Setting up an insanity defence, a lawyer for suspect Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter said his client was mentally ill and did not know it was wrong when he ran off with the seven-year-old last July. Gerhartsreiter is accused of pushing a social worker to the ground during a supervised visit in Boston and bundling his daughter, Reigh, into a waiting car. Reigh, known to the family as Snooks, was found six days later and reunited with her mother Sandra Boss, a senior partner in the London office of the management consulting firm McKinsey and Co. Opening the defence case at a trial in Boston, lawyer Jeffrey Denner said that his client was “pushed over the edge” when he lost custody of his daughter in 2007.
“He believed that on a moral level, he had to do this to save his daughter,” Mr Denner said. ”He believed he was telepathically communicating with his child. ”He believed that she was secretly signalling him… that she needed to be saved, that she wasn’t being cared for.” On Thursday, a psychologist hired by Gerhartsreiter’s legal team said during legal arguments that the 48-year-old suffered delusions of power and wealth, as well as having a narcissistic personality disorder. Opening their case, prosecutors said the alleged kidnapper is a conman who spent months meticulously planning the abduction.
The court heard Gerhartsreiter told Ms Boss he advised small countries on how to restructure their debt – but she grew frustrated with his lack of income and filed for divorce in 2006.
Sky (Thanks Craig)
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that’s quite scary.
There are many many things wrong with all of this if you read between the lines. Neither parent sounds fabulous. Poor kid.
On a shallow note…48???? Woah, tough paper round.
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Though I should add that the non-fabulousness does come down rather heavily on the fathers side of things
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Lawyers will come up with lots of explanations ofcourse … would not call the telepathic contact defense such a good move … if that is what it was.
Maybe they should not have called it telepathic communication ..
This week a child got kidnapped by someone here in Holland. Now it turns out it was the father who took her to america.
Divorces … it gets uckly way too often unfortunately. Adults can no longer be adult by that time. Kids def. wont benefit from it, although they sometimes do feel a bit like as if they do at a certain age.
The man has menbtal health problems or is trying a desperate route to exonerate himself wither way this story speaks of desperation, vulnerability and need . Its very sad.