Trial set for man known as Rockefeller

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LOS ANGELES, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- The Los Angeles trial of a German man who used the name of Clark Rockefeller and other aliases, accused of a 1985 homicide in California, is set for March.

Lawyers for Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, 51, agreed to a trial date of March 11 in Los Angeles Superior Court, in a brief hearing Wednesday in which the defendant was shackled to his chair, the Pasadena, Calif., Star-News reported.

Gerhartsreiter is accused of killing computer programmer John Sohus, 27, while he lived in the Sohus' guest house in San Marino, Calif., in the early 1980s.

Sohus and his wife vanished in 1985. John Sohus' body was found in plastic bags by pool excavators digging in the back yard in 1994, after Gerhartsreiter moved to New York, New Hampshire and Boston, where he lived with the alias of Clark Rockefeller, The Boston Globe reported Thursday.

Police said they connected Gerhartsreiter to the homicide after his 2008 arrest in the kidnapping of his daughter in Boston.

Gerhartsreiter's attorneys have attempted to cast suspicion on Linda Sohus, who has not been seen since 1985, the Globe said.