Media Mayhem welcomes two brilliant guests to talk with us about the outrageous case of Christain Karl Gerhartsreiter, alias Clark Rockefeller, and how he conned his way into high society and managed to commit murder along the way. Frank C. Giradot Jr. brings his extensive experience as an investigative journalist and author of a book on “Rockefeller,” and friend of thelip, author Walter Kirn weighs in with his customary electric insight.

Frank C. Girardot Jr. has traversed the gritty streets of Los Angeles, California, rubbed elbows with police officers who were of the same ilk as the criminals they apprehended and moved among the cadavers at the Los Angeles County Office of Coroner as if he were the spirit of some poor soul who wound up there.

He knows the scene; the crime scene, that is.

Few modern newspaper reporters or editors have accumulated his vast experience – from covering the O.J. Simpson murder trial to uncovering curious links between one Christopher Chichester and the disappearance of a young San Marino couple in 1985.

It is the latter case that consumes Girardot’s attention now. Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, alias Christopher Chichester, alias Clark Rockefeller, stands accused by Los Angeles County prosecutors of killing John Sohus in 1985 and burying his body in the backyard of the San Marino home where Gerhartsreiter was staying.

Girardot’s investigation with Star-News staffer Nathan McIntire in 2008 likely is at least partly responsible for the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office’s decision to file charges against Gerhartsreiter. And so it is fitting that Girardot – editor and columnist of the Pasadena Star-News – will be in Alhambra Superior Court next week when Gerhartsreiter’s preliminary hearing begins. If prosecutors can convince a judge that they have enough evidence, Gerhartsreiter will be bound over to stand trial in the death of Sohus, whose wife Linda also has not been seen since he disappeared.

Girardot’s 1993 article on unsolved mysteries of the San Gabriel Valley prompted author James Ellroy to investigate the 1958 strangulation murder of his mother, Geneva Hilliker Ellroy, as Ellroy described in his book, “My Dark Places.” Girardot’s article also has been the subject of an “E! True Hollywood Story” and an episode of CourtTV’s “Murder by the Book.”

But Girardot will take his work and expertise to a new level now. Besides covering Gerhartsreiter’s preliminary hearing, he will put the finishing touches on his first piece of nonfiction: “Name Dropper: Investigating the Clark Rockefeller Mystery.” The book, to be published by Star Creek Entertainment, will examine the life of Gerhartsreiter, who conned society’s elite from San Marino to Beacon Hill for more than 20 years. But is this frail, bespectacled German just a con man or is he a conniving, conscienceless killer?

Walter Kirn is perhaps best known as the author of Thumbsucker, which was made into a 2005 film featuring Keanu Reeves and Vince Vaughn; and Up in the Air, a feature film directed by Jason Reitman. In 2005, he took over weblogger Andrew Sullivan’s publication for a few weeks while Sullivan was on vacation. He has also written The Unbinding, an Internet-only novel that was published in Slate magazine.

He has also reviewed books for New York Magazine and has written for The New York Times Book Review and New York Times Sunday Magazine, and is a contributing editor of Time, where he has received popularity for his entertaining and sometimes humorous first-person essays among other articles of interest. He also served as an American cultural correspondent for the BBC.