuss in 2013. The prosecution presented their case, which was almost, entirely circumstantial. They didn't have a lot of physical evidence. They had testimony from an LA County criminologist who testified that the DNA on the stamps from the postcards sent from France didn't belong to Christian, didn't belong to the Sohusses.

It was from an unknown man. So they contended that this supported their theory that Gerhardt's writer had gotten someone to mail those postcards from France on his behalf in an effort to throw off investigators. A lot of the evidence they presented focused on the strange behavior exhibited by the man that people in San Marino back then knew as Christopher Cheechester. You know, apparently he tried to sell a bloodstained rug to someone in San Marino. and when the person questioned him about it, he just rolled it up and walked away.

The jury was also told about a friend of Cheechesters back then who had apparently asked him about this area of disturbed earth near the guest house and was told that there had been some plumbing problems. And this would be the exact spot where John Sohus' body would later be uncovered. But the prosecution was able to determine that there had never been any type of plumbing running through that section of the yard. Then they brought up some evidence that was found with John's body when it was discovered. And John's skull was found wrapped in two plastic bags, one inside the other, right? So doubled up.

One of the bags was determined to be from a USC college bookstore that they know was only used during the early 80s. The other bag came from the University of Wisconsin and it was determined to be from the 1979 through 1982 time period. Now, this is significant because Gerhardt's writer was a student at both colleges during you know, these time periods. So again, it's not direct physical evidence, but it's a lot of circumstantial evidence tying him to this murder. You know, the whole time I, you know,

about this case when I was reading it and just talking about it, it just keeps making me think kind of back to that one movie with Matt Damon in it. And Ryan, uh, not Ryan, he wasn't in it. Ryan Phillipie?

Uh, was he in it? No, the, the guy that, uh, the talented, Mr. Ripley? Yes. Is that the one you're thinking? Yes. That's it.

I don't know who else is in it. That was, oh, what's his name? I know for a fact you're not going to get it. English actor. Oh, that one? Yeah. There's only about a billion of them. He wasn't married to Reese Witherspoon.

That was married. That was Ryan Phillips. Yeah. It's the other guy. There's just one other guy. Yeah. He's such a good actor, too. Shall I play the Jeopardy theme music?

Would that help you? Anyway. He played. played in that with Matt Damon. Whoever he is. Yeah. People are screaming into their phones. I know.

You're going to cause me to get about 8,000 emails. He did a really good job, man. He was... You said he was a great actor. He did a really good job. He's in a lot of movies. He's in a lot of movies. You should be able to think of his name.

Yeah, I can't. I can think of some of the movies he was in, but... Give me a movie he was in. The holiday with the... Never seen it. When he stays at his sister's little. little cottage and runs into, uh... Go to the next one.

Okay. Uh, he plays like a sharpshooter, like a, uh, sniper in a, like a War War one movie, and he's trying to take out the, he's working, he's trying to take out the German sniper. Go to the next one. No? Uh, he's with like, uh, Forrest Whitaker and they take back, uh, body parts. They got to catch you open.

They take the body part out, scan it, and then... Is there any movies that are any good that he was in? Oh, I'm sure there was. Are these well-known movies? Did you see the movie? First of all, you don't know the names of any of these? Remember the movie with Melissa the funny girl? McCarthy.

She plays like a secretary to a spy, but she ends up being the spy. Uh-huh. Do you remember that one? Yes. Remember the guy that she was a secretary to? Mm-hmm. That guy. That's him.

Yeah. Jude Law. Thank you. Got there. We got there. It was just 17,000 degrees of separation from Matt Davis. Well, it wasn't like he was Kevin. It wasn't like he was like Kevin Bacon.

He almost couldn't remember his name. I couldn't. Jude Law. Jude Law. Yeah, he was in The Credible Mr. Ripley with Matt Damon. I got you. I got you. Edit that all out.

Leave it all in. It's there. I don't even know what to do with it. You're welcome. But no, you're right. Right. There was some con man aspects to that movie, which I think is where you were going when we started this whole charade.

Well, it was fun. That's all I care about, Gibbs, as long as you have fun. I had fun. But that was some pretty big evidence. But again, circumstantial. Yeah. But the fact that he was at both of those colleges, the skull was wrapped in, like, bags that you would get at the bookstore from both of those colleges.

His ex-wife, Sandra, took the stand. She told her story of the life that she lived with this man. that she thought was Clark Rockefeller. Just how bizarre, though, seriously. Oh, she had to sit there. Now, this is a Harvard-educated woman, extremely intelligent. She had to reveal all of these things on the stand and looking back, say, I don't know why I didn't pick up on these things.

Yeah. Because people looking at it from the outside would say, how could you not have known that something was wrong? She was so enamored with love, but she didn't even get past that. I mean, you overlook a lot of things with your significant other, especially your husband or your wife for. Yeah, it could be way down the road when you start realizing the flaws. Yeah, no doubt about it.

But it couldn't have been easy for her to have to reveal all of these things about what he told her, being a Rockefeller, his strange behavior. She had to talk about how he had maneuvered her into making sure that everything was in her name. Yeah. Embarrassing, I'm sure. Embarrassing for her. You know, she talked about how he paid all the bills, but it was her checking account. So what she would have to do is sign a bunch of blank checks for him.

And then he would make them out to whoever to pay the bill. Now, is all that that strange? some of it's a little strange, but you have to keep in mind, too, he's staying at home, she's working long hours, he's taking care of the house. Yeah. But like you said, I guarantee it was very embarrassing for her. Now, the other thing that she testified about was the travel habits of her ex-husband. And she said that there were two states that Clark would not set foot in.

One was Connecticut, and the other was California. And there were very good reasons for him not to want to be in those states. She said one time they had to drive through Connecticut. She needed to stop at a rest area to use the bathroom. He wouldn't let her. He literally would not stop. He said you had to hold it until we get through Connecticut. Wow.

He just wasn't taking any chances of. I would have. Just went right there. Right there. I know you would have. Yeah. Because you've done it in my car. And I did not appreciate it.

One bit. You've got to do what you got to do. And then once the airlines, right, at a certain point in time, the airlines started requiring passengers to show identification. And I'm not sure. Obviously, that that happened in earnest post 9-11. Yeah. But I think it happened even before then. I just don't know when.

I don't remember either. I'm not really sure. But once it happened. It's a good thing. No, it is a good thing. But once that happened, he stopped flying. He never flew again. Now, in typical con man fashion, he had a reason.

He told her that he had an ear problem that prevented him from flying. I'm not saying that I made a very good choice of husband. I mean, it's pretty obvious that I've had to blind spot. All I'm saying is that it is possible that one can be brilliant and amazing in one area of one's life and be really stupid in another. That's very true. Oh, that's very true. But she's talking about herself.

She's having to say that about herself. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's good that she's aware of it. And she's, you know, basically she's facing up to it and saying, look. I mean, I am a very smart woman, you know. And she was. There's no doubt about it. But I was snowed and I was dumb and I didn't, you know, see what everybody else saw because I was so focused and fixed on.

how he initially treated me and acted towards me. And so, I mean, I get what she's saying. And at her level, that was not easy for her to say. No, no, there's no way. Somebody that had the executive level type job she did, making two plus million dollars a year. And when you got the IQ like that. To have to admit that.

Trust me, when you have such a high IQ, I know. It's difficult. It's difficult to admit that any wrongdoing, right? Yes, exactly. Yeah. Because you're going to get a call from some of your buddies at Mensa and they're going to give you a hard time. They're going to say, man, yep, and I'll be like, hey, you guys know better.

Go back to your opponent lifestyle. But let's not forget Sandra didn't do anything wrong, right? In this case, whatsoever. No, she just fell in love with the conman. With the wrong person. Yeah. Yeah, I want to make sure that that's front and center. Yeah.

There's no blame that should be leveled against her at all. Not to mention the fact that the murder happened way before she ever even met this guy. Yeah. Yeah. Not even related. It's just the fact that her heart trumped her head. In reality, she was another victim of Christian Gerhardt's right. It was a big victim, actually.

Now, he had a team of attorneys, and what they set out to do was to point out that there was no direct evidence linking him to the murder. And in their arguments, they offered up an alternative. They said that it was actually Linda Sohuss who killed her husband, then went off the grid, never to be heard from again. They said that Linda at six foot tall, 200 pounds. Wow. Could have easily overpowered the smaller John Sohus.

And she could have. I mean, if you see pictures of them and they're out there, they make a very stark contrast. Like a Sunny and Cher? Yeah, to each other. She's very tall and he is not so tall. It's definitely a case of opposites attracting, at least in physical appearance. I think they shared a lot of the same interests. But in the end, the jury convicted Gerhardt's writer of the murder.

of John Sohus. They deliberated for less than six hours over a two-day period. But when it came to sentencing Gibbs, Gerhardt's writer chose to represent himself, fired his attorneys. Oh, here we go. Something that you would think a good con man would try to do, right? Yeah, but you think he'd be smart enough to know better, but, you know. You would think he'd be smart enough to know better, but you would also think that,

It's the ultimate thing, challenge. It is. And he's so good at talking people into getting what he wants. I'm thinking in his head, he's thinking Gibbs that if I can just get up and present my argument in front of the judge, in front of the jury. I'll sell them. I'll sell them. I'll get this sentence down to nothing, hardly. And this was despite numerous warnings for.

from the judge saying that this was a very bad idea. And I don't think there's ever been a case where a judge has said, you know what, that's a good idea. You should represent yourself. I can't think of a case that I've researched where someone chose to defend themselves where number one, it turned out really well. And number two, the judge didn't, you know, tell them repeatedly. You are making a huge mistake.

Right. But what does Gerhardt's writer say to the judge? He says, Judge, you know what? I'll be okay. I took debate in college. That's what he told the judge. I took debate. I'm good.

I got it covered. Don't worry about me. But he once again blamed the death of John Sohuss on his wife, Linda. And he said at trial, I firmly believe that the victim's wife killed the victim. But be that as it may, I did not commit the crime. He was sentenced to 27 years to life for the murder of John Sohus. And the body of Linda has never been found.

But is there really any doubt in your mind Gibbs that he probably had something to do with her death as well? I think so. Don't you? What are the chances that she just fell off the grid completely for all these years and has never surfaced? I'm not saying it couldn't happen. But given everything we know about him, given the fact that he was convicted of John's murder,

I think the chances are pretty high that he had something to do with what happened to Linda as well. But we don't know what happened to her. But my thought is, whatever it is, it's not good. And eventually they will probably figure it out and be able to tie it back to him. That's it. That is the case of Christian Gerhardt's writer, Christopher Cheechester, Chris Crow, Clark Rockefeller. I'm sure I'm leaving some out.

I think he had a couple more names too. Yeah, he's all over. It's a hard story to tell because of all the different name. I mean, as long as you can realize that they're all him, it's not that bad, but I don't know. I've just always been fascinated by this case because of how he plays. pulled off this amazing con. And it wasn't just one con, right? It wasn't just like he conned Sandra.

You know, he conned his way into San Marino. He conned his way into a bunch of these Wall Street-type jobs making high six figures, maybe. Making a lot of money. Yeah. Big time money, man. We got some voicemails. Yeah, let's play them.

Want to check those out? Let me hear him. Hey, Mike and Gibby. This is Ashley from Idaho. I have a suggestion for an episode. It would be to cover Albert Fish, aka the boogeyman. Anyway, love the show

and keep your own time ticket. Man, that's like the fourth request for... We're going to have to have to do Albert Fish. We've had a lot of requests. We have. From Idaho, too. Idaho.

Idaho. Potato. Is that the only thing you associate with Idaho? Fly fishing. Fly fishing and potato. What about a river runs through it? That's a good movie, man. That is a great movie.

Brad Pitt, right? Yeah, Brad Pitt. Tell me who else is in it. I don't remember his name. He's, well, Tom Scarritt's in it, right? He's the dad. No, Anthony Hopkins is the dad. You sure.

I'm pretty sure. I'm thinking of the right movie. I think you're thinking of the other movie where Brad Pitt plays the wild son and, yeah. Isn't that a river runs through it? No, River runs through it's when he's running booze and... But he's the wild one. Well, he's wild in all of his movies, really. but I think it's him and Tom Scarrot's the dad,

and I can't remember that. All right, shit, Gibbs. I'm looking at it. Are you actually going to go break the rules in Google? I'm going to break the rules. I'm telling you. Because this one will drive me crazy. And then I think...

Nope, you're right. Tom Scarrett. Craig Schaeffer. Craig is that other guy's name. Yeah, I don't know what I'm thinking of where Anthony Hopkins is in Brad Pitt or. It's one where he and Tristan. Is it Tristan? No.

What's his name in that one? That's his name. And his brother gets killed and he takes on his brother's wife. Then he, then he starts, he marries his brother's wife or something? Yeah, something like that.

Hell, there's too many movies, man. That was, you were definitely right, though. Legends of the Fall. Yeah, that's what I was thinking of. Yeah.

Get those two mixed up. That's a good movie too, though. One, he has short hair. The other one he has long hair. Aiden Quinn's in that one? Yeah, Aiden Quinn. He plays the brother, the good brother, I guess, the politician or something like that. Yeah, River runs through.

It's directed by Robert Redford. Yeah, it was probably shot in Utah then. Not really Idaho. All right. Score one for the Gibber. Hi, I just wanted to say that I am a huge fan of the podcast. I just started. I've been used almost everything.

And I was recently listening to episode 83 when you were talking about what's the best thing to do, fight with Ferrari won or whatever. And I recently read the book, Mind Hunter. from the FBI agent, which then the Netflix show is based on, and he talks about how it actually is impossible to tell you what to do in a situation because sometimes killers want that fight and they want that power struggle, but also sometimes they want you to be a compliant willing participant. And he goes through in the book and he names like a few other killer,

and he says he needs to be a compliant, you know, jobful person for this one. But then he names another one. Like he gets kicked out of you being that way. So really is a crapshoot when you're in that situation. So I just thought I put my two symptoms and so love a podcast and keep it on time to do. So I like to make my own odds. Mm-hmm. So I would fight and get to heck out of her.

I would not go. And I think that's what we said. But I think we also said it is hard to know in every situation exactly what to do. Yeah. I think it is. But I think you and I are of the opinion that 99.9% of the time, we would take our chances and fight it out. My ninja census would tell me.

Yeah. Yeah. 46% of the time we'd end up dead. But 99.8% of the time, 40% of the time... Your math doesn't add up, by the way. 40% of the time it works every time. But, yeah. Hello, Tiet.

This is Megan Rosario. I come from Cleveland. Actually, I live about 20 minutes from Cleveland in a little town called Painesville, Ohio. And I just stumbled upon PCAT about three months ago or so. I kind of had this own little group of podcasts that I only listened to, and I was looking for something new and something that I liked. I'm very particular about my podcast. I found you guys and have not looked back.

You're the only podcast that I've listened to since. I'm team Mike and Gibby I love both of you I love the banter you guys literally make me laugh out loud it's so awesome I love the way you guys present these cases it's just amazing

keep up the good work and keep your own time thinking well clearly she's more team Fergie since she said your name first no everybody says my name first no whatever G becomes 4M an alphabet why not say but in every episode

I'm Mike Ferguson Yeah. You're my true crime partner. Am I overthinking it? Yes, you are. It just comes out better that way. Mike and Gibby sounds better than Gibby and Mike. I don't know.

Keep saying it. Einhorn and Finkel sounds better than Finkel and Einhorn. Unless you're Finkel. But that was an awesome voicemail. It was. Thank you so much. And we hear that a lot, right? People are very particular about their true crime podcast.

Yeah. And you either catch them or you don't. I'm glad to. Kat us. Yeah. I know, no. I mean, there are people that listen to us that don't like the way we do it. There are people that listen to us that love the way we do it.

Yeah. There's something out there for everybody. The ones that don't like us, I take care of it. I don't even want to know how. I'd take care of it. Send him a nice note and say. Send him on a nice note. I'd take care of it, man.

Sorry you didn't like it. Yeah. Hi, Mike and Gitt didn't know if you'd noticed. Just finished with Ed Rifton. And the thumbnail that you chose, Richard of a Monster. And, of course, Not only is Joel Rickin on there, but good old.

Yeah, take your pick, either Joel or Don. So she's from Hamilton, Gipps, just down the road from us? Just up or down the road. Up and down the road? Well, it depends where you're at. From here, she's down the road. Mm-hmm. At my work, she'd be up the road.

She'd still be down the road. Oh, you know. Because I know where you work. You don't know. And I know geography. You think you know it. I do. You're off.

She's still down from where you work. No, but I never noticed that. I never noticed that. Whatever picture I used to put probably on our Facebook page or Twitter or whatever. Oh, yeah. I guess had a newspaper article about Joel Rifkin. Oh. And also on the same newspaper was Donald Trump.

Oh, okay. All right, Gibbs, we got a lot of mail. We did. We got to talk about what's in the mail. What's in the mail? Megan Harrington sent me a chip from San Diego. Yeah, that's cool. Kristen, I'm going to say Messick, but there might be.

a hard K in there somewhere. She sent us some homemade teacat vinyl decals from her company, Sockmonkeycrafts.com. Sockmucky. Very cool. Yeah. Rita Bovary sent a chip for me and some homemade soap for you. She did. Thank you.

I don't know what she's trying to tell you, but. Smells very good. It does. It smells amazing. Tara Williams sent me a chip from Washington. Awesome. Meg Weaver sent me a chip from the Bahamas when she was on vacation. The Bahamas.

Danielle Gru sent me a chip from New Hampshire. And then Maddie Timmy sent us a whole bunch of stuff. She sent me some chips from all over. Yeah, she did. And then she sent you some beef jerky. Yeah, I'm eating it right now. That I'm eating right now. Really good.

A sticker and some beaver nuggets, whatever the hell those are. Beaver nuggets, ma'am. I think it's like corn puffed up with brown sugar, you know. I'll let you know how they taste. Okay. They're going to be good. Beaver Nuggets. Beaver Nuggets, man.

Sweet. But listen, we appreciate it. We really do. Really enjoying this beef jerky is the bomb. It is, man. All the way from Texas. All right. Well, that is it for another episode of True Crime All the Time.

So for Mike and Gibby. Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.