Thursday's column (uncut)

It's Wednesday afternoon and I've been on the phone all morning.

Seems that reporters on the East Coast can't get enough of the Clark Rockefeller story and his possible conection to a couple reported missing in San Marino way back in 1985.

. Rockefeller is accused of violently abducting his 7-year-old daughter from a home in Boston on July 27. The two vanished only to resurface in Baltimore earlier this week. Rockefeller had already assumed a new identity there as "Chip" Smith, a local Realtor.

There's a strong suspicion that Rockefeller was once known as Christopher Chichester, who lived with the missing couple and disappeared when they did.

There's also a strong suspicion among law enforcement that he was known as "Christopher Crowe", "Christopher Mountbatten," and "Christian Gerhard Streider." But there's also a resignation of sorts that no one knows who Chichester really is -- or was -- or may be now.

Through the ensuing 23 years, rumours have persisted about the missing couple, John and Linda Sohus. John's mother Didi told investigators her son and daughter-in-law were on a secret mission. She was keeping tabs on their exploits through an unidentified third party, who filled her in with exciting details of the trio's exploits fighting Communism in Europe.

In 1989, Chichester briefly resurfaced in another toney enclave of the idle wealty -- Greenwich, Conn. He was in possession of John's truck. Then he vanished -- just as neatly. Almost forgotten really, until the bones were discovered.

In 1994, nine years after John and Linda disapeared, a pool contractor unearthed a bag of bones in the backyard of the Lorain Road home where the Sohus and Chichester once lived.

Although ravaged by the passage of time and cracked by the powerful blade of a backhoe, detectives believed the bones might belong to John Sohus. They named Chichester as a person of interest and searched the world over for the slightly built man of mystery.

More stories surfaced. There were rumors of a love triangle that estranged the "good looking, big-hipped" Linda and her "computer nerd" husband John even though the couple shared an interest in science fiction and fantasy stories. Perhaps the news story would have had more play back then, but 1994 turned out to be the summer of O.J. Simpson. A few weeks after the bizarre San Marino discovery, local, national and international attention turned to the story of a USC football hero accused in an equally bizarre murder case.

And the Sohus, Chichester story rated no more attention.

Since then a portion of the remains have been stored in a basement office at the Los Angeles Department of Coroner. They've been studied and analyzed by Steve Dowell, the nation's top forensic tool mark specialist. He believes the skull of the dead man was crushed with a blunt object like a two by four.

Then again,"he could have done a lot of coke and fallen off a bar stool and suffered an injury like that, Dowell said. "But that's a shot in the dark. Because there was an effort to bury and conceal the body, this death is classified as a homicide.

That said, the remains have never been formally identified as John's. Even though the Simpson prosecution relied heavily on DNA evidence, in 1994 the science was still in its infancy, Dowell said. There was no way back then to extract DNA from skeletal remains. No effort was made either to compare dental records, as far as Dowell knows. Although that effort would have come from sheriff's investigators, and the primary investigator on the case has apparently long since retired.

There is no easy answer as to what happened to Linda Sohus. Family members said way back when they received postcards with a picture of the Eifel Tower and tales of France. THose same postcards also contained the caveat that Linda was bad at geography.

Mysteriously the missives ceased. Neither John nor Linda nor Chichester resurfaced. The case turned cold. One can only imagine what John's mother would say to the hordes of media now intently following the case. Surely she would be able to make the physical connection between Rockefeller and Chichester.

But she died, believing perhaps that her son was a spy and would never contact her again. Depsite a mother's bravado -- some might say denial -- every indication is that she died broken-hearted.

No doubt remaining family members and friends of the Sohus have hope they will finally get some answers.