Summary German immigrant faces the rest of his life in prison for murder.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Christian Gerhartsreiter masqueraded in the US as many significant people: an heir to the fabled Rockefeller fortune, a movie producer and a wizard of Wall Street among them.
Now the German immigrant faces the rest of his life in prison for murder. He is due to be sentenced Thursday.
Gerhartsreiter, 52, has insisted he is innocent.
A jury convicted him of first-degree murder in the death of a man whose bones were found buried at a California home. John Sohus vanished with his young wife, Linda, in 1985. No trace of her has been found.
At Gerhartsreiter s trial, witnesses testified about the stranger who came into their elegant town, befriending church members who invited him into their homes.
Variously known as Chris Crowe, Chip Smith and Clark Rockefeller, Gerhartsreiter had made his way into high society and important jobs, married a wealthy woman and controlled her funds.
But his identity unraveled when he kidnapped their daughter during a custody dispute.
The resulting publicity led California authorities to revisit the Sohus disappearance. His bones were found in 1994.
Gerhartsreiter was near the end of his sentence for kidnapping his young daughter when he was charged with murder.
Defense attorney Jeffrey Denner said that Gerhartsreiter probably was his own worst enemy.
"The way he went through life deceiving people did not make him very likable to the jury," Denner said. "But that doesn t make him a killer."
The prosecutor did not seek the death penalty, so Gerhartsreiter faces a maximum sentence of 27 years to life in prison.
