Police watched Clark Rockefeller surreptitiously for a day before luring him out of a waterfront apartment in Baltimore, Md. with an elaborate ruse.
The 7-year-old daughter, Reigh “Snooks” Storrow Boss, whom he had abducted a week earlier, was found unharmed inside and was being flown back to Boston to be reunited with her mother.
“Her first words were that she was very happy to see nice people,” FBI Special Agent Noreen Gleason said at a news conference in Boston late yesterday to announce the arrest. The girl was a “little nervous” about being left alone, added police Deputy Superintendent Tom Lee.
A Baltimore real estate agent tipped off authorities that the man known as Rockefeller had rented an apartment in Mount Vernon, a neighborhood of historic brownstones and town houses, not far from a marina where he had docked a decrepit, 26-foot catamaran sailboat, police said.
After surveiling him through the large glass windows of the rental apartment, federal agents asked the marina manager to call him and tell him that his boat was taking on water. When Rockefeller rushed outside to check the boat, he was arrested.
The father is slated to be arraigned Monday on charges of felony custodial kidnapping, and assault and battery in connection with his abduction of his daughter. Police say that during a supervised visit in Boston last weekend, he pushed aside the social worker, grabbed his daughter and jumped inside a waiting black sport utility vehicle, driven by an accomplice whom he had paid to pick them up. Rockefeller was apparently aggrieved about his separation from his daughter since his December, 2007 divorce.
The abduction drew international media attention as police tried to unravel the 48-year-old Rockefeller’s identity. He portrayed himself as part of the billionaire Rockefeller clan descended from oil magnate John D Rockefeller Sr., but the Rockefeller family disavowed any association. Police say he used at least four aliases, and have been searching for his Social Security number or birth certificate. They are still trying to determine his real identity, and if anyone else was involved in the abduction.
The girl’s mother, Sandra Boss, who was in Boston during the weeklong manhunt, collapsed after hearing that her daughter was found unharmed. “She fainted,” Boston Police Deputy Superintendent Tom Lee said.
Boss, a senior partner for the managerial consultant McKinsey & Company, had taken her daughter to live in London after an acrimonious divorce late last year.
Police first believed that Rockefeller was trying to flee to Bermuda or Peru on a yacht docked in Long Island. But later they found he might have planted false clues to throw investigators off his trail.
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