The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor - Softcover

Seal, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452298032 ISBN 13: 9780452298033

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2012

Synopsis

In 2008, Clark Rockefeller, wealthy scion of a great American family, made headlines when he kidnapped his own daughter and vanished. The FBI and police were baffled. Despite tips and apparent sightings pouring in from the outraged public, every lead was a dead end, because 'Clark Rockefeller' did not exist. In this gripping work of investigative journalism, Mark Seal digs into the life and lies of this audacious criminal. Fast-paced and well researched this bizarre tale mixes fraud, imposters, kidnap and murder in one riveting story.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Seal is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where his piece on Gerhartsreiter was a finalist for a 2010 National Magazine Award. He is also the author of Wildflower. He lives in Aspen, Colorado.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

When the fingerprints came back from the lab, one thing was finally clear: the kidnapper was definitely not a Rockefeller. He was Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, a forty-seven-year-old German immigrant who had come to America as a student in 1978. Shortly after his arrival, he disappeared into what the Boston district attorney would call “the longest con I've seen in my professional career.” The elaborate, labyrinthine nature of Gerhartsreiter's shapeshifting adventures, from the time he set foot in this country as a seventeen-year-old student right up to his disappearance, makes his story more bizarre than any gifted writer of fiction could possibly invent.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0452298032
• ISBN 13: 9780452298033
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368