From Clark to Clayton Rockefeller

There's a fantastic profile in the Times of Christian Gerhartsreiter, the German-born con artist who for decades called himself Clark Rockefeller and led a high-society life full of lies.

Later in that same section, the Times writes up the wedding of Clayton Rockefeller, who really is David Rockefeller's grandson.

Aside from the facial similarity between Clayton and 'Clark', there's also this about how Clayton met his wife:

Mr. Rockefeller fell hard and fast for Ms. Rubinstein after they were briefly introduced in the spring of 2000.

“I had a crush on Manya from afar,” he said. But he found getting her attention to be difficult.

“One time I yelled her name and waved from across the street, and she just kept on walking,” he recalled.

Ms. Rubinstein now says that she must not have been wearing her eyeglasses. But as a native New Yorker, she was also not in the habit of talking to strangers. “That’s what you’re taught when you grow up in the city,” she said.

The couple had their first lengthy conversation in the fall of 2000. “She was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met and the most beautiful,” Mr. Rockefeller said.

But she remained “standoffish,” she acknowledged.

Even Mr. Rockefeller’s name didn’t make an impression. “It didn’t occur to me that only a small number of people would have this name,” she said. “A lot of people have the name Rubinstein.”

They went out a couple times. And she was both charmed and confused by this open-hearted guy from Maine “who has this amazing ability to talk to anybody about anything,” she said. “I didn’t know what to make of him. He didn’t fit into any boxes I had reserved for people.”

And having a boyfriend was not high on her priority list.

So Mr. Rockefeller impulsively upped the ante before their winter break at Brown. “I asked if I could get a ride down to New York so I could go visit some family,” he said.

They enjoyed a daylong date as they drove through a snowy New England landscape. But when they arrived in Manhattan, she overheard him leaving messages for absent relatives.

“I suddenly realized he hadn’t made any plans with anyone in his family,” she said. He admitted that he had fibbed and then took a bus back to Providence.

“I thought he was completely crazy,” she said. “But I was really touched.”

You can't make this kind of stuff up.

Pool photo by Essdras M. Suarez of Clark Rockefeller; Clayton Rockefeller photo from the Times