Con man convicted

Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, 48, was convicted of kidnapping his seven-year old daughter on his first visit with her in July of 2008. After five days of deliberation, the court sentenced him to 15 years in prison.

Gerhartsreiter had gone through a nasty divorce and when he was re-united with his daughter, he shoved the social worker aside and took off in an SUV. The social worker clung to the moving vehicle in an effort to stop it.

He was found six days later in Baltimore after an international manhunt. He told authorities that he wanted to start a new life there.

During the trial defense attorneys argued that Gerhartsreiter was insane, but the prosecutors rebuked that idea saying there was no evidence that he had ever been hospitalized for mental illness.

Gerhartsreiter moved to the US from Bavaria in the 1970's as a foreign exchange student, married an American and got his green card.

Authorities said he had lived for 27-years as a con man, using different aliases and eventually started passing himself off as Clark Rockefeller, a member of the famous US oil family.

He later married Sandra Boss with whom he had a child. During the trial Boss, a graduate of the Harvard Business School, said that he fooled her into thinking that he was a member of the illustrious family and that he had a billion-dollar art collection. She also claimed that he had exagerated his professional achievements.

Authorities in California say that Gerhartsreiter is also a person of interest in connection with the deaths of a California couple in whose guest house he was living in 1985.

av/Reuters/dpa

Editor: Chuck Penfold