On Wednesday, a judge unsealed the indictment accusing Kristina Gaime of killing her 6-year-old son Mathew Rotell and trying to kill her son Adam, 8. The indictment and a search warrant served at her Land O'Lakes town house reveal new details in the case.
Times staff writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 6, 1999
On Wednesday, a judge unsealed the indictment accusing Kristina Gaime of killing her 6-year-old son Mathew Rotell and trying to kill her son Adam, 8. The indictment and a search warrant served at her Land O'Lakes town house reveal new details in the case.
3 p.m. -- Kristina Gaime and her children arrive home after spending several days on a Caribbean cruise with her parents, Kathleen and Gary McDuffie.
8 p.m. -- Adam Rotell is watching Animorphs on television when Gaime gives him and his brother six white tablets, which he thinks are aspirin, and tells them to chew and swallow them. Later, Gaime injected the boys with morphine, put them in her minivan and ran a length of garden hose from the exhaust pipe into the van. In a letter addressed to police, she wrote: "I didn't want anyone to find us in time."
11 p.m. -- Gaime's next-door neighbor returns home and hears nothing unusual from Gaime's house. Because their homes are attached, he typically would hear her van engine running, but he said the house was quiet.
11:18 a.m. -- Pasco sheriff's deputies respond to an alarm at Gaime's house. She answers the door, tells deputies everything is fine.
11:52 a.m. -- Kathleen McDuffie, arrives at the house and finds her grandson dead in the minivan, calls 911.
11:55 a.m. -- Paramedics reach the house. Gaime is in the garage cradling her son. The investigation begins.
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