The lawyers for Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter (Clark Rockefeller) raised the possibility that the “Beacon Hill bon vivant” (the unstoppable Laurel J. Sweet’s words in the Herald) could change his plea to guilty so as to avoid having his daughter testify at trial.

The DA is recommending that he serve 4 1/2 to 5 years in prison for parental kidnapping. (more…)

Clark Rockefeller is many things (people?). He was once an aspiring trader on Wall Street. The authorities say he is Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter. Beacon Hill residents knew him as a doting father and aspiring playwright.

But who knew he was guarding a pot of gold like a leprechaun?

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There was good news and bad news for Clark Rockefeller—I mean Christian Karl Gerhartstreiter—at his indictment this morning in Suffolk Superior Court.

The good news first: His case is being fast-tracked, so his trial is set to begin on March 23, 2009 (that’s really fast, believe it or not, his first option was waiting a full year). Even more important for him, I’d guess, is that the magistrate decided to set bail. If he posts it, he’ll be able to leave jail and wait for his case to begin as a free man. (more…)

While Clark Rockefeller may still be holed up in the Suffolk County jail, it doesn’t mean he will stop making headlines anytime soon. The Globe reports that a Probate and Family Court judge has ordered the release of the divorce pact between Rockefeller and Sandra Boss, and may make even more documents from the couple’s divorce public.

For those of us who can’t get enough crazy stories about the phony blue-blood, it’s great news. Rockefeller’s lawyer, Stephen Hrones, is less excited.

“There are affidavits that go into extremely personal matters that are unrelated to the criminal charges,” Hrones said.

Hrones just allowed Rockefeller to talk about his marriage and divorce with two media outlets. Now he wants to declare the relationship off-limits?

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One of the highlights of our Wednesday afternoon is reading Jezebel’s “Midweek Madness” post. The blog’s interns run down the highlights and lowlights from the gossip rags so we can save our money for more important things. (Like beer and shoes.)

This week’s installment sheds some light on something that’s been bothering us—what to call those thick black glasses Clark Rockefeller wears. We’ve taken to calling them Clark Rockefeller glasses (what it lacks in creativity it makes up for in simplicity), but the blog’s scan of an In Touch magazine page gives us their true name: Clark Kent glasses. And they’re trendy!
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We finally got a glimpse into the minds of two men who’ve dominated the headlines most of the summer. Alleged kidnapper Clark Rockefeller and bodybuilding firefighter Albert Arroyo both gave interviews this weekend.

But which was the most insightful, and which left us more curious than when we started? After the jump, we break it down.

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The Clark Rockefeller saga has touched many lives. Local music writer Tom Kielty is no exception.

It was a drizzling Sunday afternoon and my girlfriend and I were celebrating our one-year anniversary. We were cracking a lobster at the Barking Crab and lamenting Manny Ramirez’s latest hi-jinks before we headed to Fenway for the last game of the Yankees series.

It was then that an “amber alert” came up on the television newscast. A father by the name of Clark Rockefeller had kidnapped his daughter on a supervised visit. Little did anyone know that by the end of the week Manny would be headed west and Mr. Rockefeller would begin leading investigators toward a seemingly bottomless Pandora’s Box of fraudulent identities and blurry memories. Little did I know that this summer storm planned on tossing some precipitation my way. (more…)

Every Thursday, Francis Storrs will take you inside the corridors of high-stakes finance and dealmaking. This week: Who would want to be in a club that would have Clark Rockefeller as a member?

If nothing else, Clark Rockefeller understood the power of suggestion. The way a bit of name dropping would suggest he was Hollywood writer Christopher Crowe. The power that little more than a fancy business card had to convince people believe he was a scion of noble lineage. In Boston, it was his membership in the ritzy Algonquin Club that did more than anything else to burnish his image as a monied man of leisure.

In Boston today, as a century ago, membership in a private club still carries substantial social currency. The club you choose for your drinking, dining and socializing—or, to be more precise, the club that ultimately lets you in—still says a lot about how you are as viewed by a certain cross-section of society. (more…)

In this Web 2.0 world, you’re nobody until you have a Wikipedia entry. The user-generated encyclopedia has become the go-to source for people who want to know more about a historical figure or celebrity, and don’t particularly care about all the details.

Which got us thinking. What identity has the Internet intelligentsia bestowed upon Clark Rockefeller? Wikipedia users have followed the lead of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and dubbed the alleged kidnapper Christian Gerhartsreiter.

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We’ve been dashing into the office every day this week, breathlessly anticipating the latest Clark Rockefeller-related stroke of genius on the cover of the Herald. While nothing has come quite as close to the genius that is the tabloid’s Crockefeller treatment (Adam Reilly sums up its brilliance nicely), we keep hoping the press will find yet another pun-friendly identity in the alleged kidnapper’s history.

You can imagine our disappointment when we saw a grainy surveillance image of John Buonomo hunched over a copy machine on the Herald’s front page.

Have we really reached the last of all Clark Rockefeller’s identities?*

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