“Fool for Love” by Craig Horowitz.
From New York Magazine, edited by o.a.g.

How did an Orthodox Jewish lawyer and family man fall so hard for a Scores stripper that he invited her to his kids' bar mitzvahs? There's more -- and less -- to this story than meets the eye.

The love of Mitchell Rothken's life was a topless dancer he'd met at Scores, a 35-year-old blonde with all the requisite equipment named Kymberly Barbieri.

"She was like no other woman on earth," he says, getting visibly excited talking about her, even now, in prison. "I really loved her. She had my heart, my soul, and my mind."

Over the course of their four-and-a-half-year relationship, Rothken built a life with Barbieri. They became so close, he says, it was like they were married. Except, of course, that he already was married.

When news of Rothken's indictment for stealing millions of dollars of his clients' money first broke, the Post ran the irresistible headline FAMILY-MAN LAWYER ADMITS SECRET LIFE WITH SEXY STRIPPER. But they didn't know the half of it. Yes, he had showered Barbieri with extravagant gifts, including several cars, a house in Westchester, and a $6,000-a-month three-bedroom, three-bath Greenwich Village apartment. But they never actually consummated their relationship. And along with clothes and jewelry and stays at the Delano in Miami Beach, he paid for a nanny for her two small children. "I lived a certain way and had a certain standard of living, and that's what I gave her," Rothken says. "It was only a reflection of how I felt about her."

And when she shared her dream to run a club of her own, he opened one for her on St. Marks Place called Siren. It was named, of course, for the seductive temptresses of Greek mythology who lured sailors to their death. Rothken put more than $2 million into Siren and attempted to run the club as her partner -- all while trying to keep his real-estate practice afloat and fulfill the obligations of his family life in Fresh Meadows.

It was the financial burden that made his precariously balanced worlds finally come crashing down. Rothken was a successful real-estate attorney, but not that successful: Much of his real-life fantasy was financed with his clients' money -- nearly $3 million he was supposed to be holding in escrow accounts.

 "I was dancing as fast as I could," he says, "but I knew I was sinking."

Incredibly, he was the only one who knew. Even after one of his clients' checks bounced, and he blew the whistle on Rothken by going to the district attorney, Rothken's family was utterly in the dark about his secret life. It wasn't until they were in court for his bail hearing, and the prosecutor recited the charges against him, that his wife, Shonnie, first heard the name Kymberly Barbieri.

In the early nineties, Mitchell Rothken decided he wanted to be a player. He wanted to be a guy people looked at and talked about, a guy who was out every night at the clubs and bars with a beautiful woman on his arm. He developed what was virtually an addiction to nightlife, and for the better part of eight years, he was deliriously happy -- including almost all of the time he was with Barbieri.

"You remember the scene in GoodFellas when they walk into the nightclub with their dates?" Rothken asks one afternoon in prison. "That's what it was like for us at Scores. Whenever we showed up, we always got the best table and the best girls."

Rothken went to Scores several times a week and spent several thousand dollars a night on his friends, clients and himself. "It was beautiful," he says. "There was this mystique about the place and the girls. And when I went there, I was the man."

Rothken's obsession with strip clubs and topless dancers began routinely enough. At first, it was simply a part of doing business. It was a way to entertain clients, close a deal, or attract new accounts. Of course, it was also fun.

Rothken's nightlife accelerated when he went into business for himself. "It got to the point where I'd be spending four or five thousand dollars a night a couple of times a week," he says. "And on special occasions, it could go north of ten grand. But I was making the money back. It was an investment. A lot of these guys, the bankers, were never exposed to this kind of thing. They'd be drinking champagne all night with a beautiful girl sitting on each knee. So when it came time to do a deal, who were they going to give the business to? Me or the guy who took them to Peter Luger? And yes, I paid for prostitutes for clients many times."

But the Scores scene was much more to Rothken than a place to show off for clients or escape the confines of family life. "It's weird, but it's almost like he made a second family at Scores," says Sarah Hirsch, one of half a dozen strippers he befriended there and at VIP over the years. He helped them with their problems, he listened when they needed someone to talk to, and he didn't demand anything -- including sex -- in return.

In an over-the-top expression of this bond, Rothken invited several of the dancers -- including Hirsch, Barbieri, her two sisters, and her mother -- to his sons' bar mitzvahs. "His wife thought I was a client," Hirsch says casually. "I'm used to the unusual, but I have to say that this was pretty weird. But Mitch doesn't think like everybody else. He said Kym was one of the most important people in his life and he wanted her there on such an important day."

In September 1996, Rothken was sitting at his regular table in the restaurant section of Scores when a dancer friend introduced him to Kym Barbieri. She was dressed in a long, clingy gown with spaghetti straps -- the dancers' uniform at Scores when they're not onstage -- and Rothken was smitten.  She danced for him, and then they spent several hours talking.  The tab for this kind of time from a dancer could easily reach $1,000 without the tip.

And then they began to see each other regularly. Barbieri had been complaining about how hard it was not having a car, so one day near the end of October; Rothken took her to a friend's dealership in Connecticut. "She had no credit, so I put $3,000 down for her on a used Acura Integra, and I got her a $10,000 loan, which I guaranteed, from a friend who has a finance company. At Christmas, I paid off the loan for her. She said it was the nicest thing anyone'd ever done for her."

"Trust me, as much of an idiot as I appear to be over this, I'm not that big an idiot," says Rothken. "There were lots and lots of things she said to me over the years that led me to believe this was going to be a permanent hookup.  I thought we were spiritually and emotionally connected. And there was always the promise of sex and romance. But as it turned out, she was a liar who was playing me the whole time."

The first time Rothken's wife actually found out what had been going on was at his bail hearing. Shonnie, his parents, his in-laws (including his father-in-law, an Orthodox rabbi), and several members of the community had come to court to put up their houses to secure Rothken's bail.

But when the prosecutor stood up and began weaving a sordid tale of strippers and a secret life and a love nest and all of the money Rothken had spent, everyone was stunned.  After the hearing, in the hallway outside the courtroom, there was bedlam: court officers actually had to break up the mêlée. Needless to say, after what they'd heard, no one volunteered any collateral for bail.

Shonnie Rothken was devastated. She quickly arranged for a get, a Jewish divorce.  Rothken's defense was eventually taken over by Joseph Tacopina, who skillfully negotiated a plea agreement. Before Tacopina interceded, the prosecutor had been talking about grand larceny and money-laundering charges, which could've put Rothken behind bars for more than fifteen years.

Turning reflective one afternoon in prison, Rothken tells me he should've thought about the consequences of what he was doing. "I know how badly I hurt Shonnie and the kids. But really, more than anybody else, I've betrayed myself."

Though it's clear he still has strong feelings for Barbieri, he can also get very angry when he talks about her, and repeatedly calls her a "pathological liar."

She, of course, has a different view. "He's tried to make me look like the bad guy here," she says. "But the fact still remains that he's the one who put himself in this position. He's the one who stole the money. I had no hand in that. He wants to blame his life going bad on being involved with me, but he's a grown man. He has to take responsibility for his own actions and for the choices he's made in his life."

Rothken talks about the Hebrew concept of teshuva, which is, essentially, a combination of seeking forgiveness through repentance and a total change of mind-set and life. The idea is that just saying you're sorry isn't enough. You have to do much more.

"I need to do it for my wife and my kids and my community. This is like a disgrace to God because I've not only embarrassed myself and my family, I've embarrassed other Orthodox Jews as well. I have to make amends to the community and to my victims, who I've promised to pay back."

But a close friend thinks he has a ways to go. "I believe this kind of thing can absolutely happen to him again," the friend says. "Because it doesn't seem to me that he really understands what happened."

And spending time with Rothken makes it hard to argue the point. He believes he lived every guy's fantasy. Money. Beautiful women. Sex. Freedom. And at home, he still had his family. It was, as his friend says, like he'd found his ticket to ride and wasn't getting off until the very end. No matter what.

"I actually did what a lot of guys dream about doing but never will."

The unedited version of this story can be found at:

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