Jury Selection in 'Rockefeller' California Murder Trial to Begin Monday

Jury selection in the trial of Christian K. Gerhartsreiter, the man accused of the 1985 slaying of his landlord in San Marino, Calif., – and convicted of a Back Bay kidnapping – is scheduled to begin on Monday.

Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter – a.k.a. Clark Rockefeller – was convicted of kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter during a supervised visit in Back Bay in 2009. He was sentenced to 4 to 5 years in prison for both the kidnapping and for  assaulting a social worker overseeing his supervised visit. A Massachusetts court upheld the verdict in September. 

Gerhartsreiter, who called himself Christopher Chichester in San Marino in the 1980s, rented a guesthouse on Lorain Road and is accused of murdering his landlord John Sohus, who lived in the main house with his wife, Linda, and his mother, Ruth "Didi" Sohus.

The married couple went missing in 1985 and John's remains were later found in 1994 when contractors digging a backyard pool at the Lorain Road home unearthed his bones. Linda has never been found.

Gerhartsreiter, who has also claimed to be well-to-do Clark Rockefeller of the famous American family—though the Rockefellers have claimed no such relative exists—is currently serving a four- to five-year sentence in a Los Angeles jail for on the Massachusetts conviction. He was previously serving the sentence in Massachusetts, but was extradited to California in 2011 after the murder charge arose.