"She Wanted to Know What it Felt Like"

I think this is the most disturbing bit of news I've read in a long time: Missouri Girl Held in Slaying

Quote :

Blessed with a Friday off school, 15-year-old Alyssa Bustamante dug two holes in the ground to be used as a grave, authorities said. For the next week, she attended classes, all the while plotting the right time for a murder, they said.

That time arrived the evening of Oct. 21, when Bustamante strangled 9-year-old neighbor Elizabeth Olten without provocation, cut the girl's throat and stabbed her, prosecutors said. Why?

"Ultimately, she stated she wanted to know what it felt like," Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. David Rice testified Wednesday during a court hearing over the slaying.

Rice, who interviewed Bustamante in the days after Elizabeth's disappearance, said she confessed to investigators and led them to the fourth grader's well-concealed body in a wooded area near their neighborhood in St. Martins, a small town west of Jefferson City.

This is a 13-year-old girl we're talking about here.

Quote :

A Cole County judge ruled Wednesday that Bustamante, who has been held in Missouri's juvenile justice system, should be tried as an adult. Hours later, the teen was indicted on adult charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action for allegedly using a knife to kill Elizabeth. A judge later entered a not guilty plea on Bustamante's behalf and referred her to the public defender's office.

The court proceedings marked the first time that the suspect in Elizabeth's death had been publicly identified since a two-day search for the girl by hundreds of volunteers. When they found Elizabeth's body Oct. 23, authorities only said that a 15-year-old had led them to it and was in custody for the slaying.

Bustamante remained largely expressionless as she sat with her hands shackled around her waist in court Wednesday. She occasionally looked down beneath the brown bangs that covered her eyes and swallowed hard as a judge read the charges against her.

Witnesses at Bustamante's adult certification hearing described a girl who was bright yet depressed and clever in a sometimes sneaky sort of way. She ranked in roughly the top third of her class at Jefferson City High School, the principal said, and had been in no trouble at school or with the law.

Yet Bustamante had tried to commit suicide at age 13 and had been receiving mental health treatment for depression and cutting herself, said David Cook, the chief juvenile officer in Cole County. Once, she led her family to believe she was attending a local church event when she instead sneaked off to a concert in St. Louis, about two hours away, Cook said. On one or two other occasions, Bustamante spent the night in the woods without permission, he said.

After her arrest, Bustamante tried to cut herself with her own fingernails while being held in juvenile custody, said her appointed juvenile defense attorney Kurt Valentine.

This is a kid who's royally screwed up and somehow managed to slip through the cracks. On the one hand, I get the feeling that putting her in with adult offenders is akin to throwing her to the wolves. On the other, what drives someone that age to brutally kill an innocent nine-year-old because they 'want to know what it feels like?"

Rabby wrote:

This is a 13-year-old girl we're talking about here.

Uh, the article says 15. I DEMAND AN EXPLANATION!

Also, ladies and gentlemen, this is why we should execute minors. Some of them just need it.

Quote :

On the other, what drives someone that age to
brutally kill an innocent nine-year-old because they 'want to know what
it feels like?"

Insanity?

Some people are just fucked up at a young age.

Le sigh.

Rabid Badger wrote:

what drives someone that age to brutally kill an innocent nine-year-old because they 'want to know what it feels like?"

Answered your own question there.

Kari Izumi wrote:

Insanity?

Some people are just fucked up at a young age.

No. It's more curiosity and a too-objective view on life.

I guess she's sated her curiosity. Now comes the fun part: spending a lifetime in jail knowing EXACTLY what it feels like to brutally murder a 9-year-old girl. My guess is that it feels like staring at the same four walls for the rest of your shitty, wasted life.

She's a little psychopath, and she got what she deserved. A trial judged by a jury of her peers and a fair sentence. She belongs in adult prison.

Enjoy your prison beatings.

I'm not so sure we should expect that outcome. She's a little touched in the head. Sometimes those kinds of people freak the other inmates out and they stay clear. Hell, she might kill someone in prison.

Yeah, I'm betting that someone that unstable in an adult prison is NOT a good recipe. If she murdered a child just to see what it felt like, imagine what she might do to someone who pisses her off. D:

Ugh. Prison isn't going to rehabilitate her at all, is it? Its just going to make her worse if she survives.

Prison isn't for rehabilitation. It is to punish criminals and keep them isolated from the rest of society.

Lapin wrote:

Ugh. Prison isn't going to rehabilitate her at all, is it? Its just going to make her worse if she survives.

She wouldn't get better anyway.

That's what sociopaths do.

Ugh, that girl is seriously messed up.

But adult prison? That's not going to make her any better.

Quote :

After her arrest, Bustamante tried to cut herself with her own fingernails while being held in juvenile custody, said her appointed juvenile defense attorney Kurt Valentine.

Boo-Freakin'-Hoo

Quote :

He argued Bustamante should remain in the juvenile system, where she could potentially be rehabilitated before being set free by age 21. Valentine warned that Bustamante would either kill herself or be assaulted and killed by others if she were placed in an adult jail cell or prison.

"We are throwing away the child and we are signing a death sentence for Alyssa," Valentine said. "She is not going to survive her time in the Cole County jail."

She killed her 9-year-old neighbor just for the hell of it.....but poor widdle Alyssa the Coldblooded Psychopath is the real victim here!



[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]



Give me a fucking break. Lock her up and throw the away the key.

Welcome to the experience, kiddo. Have a nice* life!

*terrible

The thought of this person ever being released from prison scares me.

Lapin wrote:

She's a little psychopath, and she got what she deserved. A trial judged by a jury of her peers and a fair sentence. She belongs in adult prison.

The jury will be made up of teenagers, will it?

Lapin wrote:

Ugh. Prison isn't going to rehabilitate her at all, is it? Its just going to make her worse if she survives.

Mafiosa wrote:

Lapin wrote:

Ugh. Prison isn't going to rehabilitate her at all, is it? Its just going to make her worse if she survives.

She wouldn't get better anyway.

That's what sociopaths do.

There's been a formal diagnosis of psychopathy, then?

Miss Misery wrote:

She killed her 9-year-old neighbor just for the hell of it.....but poor widdle Alyssa the Coldblooded Psychopath is the real victim here!



[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]



Give me a fucking break. Lock her up and throw the away the key.

Brutally murdering a nine year old - fucked up
Leaving a fifteen year old in a situation where she's likely to be brutally murdered - JUSTICE

Lady Anne wrote:

The thought of this person ever being released from prison scares me.

Yeah. Mary Bell went on a total killing spree as soon as she was released from pri-

...oh. Wait.

Well then, Cyberwulf, what do you propose should be done? She is 15 years old, hardly a child, and committed a pre-meditated murder to "see what it felt like". Anybody who commits pre-meditated murder has a few screws loose, but that doesn't mean they should all be sent to therapy and eventually released back in to society. She was aware that what she was doing was wrong because she initially tried to hide it and then led police to the body when she felt guilt over what she had done. She knew it was a terrible thing to do and did it anyway. And now a nine-year-old is dead because she was curious.

Just because someone is emotionally disturbed doesn't mean they should get a free pass for what they've done, or even a lighter sentence. People younger than her have been tried (and prosecuted) as adults. She committed a crime and now she's going to serve the penalty for it. Yes, there are people out there who are so deeply insane that they have no control over their actions and are even unaware of what they are doing/the fact that what they're doing is wrong, but from what I've read, she doesn't fall in to that category.

By the way, what makes her life so much more valuable than those of the other inmates? You're up in arms over the idea of her being sent to prison because you say she'll probably end up being killed. Don't older people get killed, raped, and injured in prisons? Does their safety matter less because they're older than 15? What about their rights?

Cyberwulf wrote:

Miss Misery wrote:

She killed her 9-year-old neighbor just for the hell of it.....but poor widdle Alyssa the Coldblooded Psychopath is the real victim here!



[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]



Give me a fucking break. Lock her up and throw the away the key.

Brutally murdering a nine year old - fucked up
Leaving a fifteen year old in a situation where she's likely to be brutally murdered - JUSTICE

Little Miss Child Killer should have thought about what might happen to her if she goes to prison that *before* slaughtering her neighbor in cold blood. But it seems to Cyberwulf that it's the killer who deserves some kind of JUSTICE and not the victim.

Nice. Are you pen pals with Willie Bosket too?

I honestly can't believe the things people are saying in this thread. I'm kind of horrified, honestly.

I never said that I think this girl deserves to be raped or beaten, but I believe 100% that she deserves to serve out a life sentence in jail. Commit the crime, do the time.

There is certain a degree of hypocricy in taking quite so much relish of the prospect of her going to adult prison for the specific reason that she'll get her shit kicked in.

Don't see why the state wouldn't stick her in a juvenile centre until she's 18 (or whatever the age of majority in Missouri is), then big girl prison for the remainder of her existence.

The only reason I could think of is incase they're worried she'll kill one of the other kids in there and don't have the capacity to keep her in her own cell and monitor the common areas properly, and that really shouldn't be the case, imo.

I think she should be held in a juvenile facility and see if she can be rehabilitated. You never know; we don't have all the facts. However, upon turning 18, she should be in jail, as Narwhal said. Throwing kids in adult prisons doesn't make things better, but in three years and many therapy sessions, they should know if she can make a normal life or not. Regardless, at 15, she's old enough to know better than to kill someone and she needs to serve time for that.

The thing is, even if she CAN be rehabilitated, that doesn't get rid of the fact that she slaughtered a nine year old girl with a knife and then buried her, allowing the child's loved ones two full days of desperate hope that somewhere, somehow, their child was still alive. She can be as sorry and sane as humanly possible, but that doesn't bring that little girl back. And no, I don't consider living with the reminder of what she's done "enough punishment". Isn't that one woman who participated in the Manson murders always on the television crying about how sorry she is?

This doesn't sound nice (because it isn't), but tough shit. Be sorry all you want, but you're going to do it in a prison cell.

She killed a kid, and she admitted to it, sent the fucker down. Besides wulf, if she were a dude I very much doubt you would have gotten so up in arms about this.