LOS ANGELES, April 10 (UPI) -- Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, who had pretended to be a member of the famous Rockefeller family, was convicted of first-degree murder Wednesday in Los Angeles.
The jury deliberated about 5 hours before returning the guilty verdict.
Gerhartsreiter, 52, was on trial for the slaying of John Sohus, who was 27 when he was bludgeoned to death in 1985 and placed in a shallow grave behind a guest house at his San Marino, Calif., home, where Gerhartsreiter had been living.
Sohus' body was recovered but his wife Linda has not been since the couple vanished in 1985. She is presumed dead, The Boston Globe said.
Gerhartsreiter has passed himself off as a British aristocrat, a film and television producer, a bond trader and as Clark Rockefeller -- a pose he used successfully to develop an upscale lifestyle in Massachusetts.
During closing arguments at the trial, Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian told jurors Gerhartsreiter "thinks he's smarter than everyone," the Los Angeles Times reported.
The largely circumstantial case against Gerhartsreiter had its big break when he gave the victims' truck -- which he had taken when he left San Marino -- to a friend. Gerhartsreiter came to investigators' attention when the friend searched for the vehicle's title.
The defense argued Gerhartsreiter was a con artist but not a killer, and the prosecution case featured no forensic evidence directly linking him to Sohus' death.
Sentencing was scheduled for June 26.
