LOS ANGELES – The best friend of vanished California woman Linda Sohus testified Monday that Sohus and her husband avoided a tenant she described as creepy.

Susan Coffman was called to fill in pieces of a murder mystery being unraveled in the Los Angeles trial of a notorious impostor. But she added more questions than answers.

Additional Photos

Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, center, sits with his lawyers in front of a projected photo of Linda and John Sohus in a Los Angeles courtroom Monday. The Associated Press

Coffman said she and Linda Sohus were best friends through high school and were bridesmaids at each other’s weddings.

“We were going to be friends for the rest of our lives,” she said. But then things took a spooky turn.

Once, when Coffman visited the couple after their marriage, she asked why they were living in the main house of John Sohus’ mother rather than a guest cottage on the property in wealthy San Marino.

“She said, ‘There’s a renter that lives there and we don’t talk to him because he’s kind of creepy,’ ” the witness recalled.

Christian Gerhartsreiter has been charged with murdering John Sohus and burying his remains on the property where he lived. No trace of Linda Sohus has been found.

Gerhartsreiter later spent years moving through U.S. high society under a series of aliases, most notoriously posing as a member of the fabled Rockefeller family.

He has pleaded not guilty to killing Sohus.

Defense attorneys have suggested the wife may have murdered the husband.

But Coffman said the couple never argued.

“They were like two contented puppies,” she said

In the spring of 1985, Coffman said, the couple came to her home to show her a truck they had bought and “were pleased as punch” that they could afford it.

They were struggling financially, she said, and Linda’s job at a science fantasy bookstore didn’t pay much.

John, who worked with computers, was a devotee of the game Dungeons and Dragons, Coffman said, and the couple invited her to attend a science fiction convention with them. She accepted.

Then, she said, Linda Sohus called her and said, “Hey, we’re heading to New York. John’s got a job with the government and they may want me too.”

Sohus said they would return in two weeks, but they never came back.

Two months later, Coffman received a postcard in her friend’s handwriting postmarked Paris. She said that only deepened the mystery. They had no plans to go to Paris.

The card with a picture of the Eiffel Tower was displayed for jurors. The message written on it was: “Sue, Kinda missed New York (Oops) but this can be lived with. John and Linda.”

“When I initially got it, I thought, Oh great. I know where she’s been,” said the witness. “But there was no explanation.”

She said that was the last she ever heard of her friend.

Later in the day, Tiffany Shew, a DNA analyst for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, testified that she tested air mail stamps placed on two postcards allegedly sent by Linda Sohus.

Shew said she found a man had licked stamps on both cards.

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