David Rothenberg Meets Jailed Father

David Rothenberg met privately with his jailed father Friday for the first time since the man set fire to David’s bed in a Buena Park motel room in 1983, burning over 90% of his body.

Alameda County Sheriff’s officials said that Charles Rothenberg, who is awaiting trial on separate charges that he shot a man, met with his son for 35 minutes in a special arrangement after visiting hours at Oakland’s North County Jail.

In a letter sent to The Times last month, Charles Rothenberg, 55, said he had been hoping to meet with his son for 13 years to express his love for him and accept responsibility for what he did. At the time, Rothenberg expressed doubts about the meeting ever taking place.

“Experts said it would never come about. . . . What will I say? How will we both react? What kind of a visit will it be? It really doesn’t matter,” Rothenberg wrote. “I just want to see my son, to take full responsibility for my actions and tell him I love him. It will be hard.”

Rothenberg and his son were separated by a protective glass during the unmonitored visit. Both father and son requested permission for the visit, sheriff’s officials said.

“It was a regular visit like everybody else does,” said Sgt. Jim Knudsen, who added that officials hoped the visit would give David Rothenberg “a chance for closure.”

David Rothenberg, 19, told a television interviewer last month that he wanted to meet his father so he could get on with his life.

“I really want to confront him. I need to close a chapter in my life. If I don’t, I feel it’s holding me back,” said David Rothenberg.

The son flew to Oakland from Los Angeles with a KABC-TV Channel 7 reporter, Knudsen said. Sheriff’s officials gave no other details about the meeting.

Charles Rothenberg was sentenced to 13 years in prison for pouring kerosene around David’s motel room bed and setting a fire that severely disfigured him. Authorities said he tried to kill the then-6-year-old boy because he feared that his wife would never let him see the boy again.

Rothenberg served less than seven years of that sentence and settled in Oakland in 1990. He was arrested in January and charged with the attempted murder of a 47-year-old man and with being a felon in possession of a gun.

He denied any involvement in the shooting.