Leavenworth ? His voice cracking with emotion, Raymond Boothe apologized Friday for stabbing his developmentally disabled son with a pair of needle-nose pliers and leaving him for dead on the Kansas Turnpike.

“I regret everything that happened that night,” he said, reading from a statement he’d pulled from the left pocket of his dull blue, jail-issued trousers.

“I’ve lost my son. If I could take back what happened, I would,” Boothe said, using his handcuffed hands to brush away tears.

Moments later, Leavenworth County District Court Judge Frederick Stewart sentenced the 35-year-old Boothe to 195 months in prison, or about 16 years.

Boothe, who has a history of mental illness, pleaded no contest last month to a lone charge of second-degree intentional murder. Earlier testimony indicated that Boothe had told Lawrence detectives that on Aug. 27, 2002, he had tried to strangle his 11-year-old son, Levi, after having heard God’s voice on his car radio telling him to kill the boy.

At the time, Boothe, who lived in Cameron, Mo., was on the Kansas Turnpike en route to Oklahoma. Levi Boothe was in the front seat; his two younger sisters and a younger brother were in the back seat.

Boothe told detectives he stopped his car, pulled Levi into a nearby ditch and stabbed him several times with needle-nose pliers and a “folding Buck knife.”

Levi Boothe’s body was found about 10 p.m. in the outer westbound lane on the turnpike near mile marker 207 in Leavenworth County. An autopsy revealed he had died from multiple blunt trauma, possibly caused by being hit by oncoming traffic.

Hours later, Boothe crashed his car through a fence at 27th Street and Lawrence Avenue in an apparent suicide attempt. He and the three children survived.

‘He is their father’

At the hearing Friday, Lisa Boothe, Raymond Boothe’s wife and Levi Boothe’s mother, was allowed to speak on her son’s behalf.

Raymond Boothe's wife, Lisa Boothe talks about her husband's sentencing for the August 2002 murder of their 11-year-old son, Levi. Eugene Boothe, Lisa's father-in-law, is at right. He said his son, Raymond, in center of right photo, never got the medical attention he needed for his mental disorder. On Friday, a judge sentenced Raymond Boothe to about 16 years in prison.

“I said it didn’t really matter how many years the sentence was because it can’t bring back my son,” Lisa Boothe said afterward.

Lisa Boothe, who has moved to Iowa, said she planned to file for divorce, though she wants her children to maintain a relationship with Raymond Boothe.

“He is their father,” Lisa Boothe said. “My kids, they’ve been through enough. I’m not going to take their father from them.”

She and Raymond Boothe have been married 13 years.

The three children, ages 12, 10 and 8, are doing well, Lisa Boothe said, though their lives aren’t entirely back to normal.

“My youngest daughter just started having nightmares again; I almost hit a deer the other night, and I think that brought back some memories,” she said.

Boothe saga comes to an end 6News video: Raymond Boothe pleads no contest (12-25-03) Boothe pleads no contest to intentional second-degree murder (12-24-03) ;6News video: Boothe confession is not suppressed (11-13-03) See more stories on Boothe

The two older children live in Osborn, Mo., with Raymond’s Boothe’s mother.

Before the sentencing, Boothe’s father, Eugene Boothe, of Eagleville, Mo., said his son had been hospitalized five times for mental illness since 1987.

“It seemed like they always stopped short of doing what needed to be done,” Eugene Boothe said, referring to mental health workers in Missouri and Iowa. “By that I mean, he’d get better, they’d let him out and then there wouldn’t be any follow-up and he’d have to go back in again.”

Eugene Boothe said he had been told his son was bipolar, a term meaning he is prone to periods of irrational behavior.

“We had probably 10 people lined up who — if this had gone to trial — would have testified that the Ray Boothe who did this was not the Ray Boothe they knew,” Eugene Boothe said. “Until this thing on the turnpike, he’d never been a violent person. He was good with kids.”

Eugene Boothe added, “A lot of us tried to stop him, but it was too late. What could you do?”

In court Friday, a stable Raymond Boothe said he now knew that what he was thinking and the voices he heard the night he stabbed his son “were not real. But at the time, they were very real in my mind.”

He asked the judge for “leniency so that I can be a father to my kids.”

By the book

Raymond Boothe’s mental illness did not affect his sentence, which was taken from the state’s sentencing guidelines.

An unidentified law enforcement official and Boothe's attorney, Gary Fuller, right, escorted Boothe out of a Leavenworth County courtroom after the sentencing.

Initially, family members expected a 155-month sentence because Raymond Boothe did not have a criminal record. But Stewart imposed a 195-month sentence after learning that Boothe had pleaded guilty to passing a bad check in 1990.

The 40-month increase was in keeping with the sentencing guidelines.

“That was for $162. It was felony back then; today it’d be a misdemeanor,” said Eugene Boothe, referring to the bad check. “He paid it all back. It was our understanding that it would be taken off his record after he got it taken care of.”

But under Kansas law, Stewart ruled, Raymond Boothe’s no-contest plea to the bad-check charge counted as a first offense on the sentencing guideline grid.

Raymond Boothe will receive credit for the 17 months he’s been in jail awaiting trial and sentencing. With good behavior, he’s also eligible for a 15 percent sentence reduction, meaning he could be out in about 12 years.

Leavenworth County prosecutor Frank Kohl said he was pleased with the sentence.

“I think it was appropriate,” Kohl said, “given the fact that Levi is no longer here.”

Kohl said Raymond Boothe’s mental illness did not lessen Boothe’s role in the boy’s death.

“The fact that he was or may have been delusional does not mean he shouldn’t be held responsible for his actions,” Kohl said.

Karen Ford Manza, executive director at National Alliance for the Mentally Ill-Kansas Chapter, disagreed with Kohl’s assessment.

“We believe that sentences for people whose mental illness or brain disorders cause them to engage in criminal behavior should be subject to mitigating factors,” Manza said. “What they need is treatment, not imprisonment.”

In Douglas County, Dist. Atty. Christine Kenney said her office had not decided whether to file charges — endangerment of a child or destruction of property, perhaps — against Raymond Boothe in connection with the car crash in Lawrence.

“We’ve been waiting to see what was going to happen in Leavenworth County,” Kenney said Friday. “We’ve got time. It appears Mr. Boothe won’t be going anywhere for a while.”