Was Carol Lee Booth the victim of a serial killer? Carol Lee Booth, a 26-year-old woman, was last seen on March 15, 1976, in South San Francisco. She had been walking from a bus stop on El Camino Real towards her home, taking a shortcut near Kaiser Hospital and Mission Road. Her disappearance sparked a search, and nearly two months later, on May 4, 1976, her body was found in a shallow grave near Colma Creek in a brushy area close to where she was last seen.
Booth's murder was particularly brutal, and authorities later connected it to a series of homicides from the same period, known as the "Gypsy Hill Murders".
Booth was one of five women who were killed between January and April 1976 in the San Mateo County area. These cases, which involved young women being sexually assaulted and murdered, remained unsolved for decades. In 2014, advancements in DNA technology linked some of the murders, including Booth’s, to a man named Rodney Halbower, who was already imprisoned for other crimes. However, despite these developments, Booth’s case remains technically unsolved as not enough evidence was available to formally charge Halbower with her murder.
The FBI and local law enforcement agencies continue to investigate these cold cases, hoping that modern forensic techniques or new information could bring justice for Carol Booth and the other victims of the Gypsy Hill killer.
