Police: Girl, 15, dug grave anticipating killing

Source: MSNBC

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - 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.
<snip>

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.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34016501/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

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Another horrible story.

physiologically wrong with her....Was she abused? What could have happened to result in this?

...and some privacy.

If she was abused, hosepipe and razor wire for the abuser.

healthy in an un-healthy world?

This part caught my attention:

"Ultimately, she stated she wanted to know what it felt like," followed by:

"Bustamante remained largely expressionless as she sat with her hands shackled around her waist in court Wednesday."

I have a sick feeling this young woman has no access to her emotions. Rather than saying "she wanted to know what it felt like," I'd hazard to say, she wanted to know how to feel.

/end psychobabble -101

:eyes:

fact is, even in a 'healthy' world, every so often there's going to be sociopaths and psychotics born into it.

I'm not at all sure why I didn't just write that. Well, except that I did just write that. Though, I will admit, I tried to go beyond the surface. But hey, "whaddevah" :eyes:

you didn't have one.

You are exactly on-point as to what was going on.

Sounds like she has a severe case of Borderline Personality Disorder and wasn't getting properly treated for it. She was a danger to herself and others and should have been hospitalized.

that she was incapable of feeling, and was looking for something big enough to break through.

I'd also say, as an armchair psychologist, anti-social personalities lack the ability to feel, not necessarily related to abuse--I think there is research showing physical basis there? While abused but non-personality disordered people have it beaten out of them, in one way or another....

oh just rambling there a bit....

anyway, awful story. :( just too sad.

Some people are just born without empathy.

Put her down. Either that or put her in jail for the next 70 years and give a bunch of chances to kill prisoners and staff.

like lets make wars to see how it feels

Death or a cell for the rest of her life.

Lock her away for 50 years and study her.

Did her parents make some sort of Lovecraftian bargain?

neighbor's child next door?

...is truly frightening, regardless of the crime.

I REALLY hope that those of you posting this kind of "pound of flesh" response are not part of our criminal justice system. Posts like this might have been written by Percy on the Green Mile.

Thanks for saying this.

she is need of intensive and long term care.


How sad for both families.

She was convicted in 1968 of the manslaughter of two young boys aged 3 & 4 whilst she herself was only 11.

During her trial psychiatrists testified that she displayed "classic symptoms of psychopathology". She was sentenced to be detained indefinitely. Despite the severity of her sentence she was release from prison in 1980 and has apparently gone on to leave a relatively normal life, although not a lot is really known about her life since prison other than she has a daughter. Virtually everything about her life now is either unknown or unreportable - there's a press gagging order to protect the anonymity of both her and her daughter.

<bleedingheartliberal>
Despite what this girl has done, it would be sheer stupidity to simply write her off as "broken". With the right support she can eventually become a relatively normal member of society.
</bleedingheartliberal>

1. If she "had been receiving mental health treatment for depression" why didn't a mental health professional see warning signs?

2. Was she/is she on some kind of medication?

Just curious.

'receiving competent mental health treatment'.

Many, many people get what help they can from over-worked, understaffed state employees who get their half-hour every two weeks and nothing more. If they are getting medications, they often are getting the wrong ones, and don't know enough to be able to tell the counselor that it's not working.

With the shutting down of the mental-health facilities over the past 30 years, going to treating everybody as out-patients, a lot of troubled people stay on the street who should be getting intensive in-house therapy on a daily basis.

Thanks, Pres Reagan.

Ted Bundy was 15 when a nine-year old girl who lived on his newspaper route went missing, and still is to this day.

:scared:
rocktivity

for decades to come, methinks...