Kermit Carl Booth, 72, a former resident of Palm Coast and a former employee of the Volusia County school district, faces two capital felony charges of raping a girl when she was between 6 and 9, in a case dating back to 2006 to 2009 in Palm Coast’s Z Section.
Booth was arrested in North Carolina last Friday and released on a startlingly low bond, prompting outrage from Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly. A Flagler County judge had set bond at $500,000 when signing the arrest warrant.
Booth was the girl’s neighbor. She would visit him–her parents trusted him–and he would manipulate her with gifts, like an iPod nano (it was big back then), or entice her with the slide he added to an above-ground pool he had in the backyard.
“No one knew that this was going on until I told my mom when I was 14,” the woman, now 26 and a mother of two, said in an interview today. “He was very manipulative and I dont remember the exact words he said, but he told me to keep secrets.”
She and her family moved out in 2009. Booth continued to live at the same house he’d owned since 1998, at 74 Zephyr Lilly Trail, until he sold it in May 2023. He retired from the Volusia County school district, where he was a year-round maintenance employee, at the end of 2013.
The alleged victim is hoping that revelations about him may lead to additional victims. “I cannot be the only victim,” she said.
According to Booth’s arrest report, the girl had reported the alleged assaults in 2015, saying he’d tried to have sex with her. She refused, but he forced oral sex. “Due to significant investigative challenges, the case saw little movement for several years,” a Flagler County Sheriff’s release issued today states. (The release states that the child’s mother also contacted authorities in 2015, reporting incidents between 2006 and 2009.)
The case was revived when the woman contacted the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office in 2023 and said Booth had contacted her by text on social media. He did so after she’d had her first child. She told him to “stay away from me and my children.” He persisted. (He was arrested in 2016 for aggravated stalking of a different woman.)
In text messages, Booth was asked why he didn’t admit to what he did–molesting a child and taking advantage of her after she had just lost her father. He claimed to have “repentid” (repented) every day. “I’m not happy with myself,” he texted, “I’m so sorry. It’s a first and was a last, I promice [sic], I’m not like that inside actually!”
It was around the time when he left Palm Coast. He texted her on the same number she’d had when she was a child–a number she kept–and at one point allegedly admitted to stalking her: he’d idled in the parking lot of a store where she worked as he thought of going in and facing her. He said he changed his mind when he thought she might be angry. “Angry” is an understatement, she said.
“I think he’s delusional and thinks I have feelings for him or something,” she said. “My boyfriend thinks [Booth] loves me in his sick, twisted fucking way. He just can’t understand that what he did is not right. I mean, you’ve seen his mugshot, the one that’s on the Facebook page. He was smiling.” She was referring to the mugshot above, which the Sheriff’s Office used in its posting of the item on the agency’s Facebook page earlier today.
For all the time that’s elapsed, “it’s been horrible,” the woman said. “I’ve had suicide attempts, I have PTSD, I have been in and out of therapists, psychiatrists, I still have flashbacks, I still have nightmares. The other day I had a nightmare where Kermit got to one of my kids and I wasn’t there to protect them.”
The woman is now furious that no sooner was he jailed on the Flagler County charges than he was let out on a low bond by a North Carolina magistrate.
Booth currently lives at 726 Echo High Road in Franklin, in western North Carolina. Sheriff’s deputies obtained a warrant on July 29. The judge in Flagler County who signed the warrant set the bond at $500,000. The Macon County Sheriff’s Office arrested Booth in Franklin on Aug. 1 and booked him at the Macon County jail.
“A North Carolina judge later lowered the bond to $35,000, and Booth posted bond with an extradition hearing scheduled for September 8,” the sheriff’s release states.
Sheriff Rick Staly was livid. “It’s deeply troubling that a North Carolina judge chose to lower the bond set by a Florida judge,” Staly said in a statement. “This victim waited 10 years for him to be held accountable and now this North Carolina judge has victimized our victim again by allowing him to be released before his extradition hearing on a very low bond. This is a travesty of justice and in all my years in law enforcement, I have never heard of a fugitive from justice case being handled like this by an out-of-state judge. I promise the victim we will continue to fight for justice.”
It is inexplicable how two capital felony charges drew a bond amount in North Carolina closer to the bond he got when he was charged with aggravated stalking nine years ago.
Though Florida law now calls for the death penalty in cases of rape of children younger than 12, the incidents predate the law’s enactment, so prosecutors could not seek the death penalty–assuming he shows up for his next court hearing. Assistant State Attorney Melissa Clark is prosecuting the case.
“Honestly, I was hoping he was going to be in jail while waiting for the trial,” the woman said, “but apparently North Carolina messed that up. But at the end of the day I hope he goes to jal for life. I was really happy when my detective told me he was arrested and put in jail. Today I had a panic attack when my detective told me he was out on lower bond.” The woman was referring to George Hristakopoulos, who heads the Flagler County Sheriff’s Major Case Unit.
“This case is a disturbing reminder of how predators can exploit situations to harm children,” Staly said, commending the “bravery of the victim and the work of our Major Case Unit in obtaining a warrant and arrest.”
In July 2016, when he was 63, Booth was charged with aggravated stalking of a part-time, 34-year-old nurse at the Windsor, the assisted living facility where his mother was a resident. He would visit there often, and seek out the nurse even though the nurse had no relationship with him and was married. She felt “extremely threatened by him,” she wrote in a court document seeking an injunction.
He managed to find her unlisted address and went to her home. The nurse was hiding from him in an employee break room when sheriff’s deputies arrived at the Windsor to arrest him. The third-degree felony charge was reduced to stalking, a misdemeanor, in a plea. Booth was placed on probation for a year. The woman and her husband both secured an open-ended injunction against him.
Laurel says
This case, and the biggest sexual abuse case regarding children, shows just how common it is to protect these offenders. I imagine the Epstein files are being scrubbed and rewritten as we read this.