Parole Violation Puts Rothenberg Back in Prison

Charles Rothenberg, the man who set fire to his son in a Buena Park motel room seven years ago, was sent back to prison for eight months Thursday after a state panel ruled that he violated his parole last month.

Rothenberg was arrested in Oakland after he eluded parole agents at a doughnut shop and disappeared for four hours. The Board of Prison Terms ruled Thursday that his disappearance was a violation of his parole and ordered him to serve the additional time in San Quentin Prison, where he has been held since his arrest.

The eight-month parole revocation will be retroactive to Rothenberg’s Sept. 10 arrest, a Board of Prison Terms spokesman said.

In a letter to The Times last month, Rothenberg insisted that his four-hour absence was not a violation of his parole because he was at a job interview at the time.

“I’ve committed no crime,” Rothenberg wrote. “I did not elude anyone. I followed instructions, and I will fight this violation with every breath I’ve got.”

Rothenberg has also contended that corrections officials never specified that he had to be under constant visual surveillance, but rather that the terms of his parole called for round-the-clock “supervision” by parole agents.

Tipton C. Kindel, a spokesman for the state Corrections Department, said Rothenberg violated his parole when he lied to his parole agents about his whereabouts. The terms of Rothenberg’s parole require him to “cooperate” with his parole agents at all times, Kindel said.

Kindel said Rothenberg slipped away from his parole agents after arriving at a job interview he claimed he had set up himself. When Rothenberg found the business closed, his parole agents allowed him to wait at a doughnut shop, Kindel said.

When Rothenberg failed to emerge after about 15 to 20 minutes, agents discovered that he had left the shop through a rear or side door. Rothenberg then called one of the agents and claimed that he was at a different job interview, authorities said. The agent told him to stay put but did not find Rothenberg when he arrived 10 minutes later.

Agents found him at yet another job interview a short time later, and placed him under arrest.

Rothenberg, 50, was freed on three years’ parole on Jan. 24 after serving six years and five months of a maximum 13-year sentence for attempting to murder his son, David, now 14, in a March, 1983, motel fire. The blaze left David permanently scarred from third-degree burns over 90% of his body.

Times wire services contributed to this report.