Romantic Deception in Boston this Week

A case of romantic deception made headlines this week when Clark Rockefeller, of Cornish, NH and Boston kidnapped his seven year old daughter Reigh. The man, who claimed to be a descendant of the Rockefeller family, appears to be anything but. The 48-year-old was a spinner of tales who wore Brooks Brothers suits and ascots and spoke with a classic WASP accent. Yet he has no driver’s license, no passport, no social security number and no apparent history before 1990. Oh yeah, he was married to Reigh’s mother on Nantucket in 1995 but there is no recorded marriage license.

Luckily, both Rockefeller and his daughter were found Saturday safe and sound. Rockefeller had whisked his daughter to Maryland where it appeared he was about to start a new life with a new name and a new home. Today he is being extradited back to Boston where he faces charges of felony custodial kidnapping, assault and battery and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

Reigh’s mother divorced Rockefeller in December. According to a friend close to the couple, she had discovered that Rockefeller was a fraud. Rockefeller has several aliases and has told people he attended Harvard and Yale. He suggested to friends that he was working for the Pentagon, either as a mathematician or physicist. He claimed his parents were killed in an auto accident. During the divorce Rockefeller was given the option to reveal his true identity or to give up custody of the daughter he, by all accounts, raised as a full time dad. He chose to let his daughter go rather than unveil his identity.

But the true lesson here is that even the best and brightest can be duped by romantic impostors. Rockefeller’s wife, Sandra Boss, is a London-based financier earning well over a million a year. She is a graduate of Stanford and Harvard Business School. It’s not clear when the marriage began to crack or when she discovered that Clark wasn’t who he claimed to be. The divorce decree is sealed and she has leaked little to the media.

This case clearly epitomizes what Dr. Caldwell states in her book, Romantic Deception, “Ask me who’s vulnerable to Romantic Deception, and high on my list will be the woman who was raised right. Show me a woman who believes in honesty and I’ll show you a woman who finds it hard to even imagine that she could get mixed up with a big-time liar.”

The true identity of Clark Rockefeller will surely be exposed soon. Boston has assigned detectives to the case and the FBI is involved as well. The arm-chair detectives among us are also dying to know. And the one person who undoubtedly cares the most has to be Sandra Boss. Had she had the wherewithal to check Clark out before they got involved, she might have saved herself a lot of heartache and a ton of money.