A motion asks that letters and medications be excluded from Kristina Gaime's murder trial.
By Times Staff Writer
Published May 4, 2004
DADE CITY - Not satisfied with a judge's ruling that would exclude volumes of evidence collected at the home of Kristina Gaime after her son was found dead there in 1999, an attorney for Gaime on Monday asked that even more material be excluded.
Circuit Judge Lynn Tepper in February ruled investigators were vague in requesting search warrants and then overstepped the warrants' limits when searching Gaime's Land O'Lakes townhome after her son, Mathew Rotell, 6, was found dead in her minivan, parked in the attached garage.
Gaime, 39, is charged with first-degree murder in Mathew's death. Prosecutors say he died in a failed murder/suicide plot. Gaime's mother found her and her other son, Adam, then 8, alive inside the home.
Prosecutors say Gaime drugged the boys, loaded them into her minivan, then directed the exhaust into the cabin with a hose before getting inside the van with her children.
Investigators had collected evidence, including a hose by the back of the minivan, as well as prescription medications and numerous letters. One of the letters appears to detail plans for the children's deaths.
Tepper disallowed most of the letters, but the defense attorney in her Monday motion seeks to have eliminated two other letters - one ordering the distribution of her clothing to friends - as well as more medications found at the home.
Prosecutors last week asked the 2nd District Court of Appeal to overrule Tepper's findings.
A trial is scheduled for September but is on hold until after the appeals court rules.
