Once so friendly and charming, the man known as Clark Rockefeller respectfully acknowledged the people who would decide his fate, the judge and jury, by standing when they entered and exited. But as for the witnesses—especially those testifying against him—he didn’t even look their way.One afternoon early in the proceedings, as an immigration official gave sketchy accounts of how the defendant had come to America as a young man, I got a tap on the shoulder and a whisper in the ear.“Are you free for a drink this evening?” asked a man who later requested that I not reveal his identity.He told me to meet him at a bar near the courthouse after the proceedings ended for the day. I was nursing a drink when he entered carrying a thick brown envelope. He handed it to me and said simply, “Maybe this will help answer your questions.” Then he breezed back out the door.I opened the envelope and gasped. It was filled with more than a hundred documents—immigration papers, court records, police reports—spelling out in intricate detail the life of the silent, stoic defendant, from his birth certificate to the warrant that had been issued for his arrest the previous summer.I started reading from the beginning: there was a document from his German high school showing that he had graduated; a letter from the company in Bergen where his father, Simon Gerhartsreiter, was employed as a designer, stating that his salary was “1,900 US-Dollar a month”; an Affidavit of Support from Simon, stating that he would support Christian in America with $250 a month “plus health insurance,”
What do You think about The Man In The Rockefeller Suit?
