He confessed to trying to kill his son in a twisted quest to hurt the wife who had divorced him, saying, “If I couldn’t have him, nobody else could.” A nationwide manhunt led to his arrest a week later in San Francisco. In the minutes after midnight, Rothenberg emptied a gallon jug of kerosene around the bed where David lay sleeping, then struck a match and fled. That regrettable phone call, both David’s parents concede, triggered the tragic fire. She told Rothenberg he would never see his son again once they returned to New York. When he accidentally revealed that he was in another state, David’s mother got angry. Instead, they went to Buena Park and planned to visit Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm.Īfter a week of rain, Rothenberg telephoned his ex-wife to ask for more time with his son. Rothenberg, fleeing a warrant charging him with vandalizing a New York restaurant where he worked, took his son for what would be a week’s vacation in the Catskills. He also worries about his mother, who was Rothenberg’s real target that March 3. Now, halfway through eighth grade, he periodically has suffered nightmares about his father “coming back to get me.” They have vanished lately but he worries that “they could come back, after Wednesday.”

This, however, has done little to assuage David’s fear, an invisible but oppressive tension he bears daily. Rothenberg will be forbidden to contact the family until his parole expires in three years. Parole officials also have assured David, his mother and stepfather, Marie and Richard Hafdahl, that Rothenberg will not be paroled to Orange County and cannot go there. He will be under 24-hour “physical surveillance,” and a parole agent will live with him, Kindel added. An electronic transmitter the size of a cigarette package will be attached to him to alert officials if he leaves the area to which he will be paroled. “Otherwise I’ll have to move to another state or something!”Īlthough Rothenberg has been in the medium security prison since September, the corrections department decided Friday to place him under the toughest restrictions of any parolee in California to date, Kindel said. “I hope it’s, like, really far away,” David Rothenberg said. Rothenberg will be among the last to know where he is going. So parole officials anticipating trouble if news leaks of Rothenberg’s whereabouts are working with three possible locations to send the arsonist. 10 by another inmate enraged over what Rothenberg had done to his son.

A desert community in Riverside County last year rejected his request to be paroled there a family that offered two years ago to help Rothenberg upon his release claim that they have received death threats. Kindel, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections. Public outrage over Rothenberg’s release has prompted a shroud of secrecy about his parole destination, which was not decided until Friday, said Tipton C.

Burned by Jordan Marie