Teen girl kills child to 'see how it feels'

November 18, 4:54 PM Strange News Examiner J. Doug Gill

The standard operating procedure grows gruesomely familiar: child is reported missing; family, friends, police and volunteers urgently begin the search; and authorities initiate an investigation.

The scenario never seems to end well.

When nine-year-old Elizabeth Olten did not return home from a neighbor’s house on October 21, hundreds of people began combing her St. Martins, Missouri neighborhood.

After two days of searching a heavily wooded area near her home, police received – according to information provided by the truecrimereport website – a handwritten note that lead them back to the house where Elizabeth was last seen.

After interviewing the 15-year-old girl who resides in the house – now identified as Alyssa Bustamante – authorities were taken to the already-searched woods and shown the body of Elizabeth Olten. She had been strangled, slashed across the throat and stabbed.

Police arrested Bustamante and charged her with first-degree murder. The juvenile is also charged with armed criminal action for allegedly using a knife in the attack

In a Jefferson City courtroom today, after a Missouri State Police officer testified the 15-year-old told investigators she killed her young neighbor because she wanted to know how it felt to kill someone, a grand jury indicted her on the murder charge.

Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem ruled that the slaying was vicious, and that the teenager should be tried as an adult, maintaining the state has no adequate facilities or services to treat the suspect if she stayed in the juvenile court system.

Bustamante, the older sister of the girl Olten was visiting that evening, also told investigators she had dug two holes nearly a week before the murder with the intention of burying the nine-year-old.

Prosecutors are pointing to this admission as proof the killing was premeditated.

According to the Associated Press, Juvenile defense attorney Kurt Valentine argued that Alyssa would either kill herself or be assaulted and killed by others if she were placed with adults in a jail cell while awaiting trial or in a prison if convicted.

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

Juvenile officers testified that Bustamante previously considered committing suicide and had been receiving treatment for depression for a few years before allegedly killing Elizabeth.

Bustamante has been held without bail in the Cole County jail since her arrest.

If convicted of first-degree murder, the teen could be sentenced to up to life in prison.