The suspected con man known to law enforcement as Clark Rockefeller started looking for a new house in Baltimore late last year but only enjoyed his new home in historic Mount Vernon for a few weeks before authorities picked him up.
Rockefeller - who called himself Chip Smith and Chip MacLaughlin here - e-mailed a city real estate firm in December requesting assistance with the purchase of a two or three-bedroom home for himself and his 7-year-old daughter, the managing partner of the brokerage said. He pretended he was moving to the city from Chile, she said.
It appears Rockefeller sought to reinvent himself in Baltimore. He created an international sensation when he disappeared from Boston on July 27 with his daughter Reigh and was charged by police with kidnapping her and assaulting a relative.
FOR THE RECORD - Articles published in yesterday's and Monday's editions of The Sun incorrectly reported the name of the owner of Obsidian Realty Co., a Baltimore real estate brokerage whose employees tipped off the FBI to a wanted fugitive suspected of abducting his daughter from Boston. The owner is Henry J. MacLaughlin Jr.
THE SUN REGRETS THE ERROR
Authorities tracked leads to New York, South America and the Caribbean, but in the story focused here on Saturday when federal agents grabbed him from his newly-purchased house on Ploy Street where he'd made elaborate arrangements for himself and his daughter. Authorities are still trying to figure out his real name.
"He was painting a picture that he was a real urbanite," said Bruce Boswell, the Baltimore man who sold a modest catamaran to Rockefeller. "He was saying that he knew a lot about Baltimore."
He recently divorced Sandra Boss, who is a partner with the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. And he'd lived for several years in Boston telling people he was related to the monied Rockefellers, which the family has denied. Yesterday, he appeared in handcuffs and leg irons in an East Baltimore District Court on North Avenue.
Correctional officers ushered Rockefeller the courtroom about 9:30 a.m. He wore preppy attire: a blue polo shirt, tan slacks, brown loafers and glasses with thick black rims. A beard covered the lower half of his face and his reddish-orange hair was tussled.
Rockefeller waived his right to an extradition hearing and a detective with the city's fugitive warrant unit said the suspect "wishes to leave" the city. Rockefeller did not have his own attorney present for the hearing, which lasted about 2 minutes.
Satellite trucks from the television networks lined North Avenue and the courtroom was crowded with out-of-town reporters, including those from New York tabs, whose reporters have swarmed Fells Point and Mount Vernon fighting for scoops. A headline in yesterday's New York Post called a Baltimore marina manager a "hero" because of his role helping the FBI lure the suspect out of his apartment. "Hero tells how he outfoxed con artists," the Post said on its front-page.
