Defendant Steven Rothschild takes the stand in Sonoma Valley murder trial

The prosecution rested its case as Sonoma Valley trial entered second week.|

On trial for killing his wife, Steven Rothschild testified Monday he only remembers incomplete snapshots of the night he beat and strangled Juanita Rothschild in the couple’s home, but he does remember fearing he was about to be subjected to one of his wife’s tirades.

Rothschild said his wife of 36 years already had unleashed a barrage of criticism as they drove home from the Green Center last August after a night out with friends, when she said he committed a social faux pas. Once home, he was afraid her rant would continue for hours, as it had in the past.

“It was a volcano blasting off,” Rothschild, 73, said, describing his actions. “It wasn’t anger... it doesn’t involve thought. It just exploded.”

Rothschild testified over two days in Sonoma County Superior Court before a jury of eight men and six women, including alternate jurors, in his murder trial that began Thursday. The trial continues Tuesday.

Rothschild admitted to a 911 dispatcher he may have killed his wife when he placed the emergency call Aug. 4, 2017 from the couple’s Amherst Circle home in Boyes Hot Springs. She was found unresponsive, slumped and bloodied, on a living room couch.

His lawyer Steven Gallenson is arguing Juanita Rothschild, 67, had subjected her husband to years of emotional abuse, and Rothschild reacted in violence out of fear of her tirades. A killing that occurs in the heat of the moment brings a lesser punishment than first degree murder, which is a premeditated act.

“I was afraid of the barrage” of criticism, Rothschild said. “She was going to repeat it for hours.”

Deputy District Attorney Javier Vaca pointed out that Rothschild, by his own account of that night, never tried to revive his wife and didn’t call 911, until after he had washed his hands twice and tried to find his glasses.

Vaca tried to paint a picture of Steven Rothschild as an “alpha male,” saying he had attended Ivy League schools and had a successful career in computer software that allowed him to retire at age 52. Rothschild said he was pushed out of his firm by a partner with a stronger personality and only was able to retire because he had equity in the company.

“If I’d been an alpha male, this guy wouldn’t have shoved me aside,” Rothschild said.

Nita retired around the same time, after receiving a settlement from AAA of California following a hostile workplace complaint.

According to Rothschild, the couple’s problems began after a series of moves, to Truckee, to Reno and to Washington State, and after they both retired completely. The Rothschilds had been living on Amherst Circle since April 2014.

He said that the couple was living in Marysville, Washington, in 2008 when Nita was diagnosed with a heart condition. He testified that she blamed him for her needing a pacemaker.

“She said, ‘I watch my diet, I exercise all the time and I have this heart problem and you caused it,’” he testified.

Rothschild wrote voluminous letters to his wife, including those in a thick binder entered into evidence, praising her virtues and admitting to his failings in their marriage.

In those letters, Rothschild described his own “temper tantrums” and what he called “free-form rage,” which he clarified under questioning meant he’d hit the steering wheel or the bed, but not his wife.

In an apology letter he wrote after an anniversary weekend when his wife said she didn’t enjoy it because “she was waiting for me to explode,” Rothschild said he “created an atmosphere of fear” and “negativity” and he lavished compliments on his wife.

Each morning, Rothschild said they would meditate in different rooms and he would come to her and repeat a speech, which started with the phrase: “You are bathed in love and adoration.”

“Who wrote those words?” Gallenson said.

“They were dictated by her, memorized by me,” Rothschild testified.

According to Rothschild’s testimony, he briefly left her twice, in 2015 and again in March 2017.

Defense attorney Gallenson portrayed Juanita Rothschild as a controlling and stifling force in the marriage, ruining the joy he used to get out of playing golf and bridge and barring him from doing things that he loved, like reading the newspaper.

“There’d be an explosion” if his adult sons didn’t call their stepmother on her birthday, Rothschild said.

Rothschild said these disappointments contributed to the distant relationship he had with his two sons, Seth, born in 1969 and Mark, born in 1972.

He cried on the stand when recounting how he couldn’t attend one of his son’s weddings because his wife wouldn’t attend family events including his ex-wife.

“Nita found dealing with them intolerable,” Steven Rothschild said of his ex-wife and her family.

Before the prosecution rested its case last Friday, forensic pathologist Kimi Verilhac testified for almost two hours about the external and internal injuries evidenced on Nita’s body during her Aug. 7, 2017, autopsy. Verilhac noted that Nita was just under 5 feet tall and weighed 116 pounds. She testified that Nita had sustained no less than seven blunt force injuries to the head and neck “consistent with a punch,” including a broken nose and a fractured rib unrelated to the lifesaving attempts by the paramedics.

During his cross examination, Gallensen focused on Nita Rothschild’s heart condition and whether his blood thinning medication and pacemaker were factors that could have influenced or contributed to her demise.

Email lorna.sheridan@sonomanews.com.

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