"Clark Rockefeller" identity uncovered by his German Brother

BOSTON - A German man has identified the mysterious man held in the kidnapping of his daughter and a "person of interest" in the disappearance of California couple as his long-lost brother who left home as a teen and severed contact with his family 20 years ago, according to two newspaper reports.

Alexander Gerhartsreiter said his brother — Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter — is the man who has most recently been calling himself Clark Rockefeller and, according to authorities, was a con artist who traversed the country using different stories and aliases to live a privileged life.

"It seems you found my brother," Alexander Gerhartsreiter said upon being handed a photograph of Rockefeller by a Boston Herald reporter who visited his home in Upper Bavaria. "It is really a shock."

He said his older brother was born Feb. 21, 1961, in Siegsdorf, Germany, and was raised until 1978 in the same house where his family still lives today.

He moved to the United States as a student in Connecticut and never returned. He initially kept contact but had not been in touch since he called his parents in 1985, his brother said.

"I think Germany was too small for him," Alexander Gerhartsreiter told a Boston Globe reporter who also visited him at his home. "He wanted to live in the big country and maybe get famous. Now that I see all this, he's really famous."