I have reporting on Rockefeller in today’s editions of the New York Post and the London Telegraph:

From the Post:

Creepy con man Clark Rockefeller posed as the long-lost brother of serial killer David Berkowitz and tried to use the Son of Sam’s Social Security number to get his Wall Street broker’s license.

And in the Telegraph:

His calling card, embossed with its Latin family motto, boasted the upper-class credentials of a peer: Christopher Chichester, 13th baronet. But all was not as it seemed. Not only was the name of the bespectacled young man with the well-pressed suits and “English” accent bogus, but so, too, were his aristocratic claims. The so-called Chichester (just one of a string of aliases used by the man who also passed himself off as a member of the wealthy Rockefeller oil clan) is in a Boston prison charged with abducting his seven-year-old daughter, Reigh, a London schoolgirl, and embarking on his latest attempt to hide in plain sight, this time in Baltimore under the name Chip Smith.

I get a plug in today’s Herald:

True-crime author Dave Copeland, a Melrose native, posted on his blog Wednesday that Rockefeller, using the alias Christopher Crowe, worked for New York-based Nikko Securities in the late 1980s but was fired for incompetence.

Copeland’s sources also said Crowe worked for now-defunct Kidder Peabody as an international sales manager.

And then in the comments of the same article:

Don’t hold back: Dave Copeland wrote that legendary VC Sam Phelps fired “Christopher Crowe” (another goddam alias!) for using David Berkowitz’ (Son-of-Sam serial killer’s) SS# on his securities license application.

Yesterday’s posts drove my site traffic up 10-fold and landed me a gig feeding my reporting on this story to the New York Post. Look for any additional work I do on this story there.

The following is a scanned image of the business card Christopher Chichester, now believed to be Clark Rockefeller, used in the 1980′s while living in San Marino:

Copyright © 2008 by Dave Copeland. All Rights reserved. Attribute all references to Dave Copeland.

Also posed as USC student in 1980s

Copyright © 2008 by Dave Copeland. All Rights reserved. Attribute all references to Dave Copeland.

Legendary vulture capitalist Stan Phelps fired Christopher Crowe — now believed to be the same man being held under the name Clark Rockefeller in Boston for abducting his seven year old daughter — for submitting a securities license application that used the social security number of David Berkowitz.

“Stan called me and said ‘You got to fire this guy’,” said one of Crowe’s former co-workers at Nikko Securities International, where he went to work after being fired by Phelps. Phelps “told me when he put the guy’s social security number through, it came back as David Berkowitz…I’m not sure if it was the same guy as Son of Sam, but it was strange.”

The source talked about working with Crowe with Dave Copeland, author of Blood and Volume: Inside New York’s Israeli Mafia. Copeland was the first to report that Crowe posed as a Wall Street trader. His reporting raises new questions on how Crowe was able to skirt the tight background Securities and Exchange Commission requirements for employees of investment firms. In addition to working for Phelps and Nikko, Crowe worked briefly for Kidder Peabody.

The job at Kidder Peabody ended suddenly when Crowe told his supervisor he needed a leave of absence to travel to South America, where his parents had been kidnapped and where he needed to pay a ransom. Crowe — who is believed to be he same man as Rockefeller — was fired and never heard from again.

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But one day later, two sources told Copeland, a FBI agent and a Connecticut State Police officer arrived at the offices of both Nikko and Kidder Peabody, looking to question Crowe about his possession of the truck of John Sohus. This week fingerprints matched Rockefeller to Christopher Chichester, a man listed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as a “person of interest” in the 1985 disappernce of Sohus and his wife, Linda.

The source Copeland interviewed Thursday morning said Crowe once threatened a co-worker by saying “The next time you touch something on my desk, I’ll bring in my German Luger.” He also confirmed a previously reported story by Copeland that Crowe claimed to be the director Christopher Crowe, as well as hinting to links to European nobility.

“He affected this accent — I could never tell if it was that of a European national or German,” he said. “I just always assumed he was a German national.”

Meanwhile, Copeland learned Thursday that Rockefeller — under his Chichester persona — posed as a University of Southern California student in 1983 and 1984 and claimed that he was the Baronet of Chichester. Crowe also claimed he was the grandson of Sir Francis Chichester, the first person to sail single-handed around the world by the clipper route.

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As an addendum to my post last night that tied Clark Rockefeller to Wall Street, this Boston Herald time line which ran in yesterday’s additions confirms that John Sohus’s truck was eventually found in Greenwich, Conn.:

1988: A truck belonging to the Sohuses turns up 3,000 miles away in Greenwich, Conn. A man calling himself Christopher Crowe had tried to sell it to the son to a local minister. Rather than buy it, he reports it to police. Authorities determine Chichester and Crowe are the same person.

I seem to have scored a bit of a scoop in painting a more complete picture of his time in Greenwich: My site meter is burning up and I just turned down an invite to be interviewed on the local Fox affiliate.

More to come (hopefully).

Claimed he was famous Hollywood director before disappearing

Copyright © 2008 by Dave Copeland. All Rights reserved. Attribute all references to Dave Copeland.

Correction posted 8/7/07 at 10:30 a.m.: Christopher Crowe is believed to have worked for a short time at Kidder Peabody after leaving Nikko. The original version of this post incorrectly reported he went to work for Lehman Brothers after being fired by Nikko.

Clark Rockefeller, being held for allegedly kidnapping his own daughter and labeled as a “person of interest” in the 1985 disappearance of a California couple, once trained with legendary vulture capitalist Stan Phelps and was sought by Connecticut State Police in late 1988 or 1989, days after disappearing from his high-paying, high-profile Wall Street job.

Rockefeller, who went by the name Christopher Montbattan Crowe at the time, worked for Nikko Securities International in 1987 and 1988 before being fired for incompetence. Almost immediately after departing Nikko, Rockefeller landed a job at Kidder Peabody as international sales manager, according to interviews conducted Wednesday by Dave Copeland, author of Blood and Volume: Inside New York’s Israeli Mafia.

But after two days at Lehman, Rockefeller told his supervisors that he needed to take time off to search for his parents, who he said had gone missing in Afghanistan. A different source said that Crowe told his supervisor his parents had been kidnapped in South America and he would be traveling there to pay a ransom.

Sources said Rockefeller – who told co-workers at Nikko he was film director Christoher Crowe – was dismissed by Kidder Peabody. Rockefeller even invited co-workers to the Greenwich, Conn. guest house he was renting for screenings of “his” movies. Rockefeller claimed he was living in the guest house because his own home was being renovated, a claim that co-workers assumed was one of his tall tales.

The day after his dismissal from Lehman, a Connecticut State Police detective and an FBI agent arrived at the offices of both Lehman and Nikko looking to question Rockefeller.

“It was obvious” that he knew police were closing in on him, the source said.

The source – one of Rockefeller’s former co-workers on Wall Street — told author and investigative journalist Copeland that he believes the Connecticut law enforcement officers were sent on behalf of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to question Rockefeller on his possible involvement in the disappearance of John and Linda Sohus in 1985 from their affluent home in San Marino, Calif., and whether or not he was Christopher Chichester, a con-man linked to the Sohus disappearance.

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