Anatomy of the ‘Rockefeller’ manhunt

September 08, 2008 04:52 AM

By Jessica Van Sack
The Boston Herald

BALTIMORE — A courageous real estate agent received most of the credit for tipping off investigators that accused kidnapper Christian Gerhartsreiter had fled to Baltimore. But it turns out authorities got their man last month mostly because sophisticated FBI software tracked him there five days after he snatched his young daughter from a Back Bay street.

“We knew he had certain things on him that put him within a 50-foot radius in Baltimore,” said Noreen Gleason, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston field office. “Problem was, we didn’t know if he was physically down there.”

In an exclusive interview with the Herald, Gleason provided a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse into the 20-person task force of Boston police and FBI agents assigned to find the con man they knew only as Clark Rockefeller and, more importantly, daughter Reigh.

The massive probe mobilized agents throughout the Eastern Seaboard and beyond, investigating many “bread crumbs” he left to disguise his trail. He had told friends about alleged real estate dealings in Florida, so agents lost valuable hours there investigating that false lead. He had made a call to the American Embassy in Peru and told friends he planned to travel there, yet another lie that agents probed.

Forensic analysts at the FBI’s state-of-the-art crime lab in Quantico, Va., pulled several all-nighters analyzing fingerprints.

And by 5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 1, agents were speaking with authorities in Los Angeles, where their kidnapper’s prints came back to a man wanted for questioning in a 1985 homicide.

Gleason and Boston Police Deputy Superintendent Thomas Lee had a decision to make: Should they tell Sandra Boss that the father of her child, the man she shared a home with for 12 years, was a potential murder suspect? They decided against inflicting her with the needless worry before Reigh was found safe.

It was as Boston agents were honing in on his position in Baltimore that Friday that their most substantial lead surfaced. A Baltimore real estate manager called the FBI in New York to say one of her clients, Charles “Chip” Smith, bore a resemblance to the man in the news.

Gleason had what she needed to alert the Baltimore bureau.

“I called around midnight and woke everyone up,” she said. “I was so excited that I could hardly speak. I said ‘Oh my God. You’ve got him.’ And also, at that time we’re thinking he might be good for two homicides. This puts it into a whole different arena.”

By 3 a.m., Baltimore FBI agents were at the Anchorage Marina where they got a glimpse in a window of what they wanted to see: a file with the name “Chip Smith.”

At the imposter’s Ploy Street carriage house, agents set up surveillance.

“It would make sense to do it in the morning ... except that we know Clark doesn’t sleep,” Gleason said, adding he has been described as an insomniac who toils away on the computer all night. “But we didn’t see him up - there weren’t any lights on.”

After Baltimore agents concocted a ruse to lure Gerhartsreiter from his hiding spot, Gleason and BPD’s Lee got into a car and headed to see Boss at the Four Seasons downtown.

“Then I received the call from Baltimore, and I can hear everyone saying, ‘We got her. She’s fine,’ ” Gleason recalled.

Gleason is a former New Jersey state trooper who joined the FBI in 1991 before spending the bulk of her career in New York City targeting drug trafficking and violent gangs. She came to Boston in February, and counts finding little Reigh “Snooks” Storrow Mills Boss as among the highlights of her career.