August 2026 - Vol. 23, Issue 4

A Child Set Afire!

It was late March 3, 1983 and David Rothenberg, 6, slept in a California motel room. His father, Charles Rothenberg, 42, had recently picked David up from the New York home of Dave’s mother and his ex-wife, Marie, for a week’s visit.

The child awoke screaming in agony. Dad had poured kerosene around the room, then lit a match.

A witness saw the conflagration and called police. Cops and an ambulance arrived. By the time University of California Irvine Medical Center doctors examined David, they found third-degree burns over 90% of his body. They expected him to die.

The next day, Charles sent Marie this Western Union telegram: “By the time you get this telegram, I will have terminated my existence. David has been in a very bad accident.”

Police informed Marie’s boss that David was injured in a fire; the boss relayed the message to her, including that David was in a California hospital. Her boss purchased airline tickets for both her and her boyfriend, a police officer, and they flew to David’s side.

David surprised doctors by surviving — a survival necessitating agony. Treatment meant removing burned tissues by placing him in a whirlpool with a bleach solution and brushing off bad skin. Pigskin and cadaver skin were temporarily stapled to him. When ready to receive real skin, physicians removed top layers of skin from unburned body sections to lay them on damaged areas.

After setting the fire, Charles drove away, then drove back to the motel parking lot. He watched emergency personnel carry David into the ambulance, then followed the ambulance to the hospital. From the hospital lobby, he sent Marie the telegram.

Charles was arrested on March 9, 1983 wearing a pin reading: “Kids Are Special.”

Interrogated at police headquarters, Charles confessed, insisting he intended to die with David but panicked. He recalled that in his phone call with Marie, she was so angered to find he had taken David to California without telling her that she had threatened he never see David again once she got him back. Questioned, Marie said she did not remember making that threat but acknowledged she might have made it in momentary anger. “If I couldn’t have him, nobody could,” Charles said.

Charles Rothenberg’s childhood was spent shuffling between a single prostitute mother and various orphanages. His mother rarely touched him because she associated touching with sex. As a youth, he found work as a restaurant server. He often supplemented his income through stealing and check forgery, leading to a lengthy criminal record and that revolving door of incarceration and release familiar to habitual criminals.

A handsome, friendly man, Marie thought him a kindred spirit since she was raised in an unhappy family. Her parents divorced when she was a child. Her mother and step-mother were abusive. Eager to live on her own, she dropped out of high school as a teenager so she could get a job in a factory to support herself.

Marie and Charles shared similar goals. Both wanted to marry and raise at least one child in a loving home. “I thought we’d both work hard to build what we had never had in our early years,” she recalled.

Initially, it seemed they would reach that goal. Both were delighted when Marie birthed David. “What a joy!” Charles later wrote in a memoir for a psychologist. “I was so happy!” He added that when he touched the baby, “David was like paper.” How could the soft skin of an infant seem “like paper”? Psychologist Andrew Savicky believed the statement showed Charles perceived even his own child as a “thing” instead of a person.

In David’s early years, Charles appeared an attentive Daddy. Marie described him as “proud” of David to the point of being “overindulgent.” Charles walked David to school each morning. After divorcing, he lived close to Marie to be close to David. He took the child shopping, buying him many gifts. “Our apartment was cluttered with enough games, puzzles, and toys to stock a store,” Marie recalled. Dave remembered once believing he had been blessed with “the best father in the world.”

Charles could be outraged by what he perceived as Marie’s failure to adequately mother their son. Once he found David crying, blamed Marie for it, and beat her. Occasional domestic violence and constant squabbles led Marie to divorce Charles in 1978. Marie thought Charles a bad husband but good father so she allowed regular Dad-son visits.

1983 was difficult for Charles. A restaurant fired him for suspected stealing. The eatery was soon vandalized and a warrant issued for his arrest. Marie was unaware of these troubles in late February 1983 when Charles informed her that he wanted to take David to the Catskills for about a week for a vacation. She had no objection.

Charles took David to California instead, telling David they would have fun at Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland. It was raining when they wanted to go to those famous amusement venues. Charles phoned his ex-wife and told her he wanted to spend more time with his kid. As they spoke, Charles let it slip that they were in California, triggering a spat.

At trial, Charles pled guilty to attempted murder and arson. Before sentencing, Judge James R. Franks cried in chambers. He wanted to imprison Charles for life but could not. He sentenced him to the maximum — 13 years.

“Disgustingly Normal”

Hospitalized and in agony, David asked Marie, “Mommy, did my Daddy do this to me?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Why did Daddy do this to me?” David asked.

She told him his Daddy was “sick” and “went crazy.”

“I never want to see my Daddy again!” he screamed.

Nicknamed “The Miracle Kid,” David recovered enough to leave the hospital in December 1983, to tremendous media fanfare. He wore a Yankees hat player Reggie Jackson gave him. When David got home, he saw a banner reading: “You’re one special kid. We’re glad to have you home.” His schoolmates greeted David like a celebrity. David made the cover of People and appeared on Donahue. Politician Ted Kennedy reached out to him (as Charles shared a prison cellblock with Sirhan Sirhan, Bobby Kennedy’s assassin).

Pop star Michael Jackson was Dave’s most enduring friend. MJ may have identified with Dave because, while the  star’s troubles were not as extreme, Jackson had a difficult relationship with his father and had been burned in a pyrotechnic malfunction. Dave said of MJ, “He’s my only friend that I can say has been there for me always.”

Marie and David moved to California in 1984 so he could be treated by Dr. Bruce Achauer, one of the world’s most esteemed plastic surgeons. David would eventually have over 100 skin grafts.

“Did you see that?” some people exclaimed when they first saw David. Others blurted, “What an ugly kid!”  Such remarks ripped fresh psychic wounds.

Even with his injuries, physical and emotional, David seemed to become a happily active kid. He was often seen skateboarding around the neighborhood. He liked sports, enjoyed art, and his mother affectionately called him “disgustingly normal.” She added, “He wants to wear a tux and ride a limo to the school dance.” Still,Marie insisted he undergo period psychiatric work-ups. “You never know what could be brewing inside,” she observed.

In January 1990, Charles was paroled. His prison time had been especially difficult since he had to be isolated from other inmates who would have attacked the “baby burner.” Having been a model prisoner, he had served only 6 1/2 years.

Parole terms were tough. An electronic monitor would be on him and a parole agent would physically reside with Charles.

David was 13. He feared Charles and slept with a BB gun close. “I’d shoot his eye out if he ever came over!” David declared.

Larry King’s Show, Mike Royko’s Wrath

Three years after being paroled, in 1993, Charles appeared on Larry King Live. King asked why Charles decided to talk about his crime on King’s TV program.

“My son has been exploited for the last ten years . . . by many of the press and I’m tired of it,” Charles replied. “It also puts me in a position where I’m being exploited.” He continued that much of the media was “only interested in ratings and money. They don’t care about my son. They don’t care about me. They don’t care about his mother.” There was something jarring in yoking the three. After all, it would be easier for most people to care about a child who had been disfigured and disabled, and about a mother whose child had been attacked, than to care about someone who  burned his child.

Perhaps sensing his condemnation of media might upset King, Charles added, “A lot of talk shows — I want to exclude you, Oprah Winfrey, Koppel, and Barbara Walters — they’re only interested in ratings.”

It was then that well-known newspaper columnist Mike Royko phoned the show. He could not get through.  Royko later explained in a column why he called and what he wanted to say. Royko found it wildly inappropriate that a man who had abused his child in such a horrifying way would be concerned about the media treatment of his situation and that he would take it upon himself to “turn into a TV critic.” Royko intended to tell Charles that since both his ex-wife and son fear him, Charles should commit suicide!

Liberating Himself From The Past

David Rothenberg changed his name to Dave Dave in 1996. In his own interview with Larry King, Dave revealed, “I wanted to liberate myself from my father’s criminality. . . . To free myself of his name and his legacy, I decided to become my own person through changing my name.”

Dave had always made it clear that there was no possibility of forgiveness for Charles. At the same time, he emphasized that he did not dwell on wrongs he suffered but was getting on with his life.

In January 1996, Charles was charged with the murder of another ex-convict. (The charge was later dismissed.) He wrote a letter the Los Angeles Times published in which he said he hoped David would meet with him so he could accept responsibility for the burning.

By this time, Dave was 19. Dave had “always dreaded” another meeting but “knew the time had come for me to confront him and get him out of my life once and for all.”

Protective glass between the two men prevented physical contact. Dave brought a written statement describing his loathing for Charles. “You are not my father,” he read. “You are an imposter.” He said real parents would not “hinder their children from experiencing a normal childhood.”

Later, Dave recalled, “I was nervous but . . . I just ripped him to shreds . . . beat him up verbally.” To Dave’s satisfaction, Charles was “shaking” under Dave’s verbal onslaught. When Charles said, “I love you,” Dave firmly replied, “No, you don’t!” before leaving.

Dave had gone into it “stressed” but left with “a great weight lifted from [his] shoulders.”

Dealing With Chronic Pain

As a burn survivor, Dave suffered chronic pain. Dave made an appearance on The Doctors TV show to discuss that. “It was like having a million 9 inch nails put into every area of your body,” he said of this agony he suffered during the fire.

Calmare Scrambler Therapy was helpful, he said on The Doctors. It is a treatment in which electrodes are attached to a patient. “It scatters messages to the brain to shut off the pain centers in the brain,” Dave explained. “It’s absolutely amazing! It’s changed my life for the better.”

Nurturing His Creativity

In 1997, Dave said he did not obsess with “what happened fourteen years ago because I want to focus on the future.”   Dave was creative. He recorded raps. He edited music videos and directed some, including one with singer Kelli Lidell.

Dave made an acting debut in March 1997 on the CBS daytime soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful as burn victim Justin who goes to a hospital to encourage another burn victim. Dave’s agent, Howie Hubberman, observed, “It comes from the heart because he went through it.”

The Bold and the Beautiful producers approached Dave about the part. Hubberman described his client as “excited” about acting and said Dave “really wanted to learn from the experience.” Hubberman elaborated that Dave wanted to “learn all facets of the business” and had plans to attend art school in 1998.

That art school was the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

As a small child, Dave was fascinated by graffiti on New York subways and other parts of Brooklyn. When he got into his teen years, this fascination grew into an interest in drawing and painting, interests that led to an art career.

Since digits of his fingers had been amputated to the knuckles, he used specially made art instruments.

Once at Michael Jackson’s Neverland, its owner saw David painting and complimented, “You’re the greatest artist in the world.”

Dave’s paintings have been hung at art galleries.

A website is dedicated to his artwork. On that site, his beliefs about art are discussed, especially his conviction that art can improve humanity: “Where others saw division, he saw the possibility of unity; where despair took root, he planted hope. Dave believed that true change began within individuals and spread outward into communities reshaping society through compassion and hope.”

Drawings on that site vary in style as Dave’s drawings could be representational, expressionistic, or purely abstract. All display energy and technical skill. Some show flower pots and fruits on tables with one drawing showing a vase tilted as if falling. There are deliberately odd drawings of faces, one with tears streaming, and a couple with joyous grins.

Some drawings were clearly studies for paintings. “There was nobody that guided me to paint,” he explained. “I started doing it when I was fourteen. It came naturally to me. There was a catalyst that brought it forward but that catalyst was within myself.” He then described the history of how he had been set on fire by his father when only six years old. That tragedy “embellished my character and allowed me to grow in ways unexplainable to anybody.” Art came naturally to Dave. “Something happens in my brain that makes me want to put a paintbrush in my hand and put paint on canvas,” he stated. He continued that he felt “a messenger within me guiding me to paint.”

A series of his paintings was titled Lifted. He explained, “I wanted to inspire others to be greater than themselves. That was a series I did two years ago. Now I’m Re-Lifting the paintings by adding oil to them.”

Dave did another series of abstract expressionist faces he called Monsters In My Head. He considers Monsters a series of “psychological profiles of people I’ve met over the years.”

Since Dave painted for a long time, he acknowledges, “it has become less enjoyment and more work.” He pointed out, “When you do something over and over again, it kind of becomes a job. That’s the way it’s become with me and painting.” Sometimes he struggles to make himself paint. Ultimately, he cannot shirk his calling: “I’m going to paint because I’m a painter.”

In an interview with Inside Edition, he described the theme of one expressionist painting: “That one is about society’s obsession with beauty and, in my opinion, beauty is nothing but a facade. That painting is called La Facade.”

As far as his history, and the often upsetting histories many others have, he commented t in 2016, “There’s a lot that happens in people’s lives but that doesn’t define them. It makes them stronger.”

The last conceptual work was the Static Series. It was described on his website as a series that “meditates on the quiet presence of static — the shimmering veil once seen in the glow of television screens.” Dave depicted it as “more than interference” but as “a subtle thread running through every moment of a human life.”

Dave Dave died on July 15, 2018, of pneumonia in Las Vegas. He was 42. Shortly after Dave’s death, family friend Mike Watkiss said, “He grabbed hold of life with a sense of urgency and passion. He put people at peace, he brought people together.”

Six years after his death, in 2026, his poems were published in a collection entitled As Dirt Clods Collide. The cover image is one of Dave’s expressionist visual works. Also on the cover are these words: “As the dirt clods collide . . . I try to find the clusters of the mind.” Hopefully, he will be remembered not as a victim but as a survivor and an artist — an artist whose artistic vision was “embellished,” not destroyed, by trauma.

References

Burnett III, Aaron. “The Boy That Fire Couldn’t Destroy: The Life and Death of Dave Dave.” Mel Magazine. Aug. 23, 2018. https://medium.com/mel-magazine/the-boy-that-fire-couldnt-destroy-the-life-and-death-of-dave-dave-aa9332120acf

“Burn Victim’s Acting Debut to Be on Daytime TV Drama.” Los Angeles Times. Feb. 19, 1997. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-02-19-me-30370-story.html

Dave. 1976-2018. https://davedavehq.com/

“Dave Dave.” Michael Quine. YouTube. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=PT1C488g_J0

“Dave Dave rare interview 1997.” MJ/Tribute artists. Inside Edition Profiles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbpG2tALlQk&t=24s

“David Rothenberg, whose father set him on fire in Orange County in 1983, dies at 42.” AP. ABC 7 Eyewitness News. Aug. 16, 2018. https://abc7.com/post/david-rothenberg-whose-father-set-him-on-fire-in-1983-dies-at-42/3971545/

“How A Burn Survivor Manages Pain: Part 1 — The Doctors.” The Doctors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IysjJmHKSIg

“How A Burn Survivor Manages Pain: Part 2 — The Doctors.” The Doctors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug9f3V08VyQ

Noe, Denise. The Bloodied and the Broken. Black Lyon Publishing, LLC. Baker City, OR. 2021.