Sonoma Valley man says emotional abuse from his wife led him to kill her

A Sonoma Valley man on trial for killing his wife 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.

Steven Rothschild said his wife of 36 years already had unleashed a barrage of criticism as they drove home 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 others 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 today.

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 testified. “She was going to repeat it for hours.”

Deputy District Attorney Javier Vaca pointed out that Rothschild, by his own account of the night of her murder, 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 enabling him to retire at 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.

Both retired from tech careers, Steven and Juanita Rothschild had been living on Amherst Circle since April 2014. Previously, they lived in Truckee, Reno, Washington State and San Francisco, according to Gallenson.

According to Rothschild’s testimony, he and his wife had a difficult relationship and he briefly left her twice, staying at a hotel in September 2015 and again in March 2017.

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 in June 2017 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 starting with the phrase: “You are bathed in love and adoration.”

“Who wrote those words?” Gallenson asked him.

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

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 two 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 sons.

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.

Rothschild described to the jury his wife’s anger over a birthday card he’d bought in January 2017 for son Seth Rothschild.

The card had an image of three little bears, a meaningful reference to his son’s nickname “bear” when he was a child.

His wife was angry because the card referenced a connection her husband once had with his ex-wife, he said.

“There was a lot of yelling after that,” Steven Rothschild testified.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.