The man who abducted his seven-year-old daughter in Boston last month was arrested in Baltimore over the weekend, and the girl was returned to her mother. On Tuesday the father was charged in a Boston court with felony parental kidnapping, assault and battery. He was held without bail.

And then the mysteries deepened.

Who is "Clark Rockefeller"? Could he be wanted in California under another name? Is he, as he presented himself, a secret agent? Or is he, as investigators believe, a former German exchange student? 

Another question: How could his ex-wife, Sandra Boss, a high-powered executive at the London office of McKinsey & Co., be deceived by such a shady character? Actually, any woman who has ever been wooed by a psychopath will know the answer to that one.

The London papers reported that Boss, who made more than $1 million a year, paid "Rockefeller" $1.5 million last year in exchange for exclusive custody of their daughter, Reigh.

The sticking point for shared custody, Boss said, was that she wanted to see "Clark Rockefeller's" valid birth certificate, and to know, finally, who her husband of 12 years really was.

He refused to reveal his identity, took the money, and began plotting their daughter's abduction, including buying an apartment in Baltimore under another assumed name.

She, finally sure that he wasn't a Rockefeller, changed their daughter's last name to Boss.

After the abduction, fingerprints from "Rockefeller" taken during the kidnapping investigation matched those from a man involved in an unsolved 1985 case in San Marino, California. Authorities there say that another poseur, this one an Englishman named Christopher Crowe Mountbatten Chichester, was a "person of interest" in the murder of a man, Jonathan Sohus, 26, and the disappearance of his wife, Linda, 28.

Jonathan, a techie, and Linda Sohus had only recently been married.

"Chichester" rented a guest house from them, in San Marino.

Lili Hadsell, the policewoman who took the Sohus missing persons report, told The Boston Herald that Chichester "seemed to be like a society gadfly. He kind of went from influential people to influential people and made his way into the inner circle.... He was very well-mannered, very cultured and people were attracted to that."

Jonathan Sohus's body was found, in 1994, buried in the back yard of the home they had lived in. Linda Sohus was never seen again. Chichester had convinced her that he was a secret agent.

After finding Jonathan Sohus's body, the San Marino police established that Chichester was, in fact, Christian Gerhart Streiter, or, as he was known as an exchange student in Connecticut in the late 70s, Christian Gerhart Reiter or Christian Gerhartstreiter. So many names, so many identities.

The last known evidence of "Chichester" (then calling himself Christopher Crowe) was in the late 1980s when he was in Greenwich, Connecticut, trying to sell a Nissan pickup truck. (A check of the Vehicle Identification Number turned up a lien and the fact that the truck had belonged to Jonathan Sohus.)

A fingerprint on an application for a stockbroker's license connected Christopher Crowe to "Clark Rockefeller."

According to Dave Copeland, an investigative journalist, Christopher Crowe worked as a stockbroker in Greenwich for Nikko Securities International in 1987 and 1988 before being fired for incompetence. Copeland has great reporting on "Rockefeller" during these years on this web site.

Christopher Crowe was no longer claiming he was a secret agent. This time he claimed he was a film director, perhaps a reference to Cameron Crowe, whose movie "Say Anything," opened in 1989.

Luckily, it was this time in the con man's life that connected him forward (via the fingerprint) to "Clark Rockefeller," and backward (via the pickup truck) to "Chichester."  

But by the time California law enforcement heard about the pickup truck, "Chichester" had disappeared. And that was before the body was discovered in the back yard, in 1994.

By then "Clark Rockefeller" had turned up in New York City with a whole new set of stories, and a glamorous lifestyle, including the ownership of an "original" Jackson Pollack.  

The Times of London seemed to find Sandra Boss at fault for her relationship with this con artist: "It remains unclear how a brilliant businesswoman, with high society connections on both sides of the Atlantic, had come to be duped by such an improbable figure as Rockefeller," it said.

And the hometown newspaper, The Boston Herald, asked: "Just when did you figure out that he was a fraud, an imposter, a cipher, a mystery man?"

But it's clear that "Rockefeller," who had at least six aliases, no driver's license, no valid social security card, and had not filed their marriage certificate in Massachusetts, a man who stood 5 foot 6 inches tall and came off as mousy and odd, was nonetheless a charming, beguiling psychopath. And we have no idea what else he was up to during the missing years in his apparent life story.

As Sandra L. Brown, co-author of Women Who Love Psychopaths, found in research for the book, women who fall victim to psychopaths were well educated and intelligent. They registered off the charts in three areas: tolerance, empathy, and cooperation.

They were not dependent or stupid, but they were forgiving and trusting.

A book by Barbara Bentley, A Dance with the Devil, My Marriage to a Psychopath, will be published in November. Bentley suggests that, when you meet a psychopath, "otherwise known as a charmer with seemingly fantastic stories about his past life":

• If he says he owns real estate, check it out. ("Rockefeller" bought the apartment in Baltimore while pretending to own a real estate company and saying he was "Chip Smith," from Chile. He paid with cashier's checks and had $278,000 in gold coins in the apartment when he was arrested.)

• If he says he has family, meet them within a reasonable amount of time. ("Rockefeller" told Boss his parents had been killed in a car accident, and he was never known to spend time with his Rockefeller relations.)

• If he says he works for the FBI or CIA, run as fast as you can.

Linda Sohus apparently didn't run. The real estate agents in Baltimore were duped. People from San Marino, California, to Greenwich, Connecticut, to New York City to Boston were convinced he was a reputable person.

The only thing Sandra Boss is guilty of is embarrassment for being fooled, and so publicly. If her ex turns out to be a murderer, she will also be relieved that she and her daughter got away.

But her little girl's life, and past, has been torn open for inspection. No one wins in a situation like this.