State Bars Rothenberg From Orange County

Charles David Rothenberg was released on parole from a Northern California prison Wednesday, the second time in 16 months that the man who set fire to his young son in a Buena Park motel has been paroled.

Officials with the state Department of Corrections would say little about the release but offered repeated assurances that Rothenberg would not be put in Orange County--where his son and ex-wife now live.

Rothenberg, who burned his son, David, as he slept in a motel room in 1983 in a warped attempt to get back at his ex-wife, will be under round-the-clock surveillance by at least one parole agent. An electronic anklet will also be used to monitor his whereabouts.

“These measures are as restrictive, as tight as we’ve ever done,” said Michael Van Winkle, a spokesman for the Corrections Department.

Nonetheless, these same security measures were in place last September when Corrections Department officials say Rothenberg managed to slip out the back of an Oakland doughnut shop in violation of his parole, which had been granted in January, 1990. That landed him in Pelican Bay state prison near the Oregon border for another eight months.

Corrections officials have refused to say where Rothenberg, 50, will be located this time around, but the talk on radio stations and in the streets of Oakland is that he may wind up in that Northern California city.

“It’s like Oakland is a great dumping ground for every degenerate released and that is not the image we want,” said Deborah Campbell, press secretary to Oakland Mayor Elihu M. Harris.

“Perhaps (Corrections officials) will say that because he escaped from Oakland the last time, they’ll try something new this time,” Campbell said. “We hope that’s what will happen. . . .

“We don’t want him here, and my feeling is that the Oakland community is even more strongly opposed this time to Rothenberg (being located there) because he did escape,” she said. “I think we’re going to start hearing from our constituents here about this.”

Dick Hafdahl, David’s stepfather and a Buena Park police lieutenant, said David has taken the last few days “just in stride. . . . We’re treating it all like a non-event as best we can.”

Part of Rothenberg’s parole agreement stipulates that he not try to contact his ex-wife or his son, who has now changed his name to David Jordan Robinson, after two of his favorite NBA basketball stars, Michael Jordan and David Robinson.

Rothenberg had custody of his son for a week in 1983 when he took him from New York to Orange County and, after an angry phone exchange with his ex-wife, doused the boy in kerosene as he slept and set the bedspread afire, leaving third-degree burns over 90% of his body.

The boy was then 6 years old.

Rothenberg served six years and five months of a 13-year sentence for the attempted murder prior to his parole last year.

Corrections Department spokesman Van Winkle said that if Rothenberg causes no trouble outside prison, “he will be on parole until January, 1993. . . . At that point there are no longer any restrictions or supervision on him.”