The Afton Star-Enterprise
Afton, Union County, Iowa
September 05, 2002

Levi BOOTHE, 11 of Creston died August 27, 2002 near Lawrence, Kansas.

Services were 2 p.m. Saturday, September 1 at United Church of Diagonal with Rev. Karen GARRISON and Rev. Lee GARRISON officiating the service. Burial was in Graceland Cemetery Creston. Family had received friends 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday at Wilson-Watson and Armstrong Funeral home in Diagonal. Memorials will be established in his name.

Levi BOOTHE, son of Lisa A. (CARSON) and Raymond BOOTHE, was born September 18, 1990 in Creston. He attended Irving Elementary School and was a resident of Midwest Opportunities in Creston for the past seven years.

Survivors include his parents Raymond and Lisa BOOTHE of Cameron, Mo., brother, Mitchell Dean BOOTHE; two sisters, Nichole RayAnn and Makayla Leann BOOTHE, all of Cameron, Mo.; grandparents, Linda (husband Kenneth) EVANS of Renville, Minn.; Eldon (wife Mila) CARSON of Diagonal, Carol BOOTHE of Osborn, Mo., and Eugene (wife Regina) BOOTHE of Eaglesville, Mo.; and great-grandparents, Lucy KIRKLAND of Macksburg, Dean (wife Virginia) McCOY and Loraine BOOTHE of Eaglesville, Mo.

NOTE: Levi BOOTHE was an 11-year-old mentally handicapped boy, autistic and suffered from brain tumors. He was unable to speak and had been fitted with a leg brace. Levi also suffered from tuberous sclerosis, a genetic disease that left a rash on his face. Those close to the family said that Levi was a happy boy, making gains and learning, and in good health in spite of his disabilities.

On August 27, 2002, Raymond took Levi from the Midwest Opportunities Group Home in Creston, Union County, Iowa, where the boy was residing. Later, some of Levi's clothing and his leg brace was found in a yard in Kellerton, Iowa. Investigators did not know how the clothing got there or why the leg brace had been removed.

Raymond took his other children, Nicole (9), Mitchell (7), and Makayla (6) from his sister Stacy PERRY's home in Osborn, Missouri. The three children were residing at the PERRY home while their mother was in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program [other accounts state that Lisa, the mother was at work while Stacy watched the children].

Outside of Lawrence, Kansas on Interstate 70 [Kansas Turnpike], Raymond stopped the car and attempted to choke his son. Then he took Levi to the bottom of a a ditch along the Interstate and stabbed the boy several times with a pair of needle-nosed pliers. After the attack, Raymond dragged Levi back onto the side of the pavement, leaving his son for dead. Levi's body was hit by at least one vehicle before it was discovered around 9:30 that night after the Leavenworth County Sheriff's Office received an anonymous 9-11 call. The caller said that a pedestrian had been hit on the interstate [perhaps the person who ran over Levi's body?].

Authorities said that during the attack, the other three BOOTHE children remained in the vehicle, screaming and begging for their father to stop. BOOTHE later told authorities that Levi was still moving when he drove off. He thought that eventually someone would run over the body.

After leaving his son on Interstate 70, approximately 3 miles east of Lawrence, Kansas, Raymond BOOTHE drove to Lawrence, apparently driving around for about three house with his three surviving children in the vehicle. Then Raymond crashed his four-door Dodge Neon at 27th Street and Lawrence Avenue in an apparent suicide attempt. The three children were not seriously injured in the crash. The vehicle went airborne, crashed through sevral fences, struck trees, then rolled before landing upright.

Raymond and the children suffered cuts and bruises from the crash. The police found them early the following morning walking along a street in Lawrence.

After being treated at the hospital, the three BOOTHE children were turned over to the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services.

Raymond BOOTHE was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder by the Leavenworth County District Court. Leavenworth County Attorney Frank KOHL stated that Levi had been killed in an excessively "callous and cruel" manner with some evidence of an attempted strangulation. The autopsy report revealed that Levi had been stabbed multiple times in the chest and back. It was determined that Levi died from multiple blunt trauma, probably from when he was struck by a vehicle[s].

Raymond BOOTHE was ordered to undergo mental evalution, housed for a 60-day psychiatric evaluation at Larned State Hospital. BOOTHE's background included drug and alcohol abuse and mental illness. He was later found competent to stand trial. Levi's mother Lisa BOOTHE stated that Raymond's mental state was deteriorating about two weeks before Levi's murder.

"It's like you knew something was going on, but you didn't know what it was," she said.

After his arrest, Raymond BOOTHE, age 34 and a carpenter from Cameron, Missouri, told police that he killed his disabled 11-year-old son Levi because the boy "had the devil in him," was an "abomination" and had given him "the finger." BOOTHE said he became angry after Levi made the obscene gesture at him. BOOTHE also stated, "I had to rid the family of him."

Raymond BOOTHE entered a not guilty plea on May 16, 2003. After several delays by the defense team, proclaiming they needed more time to gather psychiatric evaluations, Leavenworth County Frederick STEWART denied court-appointed defense attorney Gary FULLER's motion to keep BOOTHE's confession out of evidence on November 13, 2003. The judge also set the trial date for January 26, 2004.

After the 5-minute hearing, Raymond's father, Eugene BOOTHE of Eagleville, Missouri, told the press that Raymond had been hospitalized in 1987 and in 1992 for mental illness. He also stated that in the early hours of July 4th of 1987, Raymond had called him from St. Louis, saying that he was "seeing thing and hearing thing." Furthermore, Raymond had been fearful that someone was attempting to kill him.

"We feel like he doesn't really comprehend what's happened," Eugene BOOTHE remarked.

Eugene BOOTHE added, "Levi couldn't talk. [Making Raymond's] statements about things that definitely aren't so," referring to allegations that Levi had also called his father names prior to the attack.

Other family members had stated they were stunned and described BOOTHE as an average guy with no apparent problems. They thought BOOTHE was a good family man.

Family members said that Raymond and Lisa had married and raised their family in Diagonal, Iowa, before moving to Cameron, Missouri, to be closer to BOOTHE's family.

On December 24, 2003, Raymond BOOTHE entered a no contest plea to a reduced charge of second-degree murder. Leavenworth County Attorney Frank KOHL commented after the 20-minute court hearing, stating, "He acknowledged what he did. He made a plea offer and we accepted it."

On January 30, 2004, Raymond BOOTHE addressed the court. His voice cracking with emotion, BOOTHE apologized for stabbing his 11-year-old son Levi with a pair of needle-nosed pliers and leaving him for dead on the interstate. "I regret everything that happened that night," BOOTHE told the court, reading from a statement he pulled out of his jail-issued trousers. BOOTHE then asked the court for leniency. BOOTHE was sentenced to sixteen years and three months.

In 2005 BOOTHE was sentenced to and additional 12 1/2 years for the attempted injury and battery upon his other three children, incurred when he crashed his vehicle through a fence in his suicide attempt.

SOURCE:  Articles from Lawrence Journal-World, Lawrence, Kansas
Articles from Des Moines Register, Des Moines, Iowa

The Topeka Capital-Journal
Topkea, Kansas
Friday, September 06, 2002 By Associated Press

LAWRENCE -- Relatives of a Missouri man accused of killing his autistic son and crashing his car with three other children inside had tried to have him arrested because he was mentally ill, they said.

Raymond Boothe, 34, of Cameron, Mo., has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Raymond Levi Boothe, 11. He is accused of stabbing the boy with needle-nosed pliers in a ditch along Interstate 70 on the night of Aug. 27 and leaving him by the side of the road.

Police haven't determined if the boy died from the stabbing or was hit by a car. His body was found on the highway just east of Lawrence, in Leavenworth County, just hours before Boothe crashed his car in a Lawrence yard in what police said was a suicide-homicide attempt.

Lisa Boothe said she had asked police in Cameron, Mo., to arrest her husband the day of Aug. 27 after learning he had taken Levi from a group home where the boy lived in Creston, Iowa. Raymond Boothe had returned to Missouri and picked up the couple's other three children from his sister's house.

The family was alarmed because Raymond Boothe was clearly suffering from a mental illness, Lisa Boothe told a Kansas newspaper.

"We tried to get him committed," she said, "but everything happened before we could get in to see the judge. There was nothing any of us could do; I felt completely helpless. All we could do was wait."

Police said they couldn't stop Raymond Boothe because he had done nothing illegal.

The children have told their mother that Levi was alive when he was left by the road but they didn't see their father stab him, Lisa Boothe said.

The three children -- ages 6, 7 and 9 -- told their mother that Raymond Boothe dragged Levi out of the car and into a ditch. When the father returned to the vehicle, Levi wasn't with him.

"He was still in the ditch, they could hear him crying," Lisa Boothe said.

The three remaining children later survived a car crash in Lawrence that police called Raymond Boothe's murder-suicide attempt.

The children are staying with Raymond's mother, Carol Boothe, in Osborn, Mo. They haven't said much about the crash in Lawrence because they were asleep when it happened, Lisa Boothe said. They were wearing seat belts, but Raymond Boothe wasn't, she said.

"That's kind of got us wondering whether he was really trying to kill the kids, like everybody says he was," Lisa Boothe said. "If he was trying to kill them, why would he make them wear their seat belts?"

Family members interviewed this week said they still loved Raymond Boothe.

"I don't blame (Raymond)," said Lindsay Boothe, Raymond's sister. "And we don't blame him as a family. It wasn't him," it was the illness that gripped his mind.

Two weeks before Levi's death, Raymond had begun talking incoherently and having rapid mood changes, his family said.

"One time, he told me we were going to have a great life together and that he was going to sell one of his cars and make a bunch of money and not to worry," Lisa Boothe said. "And then, a minute later, he was going 90 to nothing, telling me I was drinking too much and that I had a problem and that I was hurting the kids."

Lisa Boothe admitted herself to an alcohol rehabilitation program in Excelsior Springs, Mo., a week before her husband's rampage. She said she later realized she didn't have a drinking problem, but that her husband's illness was pushing her toward a mental breakdown.

"Raymond and I had been married 14 years, and he'd never been like this, never. So I was thinking, 'Maybe there is something wrong with me, maybe I do have a problem.'"

Boothe had been hospitalized for mental problems in 1992. For years after his release he seemed fine, said Lisa Boothe, who said she did not know what type of mental illness he suffered.

Boothe still seemed to be suffering when Lisa and his mother, Carol Boothe, visited him Tuesday at the Leavenworth city jail. He was transferred Wednesday to Larned State Hospital for a 60-day evaluation.

Carol Boothe said her son told her that Levi had called him a name and complained about living in the group home. But Levi Boothe's caretakers in Iowa said the boy's disabilities made it impossible for him to speak to anyone.

Raymond "seemed confused," she said. "It was like he knew what had happened, but he didn't understand what had happened, if that makes sense."

Lisa Boothe said the tragedy has left her confused and hurt.

"I'll never have my son back again, I know that. But I miss my husband -- he was a good husband, a hard worker and a wonderful father," she said. "But I can't deal with the man who killed my son. I just can't.

"So now, in a way, I hope they don't get him to come back mentally because if they do and he realizes what he's done, it'll kill him. He'll commit suicide, he couldn't live with himself. He loves his kids, totally."

The Topeka Capital-Journal
Topeka, Kansas
Saturday, January 31, 2004 By The Associated Press

LEAVENWORTH -- A Missouri man who choked and stabbed his disabled son and left him to die on the Kansas Turnpike because he thought the child "had the devil in him" was sentenced Friday to 16 years and three months in prison.

During his sentencing hearing, Raymond Boothe asked for leniency for the killing of 11-year-old Levi Boothe in August 2002.

"He meant more to me than my own life," Boothe told Leavenworth County District Judge Frederick Stewart.

"I don't know what was flying through my mind or what I was hearing," he said. "Whatever it was, I know that it was not real. At the time, it was real in my mind."

Boothe, 35, pleaded no contest last month to second-degree murder. He had been charged with first-degree murder.

After the sentencing hearing, Lisa Boothe, Levi's mother, said she noticed a change in her husband before her son's death.

"He is not the same guy I've been married to all these years," she said. "Two weeks before, he started saying and doing odd things."

Boothe, who lived with his wife and three of their four children in Cameron, Mo., drove to Creston, Iowa, on Aug. 27, 2002 to pick up Levi.

The boy, who was living in a group home for developmentally disabled children, had had a genetic disease that left him with a malformed brain, heart and kidneys. He also was mute and wore leg braces.

Boothe then drove back to the Cameron area and picked up his three remaining children.

Investigators said that while driving along the Kansas Turnpike, Boothe thought Levi made an obscene gesture and "had the devil in him" and that his son was "an abomination."

After choking Levi didn't kill him, Boothe told authorities he dragged his son down into a ditch just east of the Douglas County line, where he stabbed him with needle-nose pliers and a knife.

Boothe pulled his son back to the highway, got in the car and ran over him. Witnesses saw Levi crawling along the road, but before they could help, he was struck by at least one other vehicle.

Boothe later crashed the car in Lawrence, in an apparent attempt to kill himself and his other children. All survived.

Boothe's father, Eugene Boothe of Eagleville, Mo., said he hopes his son receives medical treatment while imprisoned.

"I think it is necessary," Boothe said. "If it is not included, then that could be a problem. He definitely was not himself when this occurred."

Stewart ordered Boothe to serve three years of probation after his release from prison.

Transcription & compilation by Sharon R. Becker, May of 2009; updated Stepember of 2012