Aug 5, 2008 6:51 pm US/Eastern
So Who Exactly Is Clark Rockefeller?
He Says He Doesn't Remember; Prosecutors Don't Buy It
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
The man accused of snatching his daughter off a Boston street faced a judge on Tuesday.
His identity is murky, but he calls himself Clark Rockefeller. What's tripping up investigators most at this point is that Rockefeller has told them he doesn't remember his own history.
Rockefeller is accused of kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter Reigh during a supervised visit on July 27. He went before a judge Tuesday to face charges in her abduction.
"There is a crime in this commonwealth. We refer to it as parental kidnapping," said Suffolk County, Mass. District Attorney Daniel Conley.
Reigh was returned safely to her mother on Saturday, but the question still remains: Just who is Clark Rockefeller?
"We're dealing with some who has the ability to lie skillfully," Conley said.
Investigators say the enigmatic Rockefeller has gone by many aliases, but his attorney believes that Clark Rockefeller is his true identity.
"I'm not questioning him any further. That's who he says he is," Stephen Hrones said.
But one of his aliases may link him to a murder.
The Boston Globe reports his fingerprints may connect him to a California homicide.
However, through his attorney, Rockefeller denied it all.
"He described it as garbage, completely untrue," Hrones said.
Rockefeller had apparently planned to start a new life with Reigh in Baltimore, using yet another alias. Ironically, it was the real estate company that helped him find a home there that recognized his face in media reports and called police.
"I can only describe this as surreal," realtor Julie Gochar said. "Throughout this entire process, he represented himself as a single parent relocating to Baltimore with him and his daughter."
That one thing that seems certain in all this, his attorney says, is how much the man known today as Clark Rockefeller cares for his little girl.
"Tell the child that he loves her and he misses her," Hrones said, describing what his client said to him. "She was the most important thing in his life."
Authorities have no record of anything involving Rockefeller before 1993, but they also believe he's more of a schemer than someone who has lost his memory.
Right now, he's being held without bail.
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