BOSTON -- Less than an hour after the 'Rockefeller' jury announced its verdict Friday, the foreman of the young jury of eight women and four men returned to the courtroom to issue a brief statement on the panel's finding that Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter was guilty of kidnapping and assault and battery.

"This was a complicated case and not as clear cut as it might seem," jury foreman Michael J. Gregory said after the group filed in and took seats in the jury box in the Suffolk Superior courtroom where they heard evidence for more than a week.

Gerhartsreiter, 48, was convicted of kidnapping his then-7-year-old daughter Reigh Boss off a Boston street during a supervised custody visit last summer, sparking an international manhunt. The intense media scrutiny was borne, in no small measure, because of Gerhartsreiter's use of the Rockefeller name and the wealthy tycoon clan's assertion that he was no kin to them.

The pair was found six days later in a Baltimore townhouse and the child was unharmed, but the escapade, in which a social worker supervising the visit was injured hanging on to Gerhartsreiter's getaway car, landed Gerhartsreiter in jail and exposed the false identity he had been using for close to 20 years.

The jury foreman, himself a Harvard law lecturer, said the case, in which Gerhartsreiter's attorneys argued that the German national was a distraught, delusional man who went temporarily insane and kidnapped his own daughter, was not easy to decide.

"We were very thorough in our deliberations. We methodically examined every piece of evidence," Gregory, 32, said, issuing a statement for the entire jury. "We considered every element of every charge and every defense, as evidenced by our legal questions to Judge (Frank) Gaziano and our request to have 12 copies of the written jury instructions. The seriousness of our task demanded no less."

The case triggered international attention not only because of the Rockefeller name but because California investigators have named Gerhartsreiter a person of interest in a decades-old murder case there. They have sought to question Gerhartsreiter in connection with the disappearance and presumed murder of a San Marino couple with whom Gerhartsreiter lived with in the 1980s.

Gerhartsreiter left California soon after John and Linda Sohus vanished, turning up months later in Connecticut driving John Sohus' truck. Human remains were found years later in the back yard of the Sohus' former home. Gerhartsreiter has refused to talk to investigators about the case.

Foreman Gregory said in his statement following the verdict that none of the panel members ever considered any evidence outside the Boston kidnapping case.

"We want to be very clear that, as the judge repeatedly insructed us, we considered all of the evidence presented at trial, and only the evidence presented at trial. No outside information was discussed in the jury room whatsoever. We are competent that our verdict is fair and just and based only on the information that we were legally allowed to consider," Gregory said.

He indicated that although both the defense and prosecution presented psychiatrists who testified at length about whether Gerhartsreiter was delusional or insane at the time of the kidnapping, in the end they simply based their decision on the facts of the case -- presumably whether a kidnapping had occurred and whether the social worker was assaulted.

"This was a case where experts witnesses figured prominently. We gave due weight to the testimony of the experts but we also considered that testimony in light of the substantial factual evidence presented at trial," Gregory said.

Gerhartsreiter's defense team had argued that he is a delusional personality who suffered a psychotic break after his divorce and loss of custody of his daughter. They said he really believed he was Clark Rockefeller. The panel seemed, at least, to agree with that assessement, finding Gerhartsreiter not guilty of giving police a false name when he was arrested.