In St. Martins, Missouri, on Oct. 21, 2009, a 15-year-old girl committed the most heinous of acts when she murdered her 9-year-old neighbor in cold blood. It’s one of the most shocking true crime stories in recent American history.
Warning: This article contains mentions of self-harm and details of a murder.
As per CBS, Alyssa Bustamante brutally killed Elizabeth Olten by strangling her, slitting her throat, and stabbing her eight times in the chest. Moreover, she said she enjoyed it and wrote the following in her journal on the same day she committed the despicable crime:
“I just f***ng killed someone. I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed them now they’re dead. I don’t know how to feel atm. It was ahmazing. As soon as you get over the “ohmygawd, I can’t do this” feeling, it’s pretty enjoyable. I’m kinda nervous and shaky though right now. Kay, I gotta go to church now… lol.”
To maneuver Olten into place, Bustamante had convinced her younger sister to bring the girl to a nearby forest to hang out. The murder then occurred due to Bustamante’s homicidal ideation — homicidal thoughts and the need to find out what it’s like to take someone’s life. She then buried her victim’s body in a grave that she had dug in the forest five days earlier and covered it with leaves.
While it’s obviously no excuse, Bustamante had a troubled childhood. Her mother, Michelle, was a teenager when she gave birth to Alyssa, and she had addiction issues and had been in trouble with the law for theft and drug use. Her father, Caesar, was serving time in prison at the time Alyssa committed the murder. Her grandparents, Gary and Karen Brooke, had taken legal custody of her in 2002 when she was eight.
Alyssa’s persona changed, as her friends noticed, around 2007, following an attempt at taking her own life using “a bunch of Tylenol and something else, some sort of pain killer.” She self-harmed, and her online profiles listed “killing people” and “cutting” as hobbies (as per CBS).
It is, therefore, widely believed there could and should have been an intervention that might have prevented this awful crime from being committed. Of course, it happened, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it now, but what consequences did Alyssa Bustamante suffer as a result of her violent actions?
What happened to Alyssa Bustamante after she killed Elizabeth Olten?
After Elizabeth Olten was reported missing and police got involved in the case, Alyssa Bustamante ultimately led them to her grave.
Her first court appearance after her arrest came on Nov. 17, 2009, where she pleaded not guilty but was indicted on first-degree murder and armed criminal action. In Jan. 2012, Bustamante accepted a plea deal for the lesser charges of second-degree murder and armed criminal action. Shortly after that, she received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of conditional release and a consecutive sentence of 30 years for armed criminal action (as per Huffington Post).
The prosecution had urged Pat Joyce, the judge on the case, to sentence Bustamante to an additional 71 years so every time she was up for parole, she could explain, “Because I robbed 71 years from Elizabeth Olten on Oct. 21, 2009” (as per Missouri Net).
Several mental health professionals testified that Bustamante has major depressive disorder in addition to borderline personality disorder (as per St. Louis Post-Dispatch), which her defense attempted to use as reasoning for leniency, but that justification was denied.
Patricia Preiss, Elizabeth Olten’s mother, agreed to settle a wrongful death lawsuit that requires Bustanate to pay her more than $5 million (as per Associated Press).
Bustamante is now 30 years old, and her sentence means that the earliest she will ever be released is 2054, when she will be 60.
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