Man Who Set Son Afire Accused of Violating Parole

Eight months after he was paroled, the man who set his son on fire in a Buena Park motel was back in prison Monday for apparently ducking out of an Oakland doughnut shop and eluding his parole agents for four hours, authorities said.

State prison officials said Charles David Rothenberg’s whereabouts during that time remain a mystery, but he broke his parole terms by eluding one agent and lying to a second before showing up at an 11:30 a.m. job interview, where he was captured without resistance.

Rothenberg, 50, was taken to San Quentin state prison, where he will be held up to three months until a Board of Prisons hearing on the parole violation charges. If found guilty, Rothenberg could be imprisoned up to six months.

David Rothenberg, who remains disfigured from the third-degree burns he suffered over 90% of his body in the 1983 fire, learned of Monday’s episode when his mother picked him up after school.

“I was just . . . glad they caught him and he was a couple hundred miles away,” said David, now 14 and a high school freshman. “If they didn’t catch him I’d be scared, but I think after this he should be put in prison for life.”

Tipton C. Kindel, spokesman for the state Department of Corrections, said officials “don’t know why he did this, because he certainly knew it was not allowed under his parole. We don’t know why he would jeopardize what freedom he had to live on the outside . . . but it was a big mistake on his part.”

For the first time confirming where Rothenberg was paroled, Kindel said Rothenberg was en route to a job interview in Oakland, accompanied by a parole agent, when he was allowed to stop at a doughnut shop at 7:30 a.m. Monday. After “about a half hour, long enough to sit and have a cup of coffee and a doughnut,” Rothenberg failed to emerge from the shop, Kindel said. When the parole agent went inside, he found that Rothenberg had slipped out a side or back door.

Meantime, Rothenberg called a second parole agent and said he was at another location. The second agent arrived at the spot, but Rothenberg was not there, Kindel said.

“He was missing at this point, not where he was supposed to be,” Kindel said. “He deliberately eluded one agent and lied to the second, both of which are violations of his parole in that he was not cooperating with parole agents.”

Seven years ago, Rothenberg, who was divorced from David’s mother, took his son for what was to be a week’s vacation in Upstate New York. Instead, he took him to Buena Park so they could visit Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm.

After seven days, he tried to persuade his ex-wife, Marie Hafdahl, to grant him more time with his son. She insisted that the boy be brought home.

That night, March 3, 1983, Rothenberg took a jug of kerosene, doused the bedspread on which his 6-year-old son slept, lit a match and fled. He was captured a week later in San Francisco, pleaded guilty to attempted murder and other crimes linked to the fire, and was sentenced to 13 years in state prison.

After serving 6 years, 5 months of his term, Rothenberg was released Jan. 24 under what officials said was the tightest security ever provided for a California parolee. He was to live under 24-hour supervision by parole agents and to wear an electronic bracelet that would alert officials if he left Oakland.

“Now we’ve said all along that we were not comfortable with paroling him, and today he made a very serious error in judgment,” Kindel said.