( laughs ) reporter: while a rockefeller courted his soon-to-be wife in new york, back in san marino, the mystery of john sohus disappearance was about to take a sharp turn. the owners of didi sohus house at 1920 lorraine decided to put in a swimming pool. and during the excavation of the pool, the bulldozer operator struck something hard, and it turned out to be human bones. reporter: the gravesite was directly behind the guest house where a young man named chichester once lived. the body was found. it was inside of a fiberglass container. reporter: l.a. sheriffs detective tim miley. inside the container, the arms, legs and torso were wrapped in saran wrap, hands were covered in bags, and the hands, feet and head were covered in plastic bags. reporter: the remains were so decomposed that they couldn t be officially identified, and the coroner wouldn t rule it a homicide. police could only speculate about how the body came to be buried in the backyard of the
if you had nothing to do with the death of john sohus, why wouldn t you talk to detective allen? because detective allen never contacted me. reporter: he contacted mihoko. he never gave her a reason for the contact, did he? reporter: but you knew what they were there for. no. reporter: oh, you had no idea? how would i know? reporter: but here s what mihoko manabe said at trial: he told me that next time he calls, that, you know, he wasn t there and that i didn t know where he was. he had told her i wasn t a police officer, i wasn t a detective. i was a hit man out to kill him. reporter: and she believed that? and she believed that. reporter: now that crowe knew thheat t police were on to him, it was time once again to disappear, leaving allen at a dead end. did you ever meet him face to face? no. reporter: did you ever talk to him on the phone? no. fairly soon after detective allen s call, we moved to another apartment. he grew a beard. i hel
investigators to prove that this mysterious conman was also a killer. but was the case as clear-cut as it seemed? there was no motive. there was no reason he would have done this. for the first time, hear from the detectives who helped crack this puzzling case and from his ex-wife. i thought he was very intelligent, funny, very charming. for decades, he got away with a web of lies. would he also get away with murder? i can fib, certainly, but i have never hurt anyone. tonight the mystery of the man with so many faces. i m lester holt, and this is dateline, behind closed doors. here s mike taibbi. it was a brutal crime, buried over the years by dirt and lies, but there he was finally in a los angeles county courtroom to stand trial for it all. he came here with nothing, and then he ended up as a fake rockefeller. the world first came to know him as a phony rockefeller, who made headlines for duping a string of bright, if gullible women. they couldn t tell
here brick by brick. nearly a decade later, a skeleton found in the backyard. who was it? and where was that charismatic tenant? wherever he went, he told lie after lie after lie. then a bombshell. when i saw it in the newspaper, i knew that was him. tonight, dramatic new evidence in the case of the man who called himself clark rockefeller. the wife says, chris, there s a blood stain on this rug. and he rolls it up immediately and takes off. was the con man also a killer? i never hurt anyone. mike taibbi with buried secrets. welcome to dateline, everyone. i m lester holt. they were a young couple just starting their lives together. like so many newlyweds starting their careers. then they vanished. they were listed as missing, no reason to suspect foul play until an eerie discovery tied to a case that made headlines on two continents and linked to the name of one of america s most famous families. here s mike taibbi. captions paid for by nbc-universal tel