PORTLAND – When Suzanne Groetzinger was reported missing on Long Lake in Harrison last August, her three children waited on the shore for searchers to find her body.

“We went to bed at night wondering if she was out there,” her son Jordan Edwards, 16, of Oxford said Thursday. “That made it a lot harder” to come to terms with her death.

Groetzinger and her boyfriend of two months, Raye Trott, died Aug. 11 after his 14-foot runabout was struck by a speedboat owned and operated by Robert M. LaPointe, 39, of Bridgton and Medway, Mass.

Groetzinger’s son, Blaine Groetzinger, 25, of Portland remembers feeling frustrated in those first days after the wreck waiting for word about Groetzinger’s fate. “Just sitting by the lakeside wanting your mother to come home – it was definitely not easy, wondering where she was. What had happened.”

LaPointe faces seven criminal charges in connection with the incident, including two counts of manslaughter and four counts of aggravated operating under the influence.

Blaine Groetzinger filed a civil lawsuit against LaPointe on Wednesday seeking compensation for his mother’s death on behalf of himself, his brother and his sister, Alyssa Groetzinger, 26, of Otisfield. He is represented by attorney Ben Gideon of Berman & Simmons.

Trott’s estate, represented by Portland attorney Alan Beagle, is expected to file an almost identical suit against LaPointe, George LaPointe Jr. and Rick’s Cafe in Naples in Cumberland County Superior Court on Friday. Trott has two children who live in Massachusetts.

The Groetzinger lawsuit alleges that LaPointe knowingly drove his Sunsation Dominator into Trott’s boat, that Rick’s Cafe served LaPointe alcohol after it was clear he had become intoxicated, and that LaPointe – in collusion with his father, George LaPointe Jr. – concealed real estate assets to shield their assets from a civil claim.

Beagle said Thursday that the Trott estate’s lawsuit will contain very similar allegations and claims for compensation.

Gideon said Groetzinger’s children decided to file suit after “it appeared to us that he may be conveying assets that would otherwise be available to satisfy and compensate the two families of both victims of this accident. If we were to allow this to linger on, there was more risk that that would continue to happen.”

According to Gideon, the children would not have sued had LaPointe carried adequate insurance on his 32-foot speedboat, which Gideon estimated to be worth about $200,000, a boat “that’s obviously capable of severe catastrophic damage, and it would have been nice if he had coverage sufficient to fully compensate the victims here.”

According to Blaine Groetzinger, who works construction in Portland, he and his siblings “lost our mother and our best friend. We don’t have somebody to call up and talk to anymore,” he said. “She was a big part of our lives.”

Since her death, Blaine Groetzinger and Edwards said that they have become much closer as siblings, making a point to see each other as often as they can, and certainly more than they did before their mother died.

Blaine Groetzinger said he saw his mother frequently, and it’s been hard – especially over the holidays – to have lost that contact with her.

Edwards, a junior at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in Paris, remembers his mother as very understanding. Very forgiving. Traits he believes she has passed along to her children.

A musician who writes and performs his own music for guitar, Edwards is scheduled to take an advanced placement exam in U.S. history Friday morning and is thinking about studying psychology or education in college.

He’s found it hard not to have his mother around because he said he’d had a “really open relationship with my mother. She was who I went to talk to about pretty much everything,” living with her half of each week under a shared custody arrangement with his father.

Blaine Groetzinger and Edwards spoke with the media Thursday at Gideon’s office, but Alyssa Groetzinger wasn’t able to adjust her schedule to be with her brothers.

Alyssa Groetzinger was acquitted of manslaughter and convicted of operating under the influence in connection with a fatal car accident in Norway in 2000 when she was 20 years old.

She was driving, with passengers Cassandra Schmieks, 16, Danielle McAllister, 19, and Dana Mullen, 20, all of Oxford, when she lost control of her car and crashed into a tree. Schmieks was killed in the wreck.

No civil lawsuits were filed in that case, Gideon said, “because the insurance company voluntarily paid. Moreover, she was sentenced in connection with that and served jail time. She paid her dues.”

Gideon said that no information about that accident will be admissible in the criminal or civil trials, and it has “no bearing on what happened to her mom.”

“She regrets what happened in the past and believes she paid her dues for that,” Gideon said of Alyssa.

In contrast, Gideon said that since the accident LaPointe has “denied all responsibility” for the deaths of Groetzinger and Trott.

His public statements, Gideon said, “attempt to shift the blame to the other boat, that they were the responsible party” despite a statement from LaPointe’s teenage passenger, Nicole Randall of Bridgton, that “they saw the Groetzinger/Trott boat before they proceeded to drive into it,” he said.

LaPointe’s criminal trial is scheduled to start Sept. 8. Groetzinger’s children plan to attend.