Rockefeller impersonator pleads not guilty in California murder case
Alhambra, California (CNN) -- Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, a German-born man known for impersonating a Rockefeller, pleaded not guilty Thursday in a Los Angeles County court to a charge of murder.
He is accused of killing his landlady's son, who disappeared in the mid-1980s and whose bones were discovered nine years later in the backyard of what had been his mother's Southern California home.
On Thursday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Candace J. Beason scheduled an April 3 pre-trial hearing in the case.
Last month, another Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, Jared Moses, ruled there was sufficient probable cause to bind Gerhartsreiter over for trial. Gerhartsreiter appeared in court Thursday for his arraignment; he was wearing a blue jail jumpsuit.
The dismembered remains of John Sohus, who was 27 at the time of his 1985 disappearance, were found in 1994 by workers installing a pool at a home his mother once owned in San Marino, California.
At the time of Sohus' disappearance, Gerhartsreiter had been renting a guesthouse from Sohus' mother, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.
During a preliminary hearing last month, a pool builder described how he discovered a skull buried in the yard, and investigators eventually found nearly an entire skeleton. The remains were not identified until 2010.
Robison said evidence showed the bones belonged to Sohus.
During the preliminary hearing, Moses rejected a defense request that Gerhartsreiter be referred to as "Mr. Rockefeller" in court. The defense attorney said he and other attorneys on the team knew Gerhartsreiter as "Mr. Rockefeller."
Gerhartsreiter, who has led a life of multiple identities, has denied involvement in the Sohus case. At one point in his life, Gerhartsreiter assumed the identity of "Clark Rockefeller," a cultured poseur who never seemed to have a job.
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The preliminary court hearing began with an attorney for Christian Gerhartsreiter asking the judge to refer to his 50-year-old client by the last name Rockefeller. But Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Jares Moses said the defendant should be called