Original subtitles

On this episode of "expedition files."

"The exorcist," perhaps the scariest horror film

of all time, but behind the terror is a true story.

For decades, the identity of the real child said

to be possessed by the devil... Lord Satan...

was buried in mystery.

Now, we reveal all.

Then, 2,000 years ago, a hallucinogenic honey is said

to have brought down an entire Roman army

in what is considered history's first act of biological warfare.

For centuries, the deadly recipe was

considered lost, but has it now been found?

And we expose the shocking story of a man who posed

as a member of america's richest family, the rockefellers,

leaving behind a trail of deception,

outrage, and possibly... murder.

In the corridors of time,

are mysteries that defy explanation.

Now, I'm traveling through history itself...

On a search for the truth.

New evidence...

Shocking answers.

I'm Josh gates, and these...

Are my "expedition files."

Did you know Abraham Lincoln was a licensed bartender?

How about that Australia is wider than the moon?

Or that it's illegal to own only one Guinea pig in Switzerland?

Those facts may sound crazy, but they're all 100% accurate.

Look 'em up.

And tonight, we embrace this strange but true concept

to the fullest, delving into three historical mysteries

that all seem too bizarre to be believed.

But in each case, real answers are about to be revealed.

We begin in 1949.

I'm standing on bunker hill road in mount rainier,

Maryland, a peaceful, quiet neighborhood.

But something is about to shatter that silence,

something disturbing.

Inside that house, the young boy who lives there

is anything but at peace.

He's growling in a strange, almost demonic voice

and lashing out uncontrollably.

Soon, the catholic church will get involved,

leading to a terrifying exorcism.

The events will inspire a best-selling novel,

which in turn becomes the iconic horror film "the exorcist."

The real child behind it all will become known to the public

only by the alias "Roland Doe." But who is he really?

What becomes of him?

And most importantly,

is he actually possessed by the devil?

Of god!

In 1971, William blatty's terrifying novel,

"the exorcist," hits bookshelves.

Inspired by rumors of a real-life possession

of a young child, it sells millions of copies

and becomes a cultural phenomenon.

Two years later, the story leaps onto the big

screen and becomes a massive hit.

Audiences scream, critics rave.

It is widely considered one of the greatest horror films

of all time.

But none of this would have been possible

without the real boy, known by the nickname Roland Doe.

In 1949, he's 13 years old, an only child who lives

with his parents in the Maryland suburbs.

Roland loves spending time with his aunt tilly,

playing with her spirit board.

She's a spiritualist, someone who believes the dead

can communicate with the living.

It's seen as a bit of harmless fun.

They spend evenings together, asking questions in the dark.

So far, pretty straightforward.

But from here on out, the story will take terrifying

twists and turns, the details of which are

gathered from those involved. Is it all true, is it not?

Well, buckle up, because things are about to get supernatural.

According to his mother and father,

it starts small, a phantom dripping sound,

scratching beneath the floorboards,

and a picture of Christ shaking and falling to the ground.

The noises continue for ten straight nights,

and then they suddenly stop.

Three days later, a new sound begins...

the phantom creak of shoes

pacing softly around Roland's bed.

Then, in late January, tragedy strikes.

Aunt tilly dies.

After that, the strange activity only seems

to grow worse.

And Roland's mother begins to wonder if her sister's spirit

has joined the voices from the beyond.

Aunt tilly, if that's you, knock three times.

Or perhaps it's something worse.

Aunt tilly, stop!

The knocking in the night continues,

and the scratching only grows louder.

According to the family, Roland's behavior also

becomes disturbing.

He speaks in a strange, guttural voice,

murmuring Latin phrases he does not know.

Objects near him move without being touched.

He lashes out at his family with a frightening fury...

then says he doesn't remember a thing.

Roland's family is deeply religious,

and so, desperate for help, his mother turns

to father Edward Hughes, a local jesuit priest.

Over the course of two weeks of meetings with the boy,

Hughes grows alarmed as Roland's condition worsens.

With no clear answers, in February of 1949,

Hughes arranges for him to be admitted

to Georgetown university hospital for observation.

But doctors find no medical explanation for his outbursts,

so father Hughes decides to act,

performing an unsanctioned exorcism on Roland.

According to father Hughes, he begins his ritual

by sprinkling holy water and praying for Roland,

and the holy spirit.

But midway through, the agitated boy

suddenly breaks free...

and strikes father Hughes, slashing his arm.

The exorcism is abandoned.

With both doctors and the priest apparently

unable to help, Roland is sent home.

Let's be clear, everything we've just told you

is what happened according to Roland's family.

Let me see.

Weeks later, it is said the manifestations

take a disturbing new turn.

Roland apparently wakes with scratches on his skin.

At first, they're just lines.

But then an enigmatic word appears...

"Louis."

To the family, the message is unmistakable.

They have relatives in the city of St. Louis.

They need to go there now.

They leave Maryland and make the trip west,

staying with family in the quiet suburb of bel-nor.

But the frightening disturbances continue.

And soon, word reaches local St. Louis priest,

father bowdern.

At 52, bowdern is a scholar and seasoned jesuit priest

who served as a military chaplain in world war ii.

But what he hears from the family is serious enough

that he takes it straight to the archbishop of St. Louis,

who agrees the child must undergo

a second exorcism immediately.

It will become one of the most well-documented exorcisms

in U.S. history, and it is one of the rare times the church

formally sanctions the rite on American soil.

Father bowdern prepares to lead the deliverance,

joined by his assistant, father bishop,

who documents the ordeal in a handwritten journal.

To guide the exorcism, bowdern turns to the church's

ancient manual, the "rituale romanum,"

a book of rites written in Latin,

unchanged for centuries.

He memorizes the prayers and gathers

what is required... a crucifix, holy water,

and the relic of a Saint.

Because once the ritual begins, there's no turning back.

Much of the event takes place here

in a secluded psychiatric wing.

Astoundingly, the exorcism goes on for over a month as bowdern

battles would what he believes is the devil himself.

Mother of god, pray for us.

The session grows ever more violent, more profane.

Bowdern and his assistant

recount the litany of the saints.

Pray for us.

Saint Michael, pray for us.

As they invoke the saints,

it's recorded that the bed begins to shake.

The power of Christ compels you.

Roland lashes out, breaking the priest's nose.

But the men continue their prayers.

Then father bowdern notices a shift.

The boy grows suddenly calm, almost himself again.

Seizing the moment, bowdern acts.

Will you accept this baptism?

- Yeah. - Almighty and ever-loving god...

To their surprise, Roland agrees.

He renounces Satan.

According to the priest's diary,

what happens next is unforgettable.

Roland cries out, declaring himself to be

- the archangel St. Michael... - In the name of father...

wielding a fiery sword.

I command you, Satan, to leave this body now!

Now... now!

Depart! Depart! Depart!

And after hellish month of ritual, violence,

and perceived possession, just like that, it's over.

Roland seems, at last, to be at peace.

Whatever dark presence had haunted him

now appears to be gone.

After the ordeal, Roland returns home to Maryland.

He and his parents never speak publicly of what happened.

The only record of all of this is the remarkable diary

kept by father bishop.

For the next 70 years, two huge questions

will remain unanswered.

Who was the real boy behind this incredible story

and was he truly possessed by the devil?

Now we may finally have the answers.

For 70 years, the true identity of Roland Doe,

the boy who inspired "the exorcist,"

was shrouded in secrecy.

What was his real name?

And was he actually possessed by the devil?

Now, reverend Anthony Holmes, who's spent years studying

and observing firsthand cases of exorcism,

pulls back the curtain on this spine-chilling story.

Roland was a teenager.

He was in an emotional place. He was grieving his aunt.

And in the middle of his grief,

strange things started happening.

While it's impossible to know whether or not

something supernatural took place,

when you step back and look at it,

the events don't necessarily point to the supernatural.

They point to stress, trauma, and isolation.

They are psychological conditions that could explain

what the family and priests believe they saw.

Much of what we know about Roland's case comes

from the religious perspective of father bishop's diary.

Skeptics argue that those strange events,

the banging sounds in the house,

and the scratches on Roland's skin

could have been produced by a boy in the throes of despair.

But how does that explain the fact that he was speaking

Latin, a language he didn't know?

Some believe it was a case of impressive mimicry,

echoing terms he'd previously heard in the church

and during the exorcisms themselves.

The power of suggestion could deeply take play in this case.

The family was deeply religious.

The priests were around him at all times

people speaking about god or the devil

and things of this nature around him and the family.

For Roland's religious family,

the devil is seen as a real and terrifying force.

And once strange things started happening,

they prioritized seeking help

from the church over the medical community.

Being exposed to that kind of influence at a young age

while also processing the loss of his beloved aunt tilly could

have conditioned Roland's mind to believe he was possessed.

If your family believes it, if your pastor believes it,

if the church believes it,

then you might end up believing it too.

Reverend Holmes is convinced that Roland's ordeal may have

been less about demons and more about the fragile boundaries

of the human mind.

In 1999, the Vatican revisited its understanding of possession.

Priests must first rule out mental illness.

But in the case of Roland,

another huge mystery still remains.

Who was he and what became of him after

his harrowing experience?

In 2021, more than 50 years after the ordeal,

the man once known as Roland Doe dies at the age of 86.

And at that point, journalists around the world

reveal his name, Ronald Edwin hunkler.

After the exorcism, Ronald hunkler

went on to live a seemingly ordinary life.

He graduated from high school in 1954.

He pursued an engineering career and worked at NASA

for over 40 years.

He was even part of the team that helped develop technology

for the Apollo missions.

But he never spoke publicly about the exorcism.

To colleagues, he was just another engineer.

While the detailed accounts in father bishop's diary

firmly suggest a supernatural culprit,

we now know this infamous story may be more about childhood

grief than the dangers of the devil.

Ronald hunkler built a quiet, grounded life,

raising three children and distancing himself

from those events in the Maryland suburbs in 1949.

And who can blame him?

When your most terrifying childhood experience

becomes one of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters,

who wouldn't want to stay out of the spotlight?

From a demonic mystery to something strangely sweeter.

The year is 65 b.C.,

and we are deep in the hills of the pontic kingdom,

what will eventually be called Turkey.

The pontics are at war with the romans,

and they are vastly outnumbered.

But not to worry, they've got a plan to strike back,

which brings us to these Clay pots.

So what's inside? Weapons?

Maybe explosives. Actually, it's honey.

And soon it will be deployed into one of the wildest

military maneuvers of all time, one that ends in the complete

massacre of 1,000 attacking Roman soldiers.

So how does honey kill an army?

To find out, we comb through the evidence to finally reveal

the secret of history's stickiest trap.

2,000 years ago in ancient Turkey,

two great armies are battling for dominance.

The romans and the pontics.

Rome, at this time, is a mighty republic,

controlling a vast swath of the globe.

Practically every piece of land that touches

the mediterranean sea is Roman,

except for a rather large chunk known as...

"the pontic kingdom."

For the next several years, the romans and the pontics

violently clash over this valuable territory,

under the command of two opposing and legendary leaders.

On one side is pompey,

a notorious general in the Roman army.

He cultivates a reputation for ruthlessness

and is known as the "teenage butcher,"

after winning several great victories as a young man.

On the opposite side is the pontic king, mithridates,

a legend in his own right,

and not about to go down without a fight.

After all, he's resisted the romans

since before pompey was born.

But who is mithridates?

To really understand him, to rewind a bit.

Mithridates ascends to the throne as a boy

after his father's sudden and suspicious death.

Widely believed to be the work of poison administered

by none other than mithridates' own mother.

Talk about family drama.

With her husband dead, mithridates' mom rules

in his place until the boy comes of age and claims

what is rightfully his.

Fearing that his mom might now poison him,

he imprisons her where she dies.

With his power secured, king mithridates

becomes famed for his shrewd intelligence,

supposedly speaking 22 languages.

He also turns all that poison-related childhood trauma

into a lifelong project.

Toxicology becomes mithridates' true expertise,

learning how to create various poisons and measure the dose.

He often tests out deadly ingredients like nightshade,

hemlock, arsenic, and lead on criminals,

observing their effects

and looking for potential antidotes.

Over the years, mithridates

becomes so engrossed with elixirs of death,

at times, he even tests them on himself.

Kids, don't try this at home.

But his obsession with poisons doesn't end there.

He also turns his lethal recipes into weapons of war,

from venom-tipped arrows and flaming oils

to unleashing wasps and wild beasts into enemy tunnels.

He fights dirty and brilliantly, which brings us back to his war

with the romans and general pompey

and a poisonous plan to take the general out.

In 65 b.C., more than a thousand of pompey's Roman soldiers

trudge through the treacherous caucasus mountains

on their way to attack the pontic kingdom.

Starving and spent, they stumble upon

what looks like a gift from the gods,

bowls of delicious golden honey left out

in the open near a quiet village.

Too hungry to question it, the romans dig in.

But this is no sweet treat. It's a trap.

And soon, the Roman army will be dead.

But how?

Modern science finally has the answers.

In 65 b.C., an army of soldiers under the mighty Roman

general pompey stumble into a literal honey trap,

laid by enemy king mithridates.

Over the next few hours, the men dip into the sugary bounty,

but then they begin to feel strange.

Some hallucinate,

others become physically ill, and soon they grow weak,

collapse, and slip into unconsciousness.

With the romans helpless,

mithridates' forces face no resistance at all.

Sources say, "around 1,000 legionnaires are all wiped out

in a sticky, deadly ambush."

As for their leader, pompey, he survives the trap,

but is purportedly enraged, swearing revenge.

Over the next two years, he unleashes hell,

crushing the last of mithridates' forces one by one.

Realizing defeat by pompey is inevitable,

mithridates decides to take his own life with,

you guessed it, poison.

But in a cruel twist,

his suicide attempt doesn't work.

Turns out, years of testing small doses of poison

on himself has made him immune.

With poison off the table, he asks his loyal bodyguard

to do what no toxin could, finish him with a sword.

Despite losing the war and his life,

mithridates' honey trap becomes one of his greatest triumphs

and an enduring historical mystery.

For centuries, experts have wondered exactly how

he managed to concoct a honey so deadly

that it alone incapacitated the Roman army.

But in 2023, historian and emergency doctor

Matthew d. Turner

discovered the truth about what turned this sweet

nectar into a biological weapon.

Given mithridates' wide knowledge of poisons

and his reputation for poisoning,

you might think that he had spiked the honey with something,

something like arsenic, which he was fond of using.

This was not actually the case.

After combing through the historical records,

I found that the valley where mithridates is said to have

laid his trap contains a large amount of plants called

rhododendron ponticum, also known as "mountain Rose,"

a plant which is well known for the poison in its nectar.

And what's more, the bees in this valley only pollinate

a tiny two square miles around their beehive.

And what flower do the bees pollinate in this valley?

Mountain Rose.

When the bees consume the nectar of the mountain Rose plants,

the toxins make their way into the honey.

Locals call it "mad honey,"

but science calls it grayanotoxin poisoning.

This stuff doesn't mess around.

It hijacks your nervous system, slows your heart,

and blurs your vision. The result?

Up to 24 hours of wild, woozy misery

with vomiting and diarrhea. Sounds fun.

Essentially, when you're poisoned by grayanotoxins,

your body is unable to really stop or slow down

any of its processes.

You just keep sweating and sweating and sweating.

Your body is just unable to stop itself.

Gray a no toxins can have wildly different effects

at very different dosages.

Even today, very small amounts of mad honey are actually used

for medicinal purposes, for treating high blood

pressure, diabetes, and even low libido.

But even a tiny change in the dosage

can be very toxic and deadly.

It seems mithridates had perfected

his own secret formula.

If the poisoned honey had been too weak,

the Roman soldiers could have fought back.

But if the mix was too strong,

the first few to drink it would have fallen ill immediately,

warning off their comrades from taking a taste.

Mithridates diluted the poison just enough so that the Roman

soldiers all ate the honey, but had a high enough

concentration so that they were poisoned by the honey.

This was very much a goldilocks scenario of poisoning.

So according to Dr. Turner,

we now know how mithridates pulled off

his honey trap so effectively, but one question still lingers.

How did pompey not anticipate this kind of attack?

Given mithridates' reputation for using poison against

his enemies, you'd think pompey

would have seen this coming a mile away.

It seems pretty unlikely that pompey

would not have been unaware of this as a possibility.

However, it's possible he simply didn't care.

I think part of it may have been arrogance on pompey's part.

At this point, it seemed inevitable that pontic

resistance would soon be crushed, as it was.

Mithridates actually sent pompey a peace offer,

but pompey refused it 'cause he wanted, like,

a total crushing victory, and he got it,

even at the cost of thousands of his own men.

Although the romans claimed ultimate victory

on the battlefield, no one will ever forget the deadly sweet

legacy of their enemies.

Mithridates masterfully created a blend of honey

that wiped out an army, but he also did something else.

He laid the groundwork for the concept of

biological warfare,

from poison-tipped arrows and plague-ridden corpses

tossed over medieval castle walls,

all the way to the 2001 Anthrax attacks...

biological warfare has long been

a tragic fixture of human conflict,

and it all stems from a simple pot of honey.

Sickly sweet, indeed.

It's August 2nd, 2008, and I'm in front

of an apartment complex in Baltimore, Maryland.

This man has just been told over the phone

that his boat is sinking, but it's a trap.

The call came from these officers, and they're arresting

him for kidnapping his seven-year-old daughter.

So who is he?

Well, he claims to be Clark rockefeller,

fine art collector, wall street phenom,

and a guy with a last name that makes him heir to one

of the most powerful families in the nation.

But in the weeks that follow, investigators and the world

will discover this rockefeller is, in fact, an imposter,

one of the most prolific fraudsters in American history,

and shocking new details reveal he may also be

a cold-blooded murderer.

The man who would claim to be a rockefeller

is born in 1961 in Germany with a very different name,

Christian Karl gerhartsreiter. His childhood is unexceptional,

growing up in a modest working class family.

Then, as a young man, he moves to the United States,

landing in Connecticut as an exchange student.

He develops a passion for acting, but for him,

life itself is a performance. His first lie sets the stage.

He convinces his American host family he comes from wealthy

German nobility, when in truth, his background is anything but.

Two years later, he heads to the mid west

and briefly enrolls as a film student

at the university of Wisconsin.

There, he adopts his first new persona,

naming himself Christopher gerhart.

In 1981, the so-called Christopher hits

a bump in the road, his visa is about to expire,

so he comes up with a manipulative scheme.

He persuades a woman named Amy into marrying him

just so he can get his green card.

He's now a permanent U.S. resident,

and before the ink is dry on the wedding day certificate,

he skips town.

Ultimately, Amy will file for divorce,

never hearing from Christopher again.

In 1982, Christian lands in the wealthy suburb

of San Marino, California.

Using a fake ID under a new alias, Christopher chichester,

he cons his way into the city's elite social circles...

claiming to be descended from British royalty,

with ties to lord mount bat ten and sir Francis chichester.

To strangers, he's posh.

But his living arrangements are far from upper crust.

Still, with charm and cunning, he manages to land a rent-free

spot in the pool house of Ruth sohus,

a wealthy widow he meets through San Marino's high society.

But tensions start to rise when Ruth's family comes to stay...

her son John, a computer programmer,

and his wife Linda, an artist.

John grows uneasy.

The more time he spends around him, the more questions John

has about this so-called Christopher chichester,

a man who claims he has noble British roots,

yet lives in a pool house with no clear job and,

stranger still, no clear past.

After a year of rising tensions, John and Linda

apparently head out of town, leaving a message for Ruth

that they've taken a business trip to New York.

When they don't return,

Ruth grows anxious until postcards arrive claiming

the couple is now traveling through Europe.

Two months go by, and there's no further communication.

Distraught, Ruth files a missing persons report.

John and Linda are never seen again,

and the man living with Ruth known as Christopher chichester

vanishes soon after... questions swirl.

Did he have something to do with the couple's disappearance?

The trail of clues will lead us to one of the richest

and most famous families in American history.

After the suspicious disappearance of his landlord's

son and daughter-in-law, conman Christian gerhartsreiter

ditches his alias, Christopher chichester,

and moves across the country.

He pops up in greenwich, Connecticut,

as Christopher Crowe, a smooth-talking finance guy.

That is, until his lack of business experience

gets him fired.

In the mid-'90s, he lands in New York,

where he takes on his most outrageous persona yet.

Meet Clark rockefeller,

eccentric heir to the affluent rockefeller family.

The rockefellers are one of the wealthiest dynasties

in america's history.

Patriarch John d. Rockefeller founded standard oil.

His grandson Nelson would go on to be U.S. vice president.

Governor Nelson rockefeller of New York

dominates the scene and the early hours.

To be clear, Christian has no actual connection

to the rockefellers.

Instead, leaning on his charisma,

thorough research, and keen ability to dodge

questions to make his adopted persona work.

And he has a fake social security number

and forged documents handy just in case.

But living life like a rockefeller,

all while avoiding actual rockefellers, is expensive.

Christian needs to find a source of funding fast.

In 1993, while hosting a party, he meets Sandra boss,

a Harvard business school graduate earning over a million

dollars a year at a global management consulting firm.

Christian makes Sandra laugh, and Sandra makes Christian rich.

They're married in nantucket in 1995.

None of his relatives attend, as he claims to have disinvited

them over an undisclosed family drama.

After tying the knot, the honeymoon ends fast.

Christian seizes total control over their lives,

from their finances to their social lives,

even dictating what Sandra can eat.

Honey, that's enough calories for today.

Then in 2001, Sandra gives birth to a daughter,

reigh, who they nickname "snooks."

Ironically, for a man always living a lie,

Christian's love for his biological daughter seems

to be the one true thing in his life.

But that love will also be his undoing.

As years pass, Sandra grows suspicious of why she's never

met any of her husband's rockefeller relatives.

After they relocate to Boston in 2006,

she hires a private investigator.

I'm so sorry, miss boss. I've got some bad news for you.

Although her husband's true identity remains unknown,

she learns one undeniable truth.

He is not Clark rockefeller,

because there is no Clark rockefeller.

He doesn't exist.

In shock, Sandra divorces him and wins custody of snooks.

Losing his beloved daughter apparently devastates Christian.

At the end of his rope, during a supervised visitation

on July 27, 2008, he kidnaps seven-year-old

snooks, triggering a nationwide manhunt that lasts six days,

until a Maryland resident recognizes the fugitive's face

on the news and calls police.

He's got a boat at the local Marina, and authorities fear

he's about to use it to flee with his daughter.

Which brings us back here, August 2, 2008,

outside the Baltimore apartment where so-called

Clark rockefeller has finally been found

and is being placed under arrest.

After 30 years of living lie after lie,

for serial impersonator Christian Karl gerhartsreiter,

the jig is finally up.

In June of 2009, he's sentenced to five years in prison

for custodial kidnapping.

But his legal troubles are only beginning,

because soon the past he's tried so hard to outrun

will come back with a vengeance,

exposing a dark secret that had long been buried.

"The exorcist," inspired by the real-life case of Roland Doe,

is one of the most successful horror movies ever made.

But what's less well known is that the film's production was

plagued by eerie events.

Two actors who played characters that die

in the movie tragically passed away

in real life shortly after filming.

A mysterious fire also destroyed most of the set,

except, unsettlingly, the room of the possessed child

played by Linda Blair.

The crew became so concerned that director William friedkin

brought in a real priest to bless the production.

And the horrors would continue when the film was released,

with multiple viewers reportedly fainting,

and some theaters even arranging

to have ambulances on standby.

We know that art imitates life, but maybe also the afterlife.

Christian gerhartsreiter has been arrested for kidnapping

and exposed as a fraud for assuming the identity

of Clark rockefeller.

As investigators dig deeper, they begin to suspect that.

Christian's past may be darker than anyone realized.

Vanity fair journalist Mark seale years investigating

the story, and he uncovered the shocking truth

about one of Christian's former lives.

In 1994, workers were digging a hole for a new swimming pool

in this home in San Marino, California,

and the blade hit something hard,

and it turned out to be a badly decomposed body.

The authorities later identified the bones

as belonging to John sohus, who had been missing

with his wife, Linda sohus, since 1985.

This is the home of Ruth sohus.

That's right, John sohus' body was found on the same property

where Christian gerhartsreiter lived in the mid-'80s

under the alias Christopher chichester,

right before he skipped town

and took on yet another identity.

It's certainly suspicious, but also circumstantial.

And while the police had tried to track down

this Christopher chichester for questioning,

their search came up.

However, after Clark rockefeller was arrested

for kidnapping, and his story and image

were splashed across the media,

a neighbor of Ruth sohus noticed rockefeller

and chichester appeared to be one and the same.

Now that they found the prime suspect in the John sohus

murder case, they just needed the evidence to prove it.

And it turns out the key to cracking the case

was a plastic bag.

There were two plastic bags that contained some

of the remains of John sohus, and one of them had the logo

of the university of Wisconsin on them, which was quite odd.

That's where Christian had studied

just before he moved to California

and reinvented himself as Christopher chichester.

The prosecution felt this was the smoking gun

that clearly showed Christopher was the killer.

But what was the motive?

The police investigator later told me that Christopher needed

money to start a new life and that somehow he figured

he could get some of Ruth's money.

Maybe John and Linda somehow suspected that things

were not right with Christopher.

He really wasn't who he said he was.

The prosecution's theory was that Christian realized

he was about to be exposed as a fraud.

A confrontation may have followed,

leading to the murder of John and possibly Linda as well.

Lawyers argued it was is exactly the kind

of manipulative scheme you'd expect from a career con man.

The jury agreed.

They found Christian guilty and sentenced him to 27 years

in prison for the murder of John sohus.

As for Linda, she remains missing.

The tragedy of this whole thing is John and Linda sohus.

This isn't just a fun story about somebody who fooled

people with a big name.

It's a tragic story about the loss of a young man

who was in the in the prime of his life,

and Linda was an artist, and this young couple,

who everyone seemed to love, are gone.

Christian gerhartsreiter left untold damage in his wake.

His deceptions ripped lives apart,

including those of the people who loved him the most.

Christian was a master at... Making people believe.

His wife, Sandra, said in the trial

that she may have had a blind spot

'cause he was very charming, very intelligent,

had all of the trappings of sophistication.

Christian just shedded one identity for another

and just kept moving forward, but then kidnapping

of his daughter caused his whole world to be exposed to crash.

And as for Christian, to this day, he insists that while

he's guilty of living borrowed lives, he's innocent of murder.

He fought his conviction on appeal twice,

in 2015 and 2016, but both attempts were denied.

In the end, the man who fooled so many

couldn't escape himself or his fate.

I'm Josh gates, and I'll see you on the next expedition.