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Cult Liter with Spencer Henry

139: Clark Rockefeller

Cult Liter with Spencer Henry

Spencer Henry | Morbid Network | Wondery

True Crime, Exhibit C, Society & Culture, Comedy

4.95.4K Ratings

🗓️ 7 July 2021

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hello Cult Babes! This week we’re talking about the exciting and exhausting life of one of America’s most notorious conmen. A man of many names, perhaps most infamously Clark Rockefeller. We’ve got stocks, we’ve got a limo, we’ve got a moidah and more!

Sponsors:
Go to betterhelp.com/spencer for 10% off your first month of online professional counseling!
Go to hellofresh.com/cultliter14 use code cult liter 14 for 14 free meals including free shipping!
Follow: @cultliterpodcast on Instagram

Sources:

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2009/01/fake_rockefeller200901
Documentary: The Great Pretender
https://nypost.com/1999/11/30/phony-rockefeller-daughter-snooks-back-home/

https://www.latimes.com/socal/glendale-news-press/news/tn-gnp-xpm-2012-01-26-tn-pas-0127-timeline-christian-karl-gerhartsreiter-fake-rockefeller-story.html
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/02/massachusetts.rockefeller.trial/index.html
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Cult Leader Early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today.

0:31.0

Hello and welcome back to Cult Leader. I'm your Cult Leader, Spencer Henry. I'm sitting in a different spot. What's going on here?

0:44.0

I feel like so you know how you have a side of the bed that you sleep on and like even when you go to a hotel or whatever, typically I feel like you stay on your side of the bed.

0:53.0

I'm sitting at my desk right now and my office is all moved around right now because when Madison's here, my desk is in front of the couch.

1:03.0

That's in here so that Madison and I can just sit on either side and we have our mic set up and everything.

1:08.0

But I randomly pushed my desk to the middle of the room and now I'm just sitting on a different side of it.

1:14.0

Maybe this is the vibe. Maybe this is where I needed to be sitting all along. You never know what life is going to give you until you're sitting on a different side of your desk than you normally do.

1:24.0

Maybe the episode will be different. Maybe this is going to be the best episode to date because I'm sitting on this side of the desk.

1:31.0

Today's story is a doozy. We'll get to all of it in a minute.

1:35.0

First, let's catch up. So on last week's episode, we talked about the Alaskan Bush strip club. That's how I remember that episode.

1:44.0

And the murder of cancel a pink, the whole Michelle Linahead story. There were so many moving parts in that story. I was so confused.

1:50.0

I saw one comment that was like, this was maybe the most confusing episode to date and I was like, yeah, I feel it. Me too.

1:58.0

There are a lot of names in today's story, but luckily they all belong to one person. So should be easy to remember. We talked on Fridays, little leader, a little bit about the Lori Valor stuff, just some brief updates on everything that's happening there, which is, I feel like every day something new happens with that case, which is why it's so hard to recap.

2:18.0

There were some good stories on that episode. You guys have, I've gotten a lot of really good little leaders lately. So excited to share those.

2:26.0

This is a story we are talking about Clark Rockefeller. And I first heard about this case from believe it or not, a lifetime movie. There's a lifetime movie that came out in God. When did that come out? Probably I want to say like 2009, 2010. Let's see.

2:44.0

It's called who is Clark Rockefeller and it stars Sherry Springfield in Eric McCormick. Eric McCormick played Will on Will and Grace Sherry Stringfield. I don't recognize her as much. What was she on?

3:00.0

ER. Oh, she was on criminal minds. That's right. Sorry, Sherry Spring Stringfield. I'm sorry. But the movie, I remember when it came out, it was see, that's something I like about life to movies. A lot of them are based on true things. And then you're watching them. And then you Google like, well, what's the real story behind this? I guess you can do that with any movie. But I started going down the rabbit hole a couple years ago with that. I watched it again. Probably like, I want to say sometimes during quarantine, maybe towards the beginning of quarantine.

3:28.0

When I was up at Olivia's, it's a good one. Highly recommend watching after hearing today's episode. No better place to start than the beginning. Christian Gerhard Strider, you'll see, was born on February 21, 1961 to his father Simon, a house painter and Irmgard, a seamstress. The family included another son, Alexander. But he came much later. I think they had Alexander when he was born on February 21, 1961.

3:44.0

The family lived in Bergen, Germany. Now, Bergen, at least at the time, I'm not sure about now, gives off an almost midwestern vibe with how it was depicted in these two documentaries that I've seen.

3:59.0

No, one of those documentaries was not the lifetime movie. I know those aren't real. Yeah, if I had to compare it to somewhere, I would compare it to the Midwest. It seemed pretty simple.

4:17.0

I was reading this one article in the New York Times, and it referred to Bergen as a Bavarian town, which just made me think of Bavarian pretzels, which then made me think, hey, I'm kind of hungry, but we got to do this first. Childhood friends recalled Christian being treated like a grown-up, especially because he was the only child in the world.

4:46.0

Because he was the only child for such a long time. He was really around a lot of adults. He was not interested in sports. He was not an athletic kid. He was much more interested in electronic science fiction movies.

...

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