‘I’m not going to see him anymore’ [Times photo: Tony Lopez]

Since Mathew Rotell's death, his father, Stephen Rotell, left, has concentrated on protecting his surviving son, Adam (photo at left). [Family photo, above, of Mathew at Clearwater Beach last September]

By AMY ELLIS

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 12, 1999

TAMPA -- Adam Rotell knew his dad was hurting.

Leaving the funeral for his 6-year-old brother, Adam looked at his father's eyes and asked if he was crying.

Before Stephen Rotell could reply, 8-year-old Adam reached up and removed his father's sunglasses. With his tiny fingers, he pushed away his father's tears.

"Dad, you always tell me to think a happy thought," Adam said.

For Rotell, it was but one sign that he and his son were going to be okay.

"I think God is looking out for him," Rotell said of his son. "The fact that he can do that tells me he's going to get there. He's going to be alright."

Speaking publicly for the first time since 6-year-old Mathew's death on April 12, Stephen Rotell told the Times on Tuesday that he is determined to shield his surviving son, Adam, from the onslaught of publicity brought on by the younger boy's death.

At the same time, he must mourn the loss of Mathew.

"He was such a beautiful little boy," Rotell said. "You look at this face and you wonder what went wrong."

In photographs and on videotape, Rotell, 37, clings to the summer of '98.

Here he is with his boys, building sand castles on Clearwater Beach. Here they are at Sea World. And, here, they're together at their grandparents' place in Pennsylvania.

Those were happy days. And they were the last days Rotell would see Mathew alive.

"The day I buried my son is the day I saw my son for the first time in six months," Rotell said, his voice cracking, his eyes red-rimmed from tears. "I'm not going to see him anymore, and his brother's not going to see him anymore. That's all that matters now."

Adam knows his little brother, who loved Tweety Bird and roller hockey, is gone. But how much he understands beyond that is not clear, Rotell said.

Already, Adam has seen videotape on television of himself and his father at Mathew's funeral, along with newspaper photographs of his mother and Mathew. "He's very aware of it, and he has talked about it," Rotell said. "Any questions he has, we're going to try to answer. But how do you tell a child that someone he loved and trusted did something like this?"

Rotell said Adam has yet to ask about his mother, Kristina Gaime, who stands accused of killing Mathew and trying to kill Adam. A team of psychologists, counselors and family friends is at the ready to help him deal with that reality, his father said.

Police say Gaime, 34, gave the children six white tablets, then injected them with morphine. She loaded them into her minivan and tried to kill herself and them with carbon monoxide, investigators say.

Rotell, a respiratory therapist, met Gaime, a nurse, when they both worked at University Community Hospital in 1988. She asked him out, he remembers.

Rotell hesitates to describe the early, happier days of their relationship. A Tampa judge has issued a gag order in the ongoing custody case involving Adam. Rotell won't risk losing another son.

"I don't know this person," Rotell said, referring to Gaime, now under 24-hour suicide watch in a Pasco mental hospital. "I thought I did, but I was wrong."

Since Mathew's death, Adam has been more clingy with his father. He lives with his father in Lutz and is being homeschooled until attention from the case subsides. Rotell is on leave from his job at James A. Haley Veterans Affairs Hospital in Tampa.

At Mathew's interment, Adam took tiny flowers from the arrangements around the casket and placed them around the mausoleum.

"It was a very important, private moment for us," Rotell said. "It gave him some closure and made him a part of what was happening."

Rotell has tried to prevent Adam from seeing TV reports on Mathew's death or newspaper photographs. Even on a recent trip to Orlando, Adam saw photographs of his mother and brother in the newspaper racks.

"He's disturbed by it," Rotell said. "I think it makes him afraid because he doesn't understand it."

Rotell has no answers about what might have prompted Gaime to try to take her life and the lives of her sons. He hesitates to say anything that might be perceived as negative about Gaime.

"This is my children's mother," he said. "Adam could be reading this 20 years from now. I don't want to do that to him."

Adam will have a difficult road ahead but may recover to lead a fairly normal life, said Steve Woods, a child grief specialist in Buffalo, N.Y

The support Adam receives from family, friends and professional therapists will determine how well his wounds will heal, Woods said.

"This may never be fully reconciled for him," said Woods, who runs support groups for bereaved children at The Caring Place, a non-profit center for grieving children and their families.

"A mother who was supposed to love him and his brother may have tried to kill them both. This will be a lifelong process for him."

His relationship with his father may determine how well Adam will rebound, Woods said.

"He is going to need support throughout his childhood and adolescence," Woods said.

It's hard to see the good in any of this, Rotell said, gesturing toward the vacation photographs of Mathew, who died a month ago today. But Rotell sees the good -- everyday he spends with Adam.

"Adam is alive and that's the good," he said. "That's all I've got."