A wealthy, educated member of the elite Rockefeller family. A German exchange student in Connecticut. A man renting a carriage house in Los Angeles County who mysteriously vanished along with the newlywed owners of the property in what became a cold homicide case.
Police on both coasts suspect those personas could be among at least a dozen faces of the man who now calls himself Clark Rockefeller.
The 48-year-old balding father with big, round glasses and piercing eyes sits in a Boston-area jail on charges he kidnapped his 7-year-old daughter Reigh and allegedly planned to start a new life in Baltimore as Charles "Chip" Smith.
Police could have a real-life "Talented Mr. Ripley" on their hands — mystery man, multiple identities, a taste for high society — if their theories of his web of lies and false identities prove true.
"We're already familiar with multiple aliases. If there's one thing we're certain about this suspect, it's that his true name is not Clark Rockefeller," Jake Wark, press secretary for the Suffolk District Attorney in Massachusetts, told FOXNews.com.
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But for now, the prosecutor isn't saying much, either about Rockefeller's possible link to the California murder investigation — which popped up after a fingerprint match to an out-of-state license application — or about many other elements of the baffling case.
"I can only say that the investigation remains very active and is growing more focused by the day, but I'm not going to discuss specific leads or avenues of the investigation," Wark said.
He did say that, by his count, Rockefeller has "at least a dozen" different aliases.
"It's a long list," Wark said.
Rockefeller and his attorney have been mum on who he is, who he has claimed to be and where he comes from. Rockefeller refuses to speak to detectives from Los Angeles and Boston or to the media, and defense lawyer Stephen Hrones says his client won't start spilling the beans any time soon.
"I don't know anything about it (the possible L.A. murder link) except for what I read in the papers, and they're not going to talk to my client," Hrones told FOX News on Wednesday. "I'd be a fool to let him talk." Hrones said his client has told him he is, in fact, named Clark Rockefeller, and he has no reason to believe otherwise.
The latest potential alias is that of an "odd" German exchange student named Christian Gerhartsreiter who stayed with two families in Berlin, Conn., nearly 30 years ago.
Authorities have contacted the families to determine whether Rockefeller and Gerhartsreiter are one and the same, according to the Boston Herald.
Gerhartsreiter lived with the family of Edward Savio before moving to California, Savio told the Herald. The FBI later would get in touch with the Savios when they were investigating the disappearance of the newlywed couple Jonathan and Linda Sohus of San Marino, Calif.
Of interest to federal agents was an attempt made in Connecticut to sell a pickup truck belonging to John Sohus, the newspaper reported.
"He made my mom really nervous," Edward Savio, 45, told the Herald. "He said he was from Bavaria. We were a modest, middle-class family and he would say things like, 'I would never live like this.' He knew where the line was and he flirted with it."
An 82-year-old librarian, who also hosted Gerhartsreiter, has not-so-fond memories of the exchange student.
"He really was an odd kid," she told the Herald on condition of anonymity. "We did not really end up on a happy note. ... He had some fantastic stories about his parents. It turned out he was from a poor, working-class background."
Click here for more on this story from the Boston Herald.
Thomas Seidel, the principal of the school in Traunstein, Germany, that Gerhartsreiter reportedly attended, confirmed to FOX News that Christian Gerhartsreiter was a student there. Germany's BKA, the equivalent of the FBI, told FOX that they have no criminal record associated with anyone by that name and referred questions about his nationality to local authorities.
In California, a man who called himself Christopher Chichester, a tenant of the Sohus couple in San Marino, ingratiated himself to the town's elite — joining the local rotary club and speaking with a slight British accent.
The remains of a man believed to be John Sohus were unearthed on the property about 10 years after the 1994 disappearance of the couple and their guest, when the new residents were digging a space for a swimming pool. Sohus' adopted sister Ellen Sohus said a complete skeleton was found.
"My brother was bludgeoned, dismembered and buried in the backyard in three separate bags," she told MyFOXBoston.com. "There was a huge blood stain on the concrete floor of the guest house in my brother's home. My brother's car turned up on the East Coast when Chichester tried to sell (it)."
The disappearance of John Sohus and his new bride didn't cause any alarm at first, because someone sent a postcard to their family from Europe claiming they were on a "secret mission." Chichester, meanwhile, vanished soon afterward.
Click here for more on this story from The Los Angeles Times.
The Rockefeller link turned up after his fingerprints matched those with a license application for a Christopher Chichester. Los Angeles police sent two investigators to Boston to try to question Rockefeller in jail and named him a "person of interest" in the cold case, but they haven't said much about what, if anything, they've learned.
Calls to Los Angeles County sheriff's office and to the Suffolk County Jail, where Rockefeller is in custody, were not returned.
In Boston, Rockefeller married Harvard Business School graduate Sandra Boss.
The couple lived in a tony brownstone, had their daughter Reigh together and led a lavish lifestyle, buying a yacht and a summer mansion in New Hampshire and hobnobbing with the area's rich and influential. That is, until their 2007 divorce — brought on in part, court records show, by the fact that Rockefeller refused to reveal his true identity.
After Rockefeller, a former director of the exclusive Algonquin Club, allegedly ran off with Reigh to Baltimore, he used the name Charles "Chip" Smith to buy an apartment, police said.
Hrones says Rockefeller raised the little girl without much help from her constantly working mother and denies his client kidnapped her, since she was his daughter too.
Meanwhile, detectives continue to be confounded by their mystery man. But, they say, they're getting close.
"We're extremely confident that we will determine who he is," said Wark, the D.A. spokesman.
Click here for more on this story from MyFOXBoston.com.
FOX News' Greg Palkot contributed to this report.
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