The marriage gave him a legal basis for remaining in the United States. It also established a behavioral pattern: using personal relationships as instruments for practical gain, and abandoning them when they served no further purpose.
He had by this point already adopted alternate identities. In Milwaukee and elsewhere, he began calling himself Christopher Kenneth Gerhart — a simplified, Americanized version of his actual name, but still close enough to be a transitional persona rather than a complete reinvention. The full transformation came later, in California, where he arrived under a name that sounded like something from a British period drama.
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## Christopher Chichester in San Marino
San Marino, California, is a small wealthy enclave just east of Los Angeles — one of those Southern California communities where the houses are large, the streets are quiet, and the social conventions are established enough that an interesting stranger with a plausible story can find a comfortable reception.
Gerhartsreiter arrived there in the early 1980s using the name Christopher Chichester — and claiming, in some versions of the story, to be the “13th Baronet of England,” a title that would have been meaningless to most American ears but that carried connotations of inherited status and European distinction that played well in the right company.
He rented the guesthouse on the property of a woman known as Ruth “Didi” Sohus. The arrangement was common enough — a property with an outbuilding, rented to a young man with a convincing story and the social ease to make the household dynamics comfortable. Didi Sohus had a son, Jonathan, who lived nearby with his new wife, Linda.