Rachel Booth is a 13-year-old home schooled student, a neighborhood baby sitter who was a good enough seamstress to get a part-time job at Boston Stitchery near her home in Elizabeth Township.

	John Beale, Post-Gazette Interviewed for a news story in March 2004, Matt Booth Sr., stood behind a locked fence that surrounded his home at 3610 Beale St., McKeesport, which was sold that day at a sheriff's sale. At right is Matt Booth, Jr., 11. Three years later, Mr. Booth was shot and killed by his 13-year-old daughter. Click photo for larger image.

For about six months she earned money on weekends washing dishes and doing house cleaning for an Irwin family while her father, Matthew, did carpentry work for them.

She complied implicitly with her father's demands, running errands for him, dropping whatever she was doing to answer his call. An avid hunter, he taught her how to shoot a shotgun. Their relationship seemed so close that a neighbor had the impression that Rachel was her father's wife.

But early Monday morning while her father slept, she took his shotgun, she later told police, and killed him with a blast to the face.

The forces that pushed Rachel to that threshold began years earlier, their origins in a failed parental relationship, alleged physical and sexual abuse, and a home life that teetered for years on the brink of dissolution.

Rachel has been charged with murder, and was still being held in the Allegheny County Jail last night.

She was born Nov. 24, 1993, less than a year after her older brother, Matthew Jr. Their parents were McKeesport natives. Michelle Fazek was not yet 20; Mr. Booth, a year older, had joined the Army but washed out after a shoulder injury.

"I was young and foolish," Ms. Fazek said of the relationship.

They never married, but lived together in a rented 576-square-foot house at 3610 Beale St. that once belonged to Mr. Booth's grandparents. By July 1995, the couple had three children, the oldest just 2¹/₂.

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette This house in the Boston section of Elizabeth Township is where Matthew Booth met his death from a shotgun blast fired by his 13-year-old daughter. Click photo for larger image.

In those years, Ms. Fazek said, she worked as a school bus driver and also in customer service. She said she brought in most of the income. Mr. Booth worked sporadically as an armed security guard and a carpenter.

But he drank heavily, she said, and the couple had a volatile relationship. Court records show that over the years, she filed several protection-from-abuse orders against him, starting in 1997. He also filed one against her, claiming she abused alcohol and had a mental illness.

According to Allegheny County court records, the Department of Human Services' Office of Children, Youth and Families' first contact with Mr. Booth was April 15, 1998, when he complained that his children had been mistreated by their maternal grandmother.

In the spring of 2004, Mr. Booth received notice that the Beale Street home would be sold at sheriff's sale for nonpayment of about $6,000 in county and school district taxes.

At that time, Mr. Booth told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in an interview for a story about mortgage foreclosures that he was "freaking out," that he had nowhere to live if he lost the house.

"I'm stuck in my ways," he said. "There ain't nobody in this world that should come up and tell someone to get out of their house. I have kids. I have pets. I have everything. I'm not going to throw away my dogs' life."

At the time, Mr. Booth had built a 5-foot-high fence around the property, with a locked gate, and hung "Beware of Dog" and "No Trespassing" signs. To leave or enter the yard, which was littered with concrete blocks, bricks, wood remnants and empty soft drink cans, his children had to clamber over the fence.

Pressure continued to build on Mr. Booth.

In an April 4, 2005, petition for a PFA, Ms. Fazek said that "Matthew threatened me with a shotgun and told me he would kill me if I didn't leave [the house]. He pointed the shotgun in my face and pulled the trigger. He put me out of the house. He kicked me in the back and spit in my face. I went to the police station and they arrested him and advised me to get a PFA. I fear for my safety. He may kill me."

A temporary PFA was issued and she was granted primary custody of the children. But before that school year ended for the summer, CYF was contacted by the children's McKeesport school on an alleged report that Ms. Fazek had been abusive to Matthew Jr. and Rachel.

The charge was determined to be unfounded, and in late June 2005, the parents agreed to share legal custody of the three children. The older two would remain with Mr. Booth; the youngest child, Elizabeth, would live with her mother.

That July, Siti Anna Dinkel of Swissvale bought the Beale Street house at a sheriff's sale for $5,525. She said in an interview yesterday that she decided to rent the house back to Mr. Booth for $380 a month because she had seen his photograph in the Post-Gazette story about mortgage foreclosures and "felt sorry for him."

Ms. Dinkel said neither Mr. Booth nor Ms. Fazek had good enough credit to put the home's electricity and sewage bills in their own names, so she had the accounts listed in her name.

McKeesport police investigated a September 2005 incident in which Elizabeth, who was visiting her father, claimed that in a drunken state he hit her across the face. Although CYF also investigated, no action was taken because "the injuries were not severe and only resulted in moderate pain," according to court records.

About that time, Mr. Booth contacted Ms. Dinkel. She said he told her he needed money to pay attorney fees. Her husband, Mark, introduced his brother, Robert, of Irwin, to Mr. Booth. According to her, Robert Dinkel said he would pay Mr. Booth $6,500 to build a gazebo on his property.

She said that because Mr. Booth's driver's license had been suspended, Robert Dinkel drove nearly every weekend from Irwin to Elizabeth Township to bring Mr. Booth and Rachel to his home. She said Mr. Dinkel needed Rachel to clean dishes and vacuum the five-bedroom, three-bathroom house because his wife suffered from a debilitating disease.

During that six-month period, she said, Mr. Booth never built the gazebo, even though he had been paid.

"He's the smoothest talking man that I know of rather than car salesmen," Ms. Dinkel said. "He can talk his way out of anything."

Rachel earned about $20 each weekend, Ms. Dinkel said.

Court records show that on Feb. 16, 2006, Rachel called her mother early in the morning saying that she had tried to commit suicide. A possible reason came to light a week later when Mr. Booth called Ms. Fazek and said that Rachel claimed she had been sexually assaulted around New Year's by Robert Dinkel.

The Irwin Police Department had begun an investigation on Jan. 7, according to Officer Michael J. Thomas. He said the department had been contacted by "family members," whom he declined to identify. The investigation, he said, included Westmoreland County detectives and the district attorney's office.

During this time, Siti Dinkel said she overheard a conversation between her husband and his brother. She recalled that the men said Mr. Booth had agreed to drop charges of sexual assault if he were paid $30,000 and given back the Beale Street home.

She said her brother-in-law denied any improprieties with Rachel Booth. Ms. Dinkel said she told her husband and his brother not to deal with Mr. Booth.

On Feb. 9, Robert Dinkel, 49, committed suicide, ending the investigation.

In March 2006, Ms. Dinkel evicted Mr. Booth and the two children for not paying about $1,500 in bills. When she entered the house after the family left, it was stripped of everything, including the kitchen sink. In addition, she said, she found animal feces throughout the house.

The Booths moved into the first floor of 5802 Pitt St. in Elizabeth Township. Although Rachel and Matthew Jr. had attended school in the Elizabeth Forward School District, last year Mr. Booth enrolled his daughter in the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School.

Neighbor Jason Mervosh said he never noticed any abuse or heard anything strange coming from the Booths' house across Pitt Street.

"I didn't know anything about any abuse," he said. "We heard arguments, but families argue. There was never anything out of the ordinary."

But another neighbor said Rachel told her Mr. Booth had sexually and physically abused her since she was 7. Suzanne Gruber, who lives across the street from the Booth home, said she could hear Rachel screaming some nights: "No, daddy! No! I'm sorry."

For the past few weeks, Rachel had been employed at Boston Stitchery, where her talent as a seamstress was utilized. She recently got her first paycheck, an accomplishment in which she took pride.

Mr. Booth was in good spirits Sunday night as residents in the close-knit neighborhood gathered in one neighbor's yard for some camaraderie and beer, Mr. Mervosh said. He recalled that Mr. Booth told him he hoped soon to marry a woman from Masontown who recently had visited the Booth home with her child.

"We were teasing him. I said, 'Why don't you date for a while? Getting married is a big step,' " Mr. Mervosh said.

Rachel was intermittently at the party and at one point, Mr. Mervosh chastised her for "being mouthy." A verbal altercation with Mr. Booth ensued. Mr. Mervosh said he went home to bed and was awakened when police arrived at his home to speak with him about the altercation after Mr. Booth's body was discovered Monday.

Elizabeth Township Police Chief Robert W. McNeilly Jr. said it was the township's first homicide in at least a decade. He couldn't recall the department having any involvement with the Booth family beyond a single call about one of the children while they were at school. He declined to elaborate.

"It's kind of sad because it seems like the type of situation that more should have been brought to our attention," the chief said. "I thought, 'If somebody had heard that [screaming by Rachel], why didn't they call?' Some of the neighbors had to have known there were some real problems. If you hear screaming in the middle of the night, at least the police should be called."

The county Office of Children, Youth and Families issued a statement yesterday about the case.

"Because of Pennsylvania's strict confidentiality law, we cannot speak about specific issues," the statement reads. "We can say that the Department of Human Services is looking into this situation and launching a thorough investigation of whether the family was involved in any of our systems.

"We also want to stress that protecting children is everyone's responsibility."