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'Rockefeller' kidnapper is jailed | |
(about 4 hours later) | |
A German who claimed to be a descendant of oil tycoon John D Rockefeller has been jailed for five years for kidnapping his seven-year-old daughter. | |
Christian Gerhartsreiter, 48, who called himself Clark Rockefeller, had also been found guilty of assaulting the child's social worker as he fled. | |
The kidnapping took place last July after Gerhartsreiter's British ex-wife was granted custody of their daughter. | |
The jury rejected claims he was legally insane when the incident took place. | |
Prosecutors had described his defence team's claims as "preposterous", arguing that Gerhartsreiter had been planning the abduction for months. | |
He had snatched the youngster, called Reigh, on a Boston street during a supervised visit last July and fled to Baltimore with her. | |
The "assault and battery with a dangerous weapon" charge related to his ordering the driver of a sport utility vehicle to pull away with the social worker clinging to the door. | |
'Taken in' | |
Gerhartsreiter had married Sandra Boss, 42, a senior partner in the London office of the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co, in 1995. | |
During the trial, she told the court that she had been taken in by Gerhartsreiter's stories of his family wealth throughout their 12-year marriage. | |
It was only after she hired a private investigator during divorce proceedings in 2007 that she learned the truth about his past, she said. | It was only after she hired a private investigator during divorce proceedings in 2007 that she learned the truth about his past, she said. |
The jury heard Gerhartsreiter had used many aliases as he mingled among the wealthy in Boston, New York and Los Angeles, having arrived in the US in 1978 as a 17-year-old student. | |
Over the next 30 years he adopted a number of different personas, ranging from physicist to billionaire art collector. | |
Despite revelations about his past, the jury acquitted him of another assault count and a further charge of giving a false name to police. |