Witness Misidentifies Court Cameraman as ‘Rockefeller’ Murder Suspect

The cast of characters grew Thursday afternoon as Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian called witnesses to testify in a

The impostor, who has been identified as German man , whose remains were found in 1994 in the backyard of the home where Sohus lived and Gerhartsreiter rented a guesthouse.



Witness Marianne Kent, who for decades lived a few houses down from the 1920 Lorain Road home where Didi Sohus and her son John and daughter-in-law Linda lived in the 1980s, told prosecutor Balian Thursday that she knew Didi well for several years since their sons played together at a young age.

Balian asked Kent, 81, what Didi was like and how she treated John, in an effort to establish that Didi did not have a motive to kill her son.

“She loved him very deeply and watched him so carefully,” said Kent, noting that Didi kept a concerned eye on John’s sugar intake since he was diabetic and Kent could not recall Didi ever speaking ill of John.

When defense attorney Brad Bailey questioned Kent about , Kent recalled a change in Didi after John and his wife Linda disappeared in 1985.

Didi, the mother unsure of where her missing son and his wife had gone in early 1985, very seldom ever got out of her housecoat and started drinking, Kent testified. 

“I felt that she didn’t have that spark to live,” said Kent.

Witness Misidentifies Murder Suspect

In the 1980s Kent briefly met the man living in the Sohus guesthouse, but her testimony waned when she was asked if she recognized the former guesthouse tenant (now charged with murder) in the courtroom Thursday.

After a long pause, Kent said she believed the former 1920 Lorain Road resident to be a man standing near a corner of the courtroom, wearing a plaid shirt. All eyes were on the man she pointed out, who was actually a member of the press operating a large video camera and documenting the court proceedings.

Presiding Judge Jared Moses later told Kent the true identity of whom she thought might have been the man charged with John Sohus’s murder.

The member of the press was wearing glasses with rectangular black rims--the defendant Gerhartsreiter was always seen wearing glasses in photos of him as various identities--but the cameraman appeared taller and larger than Gerhartsreiter.

In follow-up questioning, Balian’s voice got a bit louder and seemingly frustrated as he asked Kent, “Do you really think the man with the camera is the man from the guesthouse?”

Kent finally conceded that she could not “absolutely positively” identify the man who had lived in the Sohus guesthouse.

Victim’s Best Friend

Patrick Rayermann testified Thursday that victim John Sohus was “one of his best friends,” and “faultlessly reliable,” so it would be unlike him to disappear purposefully and cease contact with his loved ones, like the

Rayermann and Sohus attended and together, said Rayermann, and also shared a love for science fiction and math and science in general.

John was, “shy, warm, generally upbeat … [and] always saw the best in people,” said Rayermann.

Witness Lent Murder Suspect Chainsaw

Judge William Stewart, who was an attorney in the 1980s when he knew the man calling himself Christopher Chichester, said he had known Chichester since at least November 1982 from attending church together, Church of Our Savior, in San Gabriel.

Stewart identified Chichester as the man in the blue shirt in the Alhambra courtroom Thursday, pointing to defendant Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, who was wearing blue prison scrubs.

Chichester borrowed a chainsaw from him at one point during 1985, Stewart testified, though he couldn’t pin down exactly how long Chichester had the chainsaw before returning it—somewhere between two months to six months or possibly more.

Chichester apparently requested the chainsaw so he could cut a tree branch that scratched his window and kept him up at night.

“As far as I knew it was in the exact same condition as when I gave it to him,” said Stewart regarding the chainsaw’s state when it was returned.

Chichester had told Stewart he was an instructor at the USC film school and somehow involved in the Paul Newman film The Verdict, possibly as an investor.

When asked by defense attorney Brad Bailey if he saw Chichester as “a mooch and a cheapskate” Stewart recalled, “He was not always looking for a free meal but if the opportunity was there he’d take it.”

He’d also noticed a sound in Chichester’s voice that he said he had only ever heard in German speakers and “it raised a question.”

Daniel Banks, who saw the second part of Stewart’s Thursday testimony, told Patch that everything said was exactly as he remembered.

“Bill is one of the most honorable people I’ve ever known,” said Banks, who still attends Church of Our Savior and also knew the man who called himself Christopher Chichester in the 1980s. “You can’t pull the wool over his eyes.”



Check back for coverage of Friday’s preliminary hearing proceedings.