Clark Rockefeller, who divorced his wife, Sandra Boss, in December, allegedly kidnapped their seven-year-old daughter, Reigh Storrow Boss, during a supervised visit July 27.
Rockefeller, who friends believed was a member of the prestigious Rockefeller clan, may be a pathological liar with remarkable abilities of persuasion. On separate occasions, he convinced two unsuspecting individuals to help him flee Boston and drive him to his destination, Grand Central Station in New York. The drivers appear to be “unwitting accomplices.”
Rockefeller’s conversations with friends about his purchase of a yacht, and his invitation to one driver to sail to Bermuda, may have been part of a ploy to throw off police. A search of the waters off Long Island, N.Y., proved fruitless.
A state worker in Smyra, Del., told police she’d seen Rockefeller and Reigh. According to the Boston Herald, she described “a well-dressed man [who] was standing in front of a car dealership with a blond little girl carrying a small red bag bedecked with streamers and wearing a flowered dress.”
A NISMART bulletin from 2002 shows that men perpetrate custodial kidnapping more commonly than women. In 1999, 53 percent of family-abducted children were taken by their biological fathers, compared to 25 percent who were taken by their biological mothers.
During Barack Obama’s Middle East tour, mother Colleen Davis Bargouthi asked the presidential contender to help reclaim her four daughters in a case of custodial kidnapping. Bargouthi said she was tricked into leaving them with their father, who is keeping them in the West Bank.