Justin’s Newsletter: March 2024
Vol. 4, Issue 3
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What’s Up With Me
My Pasadena Media TV show, “Pasadena Monthly with Justin Chapman,” is a finalist for two video awards, in the Alliance for Community Media West’s WAVE (Western Access for Video Excellence) Awards! Episodes from July 2023 (featuring guest Nikki High, owner of Octavia’s Bookshelf) and August 2023 (featuring guest Dr. Laurie Leshin, director of JPL) were nominated in the Talk Show (professional) and Magazine Show (professional) categories, respectively. Thank you to the team at Pasadena Media including George Falardeau, Chris Miller, Bobbie Ferguson, Jasiri Jenkins-Glenn, Jeffrey Stanfill, et al, for all your hard work to make the show happen. Wait til they see our current in-studio version of the show in next year’s awards! The award ceremony is April 19. Wish us luck!
Watch this month’s episode of “Pasadena Monthly with Justin Chapman,” featuring an interview with Jens Weiden, CEO and general manager of the Rose Bowl Stadium. He broke the news on my show that the Rose Bowl will host the semi-finals and finals of men’s and women’s soccer at the 2028 Olympics! Watch the full episode here.
Read my latest story, about how Hunter S. Thompson wrote part of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the book that made him a literary icon and created a whole new style of journalism called gonzo, right outside the border of Pasadena in March and April 1971.
Thank you to the Pasadena Media Foundation for your continued support.
Around Town
Great Reads
Here are some recommendations for interesting books I’ve read recently:
Sekret Machines (Book 1: Chasing Shadows; Book 2: A Fire Within; Gods, Man, and War Book 1: Gods; and Gods, Man, and War Book 2: Man)—Tom DeLonge, A. J. Hartley, and Peter Levenda
If you want a head trip, check out these two series of books (both confusingly called Sekret Machines) about the UFO Phenomenon by blink-182 guitarist and singer Tom DeLonge and two co-authors: the fictional series (Chasing Shadows and A Fire Within) with A. J. Hartley, and the non-fiction series (Gods, Man, and War: Gods and Gods, Man, and War: Man) with Peter Levenda. Both series have third volumes planned. The fiction books are exciting, fast-paced, well-written thrillers and the non-fiction books portend to prove that UFOs and related phenomena are real. While the evidence presented requires some leaps of faith and perhaps some suspension of disbelief, they are still absolutely fascinating reads that approach the stigmatized topic from unique angles and a wide open mind, as the reader should do. At the very least, with the acknowledgment from the U.S. government that there are, in fact, flying objects that they can’t (or won’t) identify (along with the release of videos of said objects), deeper investigations such as this honest effort are certainly required.
Becoming Clark Rockefeller: Murder, Love, Deception, and the Con Man Behind It All—Frank Girardot
A wild story that I played a small part in, as outlined in the next section. In the early 1980s, German national Christian Gerhartsreiter immigrated to the United States, assumed several new identities including “Christopher Chichester,” and settled in a backhouse in San Marino, where in 1985 he murdered John Sohus, the son of the woman who owned the main house where he was living, and probably murdered John’s wife Linda as well, although her body was never found. John’s body was discovered in 1994 in the backyard when new occupants hired workers to build a pool. Meanwhile, Gerhartsreiter assumed a new identity as “Clark Rockefeller,” fled to the East Coast, fooled everyone into thinking he was actually an aristocratic-esque member of the Rockefeller family, got married, had a daughter, got divorced, lost a custody battle, and kidnapped his 7-year-old daughter in Boston, for which he got arrested and went to prison. Then in 2011 new evidence connected him to the murder of John Sohus, so Gerhartsreiter was extradited to California, where in 2013 he was tried and convicted. He currently resides in San Quentin. Frank Girardot, former editor of the Pasadena Star-News, recently published this book about the whole sordid and unbelievable affair, and it’s well worth a read.
Spotlight on My Past Stories
Speaking of Clark Rockefeller, I covered this story back in 2011 for San Marino Patch and Back Bay Patch (in Massachusetts). I visited the house in San Marino where John Sohus’ body was found and asked the current occupant for comment—he declined. I was also asked by author Walter Kirn (Up in the Air, Blood Will Out), who lives in Montana and had been friends with “Clark,” to attend the pre-trial murder hearings in Alhambra and report back to him, as he was then writing Blood Will Out about his relationship with “Clark.”
And read all of my journalism here.