Alhambra , California -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- At first , the pool builder thought his Bobcat bulldozer struck garbage as he dug a hole in a residential backyard . After all , in the older neighborhoods of San Marino , California , people used to bury their garbage . But the plastic bag did n't contain trash . Jose Perez , operating the Bobcat with his father as a co-worker , asked his dad what was inside . His father grabbed an 18-inch piece of reinforcement bar to poke around . `` He looked inside it , and he mouthed to me that there were bones in it , '' Perez testified Wednesday in a Los Angeles County court . `` He thought it was a dog , but it did n't look like a dog . `` I told him to drop it , and he did , '' Perez continued . `` It was a human skull . '' As the prosecution witness referred to the plastic bag and the pool digging project in a photograph on a big screen in court , defendant Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter , in a blue jail jumpsuit , stared intently at the scene where prosecutors accuse him of murdering a man in 1985 . The skull was found nine years later , on May 5 , 1994 , Perez testified . The testimony was evidence that Los Angeles County prosecutors began presenting during a preliminary hearing for the German-born Gerhartsreiter , who has garnered renown for impersonating a Rockefeller and inspiring a movie about the caper . He is now accused of killing a Southern California man who has been missing since the mid-1980s . Frank Sheridan , a forensic pathologist , testified the skull suffered at least one blow to the forehead and at least two blows to the right side . The several fractures were made at or about the time of death , said Sheridan , who is also the medical examiner of San Bernardino County in California . The shape of two fractures also indicated an object with a curved surface , such as a baseball bat , was used to deliver the blows , Sheridan said under questioning by a prosecutor . `` This individual was alive when these fractures occurred , '' said Sheridan , who examined a reconstructed version of the skull . In his career , he has performed 8,000 autopsies , he said . `` There 's a lot of force involved in these blows , '' Sheridan added . `` Each one of them would have rendered the person unconscious . `` The injuries we 're talking about here would have very clearly been fatal in the absence of medical care , and they could have been fatal even with medical care , '' he said . At the pool construction site , investigators eventually found nearly the entire skeleton of a man whose height was between 5 feet 4 inches and 5 feet 7 1/2 inches , testified Judith Daye , a physical anthropologist who worked for the Los Angeles County 's coroner office and reviewed the bones at the site . The missing bones included a kneecap , four fingers and a few toes , a common occurrence with buried remains , `` especially the hands and feet because the bones are very small , '' Daye testified . Many discovered bones were inside clothing that was wrapped in plastic , such as the pelvis inside jeans and the upper torso bones inside a shirt , Daye testified . The preliminary hearing , to determine whether Gerhartsreiter should be bound over for trial , is expected to last six days , said Sandi Gibbons , a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney 's Office . Gerhartsreiter , 50 , is accused of killing John Sohus , who was 27 at the time of his 1985 disappearance . His mother once owned the San Marino home where the remains were found . During the Wednesday hearing , Los Angeles County Judge Jared Moses rejected a defense request that Gerhartsreiter be referred to as `` Mr. Rockefeller '' in court . The defense attorney said he and other attorneys on the team knew Gerhartsreiter as `` Mr. Rockefeller . '' But the judge said : `` I get individuals in court who have a number of akas , '' a police term meaning `` also known as , '' but `` I have never seen a circumstance in court where a person is referred to by one of his akas . '' Gerhartsreiter , who has led a life of multiple identities , has denied involvement in the Sohus case . At one point in his life , Gerhartsreiter assumed the identity of `` Clark Rockefeller , '' a cultured poseur who never seemed to have a job . A Boston tabloid dubbed him `` Crockefeller . '' A Lifetime movie , `` Who Is Clark Rockefeller ? '' starred Eric McCormack as Gerhartsreiter . Gerhartsreiter , who is being held without bail , is serving a Massachusetts sentence for kidnapping his daughter ; he was transferred from a prison in that state to California in July , authorities said . In July , one of his attorneys , Jeffrey A. Denner of Boston , said he was n't aware of any breaks in the 26-year-old Sohus case that would warrant a charge against his client . `` I was personally surprised because there was so much time , and what new evidence could have arisen ? We do n't know anything , '' Denner said in July after Gerhartsreiter 's arraignment . `` Old case , new case -- he did n't do it . We maintain his innocence . He maintains his innocence . '' Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian was the prosecutor at Wednesday 's hearing , held in Los Angeles County 's Alhambra courthouse . The case involves 9,000 pages of investigative documents and 83 CDs , DVDs and videotapes . The whereabouts of the dead man 's wife , Linda Sohus , are unknown . Except for a few postcards that appeared to have been mailed by the couple from Paris in 1985 , her friends and family have not heard from her . Gibbons said last summer that her disappearance was still under investigation . Gerhartsreiter has been serving a four - to five-year sentence in Massachusetts for kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter in 2008 . That prison term will end in mid-2012 , authorities said . Gerhartsreiter will receive credit for that Massachusetts sentence while being incarcerated in California , authorities said . Gerhartsreiter came to the United States from Germany in 1978 , according to testimony at his trial for kidnapping . After spending a few years in Connecticut , he moved to Wisconsin , where he married in a green card arrangement using his true name . Gerhartsreiter then relocated to California . He settled in San Marino , a wealthy community near Pasadena , where he lived under the name Christopher Chichester from 1983 to 1985 . He posed as a film student and boasted that he was of English royalty , according to Vanity Fair magazine , which profiled him in January 2009 and quoted several people who knew Chichester at the time . As Chichester , he rented a guest house from Ruth `` Didi '' Sohus . Her son John and his wife , Linda , came to live with Didi Sohus during the time Gerhartsreiter lived in the guest quarters . It is unclear what his relationship was with the couple . Didi Sohus told investigators she believed that her son and daughter-in-law were in Europe . She filed a missing person report in July 1985 , according to the Pasadena Star-News . Didi Sohus and one of Linda Sohus ' friends received postcards postmarked from Paris in mid-1985 , purportedly from the couple , but investigators were suspicious of their authenticity . Sohus sold the house in late 1985 after suffering a stroke . She died three years later . Through luminol testing of the guest quarters where Chichester lived , investigators found what appeared to be a large amount of blood . -LRB- Luminol causes a glow when it comes in contact with blood . -RRB- It is not clear when the luminol testing took place , but police thoroughly searched the house when the remains were found and again after Gerhartsreiter 's arrest in the kidnapping case . A former neighbor quoted by Vanity Fair reported that Chichester borrowed a chainsaw from him at about the time the couple went missing . An acquaintance , Dana Farrar , said she `` saw an area of dirt that had obviously been dug up and filled in '' at the time , according to the Pasadena Star-News . When she asked him why , Chichester told her he was having plumbing problems . Sheriff 's detectives from Los Angeles County sought Chichester for questioning in early May 1985 , but he had disappeared in a pickup truck registered to John Sohus . He resurfaced under yet another identity , that of Christopher Crowe , in Connecticut in the late 1980s . In late 1988 , Crowe tried to sell Sohus ' pickup truck to a man in Connecticut . When he could n't produce the proper paperwork for the truck , the prospective buyer reported him to police . Connecticut police soon learned that Chichester and Crowe were the same person , although at that time , no one knew that his true name was Gerhartsreiter . Crowe disappeared before police could question him . He resurfaced in Manhattan in 1993 as Clark Rockefeller . On May 5 , 1994 , the workers digging in the backyard of the San Marino home to install a swimming pool for the home 's new owners discovered the remains . It was not until 2010 that the remains were identified . The investigation heated up again when authorities learned shortly after the 2008 kidnapping that Gerhartsreiter was not Clark Rockefeller . He was arrested in Baltimore , where he was hiding out with his daughter . He had already assumed a new identity : a ship 's captain named Chip Smith who , with his daughter Muffy , was relocating to Chile . His second wife , Harvard-educated financial executive Sandra Boss , testified at the kidnapping trial that she spent more than a dozen years with him before growing suspicious that Rockefeller was not who he said he was . They met in New York and were married in Nantucket , Massachusetts . Their daughter , Reigh , was born on May 24 , 2001 , and her father nicknamed her `` Snooks . '' The couple divorced in 2007 after Boss hired a private investigator to conduct a background check , according to testimony at the kidnapping trial .