A Most Proper Con

On July 27, 2008, the Boston police issued an Amber Alert announcing that a man named Clark Rockefeller had snatched his seven-year-old daughter from a Back Bay street. It took at least a half-dozen state and federal agencies a full 19 days to determine that he was, in fact, a German citizen named Christian Karl Gerhartstreiter. It had taken Gerhartstreiter half his life to craft the identity that would ultimately earn him infamy. (Through his lawyer, Rockefeller declined to comment for this story, as did Boss, through a spokesperson.)

As a boy in Germany, Gerhartstreiter loved pretending he was someone else, someone special. In 1978, at age 17, he arrived in suburban Connecticut, but soon moved to Wisconsin, staying just long enough to marry for a green card (then quickly divorce). He then took the name Christopher Chichester and relocated to a suburb of Los Angeles, where he hoped to become an actor. He had to abandon that plan in 1985, around the time police started asking questions about the disappearance of his landlords, but soon resurfaced in Greenwich, Connecticut, driving the landlords' truck and calling himself Christopher Crowe. There, he talked his way into the first of a series of jobs on Wall Street—fired from one in 1989, he immediately turned up at another, only to quit abruptly. The next day, police arrived at his office looking for that missing truck. Over two decades, Gerhartstreiter never outgrew his childish faith in the possibilities of reinvention. Each failed persona inspired a more audacious follow-up. The out-of-work actor tried his hand as a banking king. And when that didn't work, he decided he'd become a Rockefeller.

At first, it was easy. He'd always understood how to network. Crisscrossing the country, he'd made a habit of joining chambers of commerce, churches, and private social clubs. After adopting the Clark Rockefeller name, he started attending St. Thomas Church in Manhattan, a congregation that at the time included the socialite Brooke Astor. It was at the church that Rockefeller met a young publishing assistant named Julia Boss, later inviting her to his apartment for a dinner party. The soiree, thrown in 1993, was based on the board game Clue; Rockefeller dressed the part of Professor Plum, a bow tie–wearing academic with a mysterious past. Julia brought along her twin sister, Sandra, who was working toward her M.B.A. at Harvard and who acted out the role of the game's femme fatale, Miss Scarlet. By the time the evening's mystery had been solved, Rockefeller realized he was in love.

As he and Sandra Boss began dating, Rockefeller revealed himself by layering detail upon detail. He said his father was a Rockefeller heir who had lost his share of the family fortune in some nebulous lawsuit with the Department of Defense. He claimed that a boyhood accident had left him mute for a decade—an adversity he was proud to have overcome to earn acceptance to Yale at the age of 14. He said his parents died in a car accident while coming to visit him at school, but couldn't recall the specifics. A part of Boss must have believed the stories; whatever part was left over must have wanted to.

Rockefeller proposed to Boss in 1994 while they were vacationing in Isleboro, Maine. He apparently preferred that no mention of the wedding, a Quaker service on Nantucket, be made in the papers. He also didn't file a marriage license, ensuring the union would remain as invisible in the official record as it was on the society pages.

After several years in New York, Rockefeller told Boss they needed to move into the woods of New England. He was vague about why, but adamant that they had to go immediately. They settled in Cornish, New Hampshire, a town of just under 1,800 residents where author J. D. Salinger had gone to disappear more than a half-century earlier. Passersby were curious about the sign the couple hung at the end of their driveway announcing their estate's name, "Doveridge." They were downright baffled by an old Ford marked with "Doveridge Security" that Rockefeller had parked there to ward off snoops.

Rockefeller's life changed forever when, a year after moving to Cornish, Boss gave birth to a daughter they named Reigh (the couple would call her by a nickname, Snooks). With Boss still working in New York, childcare fell to Rockefeller. He took on the duty in a way that suggested he was crafting the perfect companion. He had Reigh reading him the newspaper by age two and a half, and the journal Nature by three. Proud to show off her accomplishments, he could also become oddly defensive. Once in a coffee shop, when Reigh was spelling all the words she could, a friend of Rockefeller's asked her to try spelling one in French. Rockefeller bristled. "That's not fair," he snapped.

When Rockefeller learned a Cornish museum was putting on a play, he couldn't keep himself from auditioning. He listed the starring roles he said he'd played in high school, and noted that Reigh could speak fluent French, if there was a role that called for it. Director Alan Haehnel thought these were strange bits of braggadocio for a community production, yet museum officials had asked him to treat the family with the respect the Rockefeller name warranted. Haehnel cast both Rockefeller and his daughter.

The play was a rare social activity for the otherwise sheltered Reigh. Rockefeller had chosen not to enroll her in preschool, and was now dressing her in khakis and polo shirts that matched his own. His unorthodox parenting apparently convinced Boss she should keep a closer eye on her daughter.

One evening, Boss came to see Rockefeller and Reigh in their play. Rockefeller stalked around the stage outfitted as Mars, the Roman god of war. He only had a few lines but delivered them with the same earnestness he showed during rehearsals, where he pestered Haehnel to explain his character's motivation. After the show, Boss took Reigh home while Rockefeller put away his costume. When he couldn't reach Boss on her cell phone, he looked shaken. "He kept calling and calling," says a fellow actor. "I honestly thought he was worried [Boss] was going to abduct her."

If Boss had her doubts, she wasn't alone. Cornish is a small town, and if you act strangely enough, people are bound to start talking. In the midst of the play, a friend of Haehnel's pulled him aside. "You know, his connection to the Rockefellers is tenuous," the friend said. "There's a rumor that he's not connected at all."