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DADE CITY - Prosecutor Phil Van Allen wouldn't say much Wednesday about the case against Kristina Gaime.
But he did say the prosecution will continue.
Even after a judge barred Van Allen and other prosecutors from using much of the evidence against her at trial, there remains testimony of Gaime's surviving son, autopsy results of her dead son showing lethal amounts of morphine in his body, testimony from detectives and a report from Dr. Michael Maher, a psychologist who interviewed her and claimed last year that Gaime appeared to confess in 1999.
Gaime, 39, has been in jail without bail, charged with murder, since shortly after the discovery of her dead son at her home April 12, 1999. Trial is scheduled for April 12 of this year, five years to the day from that discovery.
Circuit Judge Lynn Tepper on Wednesday tore a hole in the murder case against Gaime, barring prosecutors from using stacks of letters and other evidence they seized at her home, ruling they were illegally seized.
"Regardless of the judge's ruling, we will go forward with the prosecution of this case," Van Allen said Wednesday.
With investigators developing a theory of a failed murder/suicide, alleging Gaime drugged her 6-year-old and 8-year-old sons, then tried to gas them and herself with the exhaust of her minivan, the judge blocked her handwritten letters one prosecutor deemed "critical."
One note detectives found reads: "I didn't want anyone to find us in time."
Without the letters and without the hose investigators say connected the minivan's exhaust and the passenger cabin where she placed her sons, detectives still have listed evidence against Gaime.
One piece, the testimony of her surviving son, Adam Rotell, could be challenged next at a hearing next month. Defense attorneys want to keep detectives who spoke with Adam from giving their own version of his statements, putting more pressure on the boy to testify directly against his mother.
In their initial questioning of Adam, he told detectives he had a learning disability and couldn't remember dates and times very well.
He also initially denied his mother gave him any pills, although investigators found traces of morphine in Adam's urine, as well as in the body of his dead brother, Mathew.
When he did talk, Adam told of a bizarre string of events, according to a transcript of an interview with him taped April 13, 1999.
Adam said his mother gave him and his brother white pills; Adam said he took as many as six. He thought they were aspirin.
He said he was sleepy, and Mathew had "passed out" when his mother carried them into the van.
"Mom heard a noise in the house, and she thought somebody broke in or she just got freaked out, you know?" Adam told detectives. "And then she took us to the garage."
After she put the boys in the van, Adam said she got in herself and "passed out."
"One of the last things before she fell asleep, she turned the air off," he said.
"Probably she took a sleeping pill because sometimes she hears noises," Adam said. "She noticed the air vents and then the cats meowing."
Adam said he woke up sweating in the hot van. He said he got some juice to drink, then tried to wake his mother. He said he struggled to wake her, and when he did, she couldn't get back inside her house without triggering the security alarm.
Maher said in a deposition that he was summoned to form an opinion of Gaime's mental state in 1999. He told attorneys she was confused but appeared to confess.
"She told me the first time I saw her that she remembered killing her son and that she knew that she did that," Maher testified.
"She couldn't give me a clear moment-by-moment chronologically definite description of events, but she told me that she knew that she did that and she wanted to talk to me about it."
The doctor said at a later interview in 2001, Gaime was less clear about her involvement. He quoted her as saying, "If I did this, it was to protect the children."