Just read Pam Belluck and Sara Rimer’s piece in the Sunday Times yesterday and you will be convinced. The
Photo:Essdrass M. Suarez
crime of Clark Rockefeller – the name under which the man who kidnapped his daughter Reigh and was arrested in Baltimore , was still known a week ago- is a crime of lèse-majesté. Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, a German national, usurped the great name of Rockefeller, after having assumed several other identities.
One may wonder what majesty we are talking about. The founder of the Rockefeller dynasty, John D. Rockefeller, is with Andrew Carnegie the emblematic figure of the Robber Barons; Fortunes built by crushing -legally or not- competitors and labor rights and redeemed in lavish philanthropy. In the early nineties Christian Gerhartsreiter, previously Christopher Crowe, became Clark Rockefeller and penetrated the society of people who are honored to breeze the same air as a Rockefeller. Matter of tastes. Pam Belluck and Sara Rimer seem to suggest that we shall feel sorry for this blessed society who saw zip through the “ready-made” Rockefeller. Mrs Burling, the wife of the State Senator of New Hampshire, hinted that she was smarter than the rest of the New England aristocratic pack: she smelled a rat when the con man committed the faute de goût of talking about money, which contradicts “blue blood” manners. Alas, had she then spoken to the New York Times, the New England elite would not longer have admitted such an intruder!
Anyhow, one day the intruder decided to throw down the drain some eighteen years of unchallenged success amongst the New England aristocracy. Why? For love; To kidnap his daughter Reigh whom he sees during supervised visits, though he is not a child abuser. His chances? close to zero. Perfectly absurd gamble and totally… noble. To me, this puts the man into the category of people with aristocratic guts (and more). Chapeaux bas devant Mr Gerhartsreiter!
But what do I know? I am just a French guy of obscure, peasant origins, who moreover, has not seen his daughters in almost three years. They have been kidnapped by sicko ex-wife with the precious help of Manhattan Family Court!
