They were an odd-looking couple; he at five-feet-six inches tall and one-hundred-twenty pounds and she at six-feet-one-inches tall and two-hundred pounds. The investigation into their disappearances produced bizarre rumors: a drunken mother claiming the couple were on a covert government mission; postcards suggesting they were living carefree, gallivanting across Europe; and a former house guest who disappeared shortly thereafter, and who subsequently presented himself as a member of one of America’s richest families.

The strange saga of John and Linda Sohus has only a partial ending.

Linda and John Sohus 

John and Linda Sohus had met at “Dangerous Visions,” a science fiction/fantasy bookstore where Linda worked. They married in 1983. By 1985, the twenty-seven-year-old John worked several part-time jobs as a computer programmer as the twenty-eight-year-old Linda still worked at the bookstore while she aspired to be an artist.

Financial struggles forced the couple to live with John’s adopted mother, Didi, in San Marino, California, twelve miles north of Los Angeles.

Wedding Day

In February 1985, Linda told friends and family that she and John were each interviewing for jobs in New York. Four days later, she enthusiastically said that John was offered a position with the government and that she would soon have employment with it as well. She said both were excited about the opportunity but were unable to discuss the nature of the work.

Linda said she and John were to travel to New York for two weeks. The couple were last seen, in California, on February 8.

Big Apple Bound?

Shortly after John and Linda were said to have headed east, several neighbors noticed a patch of ground dug up near the guest house located behind the Sohus main house. They also observed strange-colored smoke and detected a foul odor, both of which were emanating from the guest house chimney.

The Home of Didi Sohus

The guest house was occupied by a man known to the Sohuses as Christopher Chichester. He attributed the stench to plumbing problems. Around the same time, he asked friends where he could dispose of chemicals, had borrowed a chainsaw from a neighbor, and tried to sell a bloodstained rug.

No one thought any of the house guest’s actions were suspicious enough to report to authorities.

Christopher Chichester

When John and Linda had not returned home after a couple of weeks, family and friends repeatedly asked Didi about them. The habitual alcoholic would only say they were on a “secret mission” doing government work and were unable to contact anyone.

Didi repeated the same claims when questioned by police, adding that her “source,” whom she refused to identify, was keeping her apprised of their movements. When pressed about the nature of the supposed covert work, Didi said all she knew was that satellites were involved.

Police were obviously skeptical of Didi’s sensational claims, as neither John nor Linda had the background or training typical of those enlisted for clandestine activities, but they could do little, as there was no evidence or suggestion of foul play or anything sinister.

Didi Sohus

John and Linda’s family and friends continued to press Didi. Her stories varied and were sensationalized depending on how hard she had hit the bottle. She was always, however, consistent in her contention that her son and daughter-in-law were on a “secret mission” and unable to speak to family and friends.

The Couple Is Supposedly On A “Secret Mission”

In June 1985, three months after John and Linda had supposedly left for New York, several of the couple’s friends received puzzling picture postcards from Paris. One mailed to Sue Coffman, read, “Dear Sue, Kind of miss New York. Oops. But this can be lived with.”  The card was signed “John and Linda,” but Sue felt the diction did not sound like either of them.

Neither John nor Linda had made any mention of a trip abroad and neither held a passport enabling them to do so. Investigators found no indication that either had applied for the necessary documentation to travel abroad.

A Postcard From Paris

Linda’s mother, Susan Mayfield, soon received a similar postcard from Paris in what also appeared to be in Linda’s handwriting. Another odd message written message read, “I think we need a geography lesson, but not too bad. Linda and John.”

 

A Second Postcard . . .

A postcard sent to another of Linda’s friends read, “Not quite New York, but not bad. See you later. Linda and John.”

Three handwriting experts compared the writing on the postcards to samples of Linda’s handwriting. Two concluded they were not written by her, while the third believed she had written them under duress.

. . . And A Third

In the following month of July, three months after saying little to police, DiDi Sohus had a change of heart, as she too filed a missing person’s report on her son and daughter-in-law. She identified her “source” as her former guest house tenant Christopher Chichester, who had recently moved out of the guest house leaving no forwarding address.

A sober Didi also told police that John’s pickup was missing, but she could not recall when she had last seen it. Still, there was no proof or suggestion that any crime had been committed, and the investigation again stalled.

The Guest Is Gone

Shortly after speaking with the police, Didi sold her house and moved to a trailer park. Following her death in February 1988, her family sold the house.

Didi Dies

Three years later, in November 1988, a man calling himself Christopher Crowe tried to sell a pickup to the son of a local minister in Greenwich, Connecticut. The young man was interested until told Crowe told him he did not have the truck’s title. After learning of an outstanding lien on the vehicle, the would-be buyer sensed something was amiss and contacted the Greenwich police.

The truck was found to be registered to John Sohus, missing for three-and-a-half years from residential Los Angeles, over two-thousand-eight-hundred miles away.

John’s Pickup

Greenwich police determined Christopher Chichester and Christopher Crowe were the same person. He had again hastily left the area and could not be located.

Gone Again

Nearly five years later, in May 1994, the owners of the former Sohus property hired workers to install a swimming pool in the back yard. During the excavation, the workmen discovered three plastic bags and a fiberglass box full of dismembered sections of a human skeleton.

A forensic anthropologist determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head.

Bones Found

The remains were consistent with those of John Sohus but could not be conclusively identified as his because no jawbone or teeth were found to compare to dental records, and there were no DNA samples from any of the adopted John’s biological relatives.

Luminol tests in the guest house on the former Sohus property revealed large amounts of blood indicating telltale signs of murder. Because there was no record of John and Linda’s blood, however, it could not be determined whose blood it was.

John’s Brutal End?

The former Sohus guest house resident’s borrowing of a chainsaw, attempting to sell a bloodstained rug, and inquiring of how to discard chemicals shortly after John and Linda’s disappearances now seemed increasingly suspicious.

Christopher Chichester was now sought for questioning in connection with the disappearances of John and Linda Sohus.

Chichester Sought

Investigators determined Christopher Chichester’s real name was Christian Gerhartstreiter, and that he was a German national who had immigrated to the United States in 1978 from what was then West Germany.

Gerharstreiter had come to America as an exchange student, had graduated from high school in Connecticut and briefly attended the University of Wisconsin. In 1981, he wed a woman named Amy Duhnke in Madison, but it was only a “green card marriage” as she says he left her the day after tying the knot.

Gerharstreiter then moved to California and began calling himself Christopher Chichester. He soon moved into the guest house on the Sohus property.

Christian Gerhartsreiter

1978 INS Photo

Christian Gerhartstreiter, alias Christopher Chichester, alias Christopher Crowe, eluded authorities for the following fourteen years. When he was finally found, he was masquerading as a member of one of America’s wealthiest families.

In 2008, a man calling himself Clark Rockefeller was arrested in Baltimore for kidnapping his seven-year-old daughter during a custody dispute with his ex-wife. He had taken the child and fled one week earlier from Massachusetts, where he had assaulted a social worker supervising his visitation.

Fingerprints identified the man as Christian Gerhartstreiter. An investigation determined he had taken the Rockefeller name in 1993 and began presenting himself as a descendant of the famous family.

A Man Of Many Names

Under the name Clark Rockefeller, Christian Gerharstreiter married in 1994 and fathered his daughter, Reigh, in 2001. His wife, Sandra Boss, a senior executive at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, filed for divorce in 2006 and was awarded custody of their child.

“Rockefeller” was granted three supervised visits a year; it was during one of these visits that he abducted his daughter. He was sentenced to five years in prison for the kidnapping.

                                      Gerhartsreiter    Reigh And Sandra

In 2010, investigators finally located a blood relative of John Sohus who provided a DNA sample. Advanced technology confirmed the bones found in the backyard of the former Sohus home in 1994 were those of John.

The Remains Are Confirmed As John’s

In 2011, while he was still imprisoned for the kidnapping of his daughter, Christian Gerharstreiter was charged with the murder of John Sohus. On April 10, 2013, he was convicted and sentenced to twenty-seven-years-to-life in prison.

Gerharstreiter is serving his sentence at California’s San Quentin Prison. His requests for parole in 2015 and 2016 were rejected. He will next be eligible for parole in December 2029, at which time he will be sixty-nine-years-old. He denies any involvement in the murder of John Sohus and the disappearance of Linda Sohus, saying he believes Linda murdered John and is still living in hiding.

Christian The Killer

Authorities instead believe Linda Sohus, like her husband John, was murdered by Christian Gerhartstreiter. Using advanced radar technology, police re-examined the former Sohus property to search for her remains, but found nothing.

Linda is still officially listed as a missing person. At the time of her disappearance in 1985, she was twenty-eight-years-old, stood six-feet-one-inches tall and weighed approximately two-hundred pounds. She had a muscular, stocky build, and was physically strong. Her eyes were blue and her naturally red hair was dyed blond.  She enjoyed science fiction and fantasy novels and was a member of an organization of like-minded members.

Linda Is Still Missing

Linda was also an artist who often used the name “Cody” on her artwork.

Linda Aside Her Artwork

Linda Sohus would today be sixty-seven-years-old. If you have any information on her disappearance, please contact the San Marino, California, Police Department at 626-300-0720.

Still Seeking Answers

In addition to her love of art and science fiction, Linda was also an animal lover. Shortly before she said she was traveling to New York, she had boarded the couple’s four cats (some sources say six cats) at a local kennel and paid in advance for a two-week stay. Even after several months had passed, the owner had kept the cats.

Shortly after the Sohuses friends and family members began receiving the Paris postcards, a woman saying she was Linda’s friend came to the kennel and asked for the cats. Faced with eventually having to put the pets down if they were unclaimed, the kennel owner released them to the woman.

The name the woman gave the kennel owner was determined bogus and her real identity, as well as any connection she has to John and Linda’s disappearances, is still unknown.

 

Who Claimed The Cats?

Christian Gerhartsreiter is a man of many names and sensationalized stories. Among the bogus claims he has made at various points of his muddled life are to be the son of Ann Carter, a child actress of the 1940s, to have been a secret Russian Cold War spy, and to have been a television producer of the revival of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

After moving out of the Sohus guest home, Gerhartsreiter, under the name Christopher Crowe, had worked for the S.N. Phelps & Company brokerage firm. He was fired after it was discovered he had provided a false social security number to them. The number used by the man who later masqueraded as a Rockefeller was the social security number of the “Son of Sam” David Berkowitz.

From Berkowitz To The Rockefellers

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/119867627/jonathan-robert-sohus

 

 

SOURCES:

• Charley Project
• CNN
• Doe Network
• In Investigation Discovery
• 48 Hours
• Los Angeles Times
• San Marion Tribune
• Unsolved Mysteries